Quebec, Antisemitism & Barbara Kay

[August1991]

In response to a piece in English Montreal's The Gazette about demos and Hizballah, Barbara Kay, a columnist for the National Post, wrote a polemical piece called "The Rise of Quebecistan":

On Sunday, 15,000 Quebecers, mostly Lebanese-Canadians, marched for "justice and peace" in Lebanon. That sounds benign, but in fact the march was a virulently anti-Israel rally, and scattered amongst the crowd were a number of Hezbollah flags and placards. Leading the parade were Bloc Quebecois chief Gilles Duceppe, Liberal MP Denis Coderre, PQ chief Andre Boisclair, and Amir Khadir, spokesman for the new far-left provincial party, Solidarite Quebec.

....

The devil is always on the lookout for the moral relativism that signals a latter-day Faust, and it seems he has found some eager recruits amongst Quebec's most prominent spokespeople.

National Post

The response has been diverse, loud and endless. Andre Pratte, editorialist for La Presse, offered this:

As a Quebec federalist -- and a journalist who has repeatedly supported Israel's right to defend itself, and denounced Quebec politicians' criticism of Stephen Harper's handling of the Lebanese crisis -- I was dumbfounded by Ms. Kay's prejudice.

National Post

A Quebec French forum has several threads on the topic, including this thread and an OP linking to a French language interview (Jeff Filion!) with Barbara Kay where she veers into English.

Even Charest has gotten involved:

Premier Jean Charest said Wednesday the suggestion in a National Post headline that an independent Quebec would become "Quebecistan," a haven for Islamic extremists, is "crude."

CanWest

À beau mentir qui vient de loin.

I frankly think issues in the Middle East have no bearing on Canadian politics. Most Canadians have little or no knowledge of the subtlities/grossièretés involved in Middle Eastern politics. They wisely are not going to judge Canadian politicians on their positions in support of Hizballah or Israel.

Kay does raise two points however worth considering.

First. The Quebec souverainiste movement has always tried to seek (or accepted to write off) votes outside the Quebec, Catholic, francophone de souche 80% circle. In the past, they sought the pure Anglo vote. They've tried the South American (Chilean, Salvadorean) vote. The latest gambit seems to be to go for the Lebanese vote.

Parizeau's phrase on the referendum night in 1995 explains well the end results of these efforts, and frustration. En générale, les importés ne sont pas solidaires. Ils ne votent pas oui. (I frankly think that if the PQ were serious, it would aim for a solid majority among the Québécois de souche but I digress... )

This raw vote calculation idea is interesting though. I suspect the PQ/BQ will not get any Montreal Lebanese votes out of this but it will mean that the federal Tories may get some Montreal Jewish ridings - such as Trudeau's old Mount-Royal. I have noticed Israeli flags on cars in Cote St-Luc in the past few days. (Charest does not face a similar fear.)

Second. Kay is wrong to claim that Quebec is anti-semite, or a potential Quebecistan. Outside the leftwing groupuscles in Montreal's Plateau quartier, Quebecers are simply isolationists. Like Americans before FDR, they refuse all foreign entanglements. Quebecers treat Jews the same way they treat Arabs, Chinese or anyone else. They are foreigners, and Quebecers treat them with an open heart and an open mind. But Quebecers will not take sides.

If there is one place in Canada where people have a strong sense of what they are and defy by nature multicuturalism, it is Quebec. The other place is Newfoundland.

-----

Kay failed to mention a third point about this brou-ha-ha. In supporting Hizballah, Quebec's Montreal Left has appealed to an anti-American, anti-Big Guy, victim mythology as a way to garner support supposedly for independance. This strikes me as odd. An independant Quebec cannot exist separately from the North American continent.

Rene Levesque understood that Quebec's independence was more important than support for anti-American crusades in far flung nations. The path to Quebec's independance does not pass by support for an organization Americans consider terrorists.

This image of Elvis Gratton deserves to be conserved for posterity.

[Bakunin]

I think Barbara Kay have an issue with tolerance. And i found out that often, ppl that are badly into dogmatism imagine themself an ennemi wich in reality does not exist, often they try to regroup certain class of people or nations and attak them and this is what she did. She used the israelian conflict to attack her imaginary ennemi that she regrouped as "quebec" as an entity and on that point i totally agree wih pratte, we have to call what she write: "prejudices".

You can't call a nation anti-semite... Certainly not quebec... Quebec is problably the place where the diversity of opinion attained epic proportion. You have the "X", neo-liberal that are problably econnomically more conservative than any albertan conservative. You have the "lucide"(center-right) wich im part of, the social democrat(center-left) and the "solidaire"(left) and the people in between(center). If you go to the Cegep, you are assured to find communists, anarchist and capitalist of all kind. I beleive its almost impossible to find something that bind evry quebecker... Is there any other place in the world ppl would make a referendum on a critical issue and it would end up with a 1% margin !! it would be hard to find...

I find it ridiculous to regroup all those people and claim they are anti-semite as a group... but hey, isnt it what dogmatism do to people ?

Actually my theory is also highly linked with the Godwin's Law.

Godwin observed that people had increasingly begun to compare anyone and anything they mildly disliked with Hitler and/or Fascism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

[Charles Anthony]

This image of Elvis Gratton deserves to be conserved for posterity.

For better or for worse, I think those two guys would do anything to stir up shit.

Lifting up a Hezbollah flag is a bold move. Who knows what their motives might be, however, those guys are not stupid. They are certainly much more worthy historians (or rather editorial film-makers) than Michael Moore!

[Leafless]

I think Barbara Kay have an issue with tolerance. And i found out that often, ppl that are badly into dogmatism imagine themself an ennemi wich in reality does not exist, often they try to regroup certain class of people or nations and attak them and this is what she did. She used the israelian conflict to attack her imaginary ennemi that she regrouped as "quebec" as an entity and on that point i totally agree wih pratte, we have to call what she write: "prejudices".

Barbara Kay's article "The rise of Quebecistan" is a very valid article IMO and here's why:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/wajsman082106.htm

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...6lr%3D%26sa%3DG

[Bakunin]

Beryl Wajsman, the guy from the gomery commission, the one that have a Che Guevara poster in his office

[Leafless]

Beryl Wajsman, the guy from the gomery commission, the one that have a Che Guevara poster in his office

That explains how he became Liberal executive member under Pierre Trudeau.

At least he's got more of a vocabulary than Jean Charest who could only describe the whole matter using a single word "crude".

"Premier Jean Charest said Wednesday the suggestion in a National Post headline that an independent Quebec would become "Quebecistan," a haven for Islamic extremists, is "crude."

[August1991]

I think Barbara Kay have an issue with tolerance.

Bakunin, I think Barbara Kay has an issue with les gauchistes du plateau. That's it, that's all.

She doesn't really know Quebec outside Montreal or given the polite deference of Quebecers, or simple insularity, she surmises an anti-semitism. Her surmising is mistaken, but not surprising.

[Argus]

I think Barbara Kay have an issue with tolerance.

Bakunin, I think Barbara Kay has an issue with les gauchistes du plateau. That's it, that's all.

She doesn't really know Quebec outside Montreal or given the polite deference of Quebecers, or simple insularity, she surmises an anti-semitism. Her surmising is mistaken, but not surprising.

First of all, much of what Kay wrote was a rewrite of what Don MacPherson wrote. Does he know about Quebec?

Second, Brigitte Pellerin inferred as much last month when she commented on Quebec's media and its bias against Israel. Does she not know Quebec?

You don’t need me to remind you of the province’s unfortunate history of anti-Semitism, which I’m sorry to say hasn’t entirely disappeared. French-language media coverage of the current crisis is overwhelmingly one-sided, with countless pictures and stories about anxious Lebanese-Canadians and very little on Israeli civilians deliberately targeted by the terrorists as opposed to being accidentally hit by the Israeli military.

Quebec's Ugly Little Bias

[Bakunin]

The medias certainly commented the war differently.

I watch the news in french, i hear after an attack :57 civils died including 29 childrens, Then i switch to CNN and i hear an attack in lebanon killed a few civilians.

Its always like that though, like the war in iraq, the americans agree but as soon as they start to understand the conflict and what is behind, they disagree....

[Argus]

The medias certainly commented the war differently.

I watch the news in french, i hear after an attack :57 civils died including 29 childrens, Then i switch to CNN and i hear an attack in lebanon killed a few civilians.

That report turned out to be falsified, you know. The numbers were exaggerated, and there is some question whether ANYONE actually died when and where the Lebanese said they did.