Another NDP shame

Editorial

It was jarring to hear the forceful expression in Parliament of the kinds of conspiracy theories usually found at the far reaches of the Internet.

In presenting a petition to Parliament recently, Vancouver East New Democratic member of Parliament Libby Davies read from the text, which asserts that "scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the [United States government's] 9/11 Commission Report is a fraudulent document and that those behind the report are consciously or unconsciously guilty of covering up what happened on 9/11/2001. This evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that World Trade Centre Towers 1, 2 and 7 were brought down by demolition explosives and that the official theory of the towers collapsing from the airplanes and the ensuing fires is irrefutably false."

On the Internet, truth and lies are a short mouse-click apart and this sort of wild accusation is most often found in proximity to the pages alleging that Jews who worked in the World Trade Centre took a "sick day" on Sept. 11, 2001.

There is nothing prima facie anti-Semitic in the petition Davies read into the record. Moreover, an MP tabling a petition is not an endorsement. But if you do two minutes of research online into this subject, the discussion moves directly from general conspiracies to Jewish scheming. Anti-Semitic assumptions, conspiracies and myths seem inextricable from the larger 9/11 conspiracies, like ivy hugs a dead tree, whether it's the extremist position that Jews participated in the attacks or the somewhat more mainstream view that the attacks were brought on by the United States' friendship with Israel.

It may also be unfair to condemn an MP based on the tabling of a petition with which she may or may not agree. But there can be no confusion over another act by the honorable member for Vancouver East.

Davies is co-sponsoring – not just attending, sending good wishes or participating in a panel, but co-sponsoring – a June 28 conference in Ottawa focusing on Palestinians' "right of return" and marking the 60th anniversary of al-Nakba, the Catastrophe, which is what the Arab world and Canadian activists call Israel's independence.

The NDP can hardly wonder why it is viewed warily by Jewish and other reasonable Canadians when one of its members of Parliament co-sponsors an event that dismisses the culmination of 2,000 years of Jewish struggle for national self-determination as a catastrophe. Moreover, to support a literal "right of return" for seven million Palestinians into Israel – as Davies' co-sponsoring organizations do – is to support what incessant wars and intifadas have not achieved: the elimination of Jewish national self-determination and a return to Jewish statelessness. More alarming than Davies' position is the silence of her NDP colleagues, including leader Jack Layton.

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