© Roman Malyshev | Dreamstime.com
This is an article from Barbara Key of the National Post. She presents the case here of Amir Khadir of Québec Solidaire Party, Quebec MNA in the circonscription of Mercier. Last fall, Amir Khadir joined a group of anti-Israel protesters, the PAJU, the Palestinians And Jews United. That group advocates the boycott of all products manufactured in Israel as a denounciation of what they call the « apartheid » that, supposedly, Israel imposes on Palestinians. The PAJU has targeted a small store on St-Denis street in Montreal, Le Marcheur, for the only reason that it sells shoes of the brand Beautifeel, made in Israel.
Here are a few facts about Israel’s day-to-day life:
- 20% of the population is composed of non-Jews
- The Arab minority in Israel has to right to vote and has representatives in the Parlement
- Non-Jews can have sexual relations with Jews. They can use the same transportation system and the same hospitals. They can give or receive blood from Jews
- Arab workers in Israel have the same rights and conditions than Jewish workers
- Arabs have access to the same schools than the Jews
- There is no discrimination in public places such as cinema venue or beaches
- Arabic is one of the official languages in Israel
So how « apartheid » does that sound? What is really interesting about the article is that I am involved in this. I belong to the counter-protesters who join Mr Archambault and Ms Auger in their fight against fanaticism, fascism, nazism and anti-semitism. Every saturday we gather to make sure that these fascists from the PAJU won’t get the upper hand in that conflict and that the rights of Jews and French-Canadians or Québécois are respected and defended. Many people are beginning to ask themselves what Amir Khadir really does in the end. He admitted to have been in the past a member of the People’s Mujahiddin of Iran, a socialist Islamist group created to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran. Khadir’s brother, Omid, was arrested in Paris in 2003 at the organization’s base in a police operation. So it is not clear what his agenda is but, under the circumstances, we have to be very careful and ready to combat tooth and nail against anything he does. Social-democracy is the best political system that the world has ever invented. We have to do everything in our power to protect it.
What is striking here is how criticism of Israel is just another front for anti-semitism. Bashing Israel being more socially acceptable than just expressing direct and plain anti-semitic views, it can be sold more easily to the middle class, to he bourgeois who delect indulging in this kind of sentiments. Effectively, denouncing Israel sounds cool, right, seeming to come from a learned opinion because it doesn’t possess the stain of anti-semitism and nazism that is often fatal. It is ready-to-wear anti-semitism for the bourgeois.