Substance Over Label: Semantic Drift and Zionist Self-Identification among Canadian Jews

A 2024 survey found that 94 percent of Canadian Jews affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, yet only 51 percent call themselves Zionists. Brym attributed the gap to semantic drift: the word Zionism has acquired a pejorative connotation, so many Jews who hold Zionist commitments nevertheless decline the label. If so, substantive markers of Zionism should predict attitudes toward Canadian policies that impose costs on Israel, and the label should add little once those markers are accounted for. Using weighted data from the same survey (N = 550), we find that emotional attachment to Israel and belief in its right to exist as a Jewish state explain 23 percent of the variance in opposition to sanctions on violent settlers, an arms embargo, and recognition of a Palestinian state, beyond self-identification. Self-identification adds less than 1 percent beyond those markers, a nonsignificant increment. Among respondents very attached to Israel, non-Zionists and self-identified Zionists differ by only 0.02 points on a five-point scale. The results add converging evidence for the semantic drift hypothesis and show that, among Canadian Jews, calling oneself a Zionist does not mark a distinct position on Canadian policy toward Israel once attachment is considered.