NDP extremists prevail

Editorial

Canada's New Democratic Party has reversed its earlier decision to back the federal government's decision to boycott the follow-up meeting to the infamous 2001 Durban conference.

The Durban conference – whose official and Orwellian designation was the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance – concluded its fiesta of blood-curdling medieval Jew-hatred on Sept. 8, 2001. Its aftermath, of course, was overshadowed by the epochal events of three days later. But the follow-up conference, slated for 2009, is shaping up as a sequel that may well be more dramatic than the original.

The NDP would have our government participate in a conference against racism that is being hosted by the world's worst human rights violators. Libya – Libya! – chairs the preparatory committee for Durban II. The last Libyan Jews – the residue of a 2,300-year-old community – were expelled by the Islamic state in 1969 and citizens of Israel are forbidden entry to Libya, as are most people with Israeli stamps in their passports. Jews are, for all intents, banned from the country.

When a terrorist entered Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshivah in March, killing eight students, it was Libya that stood in the way of a consensus condemnation at the United Nations Security Council.

Libya's vice-chairs for the preparatory committee are Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. Planning meetings have been held on Pesach and Yom Kippur.

The NDP, which is coming to be defined increasingly by an extreme-left foreign policy that delegitimizes Israel while ignoring the perpetrators of egregious human rights violations around the world, seemed to be coming to its senses a few months ago. It originally backed Canada's boycott of Durban II. But internal forces – likely more than UN officials' feeble assurances that such atrocities will not happen again – are behind the NDP's flip-flop.

More than other political parties, the NDP is a coalition – of unionists, feminists, gay-rights advocates, anti-racism workers, teachers, economic nationalists and so forth. There is a sort of "render unto Caesar" attitude toward policy in the party, under which constituent groups defer on policy matters to that segment of the NDP that is most dedicated to an issue. For example, we have seen the admirable "falling in line" of blue-collar trade unions with the equal marriage policy. While there is a view, perhaps prejudiced in itself, that blue-collar workers and their representatives might have negative gut reactions to gay rights, they fall in line, usually, based partly on the understanding that, when it comes to labor issues, other segments of the party will fall in line behind them.

Since 2000, we have increasingly seen the wholesale abandonment of balance and common sense in the NDP's foreign affairs policy. This is the party giving to a relatively small band of anti-Israel extremists the policy direction regarding the most protracted dispute on the world stage. Teachers, feminists, gays and lesbians, human rights advocates and others, whose very lifeblood should be curdling at the common cause they have made with those who oppose Israel's existence solely because it is a Jewish state, nonetheless line up solidly behind the anti-Israel policy, confident that the anti-Israel cadre will support their causes when the time comes. It is perhaps Canada's most atrocious illustration of political expediency and moral abrogation.

In reversing its position on Durban II, the NDP is solidifying a shameful trend. We saw the party leadership fold like a card house after 25 leading New Democrats publicly and hilariously accused leader Jack Layton in 2004 of a "sudden lurch toward Israel." Layton, never a reliable friend of Israel, has inelegantly made certain he does not offend this group again, adopting talking points that are overwhelmingly hostile to Israel. At its most congenial, the NDP has tempered its impassioned denigration of Israel with pro forma statements of disapproval for terrorism.

What has always been most alarming about the unapologetically prejudiced anti-Israel extremism that defines the NDP is not that a small but vocal band of zealots has captured that party's foreign policy. It's that the vast majority of decent people in that party are content to let them.

Because the bulk of the NDP's vested interests are domestic economic or social causes, foreign policy has long been the purview of the left's most off-the-wall ideologues. But, the NDP, which has delusions of eventually winning an election, can read the demographic writing on the wall. Jewish Canadians, who are the most pro-Israel voters, are declining in numbers. Muslim Canadians, who form a backbone of the anti-Israel movement, have tripled since 1990. The NDP sees a growing constituency it can tap into, while anti-Israel militants see a party willing to abandon its most sacred principles for a few votes. It may be the perfect political marriage.

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