We are Canadian Jewish parents. The Toronto District School Board has failed to protect our kids

This commentary appeared on July 27, 2024 in The Hub. It is reprinted with permission of the Managing Editor and my co-author, Gili Zemer. And it is Tackle's inaugural post.

¹Much like the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by al Qaeda in the US—9/11 to many of us—the 10/7 terrorist attack in Israel by Hamas changed everything. In both cases, the localised events were catastrophic, killing over a thousand innocent civilians. In both cases, the events sent shockwaves reverberating around the world.

Following 10/7, however, Jews in most Western cities weren’t as shocked by the terrorism itself, as they were by the rapid explosion of antisemitism in its newest guise of anti-Zionism. Perhaps even more shocking was the tepid response by decision-makers, both public and private, who enabled its expansion through their acts of omission.

Before 10/7, antisemitism was, by far, the highest per capita form of recorded hatred in Toronto and Canada. Since 10/7, there has been a massive spike in antisemitic violence.

A crisis in the Middle East comes to Canada

Well before 10/7, we and other Jewish parents at Rawlinson Community School, a Toronto District School Board elementary school in Midtown Toronto, noticed a glaring double standard. While the TDSB addressed many forms of hate, such as anti-Black racism or gender-related discrimination, it was entirely silent about the rapidly rising antisemitism. To foster awareness of the problem, the school’s parent council secured a TDSB innovation grant to hold two antisemitism workshops for our school’s parents. These optional online workshops were to be presented by the TDSB partner organization Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Education (FSWC). They were to be balanced, respectful, and incorporating values of diversity and inclusion.

When the first session was announced to the community, a small but loud group of parents vehemently opposed the sessions and began a relentless campaign to cancel the workshops with letters, phone calls and meetings with the principal, parent council chairs, superintendent and our school board trustee. They claimed that while they do not oppose antisemitism education, they were appalled that a “staunchly Zionist organization would be welcomed in our  school. They alleged that FSWC “repeatedly conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism.” Meanwhile FSWC actually took great care to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from speech or writings that demonize, delegitimize or apply double standards to Israel. In an attempt to further delegitimize FSWC, they pointed to their website, which they pointed out states, “Fighting Antisemitism: Standing with Israel” and shows “an Israeli flag clearly displayed” on a young girl.

The oppositional parents also took the liberty to share their deep knowledge of the Middle East conflict by defining anti-Zionism for our Jewish community: “Anti-Zionism is the rejection of colonialist, racist apartheid political sentiment rooted in legitimation of occupation of Palestinian land, which anybody with a lay understanding of anti-racism, anti-oppression and human rights cannot deny.” It was interesting as Jews to be educated by non-Jews as to what hatred towards us actually was. Any other group would be condemned by the TDSB for attempting to define another group’s understanding and definition of racism against themselves.

These parents relied on many specious claims about FSWC: The organization, they said, demonizes Palestinians and their supporters. It applauds Israel’s military actions and advocates for the cutting off of aid to starving families and children. And, of course, it supports genocide. No matter that Joan Donoghue, former president of the International Court of Justice clarified that the court did not rule that Israel was commiting genocide in Gaza. Rather, it ruled that Palestinians had a “plausible right” to be protected from genocide, and that South Africa had the right to present its claim to the court. We believe that all people should be protected from genocide and political violence, and that all civilian casualties of war and terrorism are tragic. But the ICJ rulings are a far cry from the common accusation that Israel is directly and intentionally committing genocide and we must remember that the proximal cause of both Israeli and Gazan suffering in this conflict is Hamas.

What these parents are really trying to say is that the problem with FSWC is that it’s Zionist. It stands for the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland of Israel. What they won’t plainly say is that they oppose this right of the Jewish people, and they oppose Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. This is anti-Zionism.

In order to make this anti-Zionism sound acceptable, they dress it up in the DEI-infused language of grievance, painting Israel and organizations like FSWC that support it as “colonialist”, “racist apartheid”, and “genocidal.” We see these same tactics used across university campuses, in protests, and in the media.

There is no red line for these parents. They have learned from a system that rewards the “oppressed narrative.”  If they simply declare  they are not antisemitic, they can then proceed to cross the line into antisemitism and attempt to vilify and delegitimize Israel and mainstream Jewish institutions.

And why wouldn’t these parents cross the line when the TDSB doesn’t bother to investigate any of the allegations, when there’s no real accountability for using discriminatory language against Zionists, and when the TDSB will cower to the loudest voices?

Rather than investigating the oppositional parents’ accusations and responding with actual findings, the TDSB said nothing. Instead, our community—the Jewish community that called for the workshops in the first place and followed TDSB protocol—were told that we should find a new provider for the workshops. The blowback was immense. The TDSB would have cancelled the workshops if it wasn’t for a group of more than 100 parents who stood up to the double standards, exposed false allegations, and refused to cancel them.

Part of a larger problem

Our experience at Rawlinson is merely a microcosm of endemic rot within the Toronto District School Board. In a much more damaging scenario that played out just last month, we witnessed the same fecklessness when “community voices”, made up of parents came to trustee meetings for months to make the political case that the TDSB is silencing the Palestinian narrative and needs to adopt the inchoate concept of “anti-Palestinian racism” or APR. And so it was. Despite vociferous opposition from several hundred TDSB parents and concerned Torontonians, the TDSB trustees voted to adopt APR in their Combating Hate and Racism strategy, which had no definition and presented no data to support their case.

Parents at the TDSB can no longer sit back and trust that our school system and its policies will protect our Jewish children. Some of us are even considering pulling our kids out of the public school system and moving them to Jewish schools. However, this is a last resort that we should not be forced into just to keep our kids safe and welcome, and it would only be possible for those who could afford it. Not to mention the fact that Jewish schools in this city are currently being shot at.

We have entered an era where facts don’t matter, misinformation is spread by repetition, and policymakers cower to the loudest voices speaking the language of victimology. Political groups have learned they can push their ideological agenda by manipulating history and creating parallel arguments using the binary DEI framework that pulls at the heartstrings of poorly educated policymakers who are easy targets for manipulation.

If our experience has taught us one thing, it is that it is vital to self-organize. Had we not started to do so years ago, we would not have had a robust social network in place to resiliently respond to the TDSB’s spinelessness and the faux-victims’ lies. Even so, we’ve faced an uphill battle. Now our eyes are wide open.

1. https://thehub.ca/2024/07/27/gili-zemer-and-david-mandel-we-are-canadian-jewish-parents-the-toronto-district-school-board-has-failed-to-protect-our-kids/