The city of Montreal is so broke that the mayor quipped recently that the “city’s credit card is maxxed out.”
Meanwhile, the crises are proliferating, from a rise in poverty, crime and homelessness to decaying infrastructure, a lack of affordable housing and interminable waits for medical care.
So, naturally, on Monday the city council will vote on a motion to cut ties with Israel.
That’s not a typo.
They will look at the city’s multiple crises and fix their gaze…on Israel.
They won’t vote to cut ties with Nigeria, Somalia or Sudan, where genocidal efforts have led to the massacre of hundreds of thousands.
They won’t vote to cut ties with Russia, the invaders of Ukraine responsible for the deaths of more than a million.
Nor will they discuss Jordan and Lebanon, where Palestinian refugees have been living for decades in silent misery.
And they will ignore China, a ruthless regime that has put a million Muslim Uyghurs in veritable concentration camps.
No, the city council will vote to cut ties with only one country. The Jewish one.
This is Israel Derangement Syndrome par excellence.
And it’s not just about failing to defend Jews; it’s about declaring open season on Jews.
The motion is not coming from the Mayor’s office but from an opposition group called Projet Montreal. The fact that they’ve managed to bring this to a vote in the city council tells us much about the growing animosity for Jews today.
The council must know that in 2025, Jews were the targets of 70 per cent of all police-reported hate crimes in Canada.
Or that, as I read in a recent report, “Jewish schools in Montréal have been shot at, Jewish people have been assaulted, synagogues have been attacked, and antisemitism has entered academic and professional spaces through intimidation, threats, and exclusion.”
The council surely knows all this, and yet, it is charging full speed ahead with the vote.
When I came here this week to visit family, I had no idea I would encounter such madness. I grew up in Montreal. It’s a second home. For Montreal Jews, until recently loving Israel came safely and naturally.
Now, their own city council is considering throwing Israel supporters under the bus.
The motion asks the council to recognize and denounce an “apartheid regime” and declare that a “genocide” is being perpetrated, before imposing a concrete consequence: suspending ties with the Israeli government, “its institutions” and “its municipalities.”
Never mind that the “genocide” accusation is being exposed as the lie of the century; or the fact that Arabs have more rights in Israel than in any Arab country, making an “apartheid” claim absurd.
The community, as expected, is doing what it can to fight back.
Among the protests, an open letter from almost 50 Montreal lawyers questioned “whether the proposed measure falls within the powers conferred on the city by the provincial legislature, noting that city councils do not determine international law.” Of course they don’t. The council is there to fix potholes, not the world’s most intractable conflict.
But beyond the legalese, I’d love to see an open letter signed by 100,000 Montrealers telling the city council that this pathological obsession with Israel is not just wrong, dangerous and discriminatory.
It’s creepy.
It’s deranged.
And however the vote goes on Monday, the council must know that this motion is morally bankrupt.
