Oy vey

Paul Wells pointed this to my attention:

Le prochain scrutin risque d'être catastrophique pour Jean Charest et le parti libéral. En effet, «si la tendance se maintient», ce parti sera confiné à peu de chose près à ce qu'était celui du Parti Égalité en 1976, soit une quinzaine de circonscriptions de l'ouest de Montréal à forte concentration de Juifs anglophones. La pire débâcle de toute l'histoire du PLQ qui arriverait au troisième rang pour le nombre de députés, derrière l'ADQ de Mario Dumont.

As Wells points out, the EQ didn't exist in 1986, let alone 1976, the party never won more than four seats and there aren't enough Jews in Quebec to deliver 15 electoral ridings to anybody.

Meanwhile, in the Prairiers, Native leader David Ahenakew has been convicted promoting hatred, after making a series of anti-Semitic remarks to a journalist. At a press conference following his court appearance, he continued his anti-Jewish diatribe. Thankfully, the movement pushed forth by Peter C. Newman to have his Order of Canada revoked is gathering steam. On the National last night, a spokesman for the Assembly of First Nations refused to comment. I guess the AFN was then (who knows if it will have a change of mind) of the mind that it's inappropriate for Aboriginal leaders to call a fellow chief the racist that he is. That's inappropriate.

If the most meaningful criticism is supposed to come from within, then I'm guilty of taking my time to weigh in on the latest Zahra Kazemi affair. Kazemi was in the news in Montreal recently when the Cote Saint-Luc city council voted to remove an exhibit of her work at the borough's popular municipal library. The council was reacting to a small number of complaints about some of the murdered photographer's works, which contrasted Taliban oppression with Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied territories. Councillors and borough Mayor Robert Libman claim that the exhibit's accompanying texts equated the Israeli military's treatment of Palestinians with Taliban brutality toward women.

The exhibit was prepared by Kazemi's son, Stephan Hachemi, who insisted it be dismounted once the CSL library removed five photographs. It seems the borough council was quite content to comply with his all-or-nothing directive.

When the news hit the airwaves a few weeks ago, I called the library to find out what was going on in crazy CSL and I emailed Robert Libman. Surprisingly, both my messages were returned. One city councillor told me that a decision had to be made and that the council felt bad but had no choice. Libman, who had told the press that the borough had a tight connection to Israel and could not stand for this kind of Israel-bashing on its dime, was less conciliatory. He said that Hachemi had tricked the library by misleading it abouut the substance of the text, and that he was unwilling compromise. Apparently, incredibly, nobody at the library vetted the work before mounting it. To be so negligent and then to complain about a work being "too politically charged" for the community, as Libman later told Canadian Press, is the worst kind of cop-out. As I wrote to the library, the "decision brings you closer to the guiding principles of the fanatical regime in Iran than to the mitzvot of the Torah. The rationale that the works are too political, is incomprehensible; what were you expecting?"

My friend Chad Lubelsky has more at rabble.ca. In the meantime, in the wake of her posthumous silencing, it's worhtwhile to remember why Zahra Kazemi was killed.