Canada's Green Party will revisit a recent convention resolution to support the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, party chairman Elizabeth May said Monday, according to The Canadian Press.
May considered resigning from her post after the anti-Israel resolution passed, but said Monday she will remain Green party leader despite and will focus on her work as a member of a parliamentary committee studying options for remodelling Canada's electoral system before the next national ballot in three years.
"This is a decision that I think the party needs as we build our strength, and as I work on electoral reform and we prepare for 2019," May said, according to CP.
May, who opposed the pro-BDS resolution and has openly condemned BDS, attributed the resolution's passage to the process — brief statements followed by a majority vote rather than the party's traditional approach of a concerted effort to arrive at consensus.
"We let ourselves down, and I take blame for that myself," she was quoted as having said Monday.
The resolution that passed states that the Green Party “supports the use of divestment, boycott and sanctions that are targeted to those sectors of Israel’s economy and society which profit from the ongoing occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
It also states that the Green Party “will support such a form of BDS until such time as Israel implements a permanent ban on further settlement construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and enters into good faith negotiations with representatives of the Palestinian people for the purpose of establishing a viable, contiguous and truly sovereign Palestinian state.”
B'nai Brith Canada welcomed May's announcement that the party would reconsider the resolution.
“Reconsidering the anti-Semitic BDS resolution is a step in the right direction,” said B'nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn. “The BDS movement has no place in any respectable Canadian political party."