From Gregory: "I thought you might find this interesting. Canada’s NDP party, which was once known as socialist, is trying to shed that image and instead occupy the mushy, inoffensive, unprincipled centre in the current federal election. Here’s yet another example, where a Winnipeg candidate has been forced to quit the race. Another NDP candidate, in Nova Scotia, was also forced out after saying that Israelis are engaged in ethnic cleansing in Palestine, which anyone who has been following the situation over the last century knows to be true.
Jonasson is a minister in the Unitarian Universalist church, a liberal religious organization that draws on Christian, Jewish, Hindu and other beliefs and also includes agnostics and atheists.
Three years ago, Jonasson posted a religious article on social media, and accused the Haredim — an Orthodox branch of Judaism — of mistreating women by segregating the sexes, enforcing strict dress codes and more. He wrote "much like the Taliban and other extremists, the Haredim offer a toxic caricature of faith at odds with the spirit of the religious tradition they profess to represent."
The comments surfaced this week on The True North Times, a web site that has promised to expose controversial comments by nine politicians in nine days.
The Times said Jonasson compared Jews to the Taliban, but Jonasson said that is an extreme distortion of his comments — that he was only targeting one ultra-orthodox group."
