Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV)

Activities

• IJV claims (2024) it “is anti-Zionist. While it had many strains historically, today Zionism is generally understood to denote the political ideology that has provided the basis for Israel’s settler-colonial project and unfolding genocide in Palestine. As an organisation, we hold that the treatment of Palestinians by Israel is morally reprehensible. Zionism is the ideology underlying that treatment.”

Campaign vs. IHRA

• IJV leads the Canadian campaign “#NoIHRA,” alleging that the IHRA definition “is designed to silence criticism of Israel and of Zionism by equating this criticism with antisemitism.” The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • In April 2023, IJV was a signatory on a letter to the UN Secretary-General urging him to reject the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. According to the letter, the IHRA definition “opens the door to labeling as antisemitic… findings of major Israeli, Palestinian and global human rights organizations that Israeli authorities are committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”
  • In 2020, IJV published its own definition of antisemitism stating that “antisemitism is not an exceptional form of bigotry. People who hate, discriminate and/or attack Jews, will also hate, discriminate and/or attack other protected groups—including racialized people, Muslims, LGBTQ2+, women, Indigenous peoples.”

Campaign vs. JNF Canada

• IJV leads a campaign titled “Stop JNF Canada” to “revoke JNF Canada’s charitable status and expose, challenge and stop the JNF’s discriminatory and harmful activities.”
• IJV has accused the JNF of “greenwashing apartheid.”
• In October 2017, IJV filed a complaint with the Minister of National Revenue claiming, “JNF Canada is in violation of the Income Tax Act (the Act), official Canadian policy, and international law.”
• In 2019 IJV spearheaded a petition to the Minister of National Revenue to “revoke JNF Canada’s charitable status” as it “engages in discriminatory practices” and is “helping Israel effectively annex land within Occupied Territory.”
• In January 2019, IJV submitted a complaint to the Canada Revenue Agency alleging that JNF Canada “works in violation of the Income Tax Act and in contravention of Canadian foreign policy in various ways.”
• In September 2024, following the Canadian government’s revocation of JNF Canada’s charity status, IJV published a statement claiming, “This decision comes as a direct result of decades of grassroots campaigning such as IJV’s Stop the JNF Campaign.” According to IJV, “It has taken decades of organizing, petitioning, and protesting for the Canadian government to take action about JNF Canada’s illegal activities. At this moment, when Palestinians are undergoing genocide in Gaza and settler attacks and IDF invasion in the West Bank, it is crucial that the illegal use of Canadian charity status to support Israeli apartheid and war crimes are immediately ended, and that the organizations funding them are held responsible.”

Political Campaign following the October 7 Atrocities

• In September 2024, following Israel finding the bodies of six hostages murdered by Hamas, IJV published a statement claiming, “These deaths could have been avoided…In fact, all of the lives lost since October 7 could have been prevented had Israel and its Western backers, including Canada, sought to address the unbearable situation that led to the events of October 7. Instead, we armed Israel and gave it a virtual blank check to act in ‘self-defence’ against an illegally occupied and imprisoned people. The deaths of the Israelis killed on October 7 could also have been spared had Palestinians in Gaza not been pushed to the point of desperation, had their lives not been forsaken and devalued by Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime.”
• In April 2024, IJV sponsored a protest in Vancouver that glorified the “Beautiful, brave and heroic resistance of the Palestinian people, which did not begin on October 7, which has continued for over 75 years, which has continued over 120 years.”
• In April 2024, IJV called on the Canadian government to “take immediate action in the case of a Canadian charity sending taxpayer-subsidized funds to Israeli organizations involved in the commission of war crimes.”
• In January 2024, IJV “welcome[d]” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determination that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza, and called for Canada to “Apply all diplomatic, political and economic measures at its disposal to put an end to the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli administration” and “Take all necessary measures to prosecute Canadian nationals who participate or have participated in the crimes being perpetrated in Gaza by Israeli forces.”
• In November 2023, IJV claimed “from the river to the sea,” a phrase that echoes long-standing Palestinian terminology for the destruction of Israel, was “not hate speech,” asserting, “When Jewish allies and other supporters of Palestinian liberation share in this chant, we are collectively dreaming of a Palestine-Israel in which no one is forced to live under apartheid, to face genocide or to lose their home. This act of post-colonial imagination is fundamental to repairing the world, tikkun olam, for all who inhabit it.”
• In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7. IJV published a statement claiming, “The civilian deaths caused by the Hamas offensive are an unacceptable consequence of 75 years of unacceptable conditions, part of an attack that is neither unprovoked nor justifiable. Israel needs to be held accountable for its decades of crimes against humanity, crimes that have put Palestinians in a position where violent retribution and death feels like justice.”

Other advocacy campaigns

• In August 2022, IJV published a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “Israel’s crackdown on these organizations is a blatant anti-democratic attempt to delegitimize and ultimately silence Palestinian civil society…It’s time for Canada to take action. We call on the government to immediately condemn Israel’s attempted shut down of Palestinian groups who are exposing and opposing its well-documented system of apartheid.”
• In March 2022, IJV launched its campaign “Together Against Apartheid” to “demonstrate to world leaders that a growing number of people recognize the injustice of Israel’s policies and are standing together against apartheid.”

BDS

• According to its website, “IJV was the first national Jewish organization to endorse the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We continue to support and defend BDS as well as to hold Canadian organizations accountable when complicit in Israeli oppression of Palestinians.”
• In September 2024, IJV was a signatory on a letter to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs urging Canada to “stop all arms transfers to Israel.” 
• In November 2022, IJV held a protest to #BoycottIsraeliWines, as well in “solidarity with Palestinian and Arab prisoners, including the Holy Land Five and Georges Abdallah.”
  • In 2001, the U.S. Treasury designated the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and its employees (Holy Land Five) as a source for financing the Hamas terror organization.
  • Abdallah was convicted and sentenced by a French court to life in prison for “complicity in the assassinations” of Charles R. Ray in 1982, a US military attaché serving in Paris, and Yacov Bar-Simantov, a second counsellor at the Israeli embassy in Paris.
• In March 2022, IJV held a workshop and strategy session titled “BDS: A Toolkit for Community Organizing.” The workshop shared “best practices and how-to information to assist participants in launching their own campaigns, passing resolutions, and supporting this vibrant global movement where they live and work.”

Staff

• Corey Balsam
  • Before joining IJV as the National Coordinator, Balsam served as a consultant on advocacy and policy for Oxfam in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
  • In May 2024, Balsam was a signatory on an open letter to the Canadian Prime Minister, calling for “Canadian support for the ICC’s work with respect to Palestine/Israel.”
  • In February 2024, Balsam tweeted “Israel is carrying out a heinous genocide in Gaza. Antisemitism accusations by pro-Israel lobby orgs (CIJA, B’nai Brith, FSWC) against supporters of 🇵🇸 are mostly bogus and meant to distract / reclaim the narrative. Don’t fall for them.”
  • In October 2023, Balsam signed an open-letter claiming, “we reject the use of our mourning as a reason to commit atrocities on the Palestinian people…The undersigned members of the Jewish community in Canada do not want to have any part in war crimes committed against the Palestinian people. Not in our name!“
• Neil Naiman
  • Naiman, chair of IJV Vancouver, was involved in divestment campaigns during his time at York University.
  • In December 2023, Naiman referred to Gaza as an “open-air prison.”