Will NDP faction jump or be pushed?
They still don’t get it and never will, so say “good riddance” and let them go.
That sums up the sensible view the New Democratic Party brass is finally taking toward a nasty faction within its ranks that’s known for its dangerously creepy antipathies toward Israel, its inestimably high opinion of itself, its loathing of leader Thomas Mulcair and its habit of threatening to make a scene whenever the NDP leadership refuses to be its megaphone.
The faction is staging an especially grotesque public uproar, ostensibly over NDP headquarters’ decision last month to bar party activist Paul Manly from the contest for the Nanaimo-Ladysmith candidacy.
Manly engaged in a 2012 tirade while his father — former NDP MP and United Church minister Jim Manly — was making a spectacle of himself in one of those useless, dangerous “Gaza flotilla” escapades that were so avant-garde at the time.
But it’s not just that. What’s especially dangerous to NDP brass is that Manly still doesn’t seem to grasp the looniness of his outburst.
That’s what will make him a likely source of the kind of “bozo eruption” the vetting process brought in by the late party leader Jack Layton was intended to guard against.
This is not simply a story about a guy whose remarks were understandably intemperate because he was worried about his father, who’d just been arrested for participating in a ship-borne challenge of Israel’s naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
In his Oct. 22, 2012 interview with the Vancouver Sun, the younger Manly betrayed a world view so blinded by its own narcissism that the NDP’s merciful rescue of Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies from her own catastrophic stupidities on the subject of Israel and Palestine was reduced to a mere matter of Davies having been “muzzled and whipped” by Mulcair.
Among the many salient facts omitted is that the Gaza flotilla antics were opposed by both Layton and Mulcair, and didn’t even have the backing of the Palestinian Authority, for that matter. They had already resulted in the deaths of several flotillistas during a confrontation with Israeli commandos in the MV Mavi Marmara episode of May 2010.
The whole Gaza blockade-running project was not only unnecessary from a humanitarian perspective, but it was also wholly counterproductive to the cause of peace in Gaza. It began as a joint venture between a shadowy, since-shuttered Turkish charity that was openly affiliated with both Hamas and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader and suicide-bombing enthusiast. The fattest cheques underwriting the campaign came from the Perdana Global Peace Organization, headed by professed anti-Semite Mahathir Mohamed.
As for the contention that Davies had been “muzzled and whipped,” you’d have to entirely overlook the idiocies that got her into trouble to start with, not least a June 2010 interview where she gave every appearance of endorsing the over-the-top “boycott, divestment and sanctions” campaign against Israel (which the NDP, it should go without saying, categorically opposes).
Davies insinuated that Israel’s very existence was illegitimate, and went so far as to endorse the urban legend that Canadians are not allowed to criticize Israel and if they do, they’ll be accused of anti-Semitism. (That’s selfevidently false, since it’s all the NDP’s noisiest faction on these subjects ever does.)
Davies’ interventions threw the party into turmoil, and it wasn’t just Mulcair who made his objections known. Layton was obliged to call the Israeli ambassador to explain that Davies was freelancing, and that she’d committed a grave error. Davies herself issued a grovelling apology, and I’m not one to suggest that it was insincere.
Remember that during his leadership run, Mulcair was smeared by an anyone-but-Mulcair campaign that took pains to root out evidence of support that had come his way from Israel-friendly individuals and groups — as though this would be something to be ashamed of.
This sort of creepiness isn’t going to be swept away easily. Just this week, Jim Manly is back, slagging off the party leadership again, making obtuse claims to the effect that Israel has no right to defend itself, wallowing in the mire of crank historians and regurgitating every dumb thing we’ve heard out of the NDP’s “anti-Zionist” faction.
It’s fair to criticize the NDP for failing to articulate a coherent, progressive posture distinguishable from the Conservative and Liberal positions. But temper that criticism by the distance Mulcair will have to go to extricate the party fromd amage done by disingenuous “pro-Palestinian” histrionics.
It is not as though a clearly left-wing, pro-peace perspective is not readily at hand, especially in light of the tragedy in Gaza. It might start with a recognition that there has been a ceasefire proposal on the table — devised by Egypt, supported by Israel, and backed by the United Nations, the U.S., the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority. Only Hamas opposes it.
If Mulcair handles these internal eruptions properly, the anti-Zionist factioneers will be encouraged to carry out their various threats to quit in protest, and Mulcair will have saved his party the bother of a jolly good purge.