The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has developed an online “election hub” for navigating the issues.
Topics that might be considered “Jewish issues” in a political context are generally more federal in nature. Foreign affairs as they relate to Israel are top of mind for Jewish voters, as are things like hate crimes and discrimination, which fall under criminal law and national legislation.
Jewish advocacy organizations, of course, have generally stressed that all issues are Jewish issues in that they affect Jewish citizens. Jewish values of tikkun olam and social justice more broadly have often guided Jewish voters and their constituent agencies to emphasize initiatives like poverty reduction, housing and social welfare, as well as multicultural harmony.
The British Columbia election Oct. 19 has perhaps been imbued with added relevance for Jewish voters given events of the past months. Public security, which is a responsibility of all levels of government, has been front of mind for Jewish individuals and agencies because of the spike in antisemitic rhetoric, threats and incidents, especially since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel of a year ago. Not unrelatedly, the removal of the Jewish community’s voice in government, former cabinet minister Selina Robinson, over remarks about the historic nature of the land on which Israel was reestablished, and her subsequent resignation from the BC New Democratic Party caucus, has to some extent undermined the relationship between the current government and many members of the Jewish community.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has developed an online “election hub” for navigating the issues.
“Jewish voters in BC have several things to consider when they cast their ballot,” Nico Slobinsky, vice-president for the Pacific region of CIJA, told the Independent in a statement. “This election season falls in the middle of the Jewish High Holy Days and the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks committed by Hamas. During this time, it is important that we consider policies that strengthen family, community and safety for all that are targeted by hate. I encourage community members to educate themselves on the party platforms and to get involved in the democratic process by voting and volunteering.”
CIJA’s online resource includes information on voting, links to the platforms of the political parties and detailed information on issues CIJA and its constituents have identified as priorities.
“Our community is stronger when we all practise our democratic duty and vote!” said Slobinsky.
Among the topics CIJA identifies is the implementation of mandatory Holocaust education in the province’s educational curriculum. A year ago, the province committed to making education about the Holocaust mandatory in Grade 10. Until now, it was theoretically possible for a BC student to graduate without learning anything about the Shoah. CIJA contends that Holocaust education “meaningfully reinforces ‘never again,’ and encourages responsible citizenship for all British Columbians.”
Relatedly, CIJA is calling on the next government to collect and publish data pertaining to hateful incidents or cases of discrimination reported in the province’s kindergarten to Grade 12 education system and to implement training programs for all staff in BC schools around various manifestations of hatred.
On hate crime and related incidents, CIJA is asking the government to mandate the public reporting of hate incidents by every police force across the province, a step they say would assist investigators in tracking offenders, as well as helping develop and implement strategies to keep communities safe. These data, CIJA suggests, should be disclosed in an annual report from the relevant government departments.
The government should also provide additional resources to strengthen existing police hate crime units and to fund the establishment of such units where they do not yet exist. Special emphasis should be placed on online hate, the resource hub recommends, as this is where individuals are often incited to carry out real-world hate crimes.
Crown prosecutors should be trained, and policy directives updated, to emphasize the public interest in addressing hate-motivated crimes, CIJA recommends. They also urge the government to increase support for safety and security at cultural and religious institutions where existing programs are not currently covering all expenses, including at places of worship, community centres, childcare facilities and summer camps.
On other issues, CIJA continues to press for continued and expanded government commitments to culturally appropriate long-term care, while also making life more affordable for seniors aging in place by reducing the costs of home care, renovations and health services not covered by the provincial health funding system. CIJA recommends more funding for culturally appropriate adult day centres and programming to prevent social isolation.
On the always relevant topic of real estate and affordability, CIJA calls on the future government to permanently exempt nonprofit housing societies from the obligation to pay the property transfer tax and to work with municipalities to adopt the provincial government’s housing income limits for units where a tenant’s rent is based on income.
Adopting a transparent standard for determining affordability, according to CIJA, would make it easier for not-for-profit affordable housing organizations to navigate municipal regulations. CIJA also recommends the government work with housing providers to ensure affordable housing options that accommodate ethnocultural communities, families, seniors, single parents, persons with disabilities and those with complex care needs.
Additional issues addressed in CIJA’s election hub include implementing a living wage strategy for frontline workers and ensuring adequate consultation with small employers and the not-for-profit sector.
“Whether they are single- or two-parent families, the government should ensure that these families earn enough to provide necessities including food, shelter, clothing, transportation and childcare,” the resource says. “Consultation will ensure that small employers and not-for-profits are adequately supported.”
CIJA calls for more affordable childcare spaces. More “culturally sensitive, high-quality, affordable childcare spaces would allow more parents to work outside the home and better support families financially,” says the guide.
The organization also calls for increased program funding and supports so families that have children with disabilities, children and youth with support needs and complex medical needs have timely, universal and portable access to care.
“This care includes early intervention assessments, family respite, medical and in-home support, and resources in schools,” says CIJA.
They recommend making the full amount of the $300 temporary income and disability assistance supplement permanent and to explore further increases, including to the annual earnings exemption. They urge the government to provide equitable and stable access to funding for ethnocultural service agencies that provide culturally appropriate food dignity programs, including for children and youth who do not have access to an affordable school lunch program.
In addition, CIJA calls on the government to lead a trade mission to Israel, inviting business leaders, policymakers, and provincial and municipal representatives to build relationships with Israel’s tech industry and learn best practices.
The election hub is online at www.cija.ca/bc_election_hub. Watch for more BC election coverage in upcoming issues of the Independent.
BC Conservative leader John Rustad speaks with an audience member at a June 20 event at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. (photo by Pat Johnson)
It has been 96 years since the Conservative party won a provincial election in British Columbia. The last time a Conservative was elected to the BC Legislature was a 1978 by-election. So, the rapturous reception BC Conservative leader John Rustad and several of his local candidates received from a mostly Jewish crowd at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue recently may have been a phenomenon unseen in generations.
Public opinion polls over the last year have consistently put the BC Conservatives in second place, ahead of the BC United party, which was known as the BC Liberals before a rebranding last year. The four sitting Conservative MLAs, including Rustad, were all initially elected as BC Liberals and later crossed the floor.
The June 20 event was convened by Saul Kahn, a Jewish community leader who acknowledged he has not been politically active before. The synagogue, he noted, was a venue and the Conservatives’ presence there did not represent an endorsement.
Rabbi Andrew Rosenblatt, Schara Tzedeck’s senior rabbi, said he would welcome any politicians who want to meet and answer questions from the community. He noted that the event took place three weeks to the day after an arson attack on the synagogue and said the Jewish community is deeply concerned about developments in education in the province at all levels – primary, secondary and post-secondary.
Rustad, the MLA for Nechako Lakes, an enormous riding sprawling across central British Columbia, lamented the situation.
“We shouldn’t need to have security,” he said, noting that churches and other institutions rarely even have to consider the issue. “We’ve allowed antisemitism to take root. We are not standing up and saying it’s wrong. It starts in our schools.”
Anybody who is promoting hate in the province should be criminally charged, he said, and, if they are not Canadian citizens, the federal government should consider deporting them.
Schools should be “teaching kids how to think not what to think,” said Rustad, and he promised to rescind the provincial government’s policy on sexual orientation and gender identity, commonly called SOGI. While promising to remove SOGI, Rustad pledged to support all students and pursue anti-bullying policies.
The leader, who has been in the legislature since 2005 and served in cabinet under premier Christy Clark, promised to go through all material in the education system “with a very critical eye” toward issues of ideology, gender and the environment. He said he assumes the BC Teachers’ Federation will fight back on issues like SOGI, which he calls the “sexualization of our children,” but said some of the things being taught in school could not be put on television or said in the legislature.
The party leader condemned anti-Israel protesters on BC university campuses.
“How is it that this is OK?” he asked. “People do not have the right to incite hate.”
He floated the possibility of holding back funding or otherwise putting pressure on universities to respond to this sort of activism.
Rustad condemned the province’s approach to addiction, saying that safe supply is “creating the next generation of addicts.” He called for long-term care and supports that help people get off drugs.
“I don’t think it’s OK as a society to say it’s OK for them to live on the street,” said Rustad.
Addressing the physical addiction is one thing, he added, but providing supports so that people coming off substances do not fall back into old habits and relationships must be part of the recovery process.
Rustad would like the province to gain the sort of autonomy over immigration that Quebec has been granted, “not from the perspective of saying people can’t come, but identifying those with the skill sets we need,” he said.
Housing construction needs to be ramped up and immigrants who can work in those sectors need to be encouraged, he said. Likewise, the province should be working with post-secondary institutions overseas to address issues of credentials before new Canadians move so that people can integrate smoothly into the economy when they arrive.
The foreign buyers’ property tax allows British Columbians to, he said, point at others and say “they are the problem” for high housing costs.
The province’s new densification policies overrule municipalities’ official community plans, he said. These “sound great” in terms of housing, said Rustad, but do not consider sewers and other infrastructures.
Dallas Brodie, the Conservative candidate taking on BC United leader Kevin Falcon in Vancouver-Quilchena, shared her “Israel coming-of-age story.” She had practised law for 10 years and served as a legal aid criminal defender for young offenders before getting into broadcasting. She intended to do legal analysis but broadened her scope to become a producer for CBC in Toronto and Ottawa and later for CKNW talk radio in Vancouver. She noted a media double standard in which, for example, if a pro-Israel speaker were booked, management would demand equal time for an anti-Israel voice. The process became so onerous, she said, “you just stop covering the topic of Israel altogether.”
Eventually, Brodie became host of a weekly program on the University of British Columbia campus station CITR, which she refers to as a “viper’s nest of Marxist thought.” There, she said, she was told not to say the word “Israel” on the air because it is upsetting to people. This UBC connection put Brodie in touch with staff at the campus Jewish organization Hillel, who included Brodie on trip to Israel that she says presented a balanced introduction to the region.
“Even the Palestinian perspective was presented to us,” she said.
The next year, she participated in March of the Living, where participants visit the Nazi death camps.
Running for the provincial legislature, Brodie said some people suggested that including her strong support for Israel in her political biography might hurt her chances, but she insisted on including it.
“My party more than supports my position and stands firmly and strongly behind me,” she said. “I will never go wobbly.”
Vancouver-Langara Conservative candidate Bryan Breguet, an economist who teaches at Langara College, noted that his institution became “internationally famous” last fall after a colleague (later fired) celebrated the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Breguet reflected on a recent incident in which a Burnaby public school teacher engaged in a “thought experiment,” asking students whether Israel had a right to exist. He questioned what the public reaction would have been to a thought experiment asking whether slavery should or should not have been abolished.
Breguet said he traveled to Israel in 2007 and was shocked to see the separation barrier in the process of construction. What shocked him, he said, was that the wall “hadn’t been built decades earlier.”
John Coupar, the party’s candidate in the newly created riding of Vancouver-Little Mountain, cited his 12 years of experience as an elected Vancouver park commissioner and his efforts to save the Bloedel Conservatory.
He condemned the provincial government’s “failed experiment to legalize drugs” and called for “treatment, recovery and safe streets.”
He addressed antisemitism and condemned the governing New Democrats for their choice of candidate to run in the riding he is contesting.
“Your community is suffering deeply,” he said, before criticizing the governing NDP who he says “doubled down” by nominating Vancouver city councilor Christine Boyle as the NDP candidate in Little Mountain, “the only councilor to vote against IHRA [the adoption of a working definition of antisemitism] not once but twice.”
“This is absolutely appalling to me,” Coupar said.
A question from the audience addressed concerns that a failure to unite Conservative and BC United voters could result in a reelected NDP government. Rustad said discussions to fuse the parties, or to form some sort of electoral alliance, were unsuccessful, a failure Rustad placed on the other party.
He claims his party’s polling and analysis suggest that, if the two parties merged under the Conservative banner, the election would result in a six-seat majority for the Conservatives while, if they coalesced under the BC United banner, the NDP would win by 20 seats.
An X post about an antisemitic takeover of the Simon Fraser University library downtown, named after Jewish philanthropists Samuel and Frances Belzberg. Khalida Jarrar is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Canada listed as a terror entity in 2003. (screenshot)
More than 250 members of the Jewish community gathered at Congregation Beth Israel last week to learn more about antisemitism occurring on BC campuses. The discussion was led by a panel of Jewish students representing the University of BritishColumbia, the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University, as well as educators and a spokesperson from Hillel BC. Panelists spoke about how pro-Palestinian activists have created an environment that has made Jewish students and educators feel unsafe, and that their concerns are, by and large, not being taken seriously by university administrators.
“Hillel has shifted from being a place where students explore their identity to being an emergency room for antisemitic incidents,” said Ohad Gavrieli, executive director of Hillel BC. “What we’re encountering is unprecedented, and our main role has been to protect and defend Jewish identity.”
Hillel is focused on safety, education, programming and advocacy, said Gavrieli. It is assisting students as they try to file complaints about antisemitism, while continuing with events like Shabbat dinners and bagel lunches, critical components that allow for the continuity of Jewish life during this crisis.
Gavrieli said universities’ approaches to antisemitism have been very ineffective.
“While they understand we’re hurting as a community, they’re politicians and they care about their institutional reputation. They want to please both sides,” he argued. “So, when we talk with them about the encampments, they tell us to be patient, that they’re working on it and will come up with a solution.”
Member of the Legislative Assembly Selina Robinson described a similar “deafness and silence” when she spoke about antisemitism with her political colleagues.
“I heard stories from Langara students who were afraid to leave the bathroom because there was marching in the hallways. I got calls from students whose instructors were telling them they needed to participate in a march, and from educators whose administrators were involved in BDS [boycott, sanction and divestment] activity,” she recalled. “I felt I needed to say something, so I said lots – to the attorney general, the solicitor general, the chief of staff. And I got silence, or responses like, ‘we’re looking into it’ – but nothing happened.”
For Aria Levitt, a Jewish student leader entering her second year at UVic, the campus environment is daunting.
“When an encampment was established in the Quad at UVic, the university issued a statement that overnight camping there was not allowed. But the encampment is still there, and they’re not doing anything about it, which is a statement in itself,” said Levitt. “I heard the marches, protests and chants and it was very scary. I don’t feel proud to weara UVic sweater,” she added.
At Simon Fraser University, Rachel Altman, an associate professor, said the Faculty for Palestine group has been relentless about holding anti-Israel events, and that those events even count towards the educators’ professional credit. “I attended one of their events and I was shaking by the end of it, it was so deeply unsettling,” she confessed.
“The hatred in the room was palpable,” said Altman. “They were clearly talking about me and my colleagues, misrepresenting my responses and not giving me a chance to defend myself. I felt hated by colleagues who have never spoken to me face-to-face. One person made a claim that Israel is stealing organs. This group is large and it’s having an impact on the general climate at SFU.”
Altman is trying to get her faculty association to adopt a neutrality policy and to develop institutional neutrality. Dr. Estie Ford, a professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC, is working with her colleagues to establish the Jewish Academic Alliance of BC, with the goal of being a face for Jewish faculty who are not anti-Zionist, across the province. “This is a new time when people are coming together and there’s so much amazing work being done,” Ford said.
Gavrieli fields calls from Jewish parents wondering how safe BC campuses are for their children. He tells students to continue to hold their heads high, to not be afraid and to tackle the issues head-on.
“Antisemitism right now is being driven from campus and it’s rooted on campus,” he said. “Any parent with a child entering university should encourage them to engage in Jewish life on campus, to make it more vibrant and to deal with this issue fearlessly, because this is the time to fight.”
Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond.
Selina Robinson, centre, with then BC premier John Horgan and Kate Ryan-Lloyd, clerk of the Legislative Assembly, at Robinson’s swearing-in ceremony in 2017. (photo from Selina Robinson)
Selina Robinson says she was fired from the British Columbia cabinet. Premier David Eby says she quit.
This is merely the tip of an iceberg in the conflicting stories that have roiled BC politics since Robinson’s cabinet career ended in February – and which burst into an even bigger storm when she left the New Democratic Party caucus March 6 with an incendiary letter to caucus colleagues.
Whether Robinson jumped or was pushed, Jewish community leaders and opposition politicians are denouncing what they say is a double standard, with multiple people – including the premier – getting second chances for remarks that were at least as impolitic as Robinson’s.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Independent, Robinson maintains the premier prevented her from doing precisely the work he called on her to do – another point that Eby contradicts. He thought her acts of contrition were proceeding just fine and suggests he was blindsided by her resignation from caucus.
Perhaps the prickliest aspects of the entire controversy are the motivations of the individuals involved. Robinson, opposition officials and many in the Jewish community see antisemitism at play. Government officials – including the cabinet minister Robinson says the premier “trotted out as the new Jew” – say that the evidence doesn’t amount to racial bias.
The bones of the story are familiar by now – but Robinson shared with the Independent personal reflections and sharp critiques of former colleagues, including Eby, fellow New Democrats who she accuses of profound insensitivity in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, a death threat that is now in the hands of international policing authorities, and how everything might have been different if John Horgan were still premier.
Poor choice of words
The drama began with words Robinson spoke in a Jan. 30 webinar organized by B’nai Brith Canada featuring Jewish elected officials from across Canada – or, at least, that is how most media coverage frames the controversy. Robinson said she has had a target on her back since much earlier, as a Jewish woman with emotional, spiritual and familial connections to Israel. That targeting came from within her own party, she claims, and she went into some depth about her fights with fellow New Democrats in recent months and years over the issue.
During the January webinar, Robinson said that the area designated for a Jewish state under the 1947 United Nations Partition Resolution was “a crappy piece of land with nothing on it.”
She immediately clarified in the webinar that there were people living there and she was referring to the arability of the land and the limited economic development in the region. But the genie was out of the bottle. Robinson told the Independent that what happened in the succeeding weeks – and continues roiling – is not so much a result of what she said, but of who she is.
Marvin Rotrand, the outgoing national director of B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights, was host of the now-notorious webinar. In a statement afterward, he said that a small part of Robinson’s speech was distorted and taken out of context, leading to a campaign against her by groups and individuals “too well known for their hate of Israel.”
Within days, thousands had signed a petition calling for Robinson’s firing. Leaders of more than a dozen mosques and Islamic associations sent a letter to Eby warning that NDP representatives would not be welcome in their sacred spaces as long as Robinson remained in cabinet. Days later, her constituency office was vandalized – including with the words “Zionism is Nazism” – and she received a death threat that international police organizations deem credible.
While pressure was building, Robinson and Eby both appeared to be feeling their way through uncharted territory. Robinson apologized – twice. She also offered to take anti-Islamophobia training.
“My words were inappropriate, wrong, and I now understand how they have contributed to Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism,” she said.
Parallels Robinson drew between Indigenous peoples in British Columbia and Jewish indigeneity in Israel also brought condemnations, and she specifically apologized for those remarks.
“The experiences of First Nations people are not mine to manipulate,” she said. “That was wrong and I am deeply sorry.”
“Her comments increase divisions in our province,” Eby told media. “They increase the feelings of alienation of groups of people, especially people of Palestinian descent and people who are concerned about the death and the destruction in Palestine that is happening right now.
“She has apologized unequivocally, as she should. And she’s got some more work to do,” Eby said. Robinson, the premier told media, was in the process of reaching out to community leaders to repair the damage her remarks caused.
What happened in those hours sowed the seeds for further conflict within the party, including, Robinson now says, the premier’s refusal to allow her to do what she could do – and wanted to do – torepair the damage she caused.
Was she wrong?
Some commentators have defended Robinson, saying that pre-state Israel was indeed a crappy piece of land in terms of arability. Robinson reflected on what she said and the reaction to it.
“I said things that I did not intend to hurt anybody,” she said. “I did not intend to make Arab, Muslim or Palestinian people feel like they are ‘less than.’ I understand that just the way I described Israel made them feel like they were poor land stewards, that they somehow were to blame for the conditions.”
Nevertheless, she said, she did not invent a narrative that Mandatory Palestine was a poor piece of land, she said.
“Other people have characterized [pre-state] Israel in that way,” she said. “I didn’t create that narrative. I was repeating a narrative that others had stated, from Mark Twain to land economists.”
For the purposes of historical accuracy, she said, she blames the Ottomans, whose empire had controlled the land for 400 years, for a lack of economic vibrancy in the region. That long-ago history, though, does not mean her words did not affect contemporary audiences, she acknowledged.
“Those words impacted them,” she said of people who expressed disappointment and other emotions at her remarks.
Criticism she rejects, though, are assertions that she espoused hate.
“I didn’t espouse hate,” she said, slowly, quietly and firmly. “I said words that hurt people. There was no hate in those words.”
These nuances, for what they may be worth, made no difference when it came to Robinson’s continuation as a cabinet minister.
Jumped or pushed?
“The depth of the work that Minister Robinson needs to do, in order to address the harms that she’s caused, is significant,” the premier told media Feb. 5. “[S]he screwed up, she made a really significant error and so we need to address the harm that was caused by that.”
At a news conference, Eby said a “joint decision” was made that Robinson would leave cabinet.
While she agreed to that wording, Robinson told the Independent, that is not a correct assessment of what happened.
“I didn’t think that I needed to leave cabinet,” she said. “That was not my choice. The premier was insistent that I had to.”
Robinson says Eby seized on something she said during discussions around her future.
“I said, ‘If you are asking me to step down from cabinet, if that’s what you want, I will,’” Robinson recalled. “It’s not what I want. And he said, ‘I can’t see a path forward for you in cabinet.’ So I said, ‘So you’re asking me to resign.’”
Robinson said she insisted the announcement from the premier’s office say that the premier asked her to resign.
“And they said, no, you offered your resignation,” Robinson continued. “And I said … the most you’ll get from me is that it was a joint decision and that’s what the press release [said], a ‘joint decision.’ But … let’s be really clear, as I said in my letter [resigning from caucus], I was told that there was no path back.”
Eby denies this.
“I did not remove her,” the premier told the Independent. “I can certainly believe that she didn’t want to do that, but I did accept her resignation.”
Leaving caucus
Robinson’s successive apologies and commitment to undergo anti-Islamophobia training didn’t save her cabinet job. But, she said, she was committed to making amends.
“The concept of teshuvah [repentance], for us as Jews, I take it seriously,” Robinson said, “It’s not enough to say you’re sorry, what are the deeds that go with it?”
Robinson came up with an idea she terms “The Project.”
In the aftermath of her firing, followed by the vandalizing of her constituency office and a death threat, Robinson and her family took off for a week in Mexico to recuperate.
“I called the premier from Mexico and said I have an idea, what do you think?” she recalled. “It was around outreach, working with the [Jewish and Muslim] communities, bringing them together … what did he think?
“And he said that’s a really interesting idea, let’s think about it,” Robinson said.
When she returned from Mexico, she talked to the premier’s chief of staff, Matt Smith. She fleshed the idea out some more, proposing that she and perhaps someone from the civil service – a Jewish person and a Muslim person – “would work with these communities and try to find ways to do dialogue and engagement and break bread and do the things that bring about peace and what could that look like,” said Robinson. She discussed the concept with Deborah Lyons, Canada’s special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, who was supportive and offered to do anything she could to support the effort, Robinson said.
After contemplating the idea, Smith came back with his decision: “Too political,” Smith said, according to Robinson.
The premier told the Independent that the idea that a civil servant would work on the project with an elected official is what was “too political.”
Robinson doesn’t believe that. “It was more, we’d prefer to be silent on the whole thing,” she said.
Silence, she contends, is a root of the entire problem – not just with her firing but around the government’s approach to antisemitism. The premier and the government, she contends, are more concerned with success in this fall’s election than with doing the right thing.
“We are in election mode,” she said. “And, frankly, we’ve been in election mode since [Eby] became the premier [in November 2022]. I get it. I’m a politician. I understand the gig, I know how these things work.
“However,” she said, “we are also government. We are a party trying to get reelected and we are government, and you have to be able to do both at the same time. It’s hard. I’m not saying it’s easy. But you can’t give up the governing part and just do campaign mode. You campaign and you govern simultaneously and I think what’s happened is they stopped governing. A government says, we have a problem, what are we going to put in place to help this community that is being terrorized? And it’s controversial, because there are others who think it’s appropriate to terrorize this community. I think what governments are supposed to do is bring people together. Right now, the actions are ripping people apart.”
The fact that the premier’s office would not allow her to engage her colleagues in a broader discussion about both antisemitism and Islamophobia led her to believe there was nothing she could do that would satisfy the government.
“I committed to a number of deeds and have acted on them and that still wasn’t good enough,” she said.
While the government seemed unsatisfied with her efforts, many Muslim people have been more forgiving, she said. Many have expressed forgiveness for her words and accepted her apologies – she has accepted Iftar invitations and extended seder invitations to Muslim friends and acquaintances, she said.
“There are Arab and Muslim leaders that I have had wonderful conversations with, heartfelt conversations,” she said. “I could hear the agony in their voice and they could hear the agony in mine.”
That kind of amity, though, was not something she found among her NDP colleagues. On March 6, her 60th birthday, Robinson released a statement resigning from the NDP caucus.
Harsh words for Heyman
The day after Robinson’s resignation, the premier’s office organized a news conference at the Legislature. George Heyman, BC minister of environment and climate change strategy, told the media that he took exception to the assertion that Robinson’s resignation represented “our government [having] lost the only Jewish voice in our caucus or cabinet.”
“They should know,” said Heyman, “that I’m also Jewish. I grew up as a Jew.”
His experience in the NDP, Heyman said, does not comport with Robinson’s perceptions.
“My experience is that our caucus and our cabinet are deeply committed to fighting antisemitism, to opposing hatred and I have found them to be personally supportive of me on an ongoing basis,” he said.
“He was trotted out as the new Jew, which was a shonda [shame], as they say, on so many different levels,” claims Robinson. “I believe George was put up to it. I know how things work. They didn’t want me to be the only Jewish voice.
“But George doesn’t identify as a Jew,” she said. “He’s told that to so many people. He’s not connected to the community.”
Robinson thinks Heyman allowed himself to be used.
“You thought it was OK? So, the premier asks you, you could have said I’m not going to do that.”
Heyman takes exception to Robinson’s comments about his identity and especially about the idea that he was put up to anything.
“People who know me know that I don’t do things that I don’t want to do,” he told the Independent. Heyman said he was moved to address the issue as soon as he heard opposition MLAs claim the government had lost its only Jewish voice.
On the larger issue of his identity, Heyman said it is up to individuals to self-define.
“I think it’s actually my and every Jew’s right and responsibility to determine in what ways they identify and connect with their own heritage, which is not the same as practising a particular religion,” he said. “My position as a child of Holocaust refugees and as a grandchild of Holocaust victims is, I think, fairly well known. I certainly haven’t hidden it. I may not be a member of the Jewish community in the same way that Selina is. I am not a practising Jew, but to say that I don’t identify as a Jew I think is simply inaccurate.”
Is it antisemitism?
Robinson said media have tended to misrepresent her comments about antisemitism in the NDP. She did not say the party was rife with antisemites. Her letter of resignation from caucus included several incidents – and most of these were matters of record. She herself has experienced antisemitism directly only from two colleagues, she said.
Immediately after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Robinson said, she sent a message to her colleagues noting that the Jewish community in British Columbia was experiencing trauma as a result of what was happening, including the murder of a young Vancouver man, Ben Mizrachi, and expressions of solidarity and condolences were in order.
Days later, she said, two of her colleagues – Aman Singh, MLA for Richmond-Queensborough and parliamentary secretary for the environment, and Katrina Chen, MLA for Burnaby-Lougheed – responded to her message by stating that the government should express solidarity with Palestinians.
“Three days after, maybe four days after the massacre, [they] felt that it was appropriate to put out a statement about how Palestinians were treated,” Robinson said. “Ben Mizrachi hadn’t been buried yet. The [Israeli military] hadn’t responded.”
Robinson was outraged.
“This isn’t about that,” she said of responding to expressions of Jewish suffering with demands for solidarity with Palestinians. “Could you not take a moment – a moment – to reflect on how horrible it is that a terrorist group came in and slaughtered 1,200 people? Just acknowledge it. Just acknowledge that that was wrong and we need to fight against terrorism.”
Robinson does not understand how people cannot see antisemitism in the erasure of Jewish suffering.
“Jewish suffering is discounted,” she said. “It’s [perceived as] not real, it’s fake. It has no value and diminishes another group of people who are suffering.
“This isn’t a competition of who is suffering more,” Robinson said.
She called the premier immediately upon seeing the messages from Singh and Chen.
“I said, I can’t deal with this. I can’t deal with those two. I just can’t,” she said. “And he said, let me deal with it. I was grateful. It felt like he had my back.”
Robinson never heard from Chen, whose social media feed frequently shares Palestinian memes and messages. On the day Robinson released her resignation letter this month, Chen tweeted: “Not wanting to see more kids and people die in Gaza is not antisemitism.”
An hour after she took it up with the premier, Robinson said, she heard from Singh.
Neither Singh nor Chen responded to the Independent’s request for comment or clarification on Robinson’s version of events. However, the Independent has seen the text Robinson referenced and, in it, Singh called the Oct. 7 attacks “absolutely horrific” and said Hamas “should be brought down.” He also expressed empathy with Robinson and her family in Israel.
“I wanted us as a caucus just to recognize the pain in Gaza as well,” he wrote, adding that he was not calling on the government to make a statement in that regard, “[b]ut internally I felt that needed to be said.”
Additionally, the original email Singh sent was on Oct. 12 and, therefore, after the beginning of Israel’s military actions, not before, as Robinson had claimed.
While Chen and Singh did not comment to the Independent, Heyman defended them, also noting that the emails Robinson cited were “private communications within caucus.”
“It was disturbing to me that her interpretation of actions of a number of my colleagues were that they were antisemitic,” Heyman said. “These are colleagues I respect. I’ve had many conversations with them and I know how deeply committed they are to fighting antisemitism and to fighting all forms of hatred.”
Robinson, in any event, did not consider Singh’s text an apology and did not respond. Nor has she spoken to Singh since.
“If he had come up to me and said, ‘Selina, you never acknowledged my apology, can we talk about it?’ I would have,” she said. “But I really felt like he did not get it.”
Not getting it is, Robinson thinks, the problem. It is not that her colleagues are overt Jew-haters, but that they do not know what antisemitism looks like and refuse to take the time to find out.
“What I tell them is you don’t know enough about antisemitism in its newest form,” she said. “I think for them it’s name-calling, swastikas – I think that for them is really clear. The new form of antisemitism that we are seeing … [includes] the delegitimization of Israel, [the idea] that Jews are responsible for Israel’s political decisions or military decisions, Israel as colonizer, Jews as white people, therefore, the oppressor – I don’t think they have a frame for how to make sense of that.”
Criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, she said. Denying Israel’s right to exist, which is the position of many of the people who wanted her out of office, is.
“What you’re saying is Jews shouldn’t have a homeland, that their history of continually being pushed out of those lands over time, over millennia, you want that to continue,” she said. “If you don’t recognize the legitimacy of Israel as a nation-state, then that contributes to Jew-hatred.”
Taking the North American settler-colonialism model and applying that lens to Israel and Palestine is simply wrong, she said.
“It is inaccurate, it is a false narrative, it is patently not true. And, as a result, they are engaging in antisemitism,” said Robinson, whose own comparison of North American indigeneity to the Middle Eastern model drew condemnation. “I don’t think that they want to be antisemitic but they are, because they don’t understand and they’re not taking the time to learn how that history is different from this history here in North America. I think that’s where those folks are going wrong. What’s the solution? Education. Learn the history. And you’re not going to get it from TikTok and you not going to get it from Twitter, so you need to do some – I’ll use the premier’s words – you need to do some deep learning.”
When it comes to her former colleagues, Robinson believes their culpability comes from a combination of fear of failure and refusal to learn.
“They don’t recognize this form of antisemitism and so they are silent because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing one way or the other,” she said. “But their silence is deafening and no one is saying, I want to learn more about this.”
Though that’s not quite accurate. One colleague, after she left cabinet, and another after she left caucus, reached out to Robinson and said they have been looking to learn more about antisemitism.
One asked her why they, as elected officials, are not trained in this.
“Well, you’d better ask the premier,” she responded.
Battling Zionists
In her letter of resignation from caucus, Robinson mentioned several colleagues by name, among them Mable Elmore, MLA for Vancouver-Kensington. Elmore’s example is one that has come up repeatedly among Robinson’s defenders in recent weeks as an example of someone who has gotten away with comments that are arguably worse than anything Robinson expressed.
In November, Mable Elmore rose in the house to make a routine statement. Instead, Robinson said, she went off script and delivered a two-minute talk about people dying in Gaza.
“But she never made reference to the massacre on Oct. 7,” Robinson said. “She never tied this as a response to terrorism.”
Elmore is parliamentary secretary responsible for antiracism initiatives under the attorney general.
Leaders in the Jewish community, Robinson said, have long been wary of Elmore. At the start of her political career, Elmore got in hot water for voicing a conspiracy about “vocal Zionists” in her workplace that she and other union activists had to “battle.”
“They were always anxious about Mable, given her history,” said Robinson of leaders in the mainstream Jewish community. “When she was made parliamentary secretary for antiracism, [Jewish communal leaders] expressed concerns to me but they said … we believe people can change [and] learn, and so they went along with it.
“Then, when Mable did her two-minute statement in November that sort of disconnected what’s happening in Gaza right now from the attack on Oct. 7 and left out a big chunk of the story, [Jewish community leaders] were outraged,” said Robinson. “They were absolutely outraged. I went to the premier’s office with my own outrage and then, of course, communicated the community’s outrage.”
Jewish leaders, according to Robinson, were asking for Elmore to be taken off the antiracism file completely. Instead, she said, the premier left Elmore in charge of antiracism initiatives but removed her responsibility for liaising with the Jewish community on issues involving racism. Dealing with the Jews on antisemitism and broader antiracism approaches would be handed over to Attorney General Niki Sharma.
“This is where the story gets really interesting,” Robinson said. Eight weeks after the premier removed antisemitism and liaising with Jews from the government’s point person on antiracism and handed those responsibilities over to the more senior attorney general, Robinson reached out to Sharma after the Vancouver Police Department released a report that anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city had spiked 62% in 2023.
“It’s been eight weeks now since [Sharma] has been responsible for the file. The Jewish community is reeling, numbers are through the roof,” said Robinson, who said she asked Sharma what the government was doing. “She had done nothing from November on. She hadn’t met with the [Jewish] community. She had no plan.”
Sharma promised to get Robinson a brief on how her department and the government intended to address the increase in hate-motivated crimes against Jewish individuals and institutions. Robinson never received it.
Disputed events
In the hours after Robinson released her letter to caucus, Premier David Eby addressed the controversy repeatedly with media.
“I wish she had brought her concerns to me directly so we could have worked through them together,” he said at one point. Later, he said, “She didn’t feel safe with me to bring forward her concerns and she felt she had to resign. So, I’ll examine that.”
Eby’s comments infuriate Robinson. “When the premier says that I never came to him – this is the part that really makes me crazy – I did,” she told the Independent. “I was even coming with solutions.”
Those solutions did not seem to move the dial in terms of any redemption Robinson might have expected for what she sees as good-faith efforts to make amends and her proposals to help address antisemitism and Islamophobia in government.
Target on her back
Robinson felt she had a target on her back – and not only since the “crappy piece of land” incident.
“There were targets even during convention,” she said. Before the BC NDP convention last November, Robinson warned the premier’s office that several delegates and groups were going to bring forward emergency resolutions about the war in Gaza.
“I kept saying, we are a subnational government, we don’t do international relations,” Robinson said. “I don’t even know why we would entertain international commentary.”
Convention organizers apparently felt there was a need to allow some delegates to blow off steam. Robinson said she and others then strove to create a relatively balanced resolution, “and that work happened behind the scenes.”
“But there were people calling for my head back then, back in November,” she said.
In her capacity as minister responsible for BC postsecondary institutions, Robinson gained the wrath in February of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC and the Canadian Association of University Teachers, who called on Eby to oust Robinson. The latter group accused Robinson of undermining “the democratic principles of freedom of expression, academic freedom, and a college and university system free of direct manipulation by the provincial government” because Robinson had retweeted a call for Langara College to fire Dr. Natalie Knight, an
English instructor who referred to the mass murders of Oct. 7 as “amazing” and “brilliant.”
As a result of Robinson’s vocal and visible presence on these issues, she said, there were people “paying very close attention to what I said, how I said it, when I said it. So, I was a target – I still am a target, I think.”
Warning signs?
While Robinson has felt a target on her back, including from some in her own party, there is a larger trend that has nothing directly to do with her, arguably going back to 1967 or before, when the Canadian left’s approach to Israel and Palestine began transitioning from a largely pro-Zionist position. With a few notable exceptions, NDP elected officials and rank-and-file members for several decades now have aligned more with the Palestinian cause than the Israeli one. While criticism of Israel may or may not be fair, depending on context, some people, including some longtime party members, have written the party off as poisoned by antisemitism.
Bernie Simpson is one of only a handful of Jewish British Columbians ever elected to the provincial Legislature. He was the New Democratic MLA for Vancouver-Fraserview from 1991 to 1996, but his roots in the party go back decades earlier. He was mentored by Dave Barrett, the first and still only Jewish premier of the province, and Simpson was at the upper echelons of the NDP from the 1960s.
Throughout that time, he told the Independent, he struggled against far-left “ideologues.” He eventually left the party about 25 years ago, in large part because of the prominence of anti-Israel voices like Svend Robinson and Libby Davies.
“I always felt, in the years that I was involved with the NDP, that there was underlying antisemitism,” he said. “I didn’t realize the extent of antisemitism in the NDP until Selina brought it to the world’s attention, and good for her.”
Simpson believes Eby is beholden to certain segments of his caucus.
“He has to appease the left-wing ideologues or else he’d have a revolt and probably they could undermine his leadership,” Simpson said. “They are quite capable of doing that, the left wing.”
“Can a party be antisemitic?” Robinson asked. “Well, people make up a party. So, it depends who is there.”
In 2021, she called on the resolutions committee of the federal NDP convention to get some perspective on foreign affairs.
“When they had their convention, they had the top 25 resolutions [and] 16 of them [or] 15 of them, were anti-Israel,” she said. “Really, people? Do you not care what’s happening in Chad, or the Congo, or to the Uyghurs? What is your obsession? I reached out to them and I called the people in charge of the resolutions committee and the response was, and I quote, ‘It has been ever thus.’ I was stunned.
“Can you not reflect on your obsession and where that’s coming from?” she asked. “I get it if you have one or two [resolutions about Israel]. I don’t like Israeli government decisions, what they’re doing. For sure, challenge this [Israeli] government in terms of the decisions that they are making. You only have so much time to debate your resolutions, but you want to spend three days debating Israel? Then you’re not a party I can take seriously to represent us as Canadians. Not on China, not on Iran, not on these really big, despotic nations. Nope. It’s just the Jews.”
Under the late Jack Layton, who was leader of the federal NDP from 2003 to 2011, Robinson said, things were not as bad as they are now.
“I blame Jagmeet Singh,” she said of the federal NDP leader. “I hold him completely responsible for the rhetoric and the outrageousness that we are seeing. He’s party leader. This is on him…. His attacks on me because I described Israel pre-1948 [Israel] as a crappy piece of land and his vociferousness towards me was vile.”
Singh had called Robinson’s comments “not only factually wrong, but offensive and irresponsible” and that “elected leaders must be voices for peace and justice.” The federal NDP leader said he had conveyed his “serious concerns” to Eby.
Singh’s office did not respond to the Independent’s request for comment.
Decision to retire
When Robinson left cabinet, she let it be known that she had earlier decided not to seek reelection in this fall’s provincial election.
She had planned to announce her retirement on March 6, her 60th birthday. After three terms as an MLA, following two terms on Coquitlam city council, Robinson thought it was time to leave public life after 16 years. In December, she shared the news with the premier.
There were lots of reasons to wind up her elected service, she said. Her (adult) kids are talking about having kids and she wants to be a hands-on bubbe. Her father turns 84 this year and she wants to spend more time with him, and with her husband’s parents, who are of a similar age. Her husband, Dan, wants to travel.
The premier, Robinson said, was kind when she shared her decision with him late last year.
“He was surprised I wasn’t running again,” she said. “He thought I’ve been a very competent minister. He had lots of nice things to say about me.”
But there was something else.
“I said, caucus hasn’t felt the same since Oct. 7,” she told Eby who, she said, opted not to ask her about that. “It just hung. He didn’t ask. He didn’t say, tell me more about that or what do you mean – he knew what I was referring to, of course – but he didn’t push, he didn’t pursue. It saddened me a little bit because I would have hoped he would have been at least a little bit interested to understand what that was about.”
Still, she acknowledges, the purpose of the call was to share her retirement decision and the conversation soon turned to logistics – when she would tell the party brass, whether she had groomed a successor, when to go public.
March 6 did involve a major announcement, of course, but it wasn’t about the decision that she wouldn’t run in the next election. Instead, she released an open letter to colleagues, telling them why she would no longer be sitting as part of the New Democratic caucus.
Death threat and vandalism
The hate Robinson experienced after her webinar comments went viral was extreme. At her offices, voicemail reached capacity. Staff were days behind keeping up with the bombardment of email.
It was a Saturday when an email came in threatening to shoot Robinson in the head, but staff didn’t discover it until four days later. They knew the procedure, having dealt with a similar incident a year earlier – a threat against Robinson not because she is a Jew but because she is a woman. Staff found the death threat email the same day they had arrived at the Coquitlam office to find it vandalized and festooned with hate messaging.
“The police have found the perpetrator,” Robinson said. The email came from the United States, so US Homeland Security and the FBI are involved. “It’s legitimate and it’s credible. It helps that it’s someone at a distance but it’s also in a place where guns are easily accessible, so it’s a bit of both.”
Robinson’s husband now keeps a baseball bat next to the bed.
Kindness amid chaos
To look at social media posts targeting Robinson is to dive down a rabbit hole of varying degrees of outrage and a great deal of hatred. In the real world, she said, she has experienced an outpouring of compassion.
An acquaintance sent her a bouquet of blue and white roses – Israel’s colours. Robinson was walking in the park with earphones in and a passerby made the heart sign. Heaps of cards, letters and emails have poured in. People have sent art, including a rendering of a woman reaching for the sky, which is displayed prominently in her office.
“I want to weep, actually, because it feels validating,” she said.
But that outpouring of support from the public is not mirrored in the reaction of her former cabinet and caucus colleagues, she said.
While Robinson’s experiences among the NDP officials with whom she spent more than a decade is a testament of profound loneliness, that is not entirely the case, she said. Some people have been dependable and supportive. She can count them, she said, on one hand. And she won’t mention them by name for fear of throwing them to the wolves.
“I’m not going to single them out, only because I’m worried about their backlash,” she said. “I want to protect them for being there for me.”
What ifs …
When she left cabinet, Robinson cleared out her personal possessions from her ministerial office. The day the Independent visited her, she had just been going through those boxes.
“I came across a card from John Horgan, when he stepped down,” she said, referring to the former BC premier, who retired in 2022, and was replaced by Eby. The card, she said, “just talked about how much he values my input and that I brought all of me to cabinet.
“He trusted my judgment vis-à-vis the Jewish community,” Robinson said. “He really wanted to understand that he was doing right by the Jewish community, so he would regularly check in with me about what did I think. I would say, ‘You were a mensch.’ He really took to that word, ‘Was I a mensch?’ ‘You were a mensch.’”
Might things have played out differently if Horgan had been in the top job when all this blew up? Robinson believes so.
“I think he might have heard my concerns differently earlier on,” Robinson said. “If I would have told him that, since Oct. 7, caucus hasn’t felt the same, he would want to know why. What’s changed? What’s it like for you? And that may have had a different outcome.”
When the webinar comment grew into a crisis, Robinson suspects the former premier might have responded differently than the current one did.
“I think he would have stood by me. I think he would have weathered the storm,” she said.
Second chances?
One of the things that Robinson’s defenders, including Jewish community leaders, have pointed out is that everyone seems to get second chances but the Jew. The offences outlined in Robinson’s letter of resignation, as well as documented incidents like Elmore’s multiple transgressions, suggest a willingness to forgive, if not forget.
When Robinson was hauled on the carpet for her comments and thrown out of cabinet within days, the official voices of the mainstream Jewish community noted that, mere days earlier, the Jewish community had been asked – and agreed – to overlook an egregious misstatement on the part of the premier himself.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27, the premier’s social media feed noted the occasion and declared: “We stand with the Muslim community throughout Canada on this sorrowful day of remembrance.”
The message was soon taken down and an apology posted.
“Do you know who managed that debacle for the premier’s office?” Robinson asked. “Me.”
Robinson was not the only one to catch the grievous error, of course. BC United, the official opposition party, screen-captured the post before it was deleted. Robinson, meanwhile, was on to her leader’s office to get to the bottom of it.
“I spoke to folks in the premier’s office,” she said. “I learned who made the error. I was assured it was an error.”
An apology is not enough, she told them. “You need to explain how this could happen.”
The explanation was that two days after International Holocaust Remembrance Day was the anniversary of the 2017 Quebec City mosque attack during which six people were killed and 19 were injured. A lower-level social media staffer had apparently mixed up the messages for the two separate days.
Until the clarification, some people wondered if the post was a deliberate act of baiting the Jewish community on one of the most solemn days of the year. Robinson is confident it was simple human error.
“I have to believe that, otherwise I’m way too cynical about the world,” she said. “I have to take people at their word … and that’s what I guess is heartbreaking for me, that people couldn’t take me at my word. They chose to think the worst of me, after all this time.”
Political fallout
Robinson’s departure – and the broader issues of antisemitism she raises – absorbed the Legislature and the press gallery for days.
Kevin Falcon, leader of the BC United official opposition (formerly known as the BC Liberals), has repeatedly called for an independent investigation into what he calls “the antisemitism that is rife not just within the government but within their own cabinet, caucus and party.”
Speaking with the Independent, Falcon raised what he and so many others have called a “double standard” in the treatment of Robinson, while there are members of the NDP who have not apologized for intemperate remarks and yet have suffered no consequences.
“I can’t help but note the worst that Selina could be criticized for is using perhaps a poor choice of words,” said Falcon. “But she did the honourable thing and fully withdrew the comments, apologized for the comments and, even after saying that she would go through anti-Islamophobia training, whatever that is, [it] still wasn’t enough for the premier to [not] drop her out of cabinet, which is in stark contrast to how they’ve dealt with other people within their own government who have made terrible statements in the past.”
Recent concerns about racism against Indigenous people in the healthcare system, Falcon said, resulted in quick action.
“They couldn’t move fast enough then to appoint an independent investigation into the allegations of racism in the healthcare system,” he said. “But, when it comes to investigating antisemitism within their own government, caucus, cabinet and party, well, nothing to see here. They just continue to delay.”
Another double standard, Falcon said, is the different reactions to claims of antisemitism versus other forms of racism.
“They’re always out there professing to be so concerned about racism, except when it comes to racism against the Jewish community,” he said. “The double standard is certainly so glaringly obvious. That’s the part that feels so remarkably different. That’s the part that none of us can just get over. It’s amazing to me that they say all the right things about [being] so concerned about this, we have thinking to do, we need to create safe spaces and this word salad of woke-isms that they can spew out very easily, but fail to address the two fundamental issues that concern us on this – the double standard as a result of Selina being fired out of cabinet and people who have said far worse antisemitic statements or tropes [but who] continue to serve, some of whom have never apologized.”
Falcon said that critics of Israel, like those who targeted Robinson, are missing crucial moral principles.
“In war, tragically, there are always innocent lives lost,” he said. “It is an unavoidable aspect of war. That breaks my heart when I see innocent people dying on both sides.
“We have to understand some important principles,” he continued. “One is that Israel has a right to exist and Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Politics, legendarily, makes strange bedfellows. Robinson seems to have few reliable friends among her former colleagues, but Falcon said her new seatmates are literally and figuratively on her side – she is now on the opposition side of the House, awash with BC United, Conservative and Green MLAs.
“She’s got a lot of supporters on the opposition bench,” Falcon said.
John Rustad, leader of the BC Conservative party, a long-moribund party that is showing surprising strength in opinion polls, said his heart goes out to Robinson.
“That Selina was brave enough to share that I think speaks volumes to what is going on within the caucus and within the [New Democratic] party,” Rustad told the Independent. “David Eby has known about this for months and he’s refused to take action. I think the province is not interested in having a premier that won’t stand up and defend British Columbians and Canadians.”
The Conservative leader echoes Robinson’s allegations that the premier is more concerned with politics than fighting antisemitism.
“I don’t think they are looking to doing what’s right,” he said, suggesting that electoral calculations based on the disparity of sizes of the Jewish and Muslim populations are driving their decisions. But, Rustad warns, this approach could blow up in their faces.
“I think, quite frankly, they are miscalculating where people in this province are because I think people are not interested in antisemitism, they’re not interested in hate, they want a government that’s going to stand up for everybody in this province,” he said.
The letter from Islamic leaders warning that New Democrats would be unwelcome in Muslim sacred spaces that came shortly before Robinson’s firing was concerning, Rustad said.
“When I saw it, the first thing that came to mind was government bowing to threats,” he said.
“It takes courage to do what Selina did, it takes courage for a government to stand up for what’s right and that’s where David Eby has failed,” said Rustad. “I was, I guess, a little shocked to see how quickly David Eby backed down and bowed to that pressure that was put out there. It was disappointing from my perspective because government sometimes has to do things that some people may be upset with because it’s the right thing to do.”
BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau called the Oct. 7 attacks “a devastating and terrible event,” and said that elected officials in this province have a responsibility to address the local repercussions of overseas developments.
“We really have to focus on the people of BC and that we are taking seriously the reality of antisemitism,” she said. The rise in hate crimes, which began most notably during the COVID pandemic, was addressed in a report from the Human Rights Commissioner in 2022. Furstenau believes the commissioner should consider actions to confront the growing prevalence of antisemitism now.
“It may be that the next steps could be for the Human Rights Commissioner to take on a project to help us recognize, address and reduce antisemitism in BC,” she said. “I think, given the very complicated nature of the war between Israel and Hamas, that we could be looking for the Human Rights Commissioner to look at antisemitism and Islamophobia and, really, how do we come out of this as a place that’s less divided and has less hatred?”
Responding to Robinson’s expressions about antisemitism in government, Furstenau said the former minister needs to be taken at her word.
“Selina is the expert on what Selina has experienced and we have to respect that,” said Furstenau. “When somebody indicates that they have experienced racism or discrimination, it’s not our place to question that.”
“I’m fine”
Robinson’s emotional health has been a concern for friends and supporters. Few people can imagine the impact of being at the centre of a public maelstrom like the one Robinson is enduring.
Amid all this, there have been physical health realities.
In 2006, Robinson was diagnosed with a rare form of intestinal cancer. She beat it. Then, in February 2023 – “February’s been a bad month for me the last few years,” she said – Robinson shared the news that routine screening indicated that cancer had returned.
After treatment, she got the good news eight months later that the tumour they had found in February was gone.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m on the chemotherapy that I’ve been on for years. I will be on this medication for the rest of my life.”
The treatment is not without side-effects.
“It makes me a bit more tired than most other people, although my husband says that might not be a bad thing in terms of people keeping up,” she said. “I get muscle cramps. They are inconveniences rather than serious implications. I really am fine.”
The joyful news that the cancer was gone came on Oct. 5.
“Lots of happy tears around that,” she said. Two days later, news from Israel turned those happy tears to something very different.
Points of pride
Although she didn’t share the news with the public until the controversy arose, Robinson was already planning for a life post-politics. She will not be the NDP candidate for Coquitlam-Maillardville in the election scheduled for Oct. 19. Every indication is that she would have been reelected easily. When she first ran provincially, in 2013, it appeared on election night that she had lost. When the final votes were counted in the days after, she squeaked in by 41 votes. Her next two elections were not at all close. In 2017, more than half the voters in the riding chose her and, in 2020, she nabbed just a hair under 60% of the vote.
During her first term, Robinson was an opposition MLA. When John Horgan formed government (under an agreement with the BC Greens), he appointed Robinson minister of municipal affairs and housing. This was a daunting role in one of the most expensive places to live in the world.
Several things really stand out for her from that time.
The BC government, under Horgan, with Robinson in the housing portfolio, was and remains the only provincial government to fund housing on Indigenous reserves.
“It’s a federal responsibility, but this is ridiculous,” she said. “They are British Columbians and they need housing.”
Another achievement she cites is that, when she became minister, she undertook to meet with officials from every municipality in the province – close to 200 local governments – and she said she still runs into current or former mayors and councilors who credit her for engaging with them.
After the election in 2020, Robinson was promoted to finance minister. Achievements from that gig? Robinson throws her arms in the air without hesitation: “The biggest surplus in the history of our province.”
Her control over the province’s wallet came in the midst of the COVID pandemic, with all that entailed. In addition to sound bottom lines, she said the government brought down “good budgets that delivered for people and that made a difference.”
When Eby replaced Horgan as leader and premier, Robinson was shifted to the ministry of postsecondary education and future skills.
In this role, she takes pride in removing the age limit for former youth in care to access postsecondary education. Those who age out of the foster system had been able to obtain tuition funding and additional supports – but only until age 26.
“If you’re a former youth in care, it takes a longer time to figure out how to adult,” said Robinson. Now, these young people (even if they are no longer so young) can access educational funding and cost of living supports to reach their academic or vocational goals.
It was also in her responsibility for postsecondary education that Robinson found herself on the frontlines of campus turmoil, with anti-Israel protests by students and pro-terrorism comments by some BC academics. She convened a meeting of the heads of all BC’s colleges and universities and laid out expectations for civil, peaceful dialogue on campus.
Voting advice?
The firestorm over Robinson’s comments, charges of antisemitism in the government and public service, complaints that the premier is not taking matters seriously enough and the related controversies come only months before British Columbians go to the polls. These crises are not coincidental to the proximity of the election, Robinson contends, but are a direct effect. The government is doing what they think is politically helpful, rather than what is right, she said.
So, where does that leave Jewish and sympathetic voters who would have cast a vote for Eby’s party in October but now feel adrift, wondering if the NDP represents their interests?
“I feel very adrift as well,” she said. “I think everyone has to make up their own mind. There is no perfect party. If you’re going to bring about change, then you need to use your voice to bring about change. That’s what this is all about.”
She puts the onus on members of her own (former) party.
“If people are silent, if New Democrats are silent on this, then you are complicit,” she said. “If you think this is wrong, if you think the direction the party is taking vis-à-vis Jews [is wrong], then you need to say something. You need to take action on it. That means challenge what’s become the status quo.”
Future plans
“Boredom terrifies me,” Robinson said.
Though boredom might seem a welcome respite from some of the emotions she has endured in recent weeks, Robinson insists she is not done contributing to the community. She just doesn’t know yet in what capacity.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’ll find something to do.”
“I’m learning to knit,” she said. She’s got local food maven Susan Mendelson’s classic cookbook Mama Never Cooked Like This and she’s thinking of pulling a Julie & Julia by trying every recipe in the book and posting them to social media.
Robinson has traveled across much of Western Europe but not Spain and she is reading about that country and its history.
She has promised her husband she will not make any long-term commitments before January.
Until the writ drops for the next election, she remains MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville.
I am sorry that I could not join you in person for safety reasons, but I thank the organizers for sharing a few words on my behalf.
My heart has been with all of you these past five months. I join you in seeking release of the hostages now. I join you in seeking peace – peace for the Palestinians – peace for Israelis – peace for us all.
I am told the theme for this week is resilience and so I have spent the last few days reflecting on my own resilience – as the lone voice in government speaking up for the Jewish community and how difficult it had become while others remained silent. I also focused on how much more difficult it became after I was forced to resign, feeling punished for speaking up about Jew-hatred.
I reflected on where the strength, the koach came from to persist, when it would have been so much easier to be silent, to fade into the background, to go along with the others and to pretend that everything was okay.
So, from where do I draw the strength?
It comes from different places:
A husband outraged that his wife is poorly treated by her colleagues, forced from a role she loves and who now keeps a baseball bat in the bedroom because others are threatening her life.
A son who stopped going to his gym shortly after the massacre on Oct. 7 because the Port Moody gym owner and city councillor decided that putting up a large Palestinian flag in her gym demonstrating to the world that she suddenly cares so deeply about a complex geopolitical conflict thousands of miles away is more important than the hurt this causes friends, colleagues, and customers.
A daughter who now must find significant financial resources to make sure the Jewish children in her care are safe this summer.
My strength has also come from:
The two Jewish professional women who, as a requirement of their jobs, came to hear the Throne Speech at the Legislature in February. They were forced to find a safe route into the building as there were dozens of protesters aggressively calling for a unilateral ceasefire and the destruction of Jews.
The physicians who refuse to train Jew-hating UBC medical students.
The teachers who organize to push back on the Jew-hatred we are seeing in the [BC Teachers’ Federation].
The people working in the public service who are telling their stories of intimidation like being told that their Jewish star necklace is a symbol of genocide.
Resilience for me comes from the countless stories from people who talk about being fearful at work, from Holocaust survivors who say, “It’s happening again.”
Resilience comes from Jewish community leaders and volunteers who are doing everything they can to keep programs running, to push government to do the right thing, to care for their congregants who are scared and worried, and who lead by example.
Resilience comes from the emails and letters from hundreds of people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who remind me that even though I felt alone in my caucus and in government, I was not alone. I am not alone. We are not alone. Many were seeing what I was seeing, what we are seeing and are prepared to stand up to Jew-hatred.
Resilience comes from reaching out to others who are hurting too and finding out that they want to help heal our wounds together.
Resilience comes from seeing the Oct. 7 survivors of rape and torture pick up the pieces of their lives. It comes from seeing Israelis gather once again to protest their government. It comes from so many of you who have reached out with words of support, encouragement, and love.
Resilience comes from us gathering our collective strength as we lift each other up and remind ourselves that we are not alone – that together we will find the strength – the strength to bring peace.
There was a ceremonial handing over of a goat when Spencer Hall, left, bought the Rocky Mountain Goat newspaper from Laura Keil, who founded the paper in 2010. The goat, Buddy, was loaned for the occasion by Amanda Cameron. (photo by Sharon Ireland)
Small towns can get a bad rap. Valemount – a community of just over 1,000 people, tucked into the mountains about 300 kilometres northeast of Kamloops – has proved a pleasant surprise to Spencer Hall.
Hall, a 26-year-old Jewish trans man, has not only found fellow Jews in the tiny town but also nothing except positive responses to his trans identity. And it’s not like Hall is keeping a low profile – he just bought the community newspaper.
The Rocky Mountain Goat was founded in 2010 by Laura Keil, who sold it to Hall officially on Jan. 8 this year. Hall had been serving as a reporter there since the previous autumn. The market for the weekly paper is the sprawling Robson Valley region, which includes not just Valemount, but McBride, Dunster, Blue River, Dome Creek and Crescent Spur. Free copies are also distributed in Blue River and Prince George and in Jasper, Alta.
Hall grew up in Terrace, studied broadcast journalism at the BC Institute of Technology and then got a job at a radio station in Fort St. John. The job was one of those on-location gigs, where a station broadcasts live from community events.
“But it was during COVID, so I was going to people’s garage sales,” Hall said with a laugh. “The softest possible start to journalism, I guess.”
He moved up the ranks there before being hired as a reporter in Valemount.
The Goat – the quirky name was one of the draws that attracted Hall – is an independent newspaper and the fate of print journalism in the internet age was a consideration before Hall bought the business. However, on a webinar with local journalism professionals, Hall found he is not the only one to have entered the publishing field recently.
His paper, and many others, are getting support from the LJI – Local Journalism Initiative – a federal program that funds salaries for newspapers to hire reporters. The stories they produce are then shared across a network of participating outlets, sort of like Canadian Press or other newswires, Hall said.
“It allows people to bolster their coverage without having to take the financial burdens on,” he said. If a story published in the Goat is relevant to a paper elsewhere in the province or the country, they can run it.
Among locals, the reaction to Hall’s purchase of the paper has been one of relief.
“It was for sale for a couple of years,” he said. People were afraid that it might get snapped up by a corporate conglomerate or, worse, shut down. “Most people that I’ve talked to, they say, thank goodness.”
Some people have even said they moved to the community because it has its own independent paper, which is both an expression of support and a heavy burden to carry as head of a small team of editorial, sales and production staff.
Another happy surprise is that stereotypes about young people abandoning print media (if not news itself) have proven incorrect, based on Hall’s experience.
“It’s also interesting to see how many young people come into the office and say I love reading the paper every week,” he said. “I say, really? You’re 15.”
Hall thinks the accepted wisdom that “print is dead” is itself an antiquated assumption.
“There is an appetite, especially in our market, for people who don’t really want to participate in the 24-hour news cycle of social media and that’s why they find value in the paper,” said Hall.
For all his optimism, Hall is not expecting to get rich.
“I knew I wasn’t going to make money,” he said. “I’m hoping I can make a living. But I view what I do as a public service. It’s something that’s very much needed, especially in today’s climate, and that’s kind of the main reason I did it. I hope that I break even but, if I don’t, it is what it is, I tried.”
As an individual fitting into a new community, Hall has been warmly welcomed. A tiny group of Jews get together to celebrate holidays and his transgender identity was right out there when he did a routine addressing it during a fundraising event.
“We were trying to get a mountain bike pump track installed and I did some stand-up comedy and mine was about being trans and [the response] was overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “Everyone’s been super, super supportive.”
Valemount has a rainbow crosswalk, he noted with a laugh, and a Pride society – not what some big city-dwellers might expect from a remote town.
“I think how we view small towns, especially ones the size of Valemount, isn’t necessarily how they are,” he said. “I think there is the expectation that, because it’s a small town, there’s going to be a lot of ignorance, but people are pretty well informed and with the times here.”
The region is a draw for outdoorsy folks.
“It is surrounded by mountains and on the way to Mount Robson, so we do get quite a few tourists,” Hall said. “It’s actually a resort municipality. There’s a lot of mountain biking and getting into the backcountry … snowmobiling or mountain-biking. Also, we are very blessed to be right in the mountains, so anytime anybody wants to see the mountains, Valemount is the place.”
Dan Levitt has been appointed to be British Columbia’s new seniors advocate (photo from Dan Levitt)
Dan Levitt is set to become British Columbia’s new seniors advocate. The appointment was announced last month by BC Health Minister Adrian Dix.
“Dan Levitt has championed the rights of seniors for 30 years and with his extensive experience he is an excellent choice for BC’s seniors advocate,” Dix said in announcing the appointment. The Office of the Seniors Advocate is an independent branch of the provincial government, which acts in the interest of seniors and their caregivers.
Levitt becomes only the second person to hold the role, replacing Isobel Mackenzie, who will retire April 5 from the position she initiated a decade ago.
Levitt spoke with the Independent over lunch in the community centre that is part of KinVillage, the Tsawwassen continuing care retirement community he has headed as chief executive officer since 2021. Over the din of an adjacent bingo game, Levitt spoke of his career, the footsteps of his father and his plans for the new job.
The role of seniors advocate is unusual, he explained. British Columbia’s was the first in Canada, being created by legislation in 2013. To date, only two provinces, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, have followed suit, though others are considering it.
The purpose of the advocate’s office, which has a staff of 17, is to look at systemic issues that impact seniors and make recommendations to government.
“The five areas that we look at are transportation, housing, health care, income supports and community services that are geared around older people,” said Levitt. While the office has no authority to force governments to take steps, Levitt said his predecessor, Mackenzie, has recommended many proposals that have found favour with those in power. Not all recommendations will be adopted, he said, but “it usually helps to move the needle in a direction.”
“There isn’t that power, if you will, to say, ‘This must happen.’ But, many times, the recommendations are ones that are introduced and taken forward because they are the right things to do,” said Levitt, noting that his predecessor initiated a great range of measures that the government has taken up.
“Isobel and the office have been real pioneers in shedding lights on challenges and opportunities with an aging population,” he said. “That’s the purpose of these independent offices. They can reflect, in this case, what matters most to seniors, what are their concerns, and then move that agenda forward in helping to influence public policy.”
The position is nonpartisan and independent from government.
“In the recruitment process, no political official was involved,” said Levitt.
Levitt is not the first in his family to work in the senior care field. His father, Ken Levitt, was a longtime administrator of the Louis Brier Home and Hospital, during a time of significant expansion, including the development of the Weinberg Residence. The elder Levitt is now, among other things, past president of the Jewish Seniors Alliance of Greater Vancouver.
“I am following in his footsteps, for sure,” said the son. “And I think I am honouring, as he did, our parents by ensuring the health and well-being of older adults.”
As his new position requires he hold no outside affiliations, Levitt recently resigned from roles on the boards of directors of CommonAge, which advances the interests of older adults in the 53 Commonwealth countries, and the International Federation on Ageing. He has also given up adjunct professorships in gerontology at Simon Fraser University and in the school of nursing at the University of British Columbia, and a sessional instructor position at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
Levitt’s undergrad degree in psychology is from UBC and he graduated from the University of North Texas, Centre for Studies in Aging, with a master of science.
“I need to dedicate 110% of my working time to this role,” he said of giving up his other gigs, which included speaking engagements worldwide on topics of aging and extensive public commentary on related subjects.
The vetting process for the seniors advocate position was a lengthy one – and Levitt compares getting the final word on his selection with the feeling of elation he gets when he places well in his avocation of competitive running.
“Probably like anybody else who’s been through a job search like this, when you get that nod, it feels pretty good,” he said. “I am a competitive runner in my age category and, when I place well in a race, you are elated. So, when I got the message, I was pinching myself, making sure I heard what I thought I heard. You feel this elation. Soon this wears off and you start realizing the responsibility, start realizing what this means now, and people are depending on you to make their lives better.”
Caring for seniors also means helping the people in their lives, he said.
“It’s not just the older people that we’re trying to support, who are directly impacted, but it’s their family members,” said Levitt.
Although he is not yet in the job – he’ll have to move to Victoria, coming home to Vancouver on weekends – he already has the first few months scoped out.
“I’m going to be doing a tour around the province of BC [meeting with seniors],” he said. “I’ll be asking them questions around what are those policies that help or hinder them in those five areas of transportation, housing, health care, income supports and community supports. We’ll be looking at those issues, listening to them, then we’ll come back to the office, synthesize the information and then we will release a report on what we found. That report will give us a mandate of what the biggest concerns are that seniors have and we’ll make recommendations to the government on how we can improve different aspects of seniors’ lives.”
In the statement announcing Levitt’s appointment, his predecessor had kind words for him.
“It has been an honour and a privilege to serve as seniors advocate for the Province of BC,” said Mackenzie. “Our population is aging and seniors need the ability to live independently at home, knowing the programs and services to support them are easily accessible to everyone. As issues such as dementia, housing and elder care become more complex, it’s crucial to advocate for strengthened seniors services throughout the province. I know Dan is ready to continue the cause and his efforts will make a difference in the lives of seniors for years to come.”
“I have big shoes to fill,” said Levitt, “because Isobel Mackenzie has done a phenomenal job starting the Office of the Seniors Advocate and really setting a very high bar, really pushing forward the agenda of older people, shining a light on some of the inequities and some of the systemic issues that impact older people and making recommendations that have stuck and changed just about every aspect of life for seniors.”
Levitt has spoken out on issues in the past, weighing in, for example, on the controversy around Lisa LaFlamme, whose firing as CTV National News anchor was blamed on sexism and ageism, and in challenging the ageism of birthday cards. While he will be taking on systemic issues on the larger stage of provincial policy, he urges individuals to speak up against ageism in everyday life and to celebrate aging.
Be aware of even subtle language that debases older people and their experiences, he advises.
“Don’t use the language that demonizes or goes into the negative stereotypes we often will see,” he said. “For example, ‘I’m having a senior moment.’ No one who is young says they’re having a junior moment.”
He encourages everyone to reject negative connotations around aging.
“Embrace your own age,” he said. “Embrace who you are and enjoy those birthdays and celebrate them and celebrate getting older. Don’t hide your age.”
Left to right: Drs. Larry Barzelai, Ran Goldman, Mor Cohen-Eilig, Marla Gordon and Maya Rosenkrantz. (photo from Dr. Marla Gordon)
The Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia held its inaugural event Monday evening, Feb. 12, at Schara Tzedeck Synagogue, with 100 attendees in person and 20 via Zoom. Three speakers presented and all were inspiring, relaying hopeful words, with the broad message being to unite and stand together.
Dr. Dynai Eilig, an Israeli-born and -trained orthopedic surgeon who works and lives in Vancouver, traveled to Israel on Oct. 9 to work in Soroka Medical Centre’s trauma centre. He shared heartbreaking stories, but also stories of resiliency. He spoke about the 150,000 reservist army volunteers from outside Israel who came in the early days after Oct. 7.
Dr. Robert Krell, a retired child psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, explained the correlation between the rise of antisemitism now and that in Europe in the 1930s. He said Holocaust education is needed in all universities and all faculties and that medical and other educators must not resign from their teaching posts.
Dr. Yael Glassberg, an Israel-based pediatric gastroenterologist, joined via Zoom. She spoke on the child hostages who were released and her assessment and involvement with these children.
Planning for the JMA community-building event took place over a two-month period, led by pediatric emergency room physician Dr. Ran Goldman and elder-care physician Dr. Marla Gordon.
The Jewish Medical Association of British Columbia was started by Gordon and family physician Dr. Larry Barzelai in November 2023 as an attempt to get Jewish physicians together to support one another, especially in the current situation of increased antisemitism. The group has almost 300 members.
– Courtesy Dr. Marla Gordon
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Eric Freilich was recently promoted to director of legal, private equity and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) at BMS Group and heads the Canadian legal team for the multinational insurance broker.
Eric grew up in Vancouver and is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, where he was a proud and active member of Hillel and of the Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. Following graduation from UBC, Eric moved to Toronto to work in the film industry. He then went back to school and received his doctor of law and a master of business administration from York University. He worked at two prominent Toronto law firms prior to going in-house, focusing on corporate/commercial work and mergers and acquisitions.
Eric has recently found his way back into academia, contributing to teaching courses on mergers and acquisitions and risk management techniques in transactions at the Schulich School of Business.
Outside of work, Eric’s strongest sense of identity comes from being the best father and husband he can be.
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Adeena Karasick and Ian Keteku are the inaugural winners of the League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Award, which consists of two $1,000 awards, presented annually to two poets for a single poem or suite of poems up to 10 minutes in length.
Karasick won for the poem “Eicha,” featured in Aerotomania: The Book of Lumenations (bit.ly/aerotomania).
“Attuned to sound poetry’s domain, Adeena Karasick’s homophonic translation ‘Eicha: The Book of Lumenations’ unfolds as a dynamic interplay of acoustic and material expressions,” wrote LCP Spoken Word Award juror Eric Schmaltz. “Immersed in the intricacies of language’s auditory, textural and tonal dimensions, Karasick engagesthe original text, the Book of Lamentations, and brings it into dialogue with the multifaceted layers of our present. A simultaneous act of lamentation and ecstatic intertextual exploration, Karasick’s performance traverses sonic texture and electroacoustic manipulation to resound with a symphony of hope and sorrow.”
Keteku was honoured for the triptych: “Mr. Tally Man,” “the space between” and “The Light.” LCP Spoken Word Award juror Andrea Thompson called him “a master of spoken word,” noting: “With impeccable comedic timing and understated affect, Keteku’s performances are a triumph of wordplay and musicality, driven by wisdom and humanity – alive as a heartbeat.”
For more about the League of Canadian Poets, visit poets.ca.
Screenshot of the Jan. 30 B’nai Brith Canada panel discussion during which Selina Robinson spoke her controversial words.
Selina Robinson, who has called herself “the Jew in the crew” that is British Columbia’s cabinet, is out. The minister of advanced education and future skills resigned Monday after a torrent of protest following comments she made last week during a B’nai Brith Canada online panel discussion, in which she referred to the area that would become Israel as “a crappy piece of land.”
Premier David Eby announced Robinson’s departure from cabinet, saying her comments were “belittling and demeaning.”
“The depth of work she needs to do is substantial,” said Eby. “What has become apparent is the scope of work, the depth of the hurt. As a result, we came to the conclusion together – she needed to step back.”
The announcement came after protesters threatened to disrupt New Democratic Party events, forcing the cancelation of a major fundraising gala Sunday night and a government news conference Monday. A network of Muslim societies issued a statement over the weekend that no NDP MLAs or candidates would be permitted in their sacred spaces until Robinson was removed from cabinet.
Robinson will not run for reelection as member of the Legislative Assembly for Coquitlam-Maillardville, a decision she says she made earlier.
Response from Jewish community leaders was fast and critical.
“The removal of MLA Robinson, who apologized for her comments and promised to do better, sends a chilling message that Jewish leaders are held to a different standard than non-Jewish ones,” said Nico Slobinsky, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ vice-president for the Pacific region, in a statement. “In the past, when BC NDP politicians and staff have made antisemitic comments, the Jewish community has been asked to accept their apologies and – on every occasion – we have. As a show of goodwill, we never publicly demanded their resignations and, instead, placed our trust and faith in the premier and the BC government when he said that his team would learn from the incidents and not repeat their egregious errors.
“When, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day – a day to commemorate the six million Jews slaughtered in the Second World War – one of Premier Eby’s staff tweeted that ‘we stand with the Muslim community,’ we were asked to accept that stunning gaffe as a mistake. And we did.
“We were also asked to work with a Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives who made remarks that were deeply hurtful to our community,” Slobinsky said. “And, despite her repeated offensive actions, she continues to remain in her role.”
This reference to Vancouver-Kensington MLA Mable Elmore alludes to a history of problematic remarks, from claiming before her election that her union was dominated by “Zionist bus drivers” to more recently using a speech in the legislature ostensibly about transgender rights to call for Israel to end the war with Hamas.
Slobinsky added: “Today, as the Jewish community in BC is confronted by an alarming increase in antisemitism and by frequent pro-Hamas protests calling for the Jews of Israel to be eradicated, the loss of MLA Robinson is especially distressing, as we no longer have our strongest advocate – who understands the challenges and sensitivities of the Jewish community – at the table.
“The community is both offended and hurt by what has happened to a great ally and British Columbian, and it has seriously undermined the confidence of the Jewish community in the Government of British Columbia. Given this obvious double standard and loss of Jewish representation in cabinet, Premier David Eby must share what steps he is going to take to repair the relationship and restore the community’s trust in him and his government.”
“Facing an unprecedented increase in hate, the Jewish community in BC is hurting,” Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, said in a statement. “The level of online vitriol aimed at Selina Robinson leading up to her resignation – which mirrors the reality faced by much of the Jewish community since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks committed by Hamas – shows worrying trends in our public discourse. We are saddened to have lost one of the strongest advocates fighting against antisemitism from within cabinet – especially at a time when it is needed most.
“It is shameful that Premier David Eby has bowed to pressure from a loud minority whose campaign to discredit MLA Robinson was centred in anti-Jewish bias and lacked the offer of grace they demand when others falter.
“We need stronger leadership from this government to bring our communities together – not divide us,” said Shanken.
The Rabbinical Association of Vancouver sent a letter to the premier, signed by nine rabbis, expressing disappointment.
“We believe you have capitulated to a small but loud group of people,” the letter read. “Now it feels like you have given in to bullies for political expediency. We will remember this day the next time you ask for our trust and support.”
At least one voice in the Jewish community was pleased with Eby’s decision. “The decision to remove former MP [sic] Selina Robinson from office is a crucial win for organizers including IJV-Vancouver and our allies, who stood firm and united against anti-Palestinian racism,” tweeted Independent Jewish Voices. “The rhetoric we all heard was shameful. Thank you to all who helped hold BC accountable.”
B’nai Brith Canada told the Independent they are grateful for the work that Robinson undertook to combat antisemitism on BC’s post-secondary campuses as minister.
“It is unfortunate that comments she made last week have resulted in her feeling compelled to step down from her ministerial position,” Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy for B’nai Brith Canada, said in an email. “We believe her apology was sincere and that MLA Robinson will work to regain the confidence of the constituents who were offended by her remarks.”
“B’nai Brith Canada believes that this incident underscores the need for the province to take further steps to combat racism and hatred,” said Robertson. “One such step, amid rising levels of antisemitism, is for the BC government to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.”
Selina Robinson resigned Monday as British Columbia’s minister of post-secondary education and future skills. She also announced she would not seek reelection as the member of the Legislature for Coquitlam-Maillardville – though she said the latter was a decision she had made earlier.
The resignation Monday afternoon was the culmination of a remarkably speedy controversy that erupted late last week, after video circulated of Robinson, during a B’nai Brith Canada panel discussion, referring to pre-state Israel as a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it.” That she qualified the statement immediately, saying “there were several hundred thousand people, but, other than that, it didn’t produce an economy, it couldn’t grow things, it didn’t have anything on it,” is cut off from almost all the video clips.
The language choice was problematic and careless, no question. The Zionist movement has often been criticized for consciously or unconsciously overlooking the presence of existing populations in the land that became the modern state of Israel. One of the original slogans was: “A land without a people for a people without a land.” Robinson certainly knows this history.
What she meant – as she clarified again after the controversy erupted – was that the land had few if any natural resources or economic development. There is nothing historically inaccurate about that. Not only did Palestine not have an abundance of natural resources but, for hundreds of years, it had been an ignored piece of a failing Ottoman Empire, then, for two decades, an abused outpost of British colonialism. Regardless, the way in which Robinson spoke is not a fair or productive way to talk about a land that clearly (so clearly) means so much to so many people. Resources, economic or otherwise, are not the markers of the inherent value of a land or its significance to Indigenous peoples or anyone with a close relationship to place. That said, the feverish response to her words has been out of proportion. There is a world in which her clarification and apology would have sufficed. But, of course, this is politics.
And it is more than just politics. It is Israel and Palestine politics – and that is a particularly vicious game, even here in peaceable Canada. Annamie Paul, former head of the Green Party of Canada, learned tragically what can happen to a Jewish political leader who dares to take a nuanced position (or, really, anything but a wildly anti-Israel approach) to Middle East affairs. Some of us feared Robinson’s principles on this front put a similar target on her back. We’ve been proved right.
Robinson has been an outspoken pro-Israel voice, never more than since Oct. 7. There is no doubt that some were looking for an opportunity to knock her down – and she stumbled in a bad way, leaving her open to precisely the sort of attack some people were no doubt itching for.
Protesters, who, since Oct. 7, have been ready to mobilize about Israel with any provocation, moved into action. Social media erupted in such performative ferocity one would think British Columbians had suddenly discovered one of our leaders was a member of the Klan.
A major New Democratic Party fundraising gala Sunday night was canceled, apparently because they feared a protest that would distract from the party’s message in an election year. A news conference on Monday on a completely unrelated issue was also canceled, presumably for the same reason.
Groups accused Robinson of “blatant bigotry.” Anjali Appadurai, who ran against the current Premier David Eby for party leader, accused Robinson of “racist views.” Protesters Monday and people on social media accused her of “white supremacy.” After the controversy arose but before she resigned, Robinson had agreed to take anti-Islamophobia training.
It is perhaps most remarkable that the people most loudly condemning Robinson probably intersect significantly with the demographic that contests the widely accepted definition of antisemitism, contending, in effect, that Jews make up false “smears” about bigotry for political gain. This, of course, is precisely what happened to Robinson: an offhand (and, yes, offensive) remark is recast as “Islamophobia” by activists who have been waiting to pounce on precisely this sort of slipup. Not incidentally, it sidelines one of Canada’s few Jewish, pro-Israel elected officials.
The rhetoric being used around whiteness, settler colonialism and vulnerable communities also reinforces narratives about Israel that are deeply troubling and rooted in antisemitism and ignorance. Robinson’s comments, heard through an already flawed lens, produced a result that was all but predetermined by entrenched narratives. This is a disturbing reality, one that hurts more than Jews and their allies. Such abuse of terms like racism and white supremacy offend the serious work we must do as a society to confront these problems. Mobilizing these terms for crude political gain, as they have been against Robinson, undermines the fight against racism.
Robinson, and many in the Jewish community, no doubt feel heartbroken this week. In the long run, though, it is the people of British Columbia who are the losers. They have lost the services of a committed public servant.
More than this, our political culture and the fight against racism in all its forms have been debased.