A week after she left the governing NDP caucus in British Columbia because of what she described as the antisemitism within it, MLA Selina Robinson wonders where the leadership is going to come from to tackle the problem of antisemitism in the party, the public service and the province as a whole.
“The premier (David Eby) is now saying we need to be doing that work, but I was the one doing the work and you thought I was a liability,” she told The CJN.
On March 6, Robinson released a scathing resignation letter, stating she was “heartbroken” by the lack of a strong response from Eby and her fellow caucus MLAs in the midst of growing incidents of antisemitism in B.C. as well as antisemitic statements made by provincial NDP politicians.
Following her departure from the NDP caucus, Robinson said she had heard from members of the Jewish community who expressed their gratitude for the voice which she brought to government and for the positions she has taken. Many of the constituents in her suburban Coquitlam-Maillardville riding east of Vancouver have been equally supportive and, according to Robinson, “heartbroken” for her.
However, NDP MLAs have not contacted to her in the past week. “I suspect that they don’t know what to say,” Robinson said. “Colleagues from other parties have reached out to me to say that they are sorry I have experienced this.”
Robinson, a prominent Jewish politician in B.C., was removed by Eby from her post as minister of post-secondary education in early February over remarks she made about the state of the land in Israel. On Jan. 30, Robinson sat on an online panel, titled “An Evening with Our Jewish Public Officials,” hosted by B’nai Brith Canada.
While expressing the need for more education on the subjects of the Holocaust and the forming of the state of Israel in 1948, Robinson, the only woman on the panel, said that many young people “don’t understand that (Israel) was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it” when it was established. Her comment went viral and led to many protests calling for her to be removed from her cabinet position.
“My intent was not to hurt people. Finding out that people were hurt or insulted by a statement, that described land that had been neglected by the Ottomans under their rule, hurt Arab Muslims or Palestinians, that was not my intent,” Robinson said. “I took responsibility for and apologized for those words and said I would engage with them to better understand how those words hurt them.”
The protests that preceded and came after Robinson’s removal from Eby’s cabinet were intense and intimidating. Her constituency office was vandalized and covered with signs calling for “intifada revolution,” along with other hateful messages and Palestinian flags.
Robinson also received a death threat that placed her and those in her office on high alert and required extra security. In February, she left B.C. for Mexico for a trip she says was anything but a pleasure trip.
“I had a credible death threat. And it for me. I needed to get out of Dodge. I needed to go away firstly for safety, but also to just get some distance… so it wasn’t a vacation,” Robinson said.
During the past month, she said she felt compelled to do tikun olam. In mid-February, she suggested to the premier, as she was no longer in the cabinet, that she would be interested in working with the Muslim and Jewish communities to find a way to have a dialogue and, as she said, “to find a way to hear with compassion our respective pain and our respective fear. “
“There has to be room for dialogue. If we cannot do that, how can we expect peace anywhere?” Robinson asked. “What really finally broke my heart was finding out last week the premier was not interested in doing that work. That it was too political was the message I was told.”
Part of the work would have been to have antisemitism and anti-Islamophobia training for the entire NDP caucus which, Robinson maintains, was of no interest to the premier, either. “At that point I felt I had nothing else I can do here in this caucus or this government. I was done,” Robinson concluded.
At the beginning of March, feeling that there were no options left, she began drafting a letter to Premier Eby—a letter she asserts, was not easy to write and that she did not want to do. She was preparing to release the letter on March 5 but then heard that the premier wanted to see her the next day.
“I thought, OK, I will hold off because maybe he has changed his mind and that maybe he wants to do antisemitism/anti-Islam training for caucus, and so I held off. That’s not at all what he asked to see me about,” she said.
Instead, Eby wanted to get a feel for the sentiment in the Jewish community. Robinson told him they were angry and upset. She left the meeting more hurt that the premier, as she saw it, was still not interested in her plan and released her letter that afternoon.
The letter detailed several grievances Robinson and many others in the Jewish community have had with the NDP, particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that killed over 1,200 people, including Ben Mizrachi of Vancouver.
She lambasted the party for being silent in the face of, among other things, the intimidation of Jewish students on university campuses, the dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents in Vancouver since Oct. 7 and the regular chants of “from the river to the sea”—which many regard as calling for the destruction of Israel—at pro-Palestinian rallies.
Robinson also cited actions by members of the party, such as Mable Elmore for making antisemitic statements, Jennifer Whiteside for sharing content from an anti-Israel website and Ronna-Rae Leonard for comparing the police to Nazis.
“I raise these examples not to humiliate or shame any of you, but to point out the double standard,” Robinson wrote.
“When an elected person says something that harms the Jewish community whether the comments or position is intended or unintended, the expectation is that a simple apology is sufficient. But when a Jewish elected person says something she ‘has deep work to do’ according to the Premier and is no longer trusted. This double standard is antisemitism.”
Robinson, who had already announced that she would not be running for re-election, will not be the only Jewish politician to be leaving B.C. politics before the October election. On March 4, George Heyman, the province’s environment minister who has represented Vancouver-Fairview since 2013, announced that he would not be seeking re-election.
On March 7, Heyman was brought out before the media to refute Robinson’s claims of systemic antisemitism within the party and that certain NDP politicians had made antisemitic statements. The move to have Heyman speak to the press in the wake of Robinson’s resignation was described by Ezra Shanken, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, as “tokenization.”
Eby met with leaders of the Jewish community on March 8 and promised to “root out” the problem of antisemitism among public servants. He cited an example of a grade-school teacher who asked students to self-identify if they were Jewish. Those who did were then told to explain to the entire class what Israel is doing in Gaza.
In an open letter following their meeting with Eby, Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, chair of the Rabbinical Association of Vancouver; Nico Slobinsky, vice-president of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs; and Shanken wrote, “We look forward to working with (the premier) as he takes the next steps to repair his and his government’s relationship with the Jewish community and deliver actions that demonstrate that antisemitism will not be accepted anywhere in B.C.
“This is critical for all British Columbians. History has repeatedly shown us that hatred targeting the Jewish community does not remain directed at Jews, but spreads across society like a virus.”
As far as what she will do now, Robinson said, “I am going to continue to serve my constituents as an Independent and represent their voice in parliament. I will continue to do outreach with the Arab-Muslim community and spend more time understanding their pain. And hopefully they will want to spend time understanding mine. I have already heard from some folks who want to do that work.
I am looking forward to finding a path forward where people can come together.”
Despite the loss of Robinson, the NDP holds a comfortable majority in the British Columbia legislature with 55 of 87 seats. The right-of-centre BC United party is the main opposition with 26 seats. Provincial elections are scheduled for this October with the NDP well ahead of other parties in recent polling.