Juno News - Liberal MP “reflecting” on future with party after anti-Israel motion passes

00:00:00.000 imagine you saw the emotion you heard the emotion in Anthony Howe's father as he gave those remarks

00:00:06.140 he sat down and then everyone around him pretty much voted against him voted against him and I

00:00:13.400 mean that they voted against him as a Jew they voted against him as a member of the liberal

00:00:17.980 party with a conscience on the question of Israel and what the Jewish community in this

00:00:22.580 nation is facing and I wanted to share another clip of him in the house of commons foyer in which

00:00:29.440 he seems to be very well aware of what happened after he sat down and MPs voted is this the first

00:00:37.700 time you're actually kind of reflecting on your role within this party I mean this has been going

00:00:41.860 on for a number of months now there's been tension to Canada rising in 1970s and you've seen your

00:00:46.100 government struggle to sometimes or you know come up with a position that satisfies everybody and

00:00:51.880 you've kind of been at the forefront of this but is this the first time you're actually kind of

00:00:55.000 reflecting on your future here I think it's the first time in my parliamentary career that I've

00:01:01.760 had a reflection like this where I truly felt last night that a line had been crossed when my party

00:01:10.720 members got up and cheered and give a standing ovation to Heather McPherson and the NDP I started

00:01:18.740 reflecting as to whether or not I belonged and I will let you know further how I feel over the

00:01:25.860 coming days for the moment I'm still there. That was a very strong language from someone who's

00:01:33.280 typically been a team player with his party joining me on the line now is Robert Walker who's the

00:01:38.300 assistant director for Honest Reporting Canada. Robert good to have you on the show here I mean we heard

00:01:44.440 that speech from Anthony House father in which he takes aim at what is one of the most I'd say

00:01:51.180 dishonest portrayals we see that that you could separate Zionism from Judaism and this is what we see

00:01:58.460 in a lot of the media coverage what we see in a lot of the protests I wanted to get your thoughts on

00:02:02.000 this. Well thank you Andrew for the for the question and for covering this because I think this is an

00:02:07.520 angle that this term this concept has been completely abused and and and bastardized uh by uh by the far

00:02:15.940 left and those who seek to demonize uh Israel and the Jewish people writ large which is we talk about

00:02:20.840 this indigenous movement is that Zionism is the indigenous movement of the Jewish people that the

00:02:26.440 you know this return to their ancestral homeland where they have lived for three millennia um practicing

00:02:32.120 the same faith speaking the same language walking in the same steps um but if you listen of course 0.79

00:02:37.140 to uh to you know ideological extremists today uh in Canada and indeed around the world um you know

00:02:43.520 they are this colonialist people who have invaded and kicked out the locals um and it's it's not just

00:02:50.380 an inversion of reality uh it is a moral outrage. And I mean one of the things that I I think is so

00:02:57.420 difficult here is that you have this language of colonial resistance that's being appropriated and applied

00:03:04.220 to what's happened in the Middle East and and parties like the NDP will wear their keffiyahs in the House of

00:03:10.320 Commons as they are are voting on this and and they they they pretend this is benign uh well it it certainly

00:03:17.800 isn't because I think what we've seen is is is not just the legitimization if you will uh of Hamas terrorism

00:03:25.340 and then that was a point pointed out by a number of um parliamentarians said that although the initial

00:03:32.040 extreme um motion as proposed by the NDP was a unilateral calling for the government to unilaterally

00:03:38.680 recognize the Palestinian state which of course anybody with a pair of eyes can look and say listen

00:03:42.760 if October 7th hadn't happened if Hamas's October 7th attacks hadn't happened then very clearly uh that

00:03:48.440 wouldn't have happened so it's very clearly uh a reward for terrorism and if you're sitting there

00:03:52.620 and you're a Hamas uh leader whether sitting on top of billions of dollars in Qatar uh whether you're

00:03:59.260 sitting underneath the tunnels of Gaza you're sitting there thinking my goodness you know the

00:04:03.800 more terrorism that we perpetrate uh the more legitimacy we get the more legitimacy we get and

00:04:08.780 the more credibility we get uh from uh from certain individuals in Canada and perhaps worst yet uh was

00:04:14.960 that this wasn't just you know voted on by the NDP but of course by the governing party of this country

00:04:21.720 the liberal party um and I think that sends a very very powerful message not just to Hamas but indeed

00:04:27.480 to Jewish Canadians and indeed to the majority of moral Canadians who look and say you know you're

00:04:32.280 allowed to have this is a free country and we have a diversity of opinion and you're allowed to

00:04:36.440 believe one thing or another but this legitimizes not just Hamas terrorism but indeed the scourge and 0.90

00:04:43.400 rise of anti-Jewish hate here which is of course not just a threat to Jewish Canadians but to any Canadians who

00:04:49.320 values uh the peace and security and order that we've come to value in this country and when we

00:04:56.280 have a government and when we have parliamentarians who vote in favor of a motion which glorifies and

00:05:02.840 which excuses Hamas terrorism uh that's that's an extraordinarily dangerous precedent well and then for

00:05:09.720 people that are not as people that don't spend their lives immersed in in this issue and pour over all

00:05:15.720 the coverage like certainly you do with your work and me to to some extent although I'd probably say

00:05:20.120 not as much as you do they they are easily duped uh by no fault of their own by certain language and

00:05:26.360 ceasefire I think is a great example of this because a ceasefire if you're just someone that doesn't

00:05:30.920 like that war is taking place this sounds like a very uh virtuous thing why is that not the case

00:05:37.560 well everybody wants in theory a ceasefire at one point the question is under what conditions

00:05:41.640 Hamas wants a ceasefire once the Jews are dead uh Israel wants to ceasefire of course once Hamas 0.87

00:05:47.000 is defeated and the hostages are returned so everybody's talking about a ceasefire but the

00:05:50.520 major issue that we see among those the extremists who talk about a ceasefire is very rarely uh that

00:05:58.120 really there's a lot of context here which is of course we want a ceasefire but a ceasefire that

00:06:02.120 keeps Hamas in power uh is ultimately nothing less than a capitulation I really I shudder to think of what 0.86

00:06:09.240 this dialogue would look like 80 years ago during World War II um you know people were talking about

00:06:14.920 facing this scourge of uh you know the Nazi uh Germany and saying well ceasefire ceasefire ultimately 0.82

00:06:21.080 uh I think of anybody who looks at you know the Hamas casualty numbers and there's a this was pointed

00:06:25.720 out last week uh by a statistician of the Wharton School who said that Hamas's numbers are essentially

00:06:30.920 statistically impossible uh that Hamas's numbers are fake uh that Israel takes steps unprecedented in

00:06:37.800 modern history to minimize civilian casualties and ultimately most importantly this war could

00:06:42.680 be over in five minutes if Hamas surrenders the hostages and uh surrenders its leaders and until

00:06:49.320 we have parliamentarians and protesters who refuse to call for that I think it's very clear that

00:06:55.080 anything short of that is ultimately a capitulation not just of Israel uh but every value that we as 0.78

00:07:00.600 Canadians hold uh hold dear um and I think that what we've seen from the demonstrations whether they're

00:07:06.760 blocking hospitals attacking synagogues blocking roads preventing uh g7 leaders from speaking

00:07:12.520 is that we can have a small minority of people and as long as they're loud they can have a bigger

00:07:17.800 impact than 10 million people who are quiet and I think this is perhaps the most chilling thing is

00:07:22.520 that a hundred loud people can have a greater voice than 10 million quiet people and this should be

00:07:27.240 really the uh the message for all of us is to say you know we I read on twitter and x and the comments

00:07:33.400 and people are angry and they're upset and they're saying listen even if we don't all have the same

00:07:37.320 view here how dare you try to you know you see the polls showing the liberals 15 20 points ahead people

00:07:43.480 are upset people are angry but rather than identifying and and addressing the issues that are of concern

00:07:49.240 to Canadians we have this kind of politics of division um and people can be upset but ultimately

00:07:55.640 unless we speak out and we demand better from elected officials from the news media who then give

00:08:01.160 uh unflattering pardon me flattering coverage to this kind of content ultimately we're going to

00:08:06.440 see more of the same the silent majority at some point needs to become the vocal majority uh otherwise

00:08:11.160 it really doesn't matter what uh with the majority thinking just I'd be remiss I'd be remiss to not

00:08:16.280 ask you as well Robert about this La Presse cartoon this morning that was published just I I don't I

00:08:22.280 don't even want to put the image up but it it depicted uh you know look editorial cartoons are never

00:08:26.920 flattering we know that but this depicted Netanyahu as a blood-sucking vampire which is itself an

00:08:34.280 old anti-semitic trope here uh and I I believe they've pulled the cartoon but only sort of in the

00:08:40.200 face of of backlash here but but my goodness this is I mean you'd never see uh this level of stereotype

00:08:47.240 in a cartoon on any other group in Canadian media no and nor should you I mean this cartoon of course

00:08:53.560 borrowed from uh the 19 1922 silent German film which uh extremely anti-semitic certainly in

00:08:59.560 commentators today uh depicted Jews as first of all as a stereotypical you know hook-nosed Jew uh

00:09:06.440 depicted uh Jews as being carriers of disease uh as uh bloodsuckers of uh virtuous young Christian 1.00

00:09:13.560 children um so this is and of course this is imagery that was gladly and enthusiastically then uh

00:09:18.360 mimicked and taken by the Nazis um so it's not only that we had this columnist decide to use this

00:09:25.000 imagery a then he uses it to depict perhaps the most famous or the most prominent Jew in the world

00:09:31.720 the prime minister of the world's only Jewish state that's crazy enough but then at what point did the 0.70

00:09:37.640 leadership of La Presse a prominent French language newspaper see no problem with this whatsoever so at

00:09:43.880 best case scenario we have here profound ignorance which honestly beggars belief is how these people

00:09:49.720 were in journalism at all um that's one and that's best case scenario worst case scenario was the embrace

00:09:55.960 of vocal uh Nazi-like right caricature of Jews I mean it's it's just it's obscene here and it's it's akin

00:10:03.240 to sort of describing um you know any other group uh with the kind of cartoons that we would expect uh

00:10:10.120 you know would would remain in the dustbin of history and so it's great that they've removed

00:10:13.720 it but honestly it's like whack-a-mole here and I think the more that we see the legitimization

00:10:18.440 um of anti-semitism or really the excusal of it when politicians stay quiet news media organizations

00:10:24.440 stay quiet it becomes normalized it becomes excused and it becomes um really normalized because those who

00:10:32.040 seek to propagate this kind of stuff become emboldened uh whether it's putting out anti-semitic

00:10:37.240 cartoons whether it's blocking roads synagogues highway overpasses or whether it's passing uh

00:10:42.920 legislation or motions in the house of commons which are a one-sided defamation of a democratic

00:10:48.120 country all while downplaying really uh a genocidal islamic terrorist organization so I think that we 0.77

00:10:54.280 as a society you know we hear from our prime minister that this isn't who canadians are but

00:10:58.280 ultimately we're seeing that that's exactly what canadian canadians are and what canada is and I think

00:11:02.520 that's high time five months ago was high time but now uh that the silent majority speak out and

00:11:07.960 really say absolutely no more this absolutely cannot continue a day longer very well said

00:11:13.560 robert walker associate director of honest reporting canada thank you for uh coming on

00:11:17.800 thanks andrew thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north

00:11:23.320 at www.tnc.news

Juno News - March 24, 2024

Liberal MP “reflecting” on future with party after anti-Israel motion passes

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