The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) condemns the Niagara Region Municipality’s resolution condemning Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel as racist. The BDS campaign is targeted at those who are complicit with Israel’s human rights abuses, not the Jewish people or even Israel as a state.
It is quite rich that the Niagara Region government pretends to be sensitive to anti-Semitism when two Regional Council members were caught on camera making Nazi-salutes in the middle of an official meeting of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) in January, 2017. The response by the chair of the NPCA, who moved the motion in Niagara Regional Council to condemn BDS as racist, was to delete the salutes from the public record.
The anti-BDS resolution takes place in the backdrop of calls in the Ontario Legislature and by the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario), environmental activist groups, and OPSEU, which represents NPCA staff, for the NPCA board to be replaced by a provincial supervisor. The anti-BDS resolution was framed as a response to a proposal from the riding association of one of the MPP’s calling for the replacement of the NPCA board. This shows how cynically some of Niagara’s politicians use the real issue of racism as a ploy to divert attention from criticism of their governance.
The BDS campaign has been called for by Palestinian and Israeli labour, human rights, academic, religious, and various other types of organizations, as well as from around the world. The conditions in Israel have been recognized as apartheid by South Africans who suffered from these types of policies directly, and have even said Israeli apartheid is worse.
The Communist Party of Canada has long officially endorsed the BDS campaign, as have over forty Communist Parties including the Palestinian People’s Party and the Communist Party of Israel.
Provincial Committee, Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)
December 10, 2017
