Opinion: Why did the Liberals ignore the anti-Semitism in their ranks?
Posted on 17 September 2019
There is no room in Canada for intolerance, racism or extremism of any kind. There shouldn’t be any room for it in the Liberal party either
Chani Aryeh-Bain and Peter Kent, National Post
September 03, 2019
It’s easy to think that now-former Liberal candidate Hassan Guillet’s remarks about Israel and the Jewish people were a one-off — just some careless comments by a would-be politician that eventually caught up to him during an election campaign.
The reality for the Jewish community across Canada, however, is that Guillet’s views are part of a disturbing and growing trend. Guillet, an imam from Quebec, was found to have made comments on social media that lauded terrorism against Israel and claimed that “Zionists” were controlling the foreign policy of the United States. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs alerted the Liberals to Guillet’s views in June — a plea that fell on deaf ears.
The fact that it took Justin Trudeau’s Liberals more than two months to decide that his comments disqualified him from carrying their banner should give every Canadian pause. The delay in taking action suggests the Liberals were OK with this as long as they didn’t get caught.
The danger in that thinking is, according to statistics from B’nai Brith, there were 2,041 reported incidents of anti-Semitism in 2018 — a 16.5-per-cent increase over the previous year. That was after Statistics Canada recorded a 63-per-cent increase in police reported anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2017.
Read in full: Opinion: Why did the Liberals ignore the anti-Semitism in their ranks?