There's a Stretch

Smirking George Galloway is at it again. Things have been too quiet for him. He's ready again to raise a stink. Easily enough done in his presence; a baleful odour of malice emanates from his persona; it has the stink of righteousness in the mind of an anti-Semite. A natural enough alliance with groups who claim Jews represent the oppressors of the world, and Palestinians the perennial victims.

He admires and seeks to promote the vision of Hamas, a terror group outlawed in many Western countries, including Canada. While a sitting member of Britain's Parliament representing the Labour party, he took it upon himself to travel to Gaza and personally meet with the Hamas leadership. He defends Hamas as a responsible political group waging a war against the 'terrorists of Israel'.

Handing over cash and vehicles and other representative items of his great esteem for their purpose and their work, George Galloway proudly presents as a supporter of Hamas, an adversary of genocidal Israel whose military slaughtered untold numbers of innocent civilians to hear him tell it, during Israel's incursion into Gaza to halt rocket attacks against its population.

And now George has identified another adversary. The Government of Canada, and its Immigration Minister under the Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Jason Kenney, invoking his authority as a Minister of the Crown responsible for issuing visas, denied one to Galloway on the basis of his support of a terror group.

A decision which was later overturned by a Canadian federal court which insisted that it was too much of a stretch to label him a Hamas supporter merely because he delivered an 'aid convoy' and money to Gaza in care of Hamas. That the ban on permitting him entry to Canada to speak at an anti-Israel rally was unwarranted.

And thus, George Galloway has launched a lawsuit, suing Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney for defamation. Holding him responsible, through his Toronto lawyer, of being the cause, by alerting British media of Canada's barring of his entry to Canada, of his later loss of his seat through a failed re-election to Parliament.

The Blair government of which he was once a part, tossed him out in 2003 for opposing Britain's role in the Iraq war. And when he ran as a candidate in his riding for the left-wing Respect party in 2010, he was voted a remote third. Which proves that he is singularly unpopular in his riding, not that his refusal of entry to Canada a year earlier motivated voters to deny him his seat.

Obviously, his political antics, his vainglorious search for publicity, his identification with terror groups and his slander of Israel have not endeared him to that particular voting public. Unless we assume too much of the discriminating voters in the riding he sought to represent.