This report, co-authored with CJPME, reveals an explosion of anti-Palestinian racism (APR) in 2023 over the previous year. Read the Executive Summary below, or download the full report.

Issued December 2024

Click here to download the full report as a PDF

Executive Summary

Anti-Palestinian racism (APR) is a widespread problem in Canadian society which goes almost entirely unrecognized and unaddressed. A non-exhaustive study of APR in Canada in 2023 by the Anti-Racism Program of the CJPME Foundation (ARPCF) identified 988 examples of this form of racism in online written content.

The study identified examples of APR based on the description published in May 2022 by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), in a report entitled, “Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations.” These examples were drawn exclusively from online written content from 2023 from institutional Canadian sources known to be frequent purveyors of APR. The study deliberately excluded examples from social media, religious organizations, and broadcast and video content. As such, it is necessarily limited in scope, and the problem of APR is almost certainly more serious than this study indicates given its scope.

This report demonstrates that there was an explosion of APR since Oct. 7, 2023.  As compared to levels of APR among right-wing non-profits and media earlier in 2023, APR rose proportionately 8-fold in the final quarter of 2023.  This growth was most dramatic among media, where the levels of APR rose proportionately 33-fold.  The study attributes this growth to the expanded news coverage of Palestine-Israel after Oct. 7, 2023, and widespread and insidious anti-Palestinian attitudes among many commentators in right-wing NGOs and media. Because of this explosion of APR in the post-Oct. 7 era, the overall rate of APR among the sources examined in this study overall almost doubled between 2022 and 2023.

760 of the examples of APR (77 percent) identified in the study included defamatory slander of Palestinians as being either 1) antisemitic, 2) terrorist sympathizers, or 3) anti-democratic. Of these three, slander of Palestinians as terrorist sympathizers was the most common subtype of APR at 585 examples (59 percent of the total incidents), followed by antisemitic (457 examples, 46 percent) and anti-democratic (151 examples, 15 percent).

2023 saw a huge growth in forms of APR which portrayed Palestinians as imminent threats, vs. historical threats.  This was driven by right-wing NGOs and media which, after Oct. 7, 2023, constantly portrayed Palestinians and their allies as either threats to security and democracy, or unworthy of human rights and other protections.  As such, the APR categories which grew most significantly from 2022 to 2023 were, “Dehumanizing Palestinians” which more than tripled, and “Justifying Violence Against Palestinians” and “Erasing the human rights and equal dignity of Palestinians” which both rose more than five-fold.

Of the incidents in which Palestinians were slandered as antisemitic, it was most common for this to be justified based on 1) their advocacy for Palestinian rights (e.g. supporting the boycott of Israel), 2) their criticism of Israel, or 3) their associating Israel with colonialism. These results suggest that the politicized conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel is a driving force behind APR in Canada. Definitions of antisemitism which engender this problematic conflation, such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition (IHRA), were identified as drivers to APR.

This report makes a number of important recommendations, including:

• Governments, educational institutions, corporations and other institutions must adopt measures to incorporate APR in their equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) frameworks and human rights codes.
• Governments, corporations and other institutions must avoid adopting (and roll back the adoption of) any definition of antisemitism which itself promulgates APR (notably the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism.)
• Governments must incorporate APR into their anti-racist public awareness programs targeting not only the general public, but also law enforcement and other public-facing public service professions.  They must also strengthen the institutional collection of data and reporting on APR.
• The federal government must revise the Employment Equity Act to address APR to ensure equitable representation and treatment of Palestinians, and their supporters in the workforce.
• The federal government must also formally recognize the Nakba as a historical injustice and central to Palestinian identity.
• The Federal government should recognize Israel’s violent occupation of Gaza as a genocide.
• Media organizations must adhere more closely to established standards of journalistic ethics, and media accountability organizations should crack down on the rabid APR in right-wing media.
• The Palestinian solidarity movement should leverage anti-racist strategies to advance its message and cause more effectively.