To be clear: Green Party leader Annamie Paul, while using the terms “racist’’ and “sexist’’ to excoriate individuals behind a party schism, didn’t outright call them Jew-haters.
A party of pimple significance, with a national membership of less than 250,000 and, as of last week, reduced to two sitting MPs.
The party’s federal council, on Tuesday, issued an ultimatum that she either repudiate comments from a former staffer who, on social media, had accused some Green MPs of anti-Semitism, or face a rebellious confidence vote on her leadership.
Paul doubled down on her gutsy defiance Wednesday, following a press conference actually convened to urge the federal government to decriminalize all illicit drugs by Canada Day.
But what the May conflict did was embolden many anti-Semites to emerge from the shadows, promoting a moral compass reset of how the interminable Palestinian conundrum has been presented.
That posture seems to have seized elements of the Green Party, who’ve taken it a step way too far, attaching the polemical and despicable descriptor of “apartheid” to Israel.
Because no nation has been more microscopically dissected and appallingly sanctioned, via 45 invidious condemnations by the UN Human Rights Council, as a for-instance, than Israel.
Criticism of the country is freewheeling, with no shortage of denunciations from within Israel, by Jews and non-Jews alike.
There’s no doubt that Paul has been subjected to sexism and racism, because those are twin plagues for women and Blacks.
“It started out as innuendo with veiled suggestions and attacks against me as a Zionist,” she told The Times of Israel in March.
Following her defection to the Liberals, a party that has muscularly rejected the “apartheid” label for Israel, Atwin was asked by CTV’s Evan Solomon whether she would now back away from her stance.
Israelis are also suffering as well as their loved ones in Canada and around the world.