A winter of discontent

KYLE BERGER REPORTER

More than 30 people gathered at the NDP provincial headquarters on Boundary Road Monday to protest MP Svend Robinson’s visit to the Middle East.

Robinson, who was in Geneva on other matters, decided to “express solidarity” with the Palestinians by attempting to visit Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. He was turned back at an Israeli checkpoint. He had not yet returned to Canada when the protesters gathered outside the NDP office. Many of them held signs that read “No tax dollars for terror,” “Arafat and Svend partners in terror,” “Where is your outrage when Jews are murdered?” and “What’s next Svend? A visit to Osama’s cave?”

“Svend Robinson’s solidarity trip with Arafat is unacceptable,” said organizer Rabbi Ross Singer of Shaarey Tefilah Synagogue. “It’s morally repugnant and reprehensible. No representative of a democracy should be meeting with a man who, over the past year and a half, had those who are loyal to him involved in terrorist activities that have been targeted towards men, women and children who are civilians in restaurants, in the streets, in buses, at bar and bat mitzvahs. And Svend Robinson should have at least, minimally, as some sort of gesture, been willing to meet with victims of Palestinian terror. But the whole trip was solidarity with Yasser Arafat, the man to whom Al Aqsa, Fatah, 417 and Tanzim are all loyal.”

The protest lasted about an hour, with various local media covering the event. On Tuesday, Singer debated against Robinson on CBC Radio’s lunchtime call-in show, Almanac.

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