BARBER: Explaining the Liberals' inexplicable vote

With the Liberal ship floundering and the Conservatives steaming ahead, the Liberals would not chance losing even one vote in the up-coming election. The NDP knew this when they boldly proposed a motion unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state. They also knew that such a ploy would be fruitless if tried on the Conservatives. Such a strategy could be a win-win for the NDP. They could hope to garner more supports for their party from pro-Palestinian Canadian voters, deny said voters to the Liberals and generate negative press coverage for the Liberals regardless of the actual success of the motion. They certainly achieved these ends.The Liberals, stuck between the 'Devil and the Deep Blue Sea', had to do something, and quick. If they supported the NDP motion, they would lose Jewish votes, hitherto a group of steady traditional support. But if they voted against it, all those trips to mosques by the PM would have been wasted. The PM’s inner circle with a long institutional memory settled on a water downed, non-binding motion. The wording was rather similar to other calls for settling the conflict from European countries and since it is non-binding the ploy by the NDP was neutralized. Without much fuss, the NDP agreed to the new wording. This raises two questions.First, was some deal made between the Liberals and the NDP? Second, why the bother by the NDP if they were willing to agree to a water downed version? Not being a fly on the wall at the discussions between the Liberals and the NDP, time will tell about any inside deal. As for the second, the NDP from the beginning had to know the original motion would fail. The whole of the episode was political theater.Approximately 1,269 people were killed in events associated with October 7 and in the conflict following, thousands of Palestinians are reported dead. Unfortunately, the reported number of Palestinian deaths has been questioned but is significant. This is an ongoing demonstrative tragedy for the two sides and the rest of the world. In addition, there will be a large cohort of people suffering for years from both physical and mental health issues all initiated by these events.Regardless of the reader being a supporter of Israelis, Palestinians, both or neither, the carnage and toll of human suffering playing out before the world to see is a catastrophe. Using such events for political theater demonstrates reprehensively inappropriate judgement. As they say, “politics is a blood sport” but even given this, in a civil society we ought not to dismiss our humanity for a few votes. Dr. A.W. Barber is the former Director of Asian Studies at the University of Calgary. He is internationally active and has wide-ranging interests.

BARBER: Explaining the Liberals' inexplicable vote

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