Which ‘oppressed’ identity should leftists prioritize as the self-declared Jewish state seeks to ethnically cleanse non-Jews from Gaza while labeling critics antisemites?
Recently longtime peace activist Matthew Behrens criticized a video in which I questioned an arch Zionist MP and former Liberal party president. I posted, “Amidst huge RCMP presence outside Mark Carney’s hotel yesterday ardent genocide supporting MP Anna Gainey knocked my phone off and then hit me as I asked about Israel recently murdering and burying 15 aid workers. When I restarted recording she yelled leave me alone and manufactured Zio tears.”
Without contacting me or knowing any further details of the incident, Behrens wrote a long moralizing post criticizing the video. He noted, “One of the rarely acknowledged fault lines of the (mostly male) left is a complete failure to appreciate and end the dynamics of a society in which male violence and harassment is an everyday and often lethal risk that women face in their homes, their workplaces, and in the public square. I don’t think as men that most of us appreciate how frightening it is for women to be followed by an unidentified male filming us and demanding something from them.”
When challenged by Facebook friends Behrens repeated the point with ever greater fervour. He wrote, “I don’t think it is ‘polite’ for a man to follow a woman around with a camera yammering at her if she does not want to be yammered at, which is defined as stalking and harassment. She has a constituency office, a campaign office, and a place of work where protests should occur.”
While at least two thirds of my interventions and writings focus on men, Behrens is labelling my questioning of women politicians sexism and harassment. In so doing he’s echoing Dahlia Kurtz and the police who charged me for social media commentary critical of Israel and the police. In response to my imprisonment six weeks ago Le Journal de Montréal noted, “Il aurait harcelé deux femmes: Yves Engler, un participant à la propagande russe, arrete à Montréal.” (He harassed two women: Yves Engler, a participant in Russian propaganda, arrested in Montréal.)
While Behrens echoes this ‘feminist’ smear, here’s what transpired between me and Gainey on Thursday. After a rally for divestment as part of an unprecedented student strike at McGill, I bumped into Mark Carney’s election campaign bus just after it pulled into a hotel a block from the university. I waited in front of Le Germain hotel hoping to find the prime minister or other prominent figures to question about a Canadian factory selling Israel artillery propellent and Israel’s recent assassination of 15 paramedics. There were dozens of RCMP on site, including the sniper squad. The police all recognized me immediately and Carney’s team knew I was there.
About 20 minutes into standing out front — while I was talking with three McGill students observing the high security scene to the side of the hotel’s main door — Gainey left hurriedly. As I noticed her and hustled over, I asked about the genocide and began querying Gainey about Israel recently killing 15 paramedics and aid workers. She hit my camera off and then hit my arm a second time. As Gainey got into her $90,000 vehicle, I got my camera restarted and walked towards her asking, “Mrs Gainey why did you hit me?” With two RCMP following just behind me she yelled “leave me alone” and seemed to start crying. At the end of my clip you can hear one of the RCMP yelling at me “that’s enough”. The entire interaction took less than 30 seconds and it’s difficult to believe the daughter of a famed hockey player felt under physical threat amidst the massive police presence.
Behrens’ comment about going to her constituency office is laughable. Gainey was meeting with the prime minister or his staff inside the hotel. She has repeatedly run away from NDG for Palestine and Westmount for Palestine’s questions about her aggressive support for genocide, which includes attending pro-genocide rallies, participating in the Canada Israel Interparliamentary Group and writing a letter criticizing her own government’s backing for a UN ceasefire resolution. Last week she canceled her campaign launch event in response to a possible Palestine protest and I’ve been repeatedly blocked from her press and speaking events. Ten days ago, I went to her election campaign office to ask why Gainey signed a letter with four other Liberal MPs representing substantial Jewish electorates calling on university presidents to clamp down on students opposing genocide.
In his Facebook posts Behrens effectively aligned with right wing Zionists who labeled my questioning of Gainey “harassment”. After the video circulated widely, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs posted, “Harassment isn’t activism, it is a crime. At a time when Canadians from across the country are deeply engaged in the election, we must condemn efforts by some individuals, including Yves Engler who is already facing harassment charges, to undermine our democracy.”
At its most charitable, Behrens’ argument is that men activists should be self-aware (no matter intent) of how their actions within a patriarchal system can contribute to the exclusion of women from formal politics. At an abstract level I agree with the point though I wouldn’t apply it to electoral politics. If we applied this logic, we’d need to be circumspect in criticizing foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly or former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris.
While articulating the male oppressive identity politics framework, Behrens seems oblivious to another oppressive identity central to the issue at hand. Anyone who identifies as Jewish is in a privileged position vis-à-vis a state based upon Jewish supremacy. How could a leftist Jew be oblivious to this amidst efforts to ethnically cleanse Gaza of non-Jews?
One sign of Behrens regressive centring of Jewish sensibilities is his granting outsized credence to the Jewish victimhood narrative. In his main post Behrens berates leftists for “cheering this on and dismissing her [Gainey] upset as ‘zio tears’.”
It’s also partly seen in the reaction to his post. Prominent social democrat Michelle Lansberg commented “Thank you, Matthew. No-one should be harassing politicians as individuals. This kind of vigilantism is a degradation of political life and an ongoing deterrent to good people entering politics.” Behrens responded to the former Toronto Star columnist “1000%”.
As a Star columnist, Landsberg regularly wrote anti-Palestinian diatribes. In a 2001 Toronto Star column the prominent feminist wrote, “to keep their people primed for endless war, Palestinians have inculcated racist hatred of Jews and of Israel in school texts, official newspaper articles and leaders’ pronouncements, in language so hideous it would have made Goebbels grin.”
Landsberg joined a family that did more than any to spread anti-Palestinian racism within the anglophone Canadian left. Her husband, former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, took anti-Palestinian positions until the end of his public life and her sister in law, Janet Solberg, led the bid to scuttle the Palestine Resolution at the 2018 NDP convention. As head of the federal NDP Solberg’s father, David Lewis, was a fanatic Zionist.
While the left’s shift on Palestine has forced Lansberg to moderate her anti-Palestinianism, I find it stunning she felt comfortable publicly besmirching a challenge to Canada’s complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It demonstrates a lack of self-reflection, indifference to laying the ideological terrain for genocide and other people’s failure to hold her to account. Instead of focussing on my perceived patriarchal oppressiveness in the fight against Israel’s holocaust Behrens might consider holding fellow Jews to account (rather than egging them on) for enabling Jewish supremacy?
Looking at the Gainey video from a far more tangible, real world, “identity politics” standpoint Hamman Farah’s response to Behrens’ post reflected a much different point of view:
“I am absolutely appalled that anyone would have a problem with what Yves did. I’m a Palestinian Canadian from Gaza. Born in Gaza. Have family sheltering in the churches in Gaza.
The Israeli army RAN OVER MY AUNT WITH A TANK. HER BRAINS WERE FOUND SPLATTERED OVER THE ROAD. The woman in the video is an MP who’s been justifying and encouraging the Holocaust inflicted on Gaza. On my family. She is absolute scum. A monster. What Yves did was nothing short of heroic. We applaud him. If this is ‘harassment’ then she deserves it. We’ve been BEGGING you do MORE. And this is what you do? You shame those who have the courage and conviction that you sorely lack? Your activism has been useless and impotent. All the commenters calling Yves’s action disrespectful and unacceptable have the luxury to do so while some of us have to suck it up while she ACTIVELY encourages murdering our relatives.
“I’m disgusted. What Yves did was literally the only MOMENT of respite some of us have had in the midst of this apocalyptic nightmare. What Yves did should be replicated in an organized fashion. Remember when Trudeau was chased at the restaurant in Vancouver? The intensity of the pressure at the time is what pushed Canada to impose a one-way arms embargo. Mere crumbs but it could’ve been a start if direct actions continued. These actions are the only thing right now showing politicians and everyone else that people are outraged like never before. Either express your rage appropriately to the crime being committed (genocide) or you likely never felt rage about Gaza to begin with. Yves Engler you’re a shining example for all of us who are serious about holding monsters, Nazis and criminals accountable.”
Seems to me the sentiment expressed in this response to Behrens clarifies who the real victims are and whose oppression needs to be prioritized.
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