"Frappier added that anyone who opposes independence is not a true Quebecer." - pas gênée la tite madame (j'ai parlé de "conflit entre majorité et minorité à propos du projet d'indépendance nationale", ce qui explique certaines tensions entre communautés culturelles et majorité - on es t loin de l'exclusion!) - BF
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Last week, three PQ MNAs who have contributed money to Vigile.net made a statement dissociating the party from anti-Semitic comments on the site after the Canada-Israel Committee condemned Vigile for hateful comments toward Jews.
Photograph by: Dario Ayala, Montreal Gazette
By Marian Scott - MONTREAL - Jews control most of the world through the banks and manipulate interest rates. Israeli aggression in the Middle East is enough to make one want to “blow up Mr. Jews all around the world.” Fewer than one per cent of Jews in Quebec are truly Québécois.
Such opinions – expressed on the pro-sovereignty website Vigile.net – have revived age-old accusations that anti-Semitism infects Quebec nationalism.
On Thursday, the Parti Québécois refused to support a motion by Liberal Member of the National Assembly Lawrence Bergman denouncing anti-Semitic comments on the site and calling on members of the opposition to stop financing Vigile.net.
PQ house leader Stéphane Bédard later told reporters it wasn’t up to the National Assembly to police Vigile.net and accused the Liberals of “creating a psychodrama” in order to “associate Quebec nationalism” with bigotry.
Founded in 1996, Vigile.net is a popular forum for supporters of Quebec independence. Bédard praised the site for “the great texts that are written there, really very great texts.”
“I would never condemn people who have at heart to spread profound ideas and reflections on Quebec, on its society and its future, for what I would call a marginal number of texts,” Bédard said.
It’s not up to the National Assembly to intervene every time someone writes an intolerant blog post, Bédard added.
“There are places for that, and if people made hateful comments, there are tribunals for condemning them,” he said.
Last week, three PQ MNAs who have contributed money to Vigile.net made a statement dissociating the party from anti-Semitic comments on the site after the Canada-Israel Committee condemned Vigile for hateful comments towards Jews.
PQ MNAs Louise Beaudoin, Bernard Drainville and Agnès Maltais said the PQ is opposed all forms of discrimination, but they didn’t say whether they will continue to support Vigile.net.
Each of the three donated sums ranging from $100 to $500 between July 2010 and January 2011.
But Bergman, the MNA for D’Arcy McGee, called on the PQ to send a clear message on hatred and tell its MNAs to stop funding the site. “Quebecers have rejected all the stereotypes before by radical groups which are guided by hatred and intolerance,” Bergman said.
“When a group is doing that type of hate propaganda against the Jewish community, whose members are full-fledged Quebecers, certainly I’m vigorously opposed,” he added.
But Vigile.net founder Bernard Frappier charged the debate over anti-Semitism on his site is “a frame-up” orchestrated by the Quebec Liberal Party.
Frappier acknowledged he should have read some of the texts written by contributors more closely before posting them and said that he removed the offending paragraphs after the statement by the PQ MNAs.
However, he accused critics of taking the comments out of context to portray his contributors as bigots.
“It’s a tempest in a teapot,” Frappier said.
He also defended a screed posted Wednesday by contributor Jacques Noël, which claims that fewer than one per cent of Quebec Jews are Québécois.
Noël wrote that while Jews in the U.S., France and Canada are well-integrated, among the Who’s Who of well-known Quebecers, “I can’t find a single Québécois Jew.”
Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan are truly American, while Claude Lelouch and Simone Veil are full-fledged citizens of France, Noël writes.
But he chooses rather curious examples of well-integrated Canadian Jews: Margaret Atwood, Judy Rebick, Herb Gray.
Atwood is not Jewish.
Noël explains that by Québécois, he means someone who speaks French, follows Quebec pop culture, banks at a Caisse populaire, doesn’t follow The Gazette or CJAD and probably voted Yes in 1995. (He probably meant voted No.) Quebec Jews are mostly “Canadians,” says Noël, using the English word even though his text is in French. “The rest are French, North Africans, Israelis or from eastern Europe,” he adds.
Frappier dismissed the suggestion that some might find Noël’s comments anti-Semitic.
“That’s bull----,” he said.
“The Jewish community doesn’t integrate. They are the first to oppose independence,” he added.
Frappier added that anyone who opposes independence is not a true Quebecer.
Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies, said the anti-Semitic overtones of Noël’s message are unmistakable.
“It’s obviously not a definition (of Québécois) that includes Jews,” he said.
“Jews don’t fit in. In a manner of speaking, it’s saying, ‘You don’t belong here.’ ”
mascot@montrealgazette.com