Selina Robinson: "You broke my heart. . ."

I've never read anything quite like this from a Canadian politician.

The mildly Zionist, innocuously leftish and now ousted advanced education minister’s letter to her New Democratic Party caucus colleagues, explaining why she has resigned the caucus to sit as an independent.

The letter is an historic document, an artefact of the disgraceful cultural moment we’re living through. It’s important. It’s also a scorcher. It’s gathering a heck of a lot of attention.

I’m printing it in full here.

I’ve been insisting that what happened to Robinson is a much bigger deal and a completely different story than the one we’d all been led to believe. The necessary background: My piece in the National Post: The despicable untruths behind Selina Robinson's political lynching. More importantly, a Real Story investigation: The Problem With The Selina Robinson Story. . . It wasn't true. What follows is the story of what really happened.

Let’s just get into it. Apart from punctuation and spelling I replicate the letter faithfully, with some further commentary below it. No paywall in the Real Story today, but it always helps to subscribe.

“I don't need your hugs and your emojis.”

My colleagues,

You broke my heart - not just on February 5, when the premier told me that after the caucus talked about me he did not see a way back, that folks were wondering why I hadn't already resigned and that. the only path forward was a resignation.. Resigning was not my choice, but I told the premier that if this is what he wanted and what caucus wanted I wouldn't fight him on it - But let's be clear - others asked for my resignation, So I gave it.

You actually broke my heart in the days after October 7 - the day terrorists went into Israel and brutally murdered, slaughtered, raped, mutilated, killed and kidnapped 1,200 civilians. These terrorists didn't target the military. They killed children, concertgoers, grandmothers, peace activists, and a young British Columbian named Ben Mizrachi. The Jewish community was in shock - we are about 40,000 here in British Columbia, and we were reeling.

I had offered to the premier that, as a member of the Jewish community, I could speak at a vigil that was being planned a few days after the massacre - this was my community, and our two premiers had tasked me with strengthening the NDP relationship with the community. I put out the call for you to join me. The community was grieving, in mourning, and we needed to show them that as a caucus and as a government, that we are there for them.

I sent out a group email. Two, maybe three responded - that's it. How is it that with more than 35 Lower Mainland / Valley MLAs, only three or four would be on stage with me - I had no idea how many ucp would be there and a poor showing would not reflect well on us. I did not have the emotional capacity to reach out individually, so Alisa offered to help - still not much response. My heart cracked.

In the end, there were seven or eight of us. Two came from the island, but I was terribly embarrassed.

And then within days of the massacre, Aman [Richmond-Queensborough NDP MLA Aman Singh] and Katrina [Burnaby-Lougheed NDP MLA Katrina Chen] decided that it was appropriate to “reply all” to my initial email asking folks to stand with the Jewish community in grief and mourning, and ask that government make a public statement about the plight of the Palestinians.

We just witnessed the slaughter, rape, mutilation and murder of 1,200 mostly Jews. We watched as the terrorists celebrated this horrific act. Ben Mizrachi hadn't yet been buried. The IDF hadn't yet taken any action. The world was stunned. And two of my colleagues wanted to move quickly past what had happened and refocus government on a geopolitical conflict that has been going on for years.

But it wasn't their antisemitism that broke my heart. It was your silence to their anti semitism that hurt the most. not.. not a single one of you responded to their insensitive, disrespectful and inappropriate email. No 1.. paragraph, yourself. your silence broke my heart that day.. paragraph. you abandoned me and my community that day. paragraph, I. would have hoped that someone, anyone would have “replied all” to Aman and Katrina and suggested that their email was inappropriate - your silence spoke volumes to me and suggested that either you agreed with them, or that you just didn't want to deal with it, because it's messy.

It is messy. It's complex. It's emotional. It's hard. You just want it to go away. I understand. I want it to go away too - but my community needed you in that moment to be there in their grief and in my grief. And none of you were prepared or willing to stand up to colleagues who were antisemitic - minimizing the Jewish experience, the slaughter of innocent civilians by terrorists, countering with mirrored messages about the plight of Palestinians.

In that moment, it was not so complex - people were murdered because they were Jewish. and people here in British Columbia were needing us to mourn with them.

How eager you all are to join in the #neveragain campaign that the crime of being Jewish that resulted in the death of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis should never happen again. That we should fight against Jew-hatred - a hatred that repeats itself over and over and over again throughout history.

How eager you all are to join the few remaining Holocaust survivors as Nicholas plays Kol Nidre on the cello and we bow our heads like candles in honor of those murdered - yet when the hordes gather and chant ‘from the river to the sea,’ a Hamas mantra referring to their desire to destroy Israel and the Jews, you are nowhere to be found.

Holocaust survivors have been retraumatized and some have wound up in hospital in the days and weeks after the massacre, as they relive the horrors they experience some 75 years ago. They see the marches, the chanting in our streets, the threats to Jews around the world, and they say, “it's happening again.”

Where were you when protesters, their faces covered, marched through our campuses, intimidating young Jewish adults who now hide their Jewish identity? Where are you when young Jewish students who get trapped in bathrooms on campus because the marching is happening in hallways, and they are afraid to step out into the hall for fear of becoming a target of their hate? Where are your ideals of a broad inclusive society? How have you been standing up for your declared values?

Almost 300 Jewish physicians signed a letter calling on UBC Medical School. to address antisemitism on campus. Students are bringing their hate into health care, and they were speaking on behalf of their Jewish patients and their families. In fact, it was so bad that Ted Rosenberg, a prominent physician, quit, citing a toxic work environment and antisemitism in the Faculty of Medicine - I am not sure how we expect to train more physicians when almost 300 of them are refusing to work with students coming from UBC's Faculty of Medicine.

It was a public leaving and I heard nothing from any of you, not the Minister of Health, who committed to more physicians in the system, not the premier - no one.

The four Tri-cities MLAs received a letter from the Coquitlam Teachers Association rife with rhetoric, misinformation and lies about the modern state of Israel. The letter was also posted on their website (which has since been taken down). Jewish parents in SD43 are now considering pulling their children from public schools because they don't have faith that the teachers in the district will keep their Jewish children safe.

I asked Finn [Finn Donnelly, Coquitlam-Burke Mountain MLA] if he received the same letter. He did. And when I asked him what he was planning to do with it, he said, “Nothing - I’m going to ignore it.” Ignore the fact that Jewish constituents feel unsafe. Is this how we stand up for our constituents?

In January the Vancouver Police Department publicly shared a startling report about the dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents since October 7. And what was government's response in this report?

Silence.

Shortly afterward I reached out to the attorney-general, as the racism file is under her ministry. Niki [Attorney-General Niki Sharma] had been assigned the point of contact for the Jewish community. Given the historical antisemitism that the Jewish community has experienced from Mable [Mabel Elmore, MLA for Vancouver-Kensington] - the parliamentary secretary for anti-racism - let me refresh your memory. In 2004 during an interview with Seven Oaks. Mable claimed we have vocal Zionists in our work sites and “we have had to battle them” regarding antiwar activism in her union. Carol James, as leader, had to disavow and apologize for the comments.

But the Jewish community carried on, noting a certain mistrust of Mable as she never apologized for her comments. And when Mable's recent two-minute statement in November alarmed the community again of Mables anti-semitism and asked for her resignation, the Jewish community was merely told that Niki would now be the point of contact for anti-racism work in the Jewish community.

So I reached out to Niki at the end of January, two months after she became the designated point of contact for a community that is experiencing a spike in antisemitism, a community that is grieving and fearful. It turns out that the community leadership hadn't even heard from her. And when I asked her what she is doing about the rise in antisemitism, all she could talk about was what legislation she was working on, collecting data and the small amount of money that I worked on with the PSSG [Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor-General] and the PO to make available for additional security measures that the community needed.

Her response to my query was a response you would give the Opposition. There was no acknowledgement of my personal connection to the community or how my contacts and relationships can be useful.

There was no sense of understanding that this community is feeling threatened, that people are afraid, that antisemitism was on display in civil society, that Jewish parents don't want to send their children to public school, that Jewish post-secondary students are being terrorized on campus, that Jewish-owned businesses need additional security, that Holocaust survivors are reliving trauma, that plays with Israeli content that actually help to provide dialogue about the conflict are being silenced, that hundreds of Jewish physicians are calling on UBC leadership to address antisemitism on campus, that members of our own public service have started incorporating the Palestinian flag in their email signature and even making a Palestinian land comment when doing a First Nation land acknowledgement at the beginning of meetings, resulting in discomfort and fear. No acknowledgement and no action.

Over the past five months, a few of you have reached out after caucus discussions about me, without me in the room. The first right after Aman and Katrina sent their emails and then again after the February caucus meeting, offering hugs and heart emojis. My response to many of you is that I don't need your hugs and your emojis. What my community needs however, is for you to stand up to antisemitism. When I shared this with Lisa just a few weeks ago, she responded “of course we always do.” As a government we have not been standing up to antisemitism. If you believe that then it would appear to me that you haven't been paying attention or you don't know what antisemitism is or what Jew-hatred looks like.

Antisemitism is calling for the destruction and annihilation of Israel where half the world's 15.8 million Jews live. Antisemitism is making Jewish people afraid to show their identity. Antisemitism is silencing an openly-identified Jewish person who is speaking out about antisemitism. Your collective decision to silence me is antisemitism and you don't even know it.

Antisemitism is the double standard that we have consistently shown. When any of my colleagues have made antisemitic remarks it was expected that apologies should suffice. It's not only Mabel who has made antisemitic comments. In 2012 Jennifer Whiteside shared content from the anti-Israel website the Electronic Intifada and posts from Occupy Wall Street that attributed “Israeli theft” of Palestinian land to capitalism, and in 2014 shared articles that accused Israel of “pinkwashing” for their acceptance of LGBTQ2S-plus community and again in 2016 shared content promoting the BDS movement, and was forced to apologize and distance herself from her past support of the BDS movement.

In 2017 it came to the attention of the Jewish community that Ronna Rae invited people to support Haneen Zoubi, a former Palestinian member of the of the Israeli Knesset who negated the existence of. Israel. Ronna Rae also compared the police to Nazis in 2013. Jagrup [Jagrup Brar, MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood] quoted Goebbels in 2020 when he was pushing back at the Official Opposition during his speech in the House, saying “someone has said if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it.” He apologized the next day for his offence, retracted his comments and that was to be sufficient.

Last year [Burnaby North MLA] Janet Routledge apologized for comments of Holocaust minimization by comparing the criticisms by the official opposition to Nazi rhetoric when she said “the Holocaust ended in death camps but started with words.” I raised these examples not to humiliate or shame any of you but to point out the double standard. when an elected person says something that harms the Jewish community, whether the comments or position is intended or unintended, the expectation is that a simple apology is sufficient. But when a Jewish elected person says something she has “deep work to do,” according to the premier, and is no longer trusted. This double standard is antisemitism.”

The final straw came for me last week.

I pitched an idea to the premier ten days after I was asked to resign that perhaps government could show leadership on this hate and division we are seeing in two hurting communities by bringing these communities together. I suggested that perhaps I could work with the Jewish community and engage with the Arab Muslim community to facilitate dialogue - find a different path for two communities in agony. As part of that work, all of caucus could participate in anti-Islamophobia and antisemitism training - setting an example of how as leaders we could better understand their respective pain and fear and government could show leadership by bringing people together.

Last week, Matt Smith [Premier David Eby’s chief of staff] told me that this work was “too political” and that government was not interested at this time. Antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment are at an all time high and government doesn't see itself as having a role in helping these communities.

This shattered what was left of my broken heart.

How Robinson’s J’accuse letter is being received. . .

I don’t need to explain the reference do I? You know, Emile Zola and the Dreyfus Affair and all that? No? Good.

Here’s Premier Eby’s response. Whatever.

Here’s a joint response from Ezra Shanken, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, Chair of the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver and Nico Slobinsky, vice-president, Pacific Region, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs:

“We are profoundly saddened by the news that Selina Robinson, the MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville and former Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, will be leaving the BC NDP Caucus to sit as an independent because of the antisemitism that she has experienced.

“Since the October 7 terrorist attacks committed by Hamas, the Jewish community in B.C. has felt vulnerable. According to the Vancouver Police Department, antisemitic hate incidents increased by 62 percent in 2023 compared to the previous year. This is why we have relied on strong voices at the cabinet table to advocate on our behalf, understanding the challenges and sensitivities Jews face, including those with lived experience as members of our community.

“Now we have learned that in addition to being asked to forgive and work with members of government who offended our community or made antisemitic comments, a Jewish community member who was part of the government endured antisemitism within the government caucus first-hand.

“It is the job of the Premier to ensure that all British Columbians feel safe. Recent polling shows that 75 percent of all British Columbians are concerned with the rise in antisemitism in our province, and they support governments and organizations when they take action against it.

“Premier Eby must demonstrate leadership and address antisemitism within his caucus, his government, and in British Columbia as a whole.”

Here’s Jas Johal’s brief interview with Robinson:

Now I’m going to get something off my chest.

The journalists’ dilemma

I’m not going to comment on Robinson’s response to getting kicked out of cabinet. I’ve said enough earlier about her groveling apologies and how they ended up counting for nothing and only made her more susceptible to abuse and ill-treatment and what have you.

I could quibble with her notion that either Jagrup Brar or Janet Routledge had anything to apologize for. Their comments may have been indelicate, but they weren’t antisemitic, any more than Robinson’s reference to the “crappy land” assigned to Israel in the 1947 partition was somehow racist, or anti-Palestinian, or Islamophobic.

Besides, she wrote a hell of a letter there. Poured her guts out. Poured her heart out.

Throughout this episode, my focus has been on the contribution the news media made to Robinson’s lynching, the media’s continued platforming of the nastiest bunch of sadists at large in the country at the moment, and how the true story of what was happening to Robinson never really got told.

I mean it when I say I take no comfort in disclosing all that unreported background to the Selina Robinson lynching, and the news media’s complicity in what happened.

The perfectly understandable public disaffection with and distrust of the news media in this country too often accomodates hysteria and conspiracy theories about what gets reported and what doesn’t. This is especially so in the context of the Liberal government’s media subsidies, the Ottawa press gallery’s inclinations to herd mentality in news judgment and so on.

It’s bad enough without lathering it on about the partisan treachery of the “MSM.” I am disinclined to make matters worse.

But it does pain me to spend days on end inquiring into an uproar in the news pages that arises from sinister forces I am only too familiar with, only to come away with no choice but to write something that gives the vocation of journalism a black eye.

It’s not just that Robinson said nothing “racist” or genuinely “hurtful” in her January 30 remarks. As outrageous and bizarre as the claims about her “colonialist” and “Islamophobic” comments are, that’s just one thing. It’s even worse that so many journalists took these claims seriously, and at face value.

Here’s the dilemma.

In Canada there’s no genuine good-faith public advocacy for the people of Gaza, so we have to find a way through this. We have to find it somewhere. I found it in Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (here), and as you might imagine the “Globalize the Intifada” crowd doesn’t like Ahmed one bit.

In the Robinson story, the tendency was for journalists to turn to some of most horrible people and the most brazen liars you’ll meet in a long day’s walk, allowing them to set the news agenda.

And I do mean horrible. Like Samidoun, the co-organizer of most if not all the major rallies and marches that purport to be “pro-Palestinian” when they are no such thing, when they’re really pro-violence, anti-Israel, and damnably difficult to discern from eruptions of raw, organic, gluten-free antisemitism. My bottom line: Don’t let them get away with it.

They’d already been adequately platformed by the news media, so in the Robinson case, when they started making the most obviously untrue claims about a cabinet minister, the press tended to perpetuate the illusion that the From-the-River-To-The-Sea community should be taken seriously.

But there is a genuine conundrum at work.

This story is an absolute gut-punch: An ancient harbour dating back to 800 BC, a mosque that was home to rare manuscripts and one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries are just a few of at least 195 heritage sites that have been destroyed or damaged since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, according to an NGO documenting war damage on cultural sites.

The story is in Al Jazeera, so I wouldn’t trust much more than that first paragraph. Even so, it’s a huge, heartbreaking story.

So a Canadian journalist might sensibly turn to, say, University of Toronto Professer Katherine Blouin. She’s cultivated a reputation for having some expertise in the field of antiquities in the Middle East.

Well.

Remember the uproar a couple weeks ago about whether or how grotesquely the so-called “pro-Palestinian” protesters behaved at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto? This was Professor Blouin’s contribution: A reminder: Mount Sinai is located in Egypt and a Greek Orthodox monastery bearing my name is located at its foot. Zionist attempts to turn multifaith, multiethnic, and historically layered spaces located in Palestine and Egypt into 'purely' Jewish loci is colonial erasure.

How can anyone take this person seriously, let alone an overworked reporter on deadline?

On the Robinson story, veteran B.C. legislative reporter Keith Baldrey (an old chum; we came up in journalism together) said he’d never seen anything like it. A demand for a minister’s resignation from an “extraparliamentary opposition” that was not advocated or supported by the official legislative opposition. And the Free Free Palestine crowd shouters won.

So there’s all that. Here’s the story that is getting missed.

It’s about the recrudescence of history’s most ancient hatred.

The Robinson story marks a critical juncture in the trajectory of a distinct strain of antisemitic depravity that has erupted from the “critical studies” establishment in Canada’s most prestigious universities.

That same species of depravity has mutated across the entire milieu of Canada’s radical-chic “social justice” activism and has embedded itself in the prevailing Third Worldist catechism that animates both the militant and the illiterate sections of the “Left.” It’s high fashion in many Muslim and Arab diaspora communities. It has settled fairly comfortably in the New Democratic Party.

It’s the mutation of antisemitism that Premier Eby surrendered to in his decision to ditch Robinson. It’s the hideous thing that Selina Robinson describes among her comrades in her letter.

The proximate source if its Canadian iteration can be traced directly to a series of conferences in Cairo, going back to 2002 (see The Blueprint, here). It’s the depravity that was drawing thousands of people into the streets of Canada’s cities before the blood of the innocents from the October 7 pogrom in Southern Israel had dried upon the ground.

Attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues and community institutions have played out in a seamless consistency with these objectively pro-Hamas rallies, with all their screaming for “Intifada” and the waving of terrorist banners and hoarse-voiced shouting for Israel’s annihilation.

That the premier of Canada’s third largest province capitulated to a sociopathology that openly aligns with the goals of the theocratic-fascist Hamas organization, itself a fusion of Naziism and Islamism, is a pretty big story, I’d say. That explains my attention to it.

Thanks for putting up with me.