Antisemitism on full display in Parliament courtesy of Jagmeet Singh and the NDP-Liberal Coalition.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
In recent years, Canada has seen a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents, prompting serious concerns about the roots and perpetuation of this hatred within our society. While several factors contribute to this distressing trend, one critical aspect that demands scrutiny is the propagation of left-leaning perspectives in the NDP, Green Party, Canadian universities and unions such as CUPE and PSAC.
These views, often divorced from factual basis and driven primarily by ideological fervour, have played a significant role in fueling antisemitism in Canada. The proponents of these ideologies, including many university professors and members of left-leaning unions, have abandoned critical thinking and objective analysis in favour of pushing a particular agenda. This betrayal of intellectual integrity has muddied academic discourse in Canada and contributed to a climate where antisemitism has found a fertile ground to flourish.
One of the most glaring examples of this ideological distortion can be seen in the treatment of Israel and the Jewish community. Instead of engaging in nuanced discussions and fact-based criticisms, there is a tendency among these groups to demonize Israel and, by extension, Jewish people. This not only perpetuates harmful stereotypes but also emboldens antisemitic sentiments among the public.
Since 2015, the political landscape in Canada has witnessed instances where parties and leaders have been called out for antisemitic behaviour. The Green Party of Canada self-imploded in 2021 after the party’s national executive was caught in a scandal involving antisemitic comments made towards their then leader Anamie Paul, a racialized Jewish woman and one of her staff regarding completely acceptable views on Israel. Paul was forced out of the leadership and later quit the party. Shortly thereafter, Paul Estrin, a former president of the Green Party of Canada, wrote in an op-ed related to the incident, “When hate is allowed to fester, it further normalizes antisemitism, and is repeated by associations, unions, student groups and in society in general.”
The NDP under Jagmeet Singh and the Liberal government under Justin Trudeau have faced criticism on multiple occasions for their associations with individuals and groups known for their rabid antisemitic views. These incidents highlight the urgent need for a reevaluation of Canada’s stance on antisemitism and terrorism.
In recent weeks, organized protests have been coordinated by what appear to be hateful fifth columnists in cities across Canada, including Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, that specifically target Jewish synagogues, businesses, and university campuses with buildings named after Jewish people. These protests and parades have seen participants set off smoke grenades and threaten bystanders. Many of the protesters are cowards—mostly men who cover their faces with Palestinian keffiyeh scarfs or black face coverings—and under the cover of this anonymity. They participate in these ‘protests’ that deliberately target Canadian Jews, yelling “Kill the Jews,” or “We will put you six feet under”, or “Jewish pigs, go fuck yourself”, and “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” which is a sanitized way of saying the world must eradicate and exterminate the Jews of Israel.
These ‘protestors’ have no fear of any consequence for threatening bystanders who don’t agree with them. In Ottawa last week, one of these face-covered thugs assaulted an older woman, knocking her phone out of her hand as she was filming their antisemitic chants at the human rights monument in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police on the scene physically detained the woman who was assaulted and let the assailant walk away despite being told by several witnesses that the woman was the one who was assaulted.
Sadly, this vile ideology shamefully made its way from the streets of Canadian cities to the floor of the House of Commons this week courtesy of the obtuse NDP caucus and their shallow leader, Jagmeet Singh. Working in tandem with Canada’s Global Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and other likeminded Liberal MPs under the premise that they were going to pass a motion to impact the awful war in Gaza, these denizens of dimwittery unabashedly brought Kristallnacht into the hallowed institution of Canada’s Parliament, and shame to Canada.
Sadly, it apparently was not enough of an embarrassment for Canada and Canadians that the Trudeau government had invited a former Nazi, 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who fought for the Nazis during World War II, into the House of Commons to be cheered as a hero during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Hunka received two standing ovations from Parliament, including President Zelenskyy, who is of Jewish descent, for defending Ukraine.
The fawning attributes turned into a diplomatic disaster when it later emerged that Hunka had served in a notorious Nazi unit during the war. Besides not being vetted by anyone, the incident laid bare the abject and embarrassing ignorance and lack of education of staff in government offices. No one in the Speakers office nor any of the staff of the PM or at the Privy Council Office, at CSIS or Global Affairs Canada clued in to ask the basic question that anyone with a high school history course would know: “Why is Parliament planning to honour a person who fought against the Russians in WW2. Wouldn’t that mean he was a NAZI?”
The Nazis, of course, were responsible for the planned killing of over six million Jews, many of whom were slaughtered and burned in the ovens of Dachau, Bergen Belson, Treblinka, and other death camps. Canadian veterans fought and died to ensure this would never happen again.
This shameful event in Canada’s Parliament has been used on multiple occasions by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his propagandists to sow discord and justify their narratives in the war against Ukraine while simultaneously making Canada look foolish on the global stage. The fallout led to Speaker Anthony Rota’s resignation and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issuing an apology saying, “This was a mistake that has deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada. All of us who were in this House on Friday regret deeply having stood and clapped even though we did so unaware of the CONTEXT.”
CONTEXT is the keyword here, and it is clear that the Trudeau Liberals and Jagmeet Singh NDP learned nothing from this deplorable incident.
We know this to be the case because on Monday evening, Jagmeet Singh and his NDP caucus, many of them wearing Palestinian keffiyeh scarfs, thought it would be a clever idea to put a divisive antisemitic motion before Canada’s Parliament over the war in Gaza. In hindsight, it should have been called the “let’s throw the Jews under the bus motion.”
NDP MP Heather McPherson presented the motion as an opportunity for Liberals and Conservatives to “show that Palestinian lives matter as much as anyone’s lives matter, that Palestinian rights are human rights and that all children deserve justice.” McPherson told Parliament in response to a question on the motion, “What the member is suggesting is that the children around the world should die, should be killed, should starve to death and that the Canadian Parliament shouldn’t act and shouldn’t take steps to put to put things into place that would help.”
In presenting the motion, McPherson, Jagmeet Singh and the NDP caucus conveniently left out context. They glazed over the fact that Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists on October 7th and that over 1,200 people, both Israeli and foreigners, were brutally butchered and murdered. Or that Hamas is a designated terrorist group in Canada. They are the cousins of ISIS and as vile as the Nazis.
They left out that Hamas terrorists took 253 hostages that day and are still holding 130 of them, including seniors, children, and babies.
They left out the atrocity against the dozens of Israeli women who were brutally gang raped, and the deliberate use of genital mutilation against Israeli men and women that were a planned part of the attacks, or the mention of the several women whose breasts were cut off while they were being gang raped by terrorists who then shot them in the head while still committing the act.
They left out that these crimes are known because the Hamas terrorists filmed them while they were being committed and gleefully posted them on social media for the world to see. They left out the fact that Israel, a democratic state and ally of Canada, declared war on Hamas after the attacks.
Given all this, how can anyone in good conscience determine that it is reasonable for the Canadian Parliament to pass a motion for Hamas to lay down its arms so there can be a ceasefire? The real question is why did the NDP and Liberal motion not call for Hamas to surrender and for its leaders to be arrested and put before the International Criminal Court for war crimes? Why did their motion not acknowledge that staff from UNRWA—the UN agency that has provided billions of dollars in funding to Gaza over the past two decades (including hundreds of millions of dollars from Canada)—participated in the October 7th attacks and that these United Nations employees should be arrested and brought to trial at the International Court. Why did their motion not call for a full investigation of UNRWA participation in war crimes? Why did their ‘motion for peace’ deliberately ignore Hamas’s war crimes in using the people of Gaza as human shields in the war with Israel? Their motion also left out the part about Hamas releasing all remaining hostages before a ceasefire can occur.
Instead, the Singh-led NDP and Trudeau Liberals put forth the embarrassingly trite narrative that their joint motion was about peace with Singh’s vacuous statement, “Will members of Parliament vote in favour of peace, or not? Will they support a motion that’s calling for very important steps that Canada can take to save lives or not?” He could not explain in any way how the NDP/Liberal motion would do anything to save lives. But it did bring into context and put on full display the immense NDP bias against Jews in Canada and the stealth antisemitism so widespread in both the Liberal and NDP parties and their contempt for the democratic state of Israel.
It was not lost on many that in all his blather about peace, Singh and the NDP MPs made no calls for consequences for the violent demonstrators who have been targeting and attacking Jews across Canada since October 7th. This, of course, is the same Singh and NDP who fully supported the implementation of the Emergency Services Act to suspend the rights of Canadians over the trucker protest.
If there is any hope for pushing back the tide of hatred and antisemitism towards Jews in Canada that was on full display in the NDP and Liberal caucus this week, it came from the very brave Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman, who ferociously and emotionally spoke truth to power against the entire charade saying, “This motion is about rewarding Hamas for their massacre. This motion is a vote to reward the murder, the rape, the kidnapping of Israelis, and this motion is deeply irresponsible for this Parliament.”
Lantsman warned that Canadians would be watching to see how their elected officials vote on this motion, noting there would be consequences for those who support it. “There are going to be many politicians that make a choice today. Ours will be the right one. And I can only hope that members, all members on the other side, make the right one, too. And when they don’t, those who sit with them will have to account for their own choices,” she said.
The NDP Gaza motion came two years into Jagmeet Singh and the NDP agreeing to a cuckolded arrangement with the Trudeau Liberals to support the government regardless of what they did in exchange for political favours. Since then, Singh has shamelessly pawned away the birthright of the NDP as the party of moral principle by supporting the Trudeau government despite multiple corruption charges and investigations on everything from Adscam to the WE Charity debacle, to the multiple ethic’s breaches involving the PM himself.
In short, Singh has hallowed out the NDP and their motion this week, with its undertones of antisemitism and language that allows Hamas a pass by ignoring their gang rapes, butchery and brutalization of Israeli women and men to try to score political points is at a whole other level. It is the final selling out of the principles that were the genesis of the party.
The NDP-Liberal motion was a cynical, crass, despicable assault on Jewish people in Canada. It was a punch to the gut against the democratic state of Israel, who are Canada’s allies and who are fighting for their survival after the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Make no mistake about it: the antisemitic motion put forward this week by Jagmeet Singh and the NDP and then passed with gleeful Liberal MPs patting themselves on the back after they watered it down will not fool anyone. All it did was shine a light on the profound disdain the government and the NDP have towards Jews in Canada. If you don’t believe me, just ask Anthony Housefather.
Our Parliament should be doing everything it can to ensure the well-being and safety of Jewish communities in Canada over ideological posturing. Melissa Lantsman reminded us of the importance of upholding Canada’s values of inclusivity, tolerance, and standing against all forms of hatred and discrimination.
This shameful debacle in Parliament this week clearly shows that the time has come for Canadians to hold our educational institutions, unions, and political leaders accountable for their role in the increasing antisemitism in our country. Canada must reaffirm its commitment to fighting antisemitism in all its forms and strive to create a society where diversity is celebrated and hatred has no place.
Header image: NDP MP Heather McPherson presents the NPD motion in the House of Commons. (CPAC screen capture)