Gabby Deutch
Jewish Insider, Mar. 25, 2024
“Do I stay and keep fighting this battle on an issue that I care so much about? Or do I say, OK, well, it’s now gotten to a point where I’m no longer at home here, and my community’s telling me they’re no longer at home?”
Canadian MP Anthony Housefather had hardly made it through the door of his Ottawa office building last Tuesday when a reporter stopped him to ask about one of the most difficult days of his career. Housefather, a Jewish lawmaker who has represented a heavily Jewish district in Montreal since 2015, was one of just three members of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party to vote against a resolution the previous night that, in Housefather’s view, equated Israel to Hamas.
A 50-second clip of the interview, posted by CPAC, Canada’s version of C-SPAN, went viral on social media; it showed Housefather getting choked up as he came face-to-face with a new political reality.
“I think it’s the first time, in my parliamentary career, that I’ve had a reflection like this, where I truly felt last night that a line had been crossed,” Housefather told the reporter. “I started reflecting as to whether or not I belonged.”
His crisis of belonging was sparked by his colleagues in the Liberal Party joining Canada’s New Democratic Party — which Housefather likened to the far-left Squad in Washington — in passing a resolution that called for an end to arms sales to Israel and for Canada to support global prosecutions of Israel in venues like the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide.
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