The Jewish Left and the right to dissent

A response to the libelous accusations of HonestReporting Canada

OpinionsJordan Molot — Published March 21, 2025 6 minutes

A portion of this interview was later published in the Feb. 11 edition of The Link under the title “The rise of Montreal’s Jewish Left.”

Scott-Talib’s excellent and timely work incorporates an impressive array of sources and themes,balancing the personal experiences and political commitments of respected Jewish activists alongside recent survey data. Moreover, the article provides a thorough explanation for the growing rupture in Jewish support for Israel following the onset of the war in/on Gaza, particularly among the community’s younger demographics. The author is careful to note that though this shift is by no means dominant, it is nevertheless significant.

As a religionist interested in the construction of modern and contemporary Jewish identities, I was pleased to offer some historical considerations drawn from Jewish studies scholarship—as well as some of my own classroom reflections—to help contextualize the various testimonies Scott-Talib so eloquently brought together in her piece.

I was, and remain, proud to have been included in this work, and am grateful to Scott-Talib and The Link’s editorial team for allowing me to be a small part of a much larger and urgent conversation.

While the article has reportedly been well-received by The Link’s primarily student readership, others are evidently far less enthusiastic. 

In a March 4 review published to the website HonestReporting Canada, Layla Rudy reads the piece as an illustrative example of the uniquely intolerant climate of Montreal’s anglophone universities towards its pro-Israel student base. Lining up at least nine other articles published by McGill and Concordia student newspapers, Rudy names and shames its authors and editors for “uncritically platform[ing] views and ‘facts’ that are harmful to the factual narrative about Israel and the Jewish community.” The recent Concordia graduate concludes that such publications are guilty of “erasing dissent and fostering a campus culture where nuance is unwelcome.”

Setting aside her rather puzzling distinction of fact from “fact,” I imagine that very few people would disagree with Rudy on the importance of protecting dissent and promoting thoughtful dialogue within the university.

To my mind, the university offers an ideal setting to think and work through the complexities of politics and knowledge, whether that be concerning Palestine/Israel or more local issues. As higher education is increasingly under threat from administrative budget cuts and other neoliberalizing forces, it is crucial that we collectively protect its ideals of criticality, curiosity and openness. 

Nevertheless, Rudy’s call for intellectual sophistication belies her own refusal to reasonably engage with the critiques levelled against the very movement she so adamantly supports. It is striking that Rudy relies on the same, Anti-Defamation League-approved talking points I recall encountering in my own Jewish middle school education: that Israel assures Jewish survival; that the media is inherently biased; that its opponents either do not know about Jewish history or are willfully and dangerously ignorant of it. 

The article thus appears less interested in developing critical dialogue than in re-affirming to its predominantly Zionist readership that such dialogue is, and always will be, impossible.

Rudy’s assessment of my own words stands out among her more dubious—if not entirely absurd—claims of discursive harm, devoting nearly a quarter of her article to denouncing two entirely misread passages from my interview.

For highlighting the emotional and idealist appeals of Zionism (of which the same could be said for any form of modern nationalism), I am charged with delegitimizing the Jewish connection to Israel. For emphasizing one among many well-documented material effects of Zionism on Palestinian life—namely, infanticide—I am charged with promoting (read: “echoing”) blood libel, a medieval canard which falsely accused Jews of murdering Christian and Muslim children for religious rituals.

Those who have been on the receiving end of similar invectives are undoubtedly familiar with this highly insulting rhetorical strategy, which can only be read as an attempt to discredit me.

In the days following her article’s release, my own “Rate My Prof” page was vandalized with a set of one-star reviews charging me with presenting “biased narratives” in my class and “lacking factual knowledge.” Though they were later taken down by website administrators, it was evident that neither of these reviews were written by students presently enrolled in my course.

While Rudy’s troubling misreadings are perhaps unsurprising given her affiliation with an outlet that openly rejects journalistic standards, what is less clear is how such inflammatory charges square up with her own proposed vision of university life.

One is inevitably led to wonder what exactly nuance is for this author, and how it can possibly thrive when her own reactions to dissenting viewpoints and alternate historical narratives are so acerbic.

Rudy appears particularly bothered that Scott-Talib has “disproportionately amplified” Jewish leftism. Why, she wonders, does The Link choose to write about this movement when, by Scott-Talib’s own admission, “a majority of Canadian Jews identify with Zionism”? 

Aside from the fact that such specificity is, quite literally, the point of investigative journalism, Rudy’s inability to distinguish debate from danger illustrates a broader conceptualization of Jewish communal identity whereby unilateral consensus on Israel is equated with global Jewish safety.

This disdain for intra-Jewish dissent feels difficult to comprehend, particularly since the author’s own work has been largely concerned with questions of Jewish cultural diversity. For example, in the same review in which my words were so shockingly misrepresented, Rudy stresses that Israeli cuisine represents a blending of different Jewish traditions, including its Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and Sephardi culinary practices. 

While ethnic and racial considerations are thus readily embraced into the fold of contemporary Jewish identity, Rudy appears unwilling to extend this openness to diversity of thought. When given the opportunity to either engage with my Jewishness or reject it, Rudy unequivocally opts for the latter, equating my ideological opposition to literal murder.

This logic falls into a paradoxical trap whereby all Jews are implicitly expected to think, feel and act in identical ways. Such reasoning was, of course, central to the anti-Jewish racism circulating across 19th-century Europe, which ultimately pushed Theodor Herzl to call for the establishment of a Jewish state, whether that be in Argentina, Uganda or elsewhere.

Read along these lines, Rudy might do well to pause, listen and even be moved—however slightly—by what others have had to say on the matter. This may or may not include engaging with the plethora of Jewish and non-Jewish activists, historians and philosophers who have so generatively informed my own work. These include Shaul Magid, Atalia Omer, Jonathan Graubart, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Aurora Levins Morales, Ella Shohat, Daniel Boyarin and Marjorie N. Feld, to name only a few.

To quote an old professor of mine: it takes a village to think. But it may also be worthwhile travelling outside one’s familiar terrain in order to discover new, potentially even destabilizing, horizons. 

I join Rudy in asserting that a diversity of informed opinion is crucial for the vibrancy and cultural dynamism of any pluralistic society. If that is what she truly wants, my suggestion to her—and those who share her hostilities—would be to lead by example: to engage rather than dismiss, to ask questions rather than demand answers, to sit with discomfort rather than retreat into certainty.  

We can only wait so much longer.