Posted on 08/09/2006 8:26:06 AM PDT by Clive
MONTREAL - In his Montreal Gazette column yesterday, Don MacPherson projected a worrying Quebec trend with startling candour: "It's finally becoming respectable again to express support for terrorists."
So it has. On Sunday, 15,000 Quebecers, mostly Lebanese-Canadians, marched for "justice and peace" in Lebanon. That sounds benign, but in fact the march was a virulently anti-Israel rally, and scattered amongst the crowd were a number of Hezbollah flags and placards. Leading the parade were Bloc Quebecois chief Gilles Duceppe, Liberal MP Denis Coderre, PQ chief Andre Boisclair, and Amir Khadir, spokesman for the new far-left provincial party, Solidarite Quebec.
All four politicians had signed a statement by the organizers the day before the march, in which Israel is lambasted for its depredations in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank -- but the word "terrorism" is never mentioned, nor Hezbollah assigned any blame for the war.
In their speeches at the conclusion of the march, Messrs. Coderre and Duceppe did not condemn terrorism, did not mention Israel's right to defend itself, and spoke only of Lebanese civilian suffering. As a sop to the Quebec-Israel Committee, which had taken out full-page ads calling on the march's leaders to condemn terrorism, however, they called for the disarming of Hezbollah as part of a negotiated ceasefire.
For this, they were roundly booed by the crowd.
These politicians are playing a dangerous game. They have no political support from Jews (who are all federalists), so have nothing to lose in courting anti-Israel Arab groups. There are at least 50,000 Lebanese-Canadians in the Montreal area. We can expect those numbers to swell as Hezbollah-supporting residents of southern Lebanon cash in on their Canadian citizenship and flee to the safety of Quebec. Under the circumstances, it may be politically convenient for some left-wing Quebec politicians to stoke fires of enthusiasm for Hezbollah -- an organization officially classified as a terrorist group by the Canadian government. Yet it would be disastrous for the future of the province.
But after the thumping they took from the Conservatives in the last federal election, Quebec separatists are desperate for votes, and apparently not too morally fussy about how they get them. Their official endorsement of last week's one-sided document and their prominent presence at the march was a calculated appeal to dangerous elements in Quebec society. As MacPherson also pointed out in his column, "if [their support for the statement and the march] did not invite Hezbollah sympathizers to participate, it also contained nothing to discourage them from doing so."
Left-wing Quebec intellectuals and politicians (Pierre Trudeau being an obvious example) have always enjoyed flirtations with causes that wrap themselves in the mantle of "liberation" from colonialist oppressors -- including their very own home-grown Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), which gave them a frisson of pleasure as it sowed terror throughout Canada in the late '60s with mailbox bombs, kidnappings and a murder. Their cultural and historical sympathy for Arab countries from the francophonie -- Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon -- joined with reflexive anti-Americanism and a fat streak of anti-Semitism that has marbled the intellectual discourse of Quebec throughout its history, has made Quebec the most anti-Israel of the provinces, and therefore the most vulnerable to tolerance for Islamist terrorist sympathizers.
Think about what this would mean if Quebec ever were to become independent, and detached from the leadership of politicians who know the difference between a democracy and a gang of fanatical exterminationists. You can bet that Hezbollah would be off the official terrorism list by Day two of the Republic of Quebec's existence. By Day three, word would go out to the Islamosphere that Quebec was the new "Londonistan," to cite the title of a riveting new book by British journalist Melanie Phillips, chronicling the rise of militant Islam in her country.
Complacent Canadians think it can't happen here. It won't if our political class takes its cue from the principled Stephen Harper rather than the shameless Quebec politicians who led that pro-terrorist rally. Harper needs Quebec votes every bit as much as Messrs. Duceppe and Boisclair if he expects to achieve a majority government in the next federal election, but unlike them, he isn't willing to sell his soul.
The devil is always on the lookout for the moral relativism that signals a latter-day Faust, and it seems he has found some eager recruits amongst Quebec's most prominent spokespeople.
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Similar article in National Post this morning - complete with photo of a Montrealer holding a Hamas flag. Sad commentary on how far Quebec has fallen and continues to drop.
Coming soon to a neighborhood near you... oh, thanks to congress, the POTUS, and ICE, they're here already.
So, you can take Quebec out of France, but you can't take France out of Quebec.
This is the article in the National Post.
Any idea where this article came from Clive?
This is extremely dangerous.
Especially since English Canadians have become appeasers in the name of being socially correct.
My apologies. This IS the article in the National Post. I neglected to attribute the story.
I have asked the Administrator to add the attribution and link.
The author of the article is Barbara Kay, National Post
Thanks for the post - quite good and worth sharing.
MONTREAL - The Quebec provincial police is investigating whether the firebombing of a car owned by petroleum industry spokesperson Carol Montreuil was a terrorist act. The car burst into flames Thursday around 3:15 a.m. in the driveway of Montreuil's home 30 kilometres north of Montreal in Lorraine, Que., according to police spokesperson Marc Butz. Montreuil is eastern Canada Division vice president of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute.
The provincial police anti-terrorism unit is to analyze the charred shell of the car to determine what caused the explosion. "We don't know if it was a bomb or some technical malfunction," Butz said yesterday. "That could take several days, even weeks." However, Butz said the case may be linked to a December 2004 attack on a Hydro Quebec transmission tower in the Eastern Townships. A little-known group called the Initiative de resistance internationaliste claimed responsibility for both incidents in emails sent to some media outlets in 2004 and on Friday, he said.
On Sunday, the police seized computer files from the Journal de Montreal to trace an email the paper received, Butz said. The email blamed oil companies for holding consumers hostage while making big profits, damaging the environment and financing wars in places such as Iraq.
In June, Montreuil, vice-president of the Canada Petroleum Products Institute, which represents oil companies, said they intend to pass along the costs, and that the $200-million-a-year carbon tax will emerge in the form of 1.5-cent increase a litre in fuel.
gosses et foufoune lâches faire la pipe
A man can't serve two masters.
I had forgotten that the Fools in the Canadian government had signed on to that idiotic Kyoto treaty. What a bunch of chumps. Did they think that the oil companies were going to pay for their stupidity?
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
"Sad commentary on how far Quebec has fallen and continues to drop."
fallen from what? when Canada entered the Second World War the Francophones in Quebec rioted because they did not want to get drafted. One of the political leaders of the last decade or so was in that riot and had a swastika on his arm while they trashed and looted the cities.
please this is nothing new for them
I grew up in Northern Quebec, lived in Montreal for six years and believe me, this IS a new low.
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