Dear Mr Housefather,

I heard you frantically defending Israel on last night’s As It Happens.
Turns out, surprise surprise, you think McGill University in Montreal should call the police to evict the pro-Palestinian supporters who are staying in about 30 tents and sitting on lawn chairs on the campus’ lower field. In your opinion, there are other ways to protest. I never knew you were an expert on protests, though you never named any specifically — but live and learn.

Some man told us the strikers how to picket

Once when I was on a picket line for workers on strike here in Halifax, a man about your age drove up to the picket line and stopped. He told us how to picket, warned us not to go close to the road, not to wave flags, not to dress in punky clothes, and not to hold up traffic. I reached in and opened his car door and asked him to come out and show us exactly how to picket. Really. I don’t know why, but he seemed scared; he slammed the car door shut and drove off. So much for his mansplaining.

Housefather: What’s your “better way” to protest Israel’s genocide? Silencing your opposition is what you are talking about

There may be a tiny lesson in this for you, Mr Housefather. Maybe no one wants to hear you mansplain. If you think – as you told Nil Koksal the host on As It Happens –that there’s a better way to protest the Israeli genocide in Gaza, please show us how! You had to agree with her that the students weren’t causing damage; they weren’t creating noise, they weren’t doing much but singing, enjoying a community Seder (for the last night of Passover—a shame you couldn’t drop by); sharing food, and reading. There was no danger, no insults against Jews, no fighting.

Ezra Rosen, who is Jewish, a student at Concordia University, and member of Independent Jewish Voices, stayed over in a tent at McGill that night. He was interviewed just before you, Mr Housefather. He said there was a calm atmosphere, people shared snacks and songs. He said that McGill and Concordia students often attended events together.

Of course the point you made many times over was that the students are contravening McGill’s rules. Does that make sense when no university in Canada has a rule about sit-ins?—especially peaceful ones.

When Nil Koksal told you that Rosen was Jewish and he believed that Israel’s slaughter of 34,000 Palestinians had to end, along with Israel’s war on Gaza, you got mad. You thundered that there may have been one or two Jews at the tent-in, and that 95% of the Jewish community in Canada is not in favour of the sit-in – or a ceasefire, I guess. You also said that the two groups (including Independent Jewish Voices Canada of which I’m a member ) involved in the tent-in had no legitimacy – I think you meant we are pro-Palestinian; against Israeli genocide, and call for a ceasefire. Why not, lots of Canadians now object to what Israel is doing to add more women, children, babies, old people and men to the 34,000 Israel’s already killed.

Below: Clockwise: photomontage of the dead in Gaza including a dead surgeon, a bride, a graduate, a mother and son (credit: BBC); black and white photo of Dr Tarek Loubani of London, Ontario (credit: X (Twitter); Gazal Bakr in the hallway of the Doha apartment complex where she now lives without a leg (Credit: Samar Abu Elouf for The New Yorker); Rubble litters a street between smoldering buildings hit by an Israeli air raid on the Jabalia refugee camp. (Credit: Hatem Moussa/AP Photo); finally portrait of Anthony Housefather, MP (credit: House of Commons).

I suppose if you had your way, Mr Housefather, there would be no legal way to protest what Israel is doing–No protesting Canada’s role in propping up Israel. There would be silence. In fact you and your buddies in CIJA (Centre for Israel Jewish Affairs), B’nai Brith and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center have been trying to silence any critics of Israel. Of course you can’t say that because then you’d be an embarrassment to the Liberal Party. The Liberals are a pretty broad “tent” if you forgive the pun, but stomping on people’s right to peacefully protest would be a new low.

Housefather came out swinging against IJC’s verdict of “plausible genocide”

But you had no compunction about coming out swinging in a January 2024 interview on CBC TV’s Power and Politics. You categorically rejected South Africa’s claim of “plausible” genocide” against Israel and insisted Israel was merely “defending itself”.

Word on the street is that in exchange for continuing to sit on the Liberal bench in the Commons, Prime Minister Trudeau has allowed you to work with special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism Deborah Lyons, and thrown you the bone to play a leadership role on the file on combating antisemitism.

Housefather insists “95% of Jews support Israel”– no they don’t according to U of Toronto sociologist Dr Robert Brym

At least that will give you something to work on because everyone knew how unhappy you were when the NDP motion about Palestinian statehood passed in late March. After all, only you and two other Liberals voted no – more than 100 of your fellow party members voted yes. At the time you told the media “a iine had been crossed” when your party voted to suspend all trade in military goods and technology with Israel, work with international partners to pursue the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, and to work towards the establishment of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you hated that motion!! Of course while you think only a couple of Jews are upset with Israel, and “95% of Jews” support Israel. That’s not true according to a 2019 poll by University of Toronto sociologist Robert Brym. Polling actually shows Canadian Jews are evenly split: 42% believed God gave Israel to the Jews; compared with 41% who said that was not true. It also suggested 48% of Jews felt very emotionally attached to Israel, while another 30% felt only somewhat emotionally attached.

Looking at the US for a moment and the scores of college campuses with tents and demonstrations against Israel. University journalism school professor Peter Beinart, who is Jewish, estimates many Jewish students are part of the protest. He notes, in the campus encampments,

“We saw from Columbia … Muslims praying, and Jews praying; … Jews holding Kabbalat Shabbat and Passover Seders, being protected alongside people of every different background and race and religion. And see this as a vision of hope…”

One Last Thing…

One last thing, Mr Housefather: back in 2018, when you were a first term MP, you distanced yourself from Prime Minister Trudeau and your own government when they condemned the Israeli military for using “excessive force” against the unarmed Palestinian civilians in the Great March of Return. You disagreed with the PM when he called for an independent investigation into why an Israeli sniper shot Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani in the legs while he worked as a volunteer medic during the Great March of Return. I realise you are in your own words, a “huge supporter of Israel” but really – do you have any plan to recognise the genocide -and to tell Israel to stop the carnage in Gaza?
Is there any murderous thing Israel does that you DO NOT support, Mr. Housefather? Or are you merely a shill?

Featured photo above: McGill University encampment, 27 April 2024, 1.30 pm. (Credit: Jennifer Yoon/CBC)