An Interesting Tidbit Re Uppal Motion

The CIC [Canada-Israel Committee] Commends the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and the Bloc Quebecois for Denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week and Condemns the NDP for Refusing To Do So.

While it is clear that the Uppal motion condemning Israeli Apartheid Week failed, as Marky Mark pointed out, the vote was unrecorded. Would it have been a voice vote? Nevertheless, the above suggests that support/dissent fell entirely along party-lines. I'm not sure how the CIC could know that.

Tim Uppal's Motion Fails

No MSM coverage yet, but Tim Uppal's anti-Israeli Apartheid Week motion has been defeated.

Which makes me happy, for reasons I've given here.

Would this have been a voice vote where its impossible to who voted which way? Presumably it would have been non-whipped.

Spinelessness Confirmed!

Iggy on Israeli Apartheid Week. Looks like the party will fall in line:

On university campuses across the country this week, Israeli Apartheid Week will once again attempt to demonize and undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is part of a global campaign of calls for divestment, boycotts and proclamations, and it should be condemned unequivocally and absolutely.

Yes, lets condemn the issuing of proclamations. And, yes, let's condemn calls for product(?) boycotts, because damn it nobody has the right to spend their own money as they see fit.

Say No To Tim Uppal's Motion

That this House considers itself to be a friend of the State of Israel; that this House is concerned about expressions of anti-Semitism under the guise of "Israeli Apartheid Week"; and that this House explicitly condemns any action in Canada as well as internationally that would equate the State of Israel with the rejected and racist policy of apartheid.

Because some good people say it is an apartheid state, and some say it ain't, and some (like myself) think the phrase is an exaggeration that hides a germ of truth. None of us needs the federal government to step in and offer guidance on the issue.

(PS. What will actualy happen when the motion--which has no legal force--is introduced? I suspect gutlessness, at least from the Liberal benches. I would like to be pleasantly surprised.)

Rick Salutin On Israel Apartheid Week

What of the “new anti-Semitism” that Jason Kenney says is “based on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland”? Well, who are these new anti-Semites? I never see names or quotations.

[...]

Most of the specifics come down to shouts at protests. As in: “Cries of ‘Die, Jew' and ‘Get the hell off campus' were heard.” The Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber says he's “never” seen it this bad “on the streets of Toronto and university campuses.” Well, I spend lots of time on streets in Toronto and it doesn't look like Kristallnacht to me. But wait, that's glib. It's these images that scare my friends: They evoke Nazi Germany. I know that.

But Nazi Germany wasn't about name-calling and group hate. Those will persist, perhaps always. The Holocaust occurred largely because anti-Semitism was historically rooted and respectable there: religiously, socially, intellectually, politically. Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic. Here, anti-Semitism is unacceptable in all those ways. This whole debate proves it. We should be glad for that, and keep it in perspective.

A nice bit of writing.