BILL CURRY

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

September 5, 2008 at 8:49 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is affirming her support for an Ottawa-area Green Party candidate accused of “Israel bashing,” just one day after citing anti-Semitism as grounds for rejecting one of her B.C. candidates.

Qais Ghanem, a Yemeni-born physician with a strong interest in the Middle East, has stirred debate among his fellow Greens on the party's online discussion forum. The Greens' Ottawa-South candidate has aligned himself with three other Green candidates to form what they call the “Ottawa Group of Four.” They are pushing the party to approve a resolution called “Palestine” that “calls upon Israel to end its forty-year occupation of all Arab lands without preconditions.”

When some in the discussion forum suggested Dr. Ghanem's comments were one-sidedly anti-Israel, the Green candidate fired back. “I do not have to record the opposite point of view to every quotation I dig up, for the sake of so-called ‘balance,'” he wrote on Aug. 17. “The Israeli point of view is voiced non-stop by the North American media which is controlled by a small oligarchy.”

John Bennett, a spokesman for Ms. May, said the Green Leader views the comments of Dr. Ghanem and the Group of Four as their own individual positions. He also said their proposed resolution is “within our party policy.”

“Dr. Ghanem is a well-known supporter of peaceful resolution in the Middle East,” said Mr. Bennett, who acknowledged the party is now rethinking its website policies. “It's an open discussion forum in which people are allowed to express their opinion. Elizabeth knows Dr. Ghanem, is happy with him as a candidate, and he is definitely not an anti-Semite in any way.”

The resolution makes reference to the U.S. Green Party, which drew the ire of Israeli and British Greens when it called in 2005 for a boycott and sanctions against Israel.

Sara Saber-Freedman, executive vice-president of the Canada Israel Committee, said the Greens would be adopting an extreme position should the resolution be endorsed by party members at their next convention.

“We think it would be extraordinarily unfortunate if it were to be adopted,” she said. “It would place the Green Party very far outside the Canadian mainstream.”

One individual writing on the Green website, Leo Williams, says the Green Party should not be posting Dr. Ghanem's “scurrilous blog.”

“Every vote is important, and the alienation of discerning Christian and Jewish voters, via Mr. Ghanem's vilest brand of Israel bashing and anti-Semitism, is something the GPC [Green Party of Canada] (and Canadian politics) does not need,” the post reads.

Reached by e-mail, Dr. Ghanem wrote that the Group of Four – whose other members, Ottawa-area Green candidates Paul Maillet, Akbar Manoussi and Sylvie Lemieux – are “ardent supporters of human rights and social justice for ALL people in the world, no matter their ethnicity or religion.”

John Shavluk, the B.C. candidate ousted on grounds of alleged anti-Semitism, has been a staunch online defender of Dr. Ghanem. “Bottom line? Qais gets my help … support … approval,” he wrote July 22.

The reason cited for Mr. Shavluk's removal was an online exchange about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in which he wrote about the “shoddily built Jewish world bank headquarters.”