Indigo bookstore vandalism sparks debate over definition of antisemitism

For author and political activist Naomi Klein, red paint and posters plastered on an Indigo book store in Toronto, accusing the chain's founder Heather Reisman of "funding genocide" for her support of Israel, had nothing to do with the fact that she's Jewish.

"That's an outrageous slander," she said at a rally this week in front one of the bookstores in support of the 11 people charged in the incident.

Instead, Klein said, Reisman was targeted for her support of a program that provides free tuition for soldiers who serve in the Israel Defence Forces but which critics say is an inducement to get non-Israeli Jews to volunteer in the Israeli military.

"Whoever engaged in this activism was protesting the CEO of Indigo's political activity. Not her identity. Not her religion."

It's a position also taken by the Jewish Faculty Network, a group of professors across Canada concerned that legitimate criticism of Israel is being labelled antisemitic.

But Reisman's Jewish background, say some members of the Jewish community, is exactly why she was targeted.

The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies described the vandalism as "a vile antisemitic attack." The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs compared it to the Nazi-incited riots of Kristallnacht back in November 1938.

Meanwhile, the case is being treated as a possible hate crime because "the victim was specifically targeted because they are (or are perceived to be) Jewish, which meets the criteria of an identifiable group," a Toronto police spokeswoman told CBC News.

But whatever one's take, the incident suggests the challenges that may come with both defining antisemitism and when anti-Israel actions or sentiment cross the line from legitimate protest to hate.

Dov Waxman, director of the UCLA Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, says it's important to recognize that there is no consensus about when criticisms of Israel cross that line.

"That's long been a subject of debate and disagreement," he said. "And I think that that's really intensified over the last few weeks."

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, agrees that it has gotten particularly complicated since Hamas's attack on Israel and the subsequent rise in both criticism of Israel and direct antisemitism that has targeted Jews in a variety of ways. 

She says her organization has repeatedly disagreed with Israeli policies and that it's totally appropriate for anyone to engage in such debate, whether in response to the war in Gaza or more broadly.

What's been happening since the war started, however, is that some criticism of Israel has become explicit antisemitism, she says.