Choosing the right MP

Editorial

Former member of Parliament Svend Robinson has said he'd like to return to Ottawa, this time representing the riding of Vancouver-Centre. To do so, he would presumably have to defeat incumbent MP Hedy Fry, the Liberal who has held the seat since ending then-prime minister Kim Campbell's career in 1993.

Robinson probably assumes he has a leg-up in that riding because of its substantial gay population. Few gays and lesbians will forget Robinson's "coming out," not only as the country's first openly gay MP, but as one of this country's only openly gay public figures in any field when he made his public announcement in 1987.

Robinson has also been a powerful voice supporting sometimes unpopular causes, including First Nations rights. As an opposition MP in a small party, Robinson has provided a model for active representation. But Fry, whose career has been eventful, arguably has as strong a following in the riding's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) community as does Robinson, thanks to her indefatigable championing of issues of concern to gay Canadians.

But Robinson has been, as most Independent readers know, a passionate and vocal critic of Israel's policies.

Robinson, who until the last election was the NDP representative for Burnaby-Douglas, tends not to do things in half-measures. When he believes condemnation is in order, Robinson's devotion is total. This has gained him die-hard supporters, but it has also earned him a strong cluster of opposition.

That opposition may be most pronounced in the Jewish community. Robinson has tried, over the years, to temper his criticism of Israel with accompanying condemnation of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, as well as condemning anti-Semitism. But his critics in the Jewish community tend not to be assuaged. The pitch of the New Democrat's condemnation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his policies, as well as those of Sharon's various predecessors, is viewed as unhelpful and unnecessarily vitriolic. Robinson may mouth the right words in sharing blame, but many Zionists view his condemnation of Arab terror as rote in contrast with his clearly incendiary rage at Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

To be clear, there are those in the Jewish community whose condemnation of Israel is as vociferous as Robinson's – a fact the politician himself is wont to point out. But those who share Robinson's views make up a small minority in Canada's Jewish community. Moreover, most Jewish critics of Israel are deeply sensitive to the potential for their words to incite individuals whose motivations extend beyond Israel to a more generalized anti-Jewish sensibility. Robinson believes his criticism will be taken in the spirit in which he says it is intended. But he, like most critics of Israel, has failed to take the time to appreciate the inextricability of Jewishness from Zionism since the nearly successful 20th-century attempt to eliminate a Jewish presence from the face of the Earth.

This intrinsic unity of Jewishness with Zionism is something he and other critics could ascertain through even the most cursory discussion with the average Canadian Jew. Whether Israel's myopic critics like it or not, Israel is almost as central to Jewish identity now as Torah. One can make what differentiations are convenient for political expediency, but to condemn Israel in the seemingly boundless tones that Robinson has in the past employed is received by Canadian Jews in ways that make support for him (and, by extension, his party) difficult if not impossible for many Canadian Jews.

In light of all this, it is notable that standing between Robinson and his return to Parliament is Fry, a Liberal MP who, though no stranger to controversy, has demonstrated that she understands intuitively the historically instilled jumpiness of Jewish people. Fry was the Canadian voice of reason in 2001 when the United Nations-sponsored conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, morphed into an atrocious concentration of anti-Semitic incitement.

Canadian Jews have forgotten neither politician's past actions.

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