The new leader of the New Democratic Party, which holds six (about 1.8%) of the 340 seats in Canada’s House of Commons, is a self-identified anti-Zionist Jew.
Avi Lewis was elected with 39,734 votes (56%), ahead of Heather McPherson, who had 20,899 votes (29%), followed by Tanille Johnston (5,159 votes, 7%), Rob Ashton (4,193, 5.9%) and Tony McQuail (945, 1%), the NDP said on Sunday.
Rachel Chertkoff and Richard Marceau, senior vice presidents of community engagement and of strategic initiatives respectively at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy agent of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, stated that CIJA was “left with a deep sense of sadness.” (Marceau is also the group’s general counsel.)
“The two of us, along with other concerned Jewish and allied activists, have spent years at the table with NDP leaders, staff and members,” the two stated. “We engaged in good faith and made the case that protecting Jewish Canadians from hatred is not partisan, but foundational. The hope we had that these leaders could bring themselves back from the brink is now exhausted.”
“This weekend’s convention was a stark reminder of how far the party has drifted from its roots as the voice of Canada’s working class and trade union movement,” they stated. “Canadian Jews helped build that movement. Today, many are made to feel they no longer belong in it.”
The party has become a “hostile place for the vast majority of Jewish Canadians who want to fight for progressive values,” they added.
The two leaders noted that 94% of Jewish Canadians support the State of Israel. “Avi Lewis is himself Jewish, and we respect his family’s history in this party,” they stated. “But Jewish identity is not a shield against accountability.”
“When a leader declares that Zionism is inseparable from ethnic cleansing, he is not engaging in legitimate policy critique,” they stated. “He is telling Jewish Canadians that a core part of their identity is illegitimate. That is exclusion.”
“We will hold Avi Lewis, as we hold every public leader, accountable,” they added. “But we will not pretend today is anything other than what it is. A painful rupture, decades in the making, with dangerous implications for our community and all Canadians.”
Lewis is a former reporter for Al Jazeera and for CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He referred to himself during a debate in January as an “anti-Zionist Jewish person” seeking to “unlearn and unpack the Zionist myths that most Canadian Jews were brought up with.”
He added that he “will continue to say that and to help people understand the political ideology of Zionism and how its current incarnation in the 21st century is linked inextricably to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as an end game with the ethno-state, a Jewish state of Israel, as its rationale.”
In a Feb. 28 statement on his campaign site, Lewis said of the war against the Iranian regime that “the United States and Israel have launched an illegal act of war while Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu speak openly of regime change.”
On Nov. 29, in a statement for International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, he said that “it’s time for our government to have the moral courage to do what is right: no more arms sales to Israel, no more diplomatic and economic support, no more complicity with occupation and genocide.” (JNS sought comment from the New Democratic Party.)
Amir Epstein, director of the Jewish civil rights group Tafsik, told JNS that Lewis’s election is “no surprise.
The party leader’s focus on decrying the Jewish state “shows you how little he cares about the actual country he’s meant to serve,” Epstein said.
Matthew Taub, who runs a group called Unapologetically Jewish, told JNS that Lewis is not a “neutral critic of Israel” but is a “central figure in a fringe movement” trying to delegitimize Israel.
“By elevating him, the NDP is sending a message that this fringe ideology is now welcome in the mainstream,” Taub said.
A party must hold at least 12 seats to have official status in the House of Commons. The NDP held 24 seats prior to the 2025 election. In 2011, it won 103 seats, second only to the Conservative Party and the NDP’s highest total ever.
