Last week in this space, we wrote about the increasingly bold, dangerous encroachment of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias into the educational system of Ontario.
The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (ETFO) recently decided to hire Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a fringe, anti-Israel lobby group, whose bellicose propaganda offends truth and history, to train the union’s executive about recognizing and dealing with antisemitism.
IJV is wholly unqualified for the task. Indeed, its inventory of beliefs actually inspire malice and hatred toward Israel. Were the near and far term implications of the union’s decision to employ IJV not so dire, the exercise by the union would be worthy of a Saturday Night Live, nonsensical, tongue-in-cheek parody. But alas, the union’s decision is not a parody. Nor are we able to merely change the channel to be rid of the menace of lies posing as facts. But, sadly, this menace and that of institutionalized antisemitism are now upon us.
By its embrace of IJV, the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario showed its true intention to be part of the malign process of erasing Jewish history from the education of Ontario children.
One of the factually grotesque assertions by the IJV was that the use of the principles and definitions propagated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism.”
IJV’s reference to “anti-Palestine racism” (APR) was purposeful. APR is a full-blown, radical, anti-Israel, educational framework for use as a tool in all public schools from grades K-12 to assess the extent and teach values of tolerance and human rights.
The APR framework was written by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA). It springs from their report Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing, and Manifestations. The report defines anti-Palestinian racism in an outlandishly self-serving, open-ended manner, as “a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba [the founding of the State of Israel which they call the Catastrophe] and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.” To ensure that the definition is never ending and permanently open ended, the report expressly states that this is not an exhaustive list of how “anti-Palestinian racism” might manifest.
As if it were a sheer pane of glass, the purpose of inventing the doctrine of APR is glaringly transparent: to use as a sword to excise modern Jewish history out of the history books in the public schools of Ontario.
Some school boards, including the Toronto District School Board have already adopted the APR framework. But because the Government of Ontario recently placed the TDSB and some other school boards – for financial-related reasons – under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, the use of APR has been temporarily halted by those boards. The danger of its use, however, still exists, as there are other entry points into the curriculum for wielders of APR apart from those controlled by the Board itself, such as by parent committees.
A great deal has been written about the threat posed by the doctrine of APR to the public educational system, to the Jewish community and to democratic values. See for example, Mitchell Consky’s reporting in The CJN, articles in the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, and especially, a superb backgrounder on the subject by the North American Values Institute (NAVI).
Dr. Mika Hackner, the author of the NAVI study, refers to APR as an “emerging threat”. She urges Jewish communities and friends to “be on the lookout for this noxious framework and be prepared to oppose it head-on. The framework not only formally adopts a radical, one-sided anti-Israel understanding of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it treats any disagreement with the anti-Israel party line as inherently racist. And, given the penchant of radical education fads to spread from school system to school system, it is a real and present danger to Jewish communities in the diaspora.”
Dr. Hackner is right. We – proponents of civil society, democratic values, mutually respectful rules of intellectual engagement and a secure future for Jews here – must oppose APR head-on. There are at least three steps of opposition:
• Call it out for what it is: yet another attempted breach of the walls of truth, so vital to us.
• Oppose its infiltration into public school education.
• Raise Jewish children to know and cherish what it means to be part of the Jewish people.
The NAVI backgrounder is available at:
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If you wish to contribute to GAJE’s lawsuit to achieve fairness in educational funding, please click here. Charitable receipts for donations for income tax purposes will be issued by Mizrachi Canada. Your donations will be used for the sole purpose of helping to underwrite the costs of the lawsuit. For further information, please contact Israel Mida at: imida1818@gmail.com Thank you, in advance, for considering doing so.
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Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
March 20, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 