Canadian socialist and Jewish anti-Zionist Avi Lewis smashes leadership election

In 2009, journalist Avi Lewis was waiting to leave the Gaza Strip when the Israeli military separated him from his wife, herself a prominent socialist journalist, and pulled him into an interrogation room. Lewis was there as part of a delegation of international solidarity activists from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Once inside the room he was questioned intensively. A military officer said the Israeli authorities knew what his wife had been saying about the occupation:

Tell your wife what happened. Tell her what Hamas wanted to do to you. Get your woman under control.

Cut forward to March 2026, Avi Lewis just became the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). He was considered an outsider in terms of chances, despite the fact his family has a long history in Canada’s labour and socialist movements.

Merci à tous les bénévoles, donateurs, organisatrices et membres du NPD qui ont contribué à faire de ce mouvement un événement historique.

Nous jetons les bases d’un nouveau départ et nous sommes prêts à faire un retour en force sur la scène politique canadienne. Ça commence… pic.twitter.com/yXWJBWNu7N

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis) March 29, 2026

His manifesto is explicitly left-wing and grassroots:

Solutions as big as the crises facing working Canadians. Avi’s vision for a government that serves the many, not the money: public ownership, worker power, climate justice, and an economy built on care.

His priorities:

New Democrats know we need bold solutions to match the scale of our crises: rising inequality and job insecurity, the climate emergency, collapsing health care, the housing crisis, growing fascism, Trump’s attacks on our sovereignty, and the everyday struggle to get by in an impossible economy.

We’re not going to let the powerful keep us divided and punching down. We’re going to look up!

Avi Lewis and Atlantic counterparts

He has a tough line on AI data centres and a strong position on indigenous rights in Canada. Israel, we Brits must recall, isn’t the only genocidal white settler colony, our empire foisted onto the planet. Canada is known—correctly—for its politeness. But it has a dark history too.

One of Lewis’ first photo ops was with Wab Kinew, hip-hop artist, public intellectual, indigenous activist and NDP premier of Manitoba, one of Canada’s prairie provinces, since 2023.

A pleasure to meet with my friend and political powerhouse @WabKinew.

Look forward to walking our shared path in meeting the needs of working people, from healthcare to the cost of living and the destructive influence of AI. pic.twitter.com/gW5o5FqM0D

— Avi Lewis (@avilewis) March 29, 2026

Lewis won the endorsement of, among others, British folk legend Billy Bragg.

Lewis embodies elements of several other figures in Atlantic politics. He has something of Your Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s ability to deliver a moral appeal. He hammers away at bread-and-butter stuff like rent caps and cost of living issues like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. And like Zack Polanski he’s an eco-socialist with decent comms. He’s also an anti-Zionist Jewish activist with a stronger line on Israel/Palestine than Polanski, who has been known to waver.

In this excellent intervention he explained that he comes from the tradition of the Jewish Labour Bund – a radical left organisation founded only five weeks after the first meeting of the World Zionist Congress:

Avi Lewis on his Jewish anti-Zionist roots: "I come from a long tradition, a multi-generation tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism … as long as there's been formal pro-Israel Zionist organizations, there's been a tradition that has disagreed with that within the Jewish community." pic.twitter.com/sFLsr3IzRN

— Scott Robertson (@sarobertsonca) March 30, 2026

A sharp operator in Canada

Lewis’ wife is author and public intellectual Naomi Klein — from whose latest (excellent) book ‘Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World,‘ the Canary lifted that anecdote at the beginning.

And like his various counterparts Lewis has the potential, at least, to reinvigorate and maybe even re-orientate a rather jaded centre-left party, the NDP. And like these others, he has faced—and will face—vicious resistance from the political right and centre; from vested interests. From a smug, baroque Canadian political and media establishment; and from backers of the settler-colonial state of Israel.

Lewis is clearly a sharp operator—that much is clear.

Now a Canadian social-democratic party has a solid, articulate left-wing leader well-schooled in the movements of our time and with an appealing, forward-looking manifesto.  The Canary will be watching Avi Lewis with great interest. Our readers know our approach to left-wing leader figures. We’ll give them a fair go – but never mate’s rates.

Featured image via the Canary