Calls are growing for B.C. NDP Minister Selina Robinson to resign after she called pre-1948 Palestine “a crappy piece of land with nothing on it,” remarks the premier called “wrong and hurtful.”
Robinson, post-secondary education minister and MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville, has apologized.
But that has not quelled the call from Palestinian Canadians, the Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Indigenous leaders, and a federal NDP MP for her to be removed from the B.C. cabinet.
Robinson made the comments Jan. 30 during an online panel with other Jewish politicians. The two-hour discussion was hosted by B’nai B’rith Canada and posted on YouTube.
Robinson said 18-to 34-year-olds “have no idea about the Holocaust, they don’t even think it happened.”
She said Israel was offered to Jews who were misplaced and displaced from their homes.
“They don’t understand that it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it. You know, there were several hundred thousand people but other than that, it didn’t produce an economy. It couldn’t grow things it didn’t have anything on it, and that it was the folks that were displaced that came and had been living there for generations and together they worked hard and they had their own battles,” she said.
Robinson also equated the generations-long battle between Jews and Palestinians to a fight between the Tsleil-Waututh and the Squamish First Nations over land.
“Would we weigh in as regular people? The answer is no. It’s between these Indigenous nations.”
Laith Sarhan, a Vancouver-based Palestinian Canadian lawyer and organizer of local rallies in support of a ceasefire, said he was astonished and shocked by Robinson’s comments and believes she should be removed from Premier David Eby’s cabinet.
Her comments, Sarhan said, endorse the idea that Israel was created on terra nullius, a Latin expression essentially meaning nobody’s land. It ignores the fact that the Holy Land of Palestine “has been continuously inhabited as a fertile cradle of civilization for thousands of years,” he said.
Before the state of Israel was created in 1948, there were thriving industries in orange and olive oil production, he said.
“And for Selina Robinson to essentially say it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it, I think really diminishes the efforts of all of the folks that lived there for thousands of years and worked collaboratively in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic way to produce such fantastic contributions both to the economy and culturally. To so flippantly disregard that is, frankly, insulting to so many people, not just Palestinians.”
Robinson apologized on the social media platform X Thursday night, calling her remarks “disrespectful.” She said she was referring to the fact that the land has limited natural resources, but “I understand that this flippant comment has caused pain and that it diminishes the connection Palestinians also have to the land.”
Speaking to Postmedia News Friday, Robinson repeated her regret for her comments but said she has no plans to resign.
“I said awful things. It came out not the way I intended. I was sloppy with my story telling,” she said, adding she had 10 minutes to talk about a complex and fraught history.
“That’s on me. But to judge me as a human being who believes in working with people and bringing people together — I have a 40-year history of doing that work — all of that gets negated? That’s harsh,” she said. “I’m saddened there’s no room for someone to apologize for things that they said that hurt people.”
During an unrelated press conference Friday, Eby said Robinson “crossed a line.”
“Her comments increase divisions in our province,” Eby said. “They increase the feelings of alienation of groups of people, especially people of Palestinian descent and people who are concerned about the death and the destruction in Palestine that is happening right now.”
“She has apologized unequivocally, as she should. And she’s got some more work to do,” he said, adding that Robinson is reaching out to community leaders to repair the damage her remarks caused.
It’s the first time Eby has publicly criticized one of his cabinet members since becoming premier.
Neil Naiman, chair of the Vancouver chapter of the Independent Jewish Voices Canada, wrote to Eby calling for him to remove Robinson from cabinet.
“We have witnessed with a growing sense of outrage the litany of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab comments made via social media over the past several months by your minister of post-secondary education, Selina Robinson,” the letter said.
“At a time when every effort is being made to ensure that members of the Jewish community are made to feel safe and secure, it appears that Ms. Robinson has been allowed to make inappropriate, racist comments, blithely ignoring the feelings of members of the Muslim and Arab communities.”
Matthew Green, the federal NDP’s MP for Hamilton Centre, posted a letter to X on Friday morning calling for “the reassessment of minister Robinson’s position within the cabinet to ensure that our leadership reflects a deep commitment to historical accuracy, empathy and the pursuit of peace and justice for all peoples, including Palestinians and Israelis.”
Robinson was already under pressure to resign from two post-secondary groups over what they called her interference with academic freedoms and the freedom of expression.
The Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C. and the Canadian Association of University Teachers released a letter Thursday calling for Robinson to be removed from her role overseeing post-secondary education following comments she made about the firing by Langara College of instructor Natalie Knight.
At a speech at a pro-Palestinian rally in October in Vancouver, Knight referred to the Hamas attack in Israel that killed 1,400 Israelis, including children, as “the amazing, brilliant offensive waged on Oct. 7.”
Knight went on leave but was quietly reinstated following an internal investigation.
Knight was subsequently dismissed after Robinson met with Langara leadership to express her concerns. Robinson said on social media that she was “disappointed that this instructor continues to have a public post-secondary platform to spew hatred and vitriol.”
Robinson addressed the criticism during the Jan. 30 discussion.
“I’m being called out by the faculty association because I expressed my disappointment about her reinstatement, but I also represent a constituency and they needed to see me be upset and be concerned that this was happening,” she said.
