Jake Javanshir is a member of Independent Jewish Voice Canada, Don Heights Unitarian Congregation in Toronto and Canadian Unitarians for Social Justice (CUSJ).
On September 23, 2019 the pro-Palestinian Canadian Defenders for Human Rights (CD4HR), posted:
A member of #CD4HR Interviewed Jake Javanshir, a Canadian Jewish ex-Israeli man, about the popular abused “anti-Semitic” accusation that the Zionist regime, Zionist lobbies & their supporters use against anyone exposing or condemning the Israeli war criminal regime or the Zionist activities in the world. Jake explains in this brief video taken at the #Nccmtownhall, while Chrystia Freeland was being protested for supporting the Zionist illegitimate regime and never standing up for the Palestinian Human Rights.
Here is transcript of Jake Javanshir’s statements:
It [antisemitism] is a tactic that is being used… I’m Jewish. I’m an ex-Israeli. This tactic, this antisemitism is being used for decades by Israel, by the Jewish lobby in Canada, US, UK and so on to divert attention from anything that Israel does, not to speak about atrocities that Israel does and blame it all that anybody that criticizes Israel immediately he becomes antisemite. This is a tactic that even the Minister of Education in Israel, the former [Minister Shlomit Aloni], she said it an a speech in US that this is a tactic we always use in order to silence any criticism of Israel… Judaism is a religion, [it] is a faith, [it] has nothing to do with Israel or anything like that. Zionism is a secular ideology that came up from Russia, from Poland from Germany, from people the Zionists who started the whole movement they were all atheists. Their idea was to come to Palestine to take it over. They did not believe in anything about Judaism or anything like that. Judaism and Zionism are two absolutely different things. So it cannot be convoluted although [Benjamin] Netanyahu [Israel’s prime minister] always wanted to pretend that it all the same. It’s not the same. Absolutely. Judaism is a religion. Zionism is an ideology of a colonial and repressive ideology that they will take the land no matter how and what it takes and that’s what they’re doing a slow genocide.