Few are worse than Itamar Ben-Gvir, but if you hang him in effigy Montreal’s mayor will label you racist. The real question is how many in the mayor’s party will break from her Ben-Gvirist politics to support a motion to cut ties with the genocidal state.
“There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people,” noted Israel’s national security minister in a speech in which Ben-Gvir called to “kill 30 or 40” Palestinians in Gaza nightly. Ben-Gvir followed this up by boasting about building new execution rooms in Israeli prisons.
You can tell its election season in Israel when they are competing to demonstrate how sociopathic they can be.
Two months ago, Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada called a mock hanging of Ben-Gvir “a clear act of antisemitism” and “unacceptable.” She even suggested the city might change its rules on demonstrations because of a May 24 Montreal 4 Palestine march that included effigies of Ben-Gvir, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. A Rebel News videographer Guillaume Roy circulated a somewhat hard to make-out video with only the Ben-Gvir effigy, which has his trademark large white kippah, under the tagline “The pro-Hamas group Mtl4Palestine displays the [Montreal] Canadiens flag next to what appears to be an effigy of a Jew wearing a kippah, hanged with a rope.”
A member of the mayor’s party shared the Rebel News post suggesting some type of criminality. Liberal MPs/ministers Anthony Housefather, Evan Solomon, Gary Anandasangaree and Leslie Church, as well as Conservatives Pierre Poilievre and Melissa Lantsman, echoed the defence of Ben-Gvir who had already been sanctioned by Ottawa for his extremism.
Tuesday, I asked the mayor if she regretted her statement about Ben-Gvir. She once again refused to answer.
I also asked whether she’ll back an upcoming city council motion that dubs Israel an “apartheid” state committing “genocide”. The motion calls on Montreal to cut ties with Israel, referencing a 1987 decision by the city to refuse to award municipal contracts to companies profiting from apartheid in South Africa.
In June, the mayor’s party postponed a planned city council vote on the resolution. Sponsored by the opposition Project Montreal, the motion only requires a few members of the mayor’s party to break rank from her Ben-Gvirist politics to pass.
On Monday 700 Quebec artists and cultural workers called on the city council to support the resolution. Endorsers of the Montreal Anti-Apartheid collective statement include Xavier Dolan, NARCY and Luc Picard.
The motion will now be debated on August 24. On the day a protest is planned at city hall. Hopefully Montreal’s city council will vote to sever ties with apartheid and genocide.