Montreal passes amended motion that does not cut ties with Israel

Montreal City Council voted to amend a motion that would have cut the city’s institutional ties with Israel and instead passed a version that recognizes Hamas as a terror organization and notes the rise in Jew-hatred across the country.

References to “apartheid” and “genocide” were removed from the motion, which the opposition party Projet Montreal had put forward. The final version supports international judicial bodies examining allegations of “genocide.”

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The council voted 38-22 to make the changes, which the administration of Soraya Martinez Ferrada, mayor of the city, promoted. The amended motion then passed 54-6.

In the passed version, the council “affirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people” and supports a negotiated two-stated solution.

Paola Samuel, Quebec and Atlantic Canada regional director at B’nai Brith Canada, stated that she was “pleased that the City Council did not adopt the deceitful and distorted language contained in the original motion.”

Divisions about the “conflict in the Middle East” are “contributing to a significant increase in hostility and violence targeting the Jewish community,” Samuel said. “This manifested itself at City Hall last night, where an angry mob of extremists accosted people leaving the building, shouting hateful invectives.”

Samuel urged the council “to continue to focus its attention on what matters most to its constituents—housing, crime and affordability—rather than inserting itself into complex geopolitical issues that foster division and contribute to the normalization of hate on our streets.”

Rabbi Saul Emanuel, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, stated that he was “deeply troubled” by the substance of the adopted motion, despite the changes made, and by “the fact that a motion singling out Israel in this manner was brought before Montreal’s municipal government in the first place.”

“A substantially improved motion is not the same thing as a good motion,” the rabbi said. “The fact that it was proposed at all, and that council could not simply say no, demonstrates how profoundly Montreal has changed.”

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