Wrong person for the job
A news items from a couple of weeks ago:
The University of Alberta has fired Samantha Pearson, the director of the Sexual Assault Centre, after she signed an open letter penned by ousted Ontario MPP Sarah Jama that calls into question whether Israeli women were subjected to rape and sexual violence during a Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
If you’re the director of a sexual assault center your job is not to be skeptical of particular rapes and acts of sexual violence based on your political views.
Jama, an Independent MPP from Hamilton, Ont., was the letter’s first signatory. She was booted from the NDP caucus last month after making controversial comments in support of Palestinians.
Pearson signed the letter on behalf of the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre.
The CBC also a couple of weeks ago:
Hamilton Centre MPP Sarah Jama says she has removed her name from an open letter that voiced support for the people of Gaza and questioned the validity of sexual assault claims against Hamas.
The Independent MPP added her name to the open letter last week after the reopening of her constituency office, where someone presented Jama with a physical copy of the letter.
Be careful what you sign. (The two accounts of the letter differ – the first says Jama wrote it, the second says someone handed it to her and she signed it.)
The director of University of Alberta’s sexual assault centre was replaced after endorsing the letter.
On social media platform X, formerly called Twitter, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs thanked the University of Alberta for its “decisive action” and asked: “Shouldn’t a sexual assault centre believe all victims, including the Jewish ones?”
You’d think.
Maybe she’d still have her job if she hadn’t decided to use the weight of her position to inflate the importance of her signature. Maybe she forgot that she was an officer of the agency rather than the agency itself, and that the agency should remain apolitical? But, she was so desperate to signal her virtue, she used her position as a means of amplifying the signal, and at the same time increase the credibility of the “What rapes?” narrative without the evidentiary justification to do so. That sort of justification would be expected if she were signing as part of her official capacity, rather than as a kneejerk response designed to excuse and minimize the cruelty and horror inflicted by Hamas in the October 7 attacks. Well now she can keep Owen Jones company on the sad bench.
Not if you’re on the wrong side of the Official Intersectional Analysis performed by bona fide Caring People.
Nobody seems to notice that ‘pro-Palestinians’ are actually pro Hamas? Quite specifically, for all the generic exterminationist ‘river to the sea’ nonsense.
Meanwhile, Stürmer style antisemitism is veiled as ‘anti Zionist’ or even ‘just critical of Likud.’