A Riddle Within A Puzzle

"I want to make it very clear that the Green party and I personally do not support the BDS movement. There is a Green party in Israel, which is consulted with frequently, and its view is that it would prefer that Green parties around the world do not support calls for boycotting Israel."
"The Green Party resolution process is very different from other parties.  We do not have any screening process.  Resolutions of all kinds go forward for a vote. Until the convention in August in Ottawa, we will not know if there is sufficient support to change our current policy."

"I personally oppose the use of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction tactics to influence the policies of the Netanyahu government and the Green Party does not endorse it. Some members wish to change that policy.  That is their right as members." 

"The resolution relating to the Jewish National Fund is more problematic. There are clearly a number of problems with the draft resolution."

Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada, Member of Parliament 

Jewish National Fund

Popular wisdom is that you can tell a person's character by the company they keep, and how could that be wrong, since birds of a feather do tend to flock together, to use yet another tired old, but true, bit of folk wisdom. The Green Party of Canada has a very particular point of view, canted toward stewardship of the environment that reflects their values and views on how best to do just that. There are iterations or branches of the 'Green Party' in various parts of the world. There is one in Canada and there is another one in Israel, just as there are similar franchises elsewhere in Europe, and presumably they keep in touch.

The Green Party in Canada is receiving proposals from members for resolutions to be discussed at their next conference for a party that has managed to garner a desultory number of votes nation-wide, allowing it to elect one single Member of Parliament, their leader Elizabeth May, who has the distinction of sitting in Parliament all by her lonely self as the sole representative of her party. Two proposed resolutions have recently surfaced; one to support the BDS movement in support of the "Palestinian cause", whereby Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel becomes officially sanctioned by the Greens.

Another resolution proposed is that the Jewish National Fund no longer be recognized in Canada as a legitimate environmental group deserving of officially recognized charitable status for tax purposes. Which is passing strange, since the Jewish National Fund has earned its credentials as an outstanding enterprise whose interest in the environment is unchallenged. Essentially, in a desertified geography the Fund purposefully plants acreages of trees, and it is integrally involved in protecting wildlife and in teaching the merits of environmental stewardship.

For many years, Jewish National Fund has been working to bolster Israel’s water economy by developing alternative water sources, saving the economy millions, advancing Israeli agriculture, and improving water quality. JNF’s work with water has increased Israel’s water economy by over 12% through the treatment, recycling, and collection of both waste and runoff water, responsible aquifer drilling, and river rehabilitation.

Yet the Green Party of Canada is being steered toward rejecting the work done by the Jewish National Fund. Just as part of its membership has been agitating for a formal adoption of the BDS slander-and-slash decertification of Israel as a production and trade, academic, scientific source of research and business that has enriched the world with its trove of successful enterprises in matters as diverse as desalinization, agriculture, electronics, medical advances, technology and science. The Green Party leader Elizabeth May advances herself personally as not in support of either proposal.

Yet when Canada's Parliament passed a motion in the House of Commons to "reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel", majority support came from the Conservatives and Liberals. There was an abstention on this motion by the leader of the Green Party of Canada, Elizabeth May, the party's sole elected Member of Parliament. Her reason, she clarified, for not supporting the motion was that it was too broad, which is beyond puzzling. The motion was clear in its wording and its message. If she had an objection about either she failed to state precisely what it might be.

If the leader of a party devoted to environmental causes finds herself in disagreement with a faction of her party over a political issue that bears no reflection on the country in which the party exists apart from its international counterparts, and chooses furthermore to deviate so egregiously from its core concerns to isolate, slander and harm another country entirely on the specious claims that this country abuses the human rights of a group aspiring to statehood by manipulating international opinion, not through a legitimate legal course of negotiations, the dissonance between the two calls for a rational explanation.

Attacking the funding base of another international environmental group that is highly respected for the success of the work they engage in, reflects so poorly on the Green Party of Canada that it is inescapable to conclude that its leadership is lacking the purpose and skills of directing the party in a manner that gives it respect and credibility. Unless it is hoping to increase membership by attracting the attention and support that others who think like them -- which can be construed as anti-Semitism -- to justify their strange preoccupation and new direction.