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Green Party Rejects BDS, Calls for Boycott of ‘Illegal Israel’

Green Party of Canada screenshot

On Saturday, Dec. 3, the Green Party of Canada amended its previous resolution which was in favour of adopting the antisemitic boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in Canada.

B’nai Brith Canada acknowledges the Green Party has now adopted the same stance as their peers in the Federal and Ontario Provincial Governments in explicitly rejecting BDS. “The Green Party made the right decision, after reviewing the goals of the BDS movement, in realizing that this antisemitic movement is ‘incompatible’ with itself,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada.

“Given Canada’s rejection of BDS, the fact that it needed to be debated or discussed at all is obscene. It is significant, though, that given the enormous amount of energy, time and resources poured into the promotion of BDS by certain factions within the Green Party, that it could not find any foothold.”

The Green Party’s amended resolution, however, is still loaded with factual inaccuracies such as claiming there is a “legal” and “illegal” Israel – the latter of which, it argues, ought to be subject to boycott – as well as accusing Israel of “killing civilians.”

The resolution also calls for “an end to the collective siege of Gaza” without mentioning the Hamas terror regime. By deliberately omitting the terrorist threat to Israeli citizens by Hamas, the resolution, if ever enacted, would put civilian lives at risk.

“Considering the public outrage sparked by the previous resolution, one would have expected the Green Party to have undertaken objective research before forming a revised policy,” said Mostyn. “The very characterization of settlements as ‘illegal’ under Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, for example, is either a deliberate misreading of that document, or complete ignorance of international law.

“Furthermore, the implication that the Jewish people are not indigenous to the land of Israel ignores historical reality for the promotion of an anti-Jewish ideology. This is particularly insensitive coming on the heels of last week’s Day of Commemoration for the nearly one million Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands following the creation of Israel in 1948.”