Dion - Does he speak English or . . .
Jason Cherniak has a problem on his hands. Today he proudly posts Stephane Dion's latest speech on Canada's relationship to Israel. Frankly, it's more of the same say nothing crap that has lost the Liberals significant support in the last year. But Dion, in his speech, brought up the firebombing of the United Talmud Torah school in his riding.

Here in Canada, when the United Talmud Torah school is attacked in my riding of St. Laurent-Cartierville in Montreal - its windows broken, its library burned - it is an attack on the values of every Canadian. When even one Canadian child is threatened because of her religion, we all feel the cold breath of intimidation. We can only imagine the insecurity that Israelis feel day after day.

At the time of the incident Dion made a major gaffe, implying it was acceptable to attack Jews if they supported Israel or Ariel Sharon:

Stephane Dion, MP for St. Laurent-Cartierville, also present, later found himself having to backpedal on a comment attributed to him in the Globe and Mail April 6, in which he said it was regrettable that this happened when not all Jews support the policies of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

In a letter to the Globe and Mail April 7, Dion wrote: "No matter what one's opinion of the Sharon government's actions, violence is never an acceptable response. When I said, 'Why link all Canadian Jews with the policy of a government?' it was in the context of expressing my admiration for the pluralism of opinions among Jews of Canada and elsewhere."

From that story it appears Dion's troops went into immediate Spin Mode and tried to say he was misunderstood. But Michael Coren was given a different spin:

Dion publicly condemned the outrage but said it was wrong "because not all Jews support Sharon's policies."

The logic of the statement, of course, was that the firebombing would have been acceptable if all Jews did in fact support Sharon.

Dion and his people went into a political spin and explained it was all a language issue and he had not meant to say that at all. Firebombing schools was, it seemed, never a good idea. He was, we were told, lost in translation.

That really tweaked me because Cherniak and a whole slew of other Libloggers have been beating the drum for Dion, denying he has any difficulties in English.

Well, if that is true, why claim Dion's gaffe was just an issue of translation? If Dion speaks solid English one can only assume he meant what he said when he implied Jews who support Israel are valid targets. Given the terrible record the Liberals have displayed on the Israeli question, the outright anti-Semetism of a number of Liberal blog commenters, the smearing of Bob Rae at the convention, and the exodus of prominent Jews from the Liberal party, I think I will believe the bloggers who say Dion's English is solid.