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"Minister Selina Robinson's Comments Stir Controversy: Crappy piece of land"
2-01-2024
A video circulating on X, formerly Twitter, has sparked outrage among numerous netizens in British Columbia.
In the video, Minister Selina Robinson, responsible for Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills, made a controversial and uninformed statement regarding the pre-occupation state of Palestine. Calls are mounting for her to resign.
She expressed:
"We have a whole generation and we know from the data that it's 18 to 34 year olds that have no idea about the Holocaust. They don't even think it happened. They don't even understand that Israel was was offered to the Jews who were misplaced, displaced.
So they have no connection to how it started. They don't understand that it was a crappy piece of land with nothing on it. You know, there were, you know, several hundred thousand people. But other than that, it didn't produce an economy.
It didn't have, it couldn't grow things. It didn't have anything on it. And that it was the folks who were displaced that that that came and the people who had been living there for generations. And together they worked hard and they had their own battles, right?
We know the history.”
After hundreds of petitions for her to resign, Robinson made a statement posted on X, Robinson said she regrets her comment and apologizes “without reservation.”
“I want to apologize for my disrespectful comment referring to the origins of Israel on a ‘crappy piece of land,’” she said. “I was referring to the fact that the land has limited natural resources. I understand that this flippant comment has caused pain and that it diminishes the connection Palestinians also have to the land.”
The BC Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) is the latest group to call for Robinson’s ousting, after the Federation of Post Secondary Educators (FPSE) said Thursday she “wrongfully” intervened and the college shared private files with the minister.
“Minister Robinson’s intervention in the termination of a Langara College instructor undermines the democratic principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom,” the BCCLA said on X, Friday.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) also joined the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of British Columbia (FPSE-BC) in calling on B.C.’s Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills to resign following revelations she interfered in an internal personnel matter at Langara College.
On January 25, Minister Selina Robinson used her X account, formerly known as Twitter, to call for the termination of Dr. Natalie Knight, even though an investigation cleared the professor of any wrongdoing.
Dr. Knight was fired from the college within 24 hours of the minister’s posting.
“The minister is free, as any citizen is, to disagree with Dr. Knight’s political views,” said CAUT’s Robinson. “However, the minister does not have the licence to censor those views or to meddle in a college’s internal matters.”
Call to action
Send an email to the Premier and MLA's for Selina RObinson to resign
https://alameenpost.com/email.html
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/genocidal-bc-ndp-minister-mustberemoved?source=direct_link&
Picture: The Downtown Triangle Public Square in the New City was a central commercial and entertainment district in the New City, bounded by Jaffa Road to the north, King George Street to the west, and Ben Yehuda Street to the southeast. It was designed as a roundabout and built during the time of the British Mandate and came to be called Zion Square (shown here in the late 1930s or early 1940s). Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 13389]
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