Open Letter to the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, February 12, 2026

The decision by the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario (“ETFO”) to engage Independent Jewish Voices (“IJV”) to conduct antisemitism training for its executives is, to be blunt, a sick joke.  

IJV represents the Canadian Jewish community the way that Jim Jones’ People’s Temple or the Westboro Baptist Church represents Canadian Christians.  They’re “independent” for a reason – no mainstream Jewish group will associate with them, as their values and organizational purpose is inimical to that of the Jewish community.  Engaging them to teach about antisemitism is like hiring a conversion therapy ‘practitioner’ to teach about homophobia.

IJV contests the right of Israel to exist, in any form, in any size.  They want Jews to return to the centuries of exile, when Jews had no homeland of their own and lived in other countries by permission.  Look up the terms “pogrom”, “inquisition”, “dhimmi”, “expulsion edict” and “Holocaust”, draw your own conclusions about how that worked out. 

ETFO’s engaging this motley collection to teach about antisemitism is a calculated insult to Canadian Jews and their  mainstream organizations.  Here’s what their so-called “rabbi” David Mivasair had to say on January 14 about visiting Israeli teenagers hosting a Hebrew language story hour for children and toddlers at a public library in Newmarket, Ontario:

IJV is not a new phenomenon in Jewish history.  Students of Holocaust history will recall that there were Jewish groups, such as the Association of German National Jews (Verband nationaldeutscher Juden) who said that the proper response to Hitler’s rise to power was complete assimilation and rejection of all Jewish practices.  They ended up in the camps all the same.

It’s time to get the identity politics out of teacher training, end the Oppression Olympic Games, and stop cherry-picking lucky mascots out of various ethnic minorities to bootstrap your pre-conceived ideologies.  Bigotry is bigotry, even when it’s disguised in the fashionable woke jargon of the moment.

At the end of the day, it’s your union.  You’re a private organization.  You have the right to hire James Sears, Laith Marouf, Candace Owens, David Duke or Nick Fuentes to train your executives if that’s what you want.  But we’ll make it our business to find out what goes on at this training.  The slides, the talking points, everything; you won’t be able to keep it secret forever.  We can take a pretty good guess at what kind of toxic rubbish will get pushed.  Then, when your executives act on it, and disgrace themselves like so many of your members have done, we will have no hesitation to file professional misconduct complaints with the Ontario College of Teachers.  

We are not accepting anti-Jewish and/or antizionist bigotry in the teaching profession anymore, from anyone.

Parents, Grandparents, and Guardians of children in the Ontario public schools--pay attention. If you are advised of teachers spewing antisemitic tropes, antizionist lies, defaming or demonizing Jews, report immediately to CAEF or another recognized Jewish advocacy agency, and a formal complaint will be lodged. 

Contact:   Andria Spindel, andria@caef.ca , Talia Klein Leighton, talia@cwaa.ca, Avi Attali, avi@oneglobalvoice.org