How A Letter Writing Campaign Concerning Canadian Zionist Summer Camps Reveals the Prevalence of Zionist Derangement Syndrome
On February 4th, 2026, Just Peace Advocates led a group of pro-Palestine organizations in launching a letter-writing campaign concerning Zionist Jewish summer camps in Canada, called “When Children’s Camps Support a Genocidal State, It’s Time For A Gigantic Change.” The goal of the campaign, like a lot of JPA campaigns, was to end governmental “tax breaks and support from camping associations” for Jewish overnight camps that are vocally Zionist, that bring in Israeli soldiers as staff and special visitors, and that support the Israeli state in activities, language learning, holiday celebration, and myriad other ways. (I had nothing to do with the campaign, though I support it entirely.) JPA identifies “at least 17 overnight summer camps throughout Canada that support the State of Israel in some way.” They make it abundantly clear that “These camps are not problematic because they encourage connection to Jewish identity. Rather, they pose a problem because they encourage support for a genocidal, settler-colonial state.” The campaign includes as evidence a partial list of camps and their Zionist activities, and also focuses on Joy Levy, the Executive Director of Ontario Camping Association, a self-avowed Zionist, who in May 2025 raised 20,000 dollars “to bring Israeli staff to Canada,” and has posted vile anti-Palestinian and anti-Lebanese racism on her social media accounts.
Not surprisingly, the campaign elicited a quick and furious response from the Zionist world. The Ontario Camping Association issued a statement, claiming that “[c]ampaigns of this nature” aim to “[u]ndermine the welfare and safety of Jewish children, including at camps,” “[a]pply a bigoted litmus test on which Jews are considered ‘acceptable’ based on an external and false paradigm,” and “[d]istract from and disparage a long history of meaningful Jewish contributions to Canadian, and Canadian camp life,” among other things. None of these declarations—note the attempted sleight-of-hand from “war criminals at camp” to “Jewish contributions to Canada”—address the actual issue the campaign raises: that soldiers from a foreign military actively engaged in war crimes are invited to spend time with impressionable children at tax-deductible, charity-status, government-supported summer camps, where they are encouraged to preach the justness and innocence of an ethnic-nationalist militarized state.
(Just Peace Advocates issued a response to the OCA on February 18, where they were forced to reiterate that “This work is not about Jewish camps, it is about support for the State of Israel, namely its military. While we have received hate mail and threats, we remain steadfast in our fight for justice. It is nothing compared to what Palestinians have and continue to endure. We welcome you to be in touch if you are interested in learning more.”)
The hypocrisy is galling. If it was a letter-writing campaign targeting Palestinian soldiers at summer camps, Iranian soldiers at camps, Russian soldiers, Ukrainian soldiers, Chinese soldiers, American soldiers, even Canadian soldiers, there is absolutely no way the OCA would be reacting in this way. Why is it okay for Israeli soldiers—in a very visible attempt to ideologically capture our Jewish youth—to be fixtures at these camps? Not only is the question entirely ignored by the OCA, it’s turned inside out.
The major Zionist Jewish institutions in Canada all issued responses, and articles on the campaign were printed in the New York Sun and even in the Jerusalem Post. The Canadian Jewish News quotes Risa Epstein from Canadian Young Judaea (the umbrella organization of nine Zionist summer camps across Canada, two of which I attended as a teenager) as saying that the campaign wouldn’t “deter them from continuing to support Israel, Zionism and also welcoming Israeli campers and staff to attend this coming summer.” In all the responses and articles, there’s lots of Zionist pride, lots of talk of the need to increase security, to turn these summer camps into fortified complexes, all so Israeli soldiers can take a break from the killing fields in Gaza (and now Lebanon, Syria, and Iran).
CIJA’s response is perhaps the most disconnected from reality, stating that “Jewish summer camps are not political battlegrounds and children must not be dragged into ideological fights.” A few sentences later they write that “camps have every right to celebrate Jewish life, including the longstanding tradition of welcoming Israeli counsellors.” This is of course non-sensical: Jewish summer camps have long been acknowledged in the Jewish world as sites of identity formation, and have been proudly home to Zionist indoctrination for generations. These camps are the ones actually dragging children into ideological fights. It’s like saying Birthright Israel isn’t about ideology but about a free trip where twenty-somethings can drink and have sex. What CIJA and the Jewish Zionist world are saying, in reality, is that they do not want their ideological project of violent ethnic nationalism scrutinized, criticized, or altered in any way, current genocide or not, and are willing to distort reality until it is unrecognizable in order to do so.
As I wrote for Mondoweiss last June, around 1,500 Israelis served as Jewish camp staff in the summer of 2023 across Turtle Island. Researching that article, I was shocked by how easy it was to find Zionist leaders, both here and in Palestine, boasting about their fund-raising, trainings, and placing of Israeli soldiers and ex-soldiers at camp. While the essay got lots of support from fellow pro-Palestinian activists and antizionist Jews, it also met with some angry responses, including old family friends asking me if I thought they were guilty of war crimes when they served in the IDF in the 1970s (“how should I know?” I responded. “That’s between you and your conscience”). I also heard from Jewish comrades who, after reposting the essay, were accused of putting Jewish children’s lives at risk.
This was a line of attack directed at me, as well. In a long Instagram DM, a staff member at Camp Northland B’nai Brith excoriated me and the essay. It’s worth quoting nearly in full:
“I read your article about shlichim, I also go to camp Northland. Not only are you so wrong about us (we don’t push any views on anyone, and all of the shlichim are the nicest people), but your article is so dangerous. Especially calling us out by name? You realize how many people are crazed and trying to find targets to attack? Your article points them right at us. A children’s summer camp that you have practically labeled with a cross hair for all the crazy terror supporters in our area. I also work in Israeli-Palestinian education trying to bring both peoples together with an understanding for the other side. What made you think it was a good idea to call out a summer camp filled with kids for simply bringing Israelis to camp. Theyre people just like you and me. With feelings and emotions and empathy. Theyve just been through hell with compulsory service, some not even in the military yet. These aren’t genocidal soldiers, they’re humans trying to get on with their lives. You’re article is despicable, dangerous, and completely filled with misinformation, disproved libels about Israel and Israelis, and overall just a poor attempt to gain some traction on your work at the expense of so many people who each have twice as much character as you could ever have. Why turn on your own people like this? Your Jewish no? These soldiers fight for your protection too. My friends have died from hamas artillery fire while trying to evacuate civilians to danger. You know nothing of the heroes in the idf, and your article is not only dishonest and false, but shows your privilege living in a country where you don’t have to worry about being rocketed by countries that hate you for your religion, or be taken hostage and murdered just for being Jewish. Please look deeper into the history of our people and country, and the history of Palestine and the Palestinian identity, because that poor excuse for journalism you put out is so dangerous, hurtful, and wrong.”
While not as polished or as adept at peddling untruths, this DM was, in substance, no different than CIJA and UJA’s responses. The usual Zionist talking-points and misinformation, peppered with some ad hominem attacks: Israeli soldiers are both innocent victims, forced into mandatory service, and valiant heroes protecting the Jewish diaspora (whether they want to be protected or not) from crazed Jew-hating terrorists. He works in Israel-Palestinian education (which, in this context, can only mean Zionist propaganda) where he wants the two peoples to live together, but he also disparages all of Palestinian identity and history. I’m betraying my own people for not keeping my mouth shut when an illegitimate state performs vast violence supposedly in my name. The idea that I am the one putting Jewish children’s lives at risk, and not the camps bringing Israeli soldiers in summer after summer, in more and more fortified complexes, is ludicrous. It is the camps that are responsible; it is camping associations; it is government subsidies; it is the parents. Not to mention that everything I quoted in my article I found after a simple Google search. If you are so worried about how Canadians will react to you having war criminals at your camps, you should try and hide it better.
The responses to the letter-writing campaign, the messages my article received, are telling examples of what I’ve started to call Zionist Derangement Syndrome. To take very specific critiques of very particular Jewish summer camps and to turn it into a generalized, detached antisemitism; to see everything as ideological except for your own hegemonic ideology; to believe the sanitized, fictional narrative of the state of Israel, its Arab neighbours, and its Palestinian victims: all of these are symptoms of Zionist Derangement Syndrome. Of course, not all sufferers of ZDS are Jewish, and not all Jewish people have contracted ZDS; far from it. Besides the underreported and growing number of staunchly pro-Palestinian, antizionist Jews, we have to contend with the fact that plenty of Zionist Jews do see reality, do know the score, are entirely clear about the situation, want to kill every Palestinian in Gaza. Regardless of if you’re detached from reality or firmly in the grip of it, Zionist Jews, their institutions, their representatives, their summer camps, are at least morally, and sometimes legally, complicit in the vast network of crimes against humanity currently being undertaken by Israel.
Why Jewish parents would want to send their children to camps that celebrate these crimes, that normalize Israeli aggression, that paint a picture of innocent victims protecting themselves, is something that we will have to answer for for many generations. To any Jewish parents reading this, who are maybe feeling uneasy: it’s not too late. The summer is still many months off. You can raise your voice. You can join in the important, necessary, difficult work Just Peace Advocates and their allies are doing to hold Zionist institutions accountable. As Karen Rodman, director at JPA, pointed out to me, not only are “charities not allowed to support foreign military” according to the Canadian Revenue Agency, but it is “also a crime in Canada to recruit anyone for a foreign military, and to aid and abet such recruitment by offering incentives and encouraging any person to serve in a foreign military.”
This is why the CRA has revoked the charitable status of Canada Charity Partners, the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, and JNF Canada and Ne’eman, and is one of the valid avenues to decertify Zionist summer camps. Thousands of Canadians have joined the letter writing campaign, and so can you. They have AI drones, endless rockets, nuclear weapons, a tightly-controlled narrative of lies that plays on our insecurities. We have our commitment to justice for Palestinians, justice for all. We have our voices. I intend to keep using mine.
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Thanks for sharing this Aaron and thanks for all your doing to raise awareness. I wish the point about soldiers from other armies could be heard.
I’m so grateful for this Aaron. In what feels sometimes like a endless sea of hopelessness, indecency, injustice and a lack of courage to speak truth to power, I cling to voices like yours as though clinging to a life raft.