When will enough be enough?
For a while, I’ve thought about what to say regarding Liberal MP Anthony Housefather and the way he’s being treated by his party.
On the one hand, Housefather is largely responsible for putting himself in such an untenable situation. He chose to stay in the Liberal Party, despite his well-publicized concerns over Justin Trudeau’s ‘equivocation’ when it comes to Israel and Hamas.
Trudeau has tried to have it both ways, repeatedly drawing a false moral equivalence between Israel – a democratic state – and Hamas – a genocidal terrorist organization.
Trudeau, along with other top officials like Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly – have also repeated false Hamas propaganda and then failed to remove/retract their Tweets and statements based on that propaganda, thus allowing lies to linger and spread.
They’ve done all of this at a time of surging anti-Semitism, a surge which has been worsened by the very same equivocation and false moral equivalencies that Housefather has been understandably concerned about.
Housefather watched all of this happen – while speaking out against it – yet still decided the Liberal Party was the best place for him.
And so, Housefather is indeed largely responsible for the place he finds himself in, and I can understand why some would feel no sympathy for him.
That said, consider what it would be like to give years of your life to working within a political party, only to have that party – at the most crucial moment – completely surrender to anti-Semitism and pander to those who despise the Western world.
Imagine being betrayed by your party leader – someone who surely told you everything you wanted to hear behind the scenes.
Imagine watching the shocking rise of anti-Semitism in Canada, a surge pushed in large part by Islamists who are promoting one of the most regressive and anti-freedom ideologies in the world, only to have your ‘progressive’ Prime Minister decide that even though standing with the Jewish community is the only choice consistent with Canadian values and Western values, there is more short-term political gain to be found in abandoning the Jewish community.
That would be incredibly difficult, and, understandably, Housefather has struggled with what to do.
And yet, at some point, it comes down to this:
Have some self-respect, man.
If it wasn’t obvious before, it should be obvious now that people like Housefather – Canadians who actually believe in Western values and believe in standing against the barbaric and backwards hatred of radical Islamists – are simply not welcome in the Liberal Party:
“A proposal to appoint Liberal MP Anthony Housefather to a new role fighting antisemitism — which has been in the works for weeks — has been held up by concerns about divisions in the government caucus over the Israel-Hamas war, CBC News has learned.
And sources who spoke to CBC News — including one caucus member — are asking how Housefather’s role would differ from the work of Deborah Lyons, the special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism.”
Trudeau could have prevented this latest humiliation of Housefather by simply appointing him to the role immediately. The fact that he didn’t, the fact that he’s letting it linger, the fact that he’s letting Housefather’s ‘colleagues’ publicly undermine him, tells you that Trudeau wants the humiliation and undermining to happen.
Trudeau is either too complicit or too weak to stand up to surging anti-Semitism.
Either way, Anthony Housefather should finally conclude that it’s time to leave the Liberal Party.
At some point, enough has to be enough.
Spencer Fernando
