Selina Must Go
We call on the BC NDP to fire MLA Selina Robinson. MLA Robinson has a long history of making and amplifying anti-Palestinian, anti-Indigenous and Islamophobic statements while abusing her position to embed and enforce racist policies.
KEY DEMANDS
CALLS FOR REMOVAL
COMMUNITY ACTIONS
HISTORY RACIST RETHORIC
HISTORY OF ABUSE OF POWER
KEY DEMANDS
Remove MLA Selina Robinson from Caucus. The BC NDP must take action. An MLA who continuously makes racist statements and politically interferes in public institutions should not have a place in the Legislature.
Scrap policies designed to suppress Palestinian Solidarity. Specifically remove the misleading IHRA definition of anti-semitism from legislation which categorizes any critique of Israel as anti-semitic. See Independent Jewish Voices NOIHRA campaign.
Adopt ACLA report on anti-Palestinian racism and the Jerusalem Declaration on anti-semitism. The BC government should adopt these robust and systemic frameworks and ensure they inform upcoming BC anti-racism legislation.
Initiate an independent investigation into Minister's interference with firings & academic freedom. The BC government must uncover the scope of interference and ensure our institutions maintain their independence and academic freedom.
CALLS FOR RESIGNATION
HIGHER EDUCATION
RELIGIOUS & DIASPORIC
ADVOCACY
ELECTED OFFICIALS
ACTIONS
PROTEST
PETITONS
SELINA ROBINSON'S RACIST COMMENTS:
A few days ago on a recorded event on zoom MLA Selina Robinson called Palestine a “crappy piece of land with nothing on it.”Robinson's appalling statements are factually incorrect and they erase Palestinian land, lives and history. Selina Robinson's comments are reflective of the racist mindset behind Israel's ongoing genocidal campaign that has murdered over 30,000 Palestinian people.It is not coincidental that her language echoes the racist concept “Terra Nullius” which was used to justify purported Crown sovereignty in so-called Canada by disregarding the presence of Indigenous peoples and claiming the lands to be empty. Like Canada, Israel is a settler-colonial occupation. David Ben-Gurion, who is considered the father of Israel, said “Look what the Americans did, they took this land that was filled with savages and filled with swamps and they displaced the savages and drained the swamps and they ended up building this great civilization and that’s what we’re trying to do.” Selina Robinson’s remarks do not stand alone, they are a part of a colonial racist propaganda machine.
BELOW ARE A FEW OF THE RACIST TWEETS MINISTER ROBINSON HAS BEEN SHARING IN THE PAST FEW MONTHS
She has questioned the validity of pictures and videos depicting violence in Gaza despite continuously posting misinformation herself.
She retweets and platforms misinformation from explicit racists like Bill Maher and Warren Kinsella, a Canadian lawyer who called for people who attended Ceasefire rallies to be criminally charged and deported.
In this series of tweets she posts an article "Time for the good people of humanity to pick a side" (specifically Israel's). Then posts unproven allegations that the Muslim Association of Canada is involved in a Hamas network.
She retweeted a call to suspend a doctor who questioned Israel's justification for genocide and war crimes
This retweet uses misinformation to describe Israel's current genocidal campaign as a war against all Arabs.
SELINA ROBINSON'S RACIST POLICIES
In Canada the groundwork for a coordinated silencing of Palestinian solidarity organizing has been laid for years by politicians like Minister Robison, with the support of the well resourced far-right lobby group The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).Minister Robinson has been using her position as Higher Education Minister to advance racist anti-Palestinian policies and to penalize Palestinian solidarity organizing.
Minister Robinson used her position to pressure Langara College to fire Dr. Natalie Knight, a tenured instructor and Indigenous Curriculum Consultant, for comments she made at a Palestinian solidarity rally.
Dr. Natalie Knight was cleared by the internal Academic Freedom and Freedom of Expression Advisory Committee at Langara College. The Minister lobbied the college directly to ensure that Dr. Knight was fired.
Minister Robinsons openly boasts about talking to the The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs daily. CIJA is a lobby organization representing a foreign country and has been given extraordinary influence to shape Provincial policy.
Israel, through lobbying groups like CIJA, has launched an International campaign to silence critiques of its genocidal actions. Like Selina, many prominent members of CIJA hold vocally racist views of Palestinians.
IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism does not offer a systemic analysis of discrimination but is instead designed to conflate all critiques of Israel and Zionism with anti-semitism in order to suppress and penalize Palestinian Solidarity.
As a response to the stats that youth are more likely to be against Israel's genocidal campaign, the minister imposed a “mandatory” Holocaust education weeks designed by CIJA. Selina's comments have made clear that this curriculum likely includes misinform