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.
No matter where they are, the French are fusqued.
ping
Tant pis.
It can't happen here... No way...
Just like their cousins in France.
I eagerly await the day that Canada sans quebec-frogistan is annexed by the US.
then we put the squeeze on the froggies...
rule 1 - we ban the fwench lanigauge
ontario and the jewish community not always a love affair.
Martin Sable(author)
George Drew and the Rabbis: Religious Education in Ontario’s Public Schools
In 1944, Ontario Premier George Drew’s minority Conservative government introduced compulsory religious education into the Province’s public schools. The enabling legislation, the “Drew Regulation,” prescribed two one-half hour periods of religious instruction per week. A response to world-wide godlessness symbolized by Nazi Germany’s crimes, remarkably, the Drew Regulation remained in place for forty-six years. Over time it became clear that the Regulation was being used for decidedly Protestant purposes, and the task of opposing the Regulation fell to the Jewish community. The Jewish community, sensitive to the abuses visited on Jewish and other minority children by this Regulation, was nevertheless hamstrung by its reticence to assume a high public profile, especially when this meant clashing with deeply-felt convictions of the general community. Among the most outspoken critics of the Regulation in the Jewish community was Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, spiritual leader of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple who found himself at odds, not only with the general community, but also, for various reasons, with sectors of the Jewish establishment. I guess this is the canadian way you blame a few light headed politicians for a march but you ignore an injust law for 46 years
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