Avi Lewis is one of the most aggressive anti-Israel activists in Canadian public life — and one of the most prominent figures in the so-called "anti-Zionist Jewish" movement. His positions go well beyond the foreign-policy debate over the Israel–Hamas war. They extend to a sustained delegitimization of Jewish institutional life in Canada itself.

On the war, Lewis has called Israel's defensive campaign against Hamas a "genocide." According to the Jewish Independent, Lewis has urged the Canadian government to halt all weapons sales to the Jewish state and supports South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of war crimes.

On the underlying ideology, Lewis told The Link in January 2026: "I'm an anti-Zionist Jewish person, and I will continue to help people understand the political ideology of Zionism and how [it] is linked inextricably to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine as an endgame with the ethno-state, a Jewish state of Israel as its rationale."

The most striking material, however, is Lewis's domestic attack on Jewish Canadians themselves. In a paper attacking the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, surfaced publicly by Canadaland's Jesse Brown in March 2026, Lewis described Jewish Canadians as "cartoonish narcissists," "perpetrators," "supremacists" and "crybullies" who "urgently" must be made uncomfortable. He has also dismissed Canadian antisemitism as a "narrative" forced on the country by an "Israel lobby" that relies, in his words, "on false claims that Palestinians and their supporters are motivated by antisemitism" and on "widely critiqued data to manufacture the appearance of an astronomical rise in antisemitism" (per the National Post's analysis).

This is not foreign-policy criticism. It is the systematic delegitimization of an entire Canadian religious and ethnic minority's institutional voice. The vocabulary — "supremacists," "narcissists," "crybullies" — would end the career of any Canadian politician applying it to any other minority. The double standard is plain.

References

Avi Lewis — Jewish Independent coverage (April 11, 2025)

NDP leadership candidates share views on genocide in Palestine — The Link (January 23, 2026)

Avi Lewis tries to silence Zionist groups with CIJA Report — National Post (October 28, 2025)

Jesse Brown / Canadaland on Lewis's CIJA paper (March 29, 2026)