By Cam Scott
On April 1, Winnipeg’s Asper Jewish Community Campus hosted an event called “Triggered, The Tour: From Combat to Campus,” featuring two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who participated firsthand in the siege on Gaza – where a UN special committee has found Israel’s methods to be consistent with genocide. These crimes have transpired in view of the entire world, and the local Palestinian community and its supporters showed up to oppose the flouting of Palestinian life by the “Triggered” event’s organizers.
I was disappointed but hardly surprised to see Ben Carr, the Liberal MP for Winnipeg South Centre, rush to the event’s defence on social media the next day. Carr calls for “bubble legislation” to protect religiously affiliated facilities from protest. “If one wants to make a political statement or protest public policy, I support, always, the right to do it,” Carr continues, “but never in front of religiously affiliated spaces.”
This attempt to recast his own conviction as a strictly formal matter, or a question of religious freedom, is utterly disingenuous. Carr was equally opposed to a panel on “Palestine and Genocide” at the University of Winnipeg in 2023 – which is certainly not a religiously affiliated space – urging its cancellation. As his record in Parliament shows, he is a proponent of Israel’s scorched earth policy in Gaza, opposing a successful motion calling for a ceasefire and an arms embargo alongside several Liberals and the entire Conservative Party.
Carr notes the many community functions that the Asper Jewish Community Campus fulfills, but this event was hardly a religious or community service. If the campus wishes to avoid political protests, perhaps it shouldn’t host stridently political events, let alone events that mock at ongoing war crimes and celebrate their perpetrators.
In light of damning UN inquiries into the IDF’s conduct in Gaza, it’s not difficult to imagine a near future in which IDF soldiers wouldn’t be celebrated in Winnipeg or anywhere but actually banned from Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which denies entry to individuals who have engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
I also fear that coverage of this event cedes too much ground to Carr’s deceptive framing, where protest remains a protected charter right and “Triggered” was in no sense a religious gathering. Ben Carr’s longstanding attempts to smear criticism of Israel as antisemitic is dangerous and fails to address the large differences of opinion within the Jewish community.
Last month, in a powerful contrast to the “Triggered” event, Independent Jewish Voices hosted two conscientious objectors from the IDF – part of a powerful Jewish movement for peace and against apartheid.
Ben Carr’s attempt to pit the right to protest against the right to religious practice is not only dubious at the level of demonstration: it also conceals his own support for Israeli policy towards Gaza, in spite of his weak condemnation of the Netanyahu government.
In an election, it’s particularly urgent that voters know where their candidates stand. If Carr wishes to continue his record of IDF support in plain view of the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people, I encourage him to say so directly rather than conceal this conviction behind an empty concern for democratic rights.
Cam Scott is the Communist Party of Canada Candidate for Winnipeg South Centre. This article was submitted as a letter to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press following their coverage of this event, but was neither acknowledged nor published.
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