Not-So-Strange Bedfellows : Liberal Party of Canada, Venomous Israel-Bashers

 

"This is a very strange mix the Greens have going, just two intense concerns: Polar bears and Palestine. No mention, incidentally, of Hamas and its pledge to wipe Israel off the map. But leaving that aside, just what is it that yokes so strongly two issues that are a whole planet, if not a whole cosmos, apart?"

"A few of her choice thoughts may be read on Twitter: 'I stand with Palestine! There are no two sides to this conflict, only human rights abuses! #EndApartheid."

"One day, it's all the 'world is going to end', and the next, with the same intensity, a whole swath of Greens are grinding their teeth over Israel, and only Israel. China can purge the Uyghurs. North Korea can maintain its slave state. Massacres of Christians can occur by the day. Yet the planet-cuddling Greens are mute. With the Greens, it's always Israel and only Israel that's a pariah state."

Rex Murphy, National Post

Canada's Green Party is wedged tight into its fledgling state. It just cannot seem to get into flight mode. Its focus, as its name suggests, is the environment and its fight over Climate Change. Its purpose is to invest Canadians with the outrage they feel over its lack of purpose and promise in fighting what they claim is the inevitable breakdown of the environment resulting from environmental degradation owing to our dependence on fossil fuel energy sources. Somehow, they still have time to glare with the most jaundiced of vision at one tiny world state: Israel.

 

They're not entirely alone in Canada with that focus. The older, larger, more influential and still lagging New Democratic Party is subject also to the malady of anti-Semitism which they cloak as criticism of Israel. The NDP is a party disgruntled with everything and everyone, decrying Canada's lax attitude toward social justice, urging a total social-political overhaul in super-funding the universal health care system, offering no-tuition-charge university education, a universal minimum wage, and land settlement claims for First Nations.

 

The latter will leave the rest of Canada tenants on Indigenous lands since, needless to repeat, they were here first. But since Canada is a 'racist' country where visible minorities, religious minorities, ethnic groups' needs are all neglected, the people persecuted, kept in obscure poverty from lack of opportunities available only to privileged whites, the NDP continue to do their best in Parliament to hold successive governments (Liberal/Conservative) to account. In this racist country, the leader of the NDP is a Canadian Sikh.

 

The governing Liberals who view themselves on the record and on the basis of voter reality as the country's 'natural' governing party missed a majority this last voting session that brought Prime Minister Justin Trudeau back to minority status, so they're planning another, early election to ramp up to a majority government. This, despite a litany of executive administrative failures, broken promises, corruption, scandalous democratic failures in governance, superficial claims of governing success and total arrogance.

 

They will do just about anything to curry favour with the electorate, and have in fact, done just about everything, including buying votes by handing out government cheques at every opportunity in the guise of 'helping' Canadians during the pandemic who have lost employment, and doing the same for Canadian corporations who have moaned about lost business. 

 

Those corporations in turn, used the funding given them in compensation for lost business to give hefty bonuses to their executives. The hundreds of thousands of Canadians who  were not qualified to register for monthly cheques enabling them to bank money they didn't need, need not pay back what they were given, thanks to this government spirit of largess.  

So the next election in the offing is pretty well guaranteed to return the Liberals and Justin Trudeau to power, even as the taxpayers of succeeding generations will be left with an insuperable burden of debt. 

 

Last week, one of the three elected Green Party Members of Parliament crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Liberals. She had declared her moral, principled inability to remain within the Green Party because its new leader had failed to sufficiently to her satisfaction, state on behalf of the party, a firm condemnation of the State of Israel over its conflict with Hamas.

"I stand with Palestine and condemn the unthinkable airstrikes in Gaza. End Apartheid!", tweeted Green Party MP Jenica Atwin, as she castigated the party leader Annamie Paul who had simply called for de-escalation between Israel and Hamas. Ms.Paul herself in calling for 'de-escalation' as good as gave equivalence to both parties in the conflict. Hamas terrorists (which is what they are deemed to be on Canada's own terror list) had lobbed over 4,000 rockets and other missiles into Israel, leaving the IDF little option but to protect the country by responding in measured strikes to 'de-escalate' the barrage.

And the Liberal Party of Canada, with full knowledge of Ms.Atwin's sentiments -- fully anti-Semitic in flaming colours -- happily welcomed her defection from the Greens to the Liberals. (They had, in fact, been courting her transition for some time.) In a later interview Ms.Atwin modestly said that it was too precipitate to have any discussions with respect to being offered a cabinet position. "In the past month I've been at a crossroads. It's been, in a word, distracting. And so I'm going where I can do my best work on behalf of my community and for the people that I care so deeply about", she declaimed.

Dominic LeBlanc and Jenica Atwin arrive at a news conference in Fredericton, Thursday, June 10, 2021. Atwin's aisle crossing marks a small win for a Liberal party looking to tout its environmental credentials and shore up the ranks of its minority government, but marks a much bigger blow for a Green caucus already struggling to stay afloat. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Bissett

"I am profoundly disappointed that she decided her only option was to cross the floor, after the voters of Fredericton and Oromocto had elected her as a Green, to be the kind of strong and independent voice in Ottawa that the Green Party encourages."

"She will discover that her principles will not find a home with the Liberals."

David Coon, leader of the New Brunswick Greens

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a brief statement when the news of the Liberal welcome of the former Green Party member became public, noting Atwin's "tireless and effective advocacy on priorities like climate action, mental health, reconciliation, and making life more affordable for families." No acknowledgement in any form of her controversial, adversarial stand on Israel defending itself from Hamas as an atrocity committed against Palestinians.