It’s significant that Jagmeet Singh raised Israel’s genocide at both leaders’ debates. His Palestine intervention marks a historic reversal for Singh and NDP policy.
At both the English and French language election debates, the leader of the NDP pressed Mark Carney on his refusal to label the situation in Gaza “genocide.” In French Singh stated,
Why don’t you call things as they are? This is a genocide.
Carney responded pathetically that the term “politicizes the situation.” As if genocide and an election debate aren’t “political”.
During the English language debate Carney’s response to Singh’s prodding was even worse. The prime minister pivoted to criticizing Iran.
In both the French and English debates Singh also correctly labelled Pierre Poilievre’s position towards Palestinians and UNRWA “disgusting”. Poilievre didn’t respond.
Wallowing far behind in the polls, Singh clearly sees political advantage in criticizing Israel and identifying with Palestine solidarity. At least 160 NDP candidates have endorsed activist groups’ Vote Palestine pledge. Over the past year the party’s NATO-promoting, establishment-minded foreign affairs critic, Heather McPherson, has regularly raised the issue while more leftward NDP revenue critic Niki Ashton has sent many emails to her supporters about government subsidized charities financing Israeli apartheid and genocide.
Singh’s interventions at the debates represent an important shift for Singh and the party. Singh’s most egregious display of anti-Palestinian racism took place in 2021 when he refused to employ the word Palestine or Palestinian when asked about resolutions submitted to the then upcoming NDP convention regarding “Canada’s relationship to Israel and the Palestinian territory”. Instead of responding to the CBC radio host, he mentioned “antisemitism” four times. Asked again about “resolutions that in a sense condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians”, Singh again failed to mention Palestine or Palestinians. Instead, he talked about “increased hate crimes also against people of the Jewish faith”.
Singh’s appalling display of anti-Palestinian racism reflected a broader anti-Palestinian record. A year earlier he refused to endorse a pledge, supported by 70 MPs, to oppose Israel’s plan to annex the Palestinian West Bank. During the 2019 election the party leadership blocked a half-dozen candidates from running partly or entirely because of their support for Palestinian rights. A year earlier Singh explicitly rejected a call from 200 prominent individuals, labour leaders and party members—including Noam Chomsky, Linda McQuaig and Maher Arar—for the NDP to withdraw from the Canada Israel Inter-parliamentary Group (CIIG). At the 2018 convention Singh mobilized his family and dozens of members of his community to vote against allowing debate on the modest “Palestine Resolution: renewing the NDP’s commitment to peace and justice”, which was unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many affiliated groups and two dozen riding associations.
Singh’s anti-Palestinianism was well rooted in the NDP. His predecessor as party leader, Tom Mulcair, once said “I am an ardent supporter of Israel in all situations and in all circumstances”. The party’s most famous former leader, Tommy Douglas, was a member of the Canadian Palestine Committee, a group of prominent non-Jewish Zionists formed in 1943. After a trip to that country in 1975 Douglas said, “Israel was like a light set upon a hill–the light of democracy in a night of darkness–and the main criticism of Israel has not been a desire for land. The main enmity against Israel is that she has been an affront to those nations who do not treat their people and their workers as well as Israel has treated hers.” (Douglas’ comment was made after Israel had driven out its indigenous population and repeatedly invaded its neighbours.) Leaders of the federal and Ontario NDP in the late 1970s, David Lewis and Stephen Lewis were viciously anti-Palestinian. As Ontario leader Stephen Lewis demanded the federal government cancel a major UN conference scheduled for Toronto in 1975 because the Palestine Liberation Organization was granted observer status at the UN the previous year and their representatives might attend (the conference had nothing to do with Palestine). In a 1977 speech to pro-Israel fundraiser United Jewish Appeal, which the Canadian Jewish News titled “Lewis praises [Conservative premier Bill] Davis for Stand on Israel”, Lewis denounced the UN’s “wantonly anti-social attitude to Israel” and told the pro-Israel audience that “the antisemitism that lurks underneath the surface is diabolical.”
Ontario NDP leader Bob Rae was also decidedly anti-Palestinian. Married to a former vice-president of the Zionist Canadian Jewish Congress, Rae left the party in 2002 because some NDP MPs expressed halting support for Palestinian rights. Current NDP premier in Manitoba Wab Kinew has spoken at recent pro-Israel events.
Usually quick to pounce on any notable expression of support for Palestinians, the main Israel lobby groups have stayed silent on Singh’s genocide comment at the debates. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, B’nai Brith and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre have all failed to post about it on X or elsewhere. Do they believe that attacking Singh on Israel’s genocide would boost the NDP?
While Jagmeet Singh does not have a track record of principled opposition to Palestinian dispossession, the electoral calculation has finally become clear to him and the party. Better late than never and everyone campaigning against genocide deserve praise.