Canadian-Muslim Political/Social Dysfunction

"That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad."
Conservative MPs Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel 

The Parliament of Canada entertained a motion in the House of Commons last week, condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that is fomented throughout Europe and North America by Palestinian students and their supporters, and the motion was fairly unanimously carried. All Conservative Members of Parliament supported the motion, and most Liberals with the exception of a dozen did as well. Only the New Democratic Party failed to support the anti-BDS motion claiming it to be an infringement of the right of free speech.

The quite interesting issue is that those Liberal Members of Parliament who failed to support the motion had quite a lot in common. They all support the BDS movement, and the reason they do so is because of their sympathy with the "Palestinians", and their condemnation of the Government of Israel, because from their perspective as Muslims, their views represent reality in the world of Islam in general. So these Liberal MPs exercise their option to support a movement whose purpose is to destroy a democratic partner of Canada abroad.

Students gather in a spillover room to watch a livestream of a debate and vote on the boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS) at the Students’ Society of McGill University February 22, 2016. Dario Ayala / Montreal Gazette

In so doing they feel it entirely appropriate to bring an international conflict taking place in the Middle East into Canadian political and social life, and in so doing they obviously see nothing wrong in polarizing two Canadian communities, Muslims and Jews. Recognition was made that Omar Alghabra (MP Mississauga Centre), appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs absented himself from the House when the vote on the motion was cast.

This is a man whose anti-Israel philosophy is well known. As one-time Chairman of the Canadian Arab Federation he had criticized the news media for characterizing the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade as terrorists, even though the official designation for this group in Canada is that of a terrorist entity which carried out terrorist attacks, including suicide bombing attacks against Israel and of course specifically targeting Jews.

 In failing to cast votes against the BDS movement, Mr. Alghabra was joined by Majid Jawhar, MP for Richmond Hill, Izra Khalid, MP for Mississauga Erin Mills, Yasmin Ratansi, MP for Don Valley East, Marwan Tabbara, MP for Kitchener South-Hespeler, Arif Virani, MP for Parkdale-High Park, and Salma Zahid, Liberal MP for Scarborough Centre. Members of Parliament are elected to represent the interests of Canadians, all Canadians. How it can be interpreted that this kind of clear ethnic-religious animosity reeking of anti-Semitism reflects Canadian values is beyond absurd.

The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and now Prime Minister of this country gave his personal stamp of approval to candidates running for office as Members of Parliament during the last election which brought the Liberals to power. He was emphatic that he would not accept any candidates who failed to espouse and uphold a woman's right to choose whether or not to bring a pregnancy to term or to terminate it through abortion.

The Prime Minister of Canada flirted with the idea of 'whipping' his caucus to ensure that all Liberal Members of Parliament would vote unanimously on the controversial issue of assisted suicide becoming law in Canada under specific guidelines. He obviously sees no need to ensure that Members of Parliament representing the Liberal imprimatur be required to respect all Canadian citizens in a pluralistic, equal society equally.

The differences between the Jewish and the Muslim communities in Canada are many, but they should not be unbridgeable. Yet it is those from the Muslim communities who agitate against Jews and not necessarily by default when they ventilate their hatred for Israel, characterizing the state and its Jewish citizens as brutal occupiers, not as people attempting to defend themselves from the violence perpetrated upon them by Arab Muslims refusing to recognize the Jewish state and in so doing accept its presence and establish a state of their own.

While in the Middle East countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, both Islamist regimes, defy the very notion of equality and freedoms we take for granted, while practising the most egregious forms of human rights abuses, and other countries like Syria and Iraq and Lebanon have succumbed to vicious sectarian violence through conflict that has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to morbid hatred and slaughter, not a murmur of condemnation emanates from Canadian Muslim groups.

And while Syria's Bashar al-Assad continues his Alawite Shiite vengeance against Syrian Sunni civilians by destroying their homes and livelihoods and their very lives through chemical gas and barrel bomb attacks, torture, imprisonment and extrajudicial killing of both children and adults, creating millions of displaced internally and seven million refugees, over a million of whom have migrated for haven to Europe, Canadian Jewish social and synagogue groups have raised money to sponsor Syrian refugees to Canada.