| | | You thought the Green Party was about the environment?
Canada’s Green Party remains a mess of obsessive Israel-bashing and allegations of antisemitism.
When New Brunswicker Jenica Atwin became the third-ever federally elected member of Parliament from Canada’s Green Party, I anxiously awaited learning what flavor of crackpot she was. The Green Party, after all, is basically the junk drawer of Canadian politics, a fringe fifth-place party of misfits too paranoid to trust the other four. It turns out Atwin hailed from the Green’s obsessively anti-Israel wing, a faction that, as I’ve noted before, is forever on the brink of consuming the party outright.
When war between Israel and Hamas erupted last month, Green leader Annamie Paul struck a diplomatic tone, declaring “violence and confrontation will not bring resolution, only more suffering. We urge restraint and call on those in positions of authority to do all in their power to prevent further injury or loss of life.”
This angered Atwin. After Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East — a strident anti-Israel group — sent out a tweet bashing Paul’s statement, Atwin tweeted agreement.
“It is a totally inadequate statement,” she concurred. “Forced Evictions must end! I stand with Palestine and condemn the unthinkable air strikes in Gaza. End Apartheid!”
Atwin’s disgust at her leader’s call for calm was declared her “catalyst” for quitting the Greens and defecting to the Liberals. That the Liberal Party is itself quite moderate on the Israeli-Palestinian situation has prompted some head-scratching.
“No, no, no, I certainly stand by what I’m saying” was her reply when CTV’s Evan Solomon asked if she’d stopped believing Israel is an apartheid state. “I know I’m going to a place where I’m not alone in how I feel about this issue,” she added, in a comment that I doubt delighted her new colleagues.
In any case, the Atwin drama can’t be understood outside the context of the Green Party’s larger gyre of drama around all things Jewish.
During the long reign of former leader Elizabeth May, it was clear the Greens were drawing significant support from Canadians with fairly deranged opinions about Jews. I’d argue this was because May made dog-whistling to conspiracy theorists a cornerstone of her brand, and when any movement signals it’s a safe space for cranks, it doesn’t take long before antisemites show up. Take convicted Holocaust denier Monika Schaefer, for instance, who was a two-time Green candidate under May. Schaefer was the most high-profile antisemite to call the party home, but hardly the only one.
The party’s more mainstream faction, meanwhile, spent the later May years passing resolutions in favor of revoking the charity status of the Jewish National Fund and endorsing the movement to impose “boycott, divestment and sanctions” on Israel. The sponsor of the latter motion (which was subsequently watered down following outrage from Jewish groups) was Dimitri Lascaris, the party’s leading anti-Israel obsessive, who has been condemned by everyone from B’nai B’rith to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the way he talks about Israel and Jews. After May finally quit in 2019, Lascaris ran to replace her and was only narrowly defeated on the eighth ballot by Paul in 2020.
Paul is Jewish, a fact that did not go unnoticed by her opponents. During her campaign, she says she was subjected to “months of antisemitic attacks.”
“My loyalty to Canada has also been called into question,” she wrote, “and I have been accused of taking bribes from Israel, leading a Zionist take-over of the Green Party of Canada and of spreading hasbarah” — a term antisemites use for Israeli propaganda.
On May 14, amid the Gaza war, Paul’s adviser Noah Zatzman, who is also Jewish, complained he had “never experienced more anti-Semitism and Jew hatred from people I thought I knew well, than I did this week,” specifically singling out Lascaris and “many Liberal NDP and sadly Green MPs.” His comments evoked those of former Green Party president Paul Estrin, also Jewish, who resigned in disgust during the 2014 Gaza war and has complained about “hate and even anti-Semitism” he received from members.
Zatzman was ultimately fired, much to the delight of prominent Green activists like writer Yves Engler, who described the ex-staffer as a creation of “intense Israeli nationalist institutional indoctrination” because he attended Hillel and went on Birthright.
Following Atwin’s departure, the two remaining Green members of parliament — May and Paul Manly, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist who was expelled from the New Democratic Party for being too anti-Israel — released a strange statement blaming Zatzman’s complaints about antisemitism for having “created the conditions that led to this crisis.” The party board has given Annamie Paul an ultimatum — further denounce Zatzman, or face removal.
After just eight months on the job, Paul is undeniably a tragic figure. But there’s a limit to how much empathy one can muster for someone who wanted to run this toxic mess of a political party in the first place.
washingtonpost.com |
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