I have mixed feelings about Sarah Jama; the non-verbal hints of her immediate comments after October 7th were certainly ill-judged. But her comments about Hamas rape are not necessarily outrageous or even incorrect; your own citation of the UN inquiry establishes that Hamas was guilty of "sexual violence", but not necessarily rape. (It never made sense to believe that Hamas would want to copulate with Jews, even if Hamas would certainly want to humiliate them.) That's a semantic distinction to be sure, but even if Jama were factually wrong it would not make her an advocate of violence (not that you personally accused her of being such), just as the lack of rape-guilt by Hamas would not change the reality of them being an atrocious death cult.
I am not sure that it is comparing like circumstances to compare Jama's results with Bobbi Ann Brady's results. Although we have heard about Jama in the news much more than about Brady, it is entirely possible that Brady has much more name-recognition in Haldimand-Norfolk than Jama has in Hamilton-Centre. Even if low by Brady's precedent, 15% of the vote share actually is quite exceptional by the standards of Independent candidates, most of whom rarely exceed 1-2% of the local vote.
This is ugly. People wonder why women and people of colour are under represented in our legislatures, it's because of abuse like this. Diversity isn't about just numbers, it's about the representation of different perspectives. Which is what Ms. Jama was doing, whether you agree with her or not. A lot of MPPs didn't get reelected last week, this is the only story I've seen revelling in one of their misfortunes. That it was targeted at Ms. Jama is certainly not a coincidence.
I have mixed feelings about Sarah Jama; the non-verbal hints of her immediate comments after October 7th were certainly ill-judged. But her comments about Hamas rape are not necessarily outrageous or even incorrect; your own citation of the UN inquiry establishes that Hamas was guilty of "sexual violence", but not necessarily rape. (It never made sense to believe that Hamas would want to copulate with Jews, even if Hamas would certainly want to humiliate them.) That's a semantic distinction to be sure, but even if Jama were factually wrong it would not make her an advocate of violence (not that you personally accused her of being such), just as the lack of rape-guilt by Hamas would not change the reality of them being an atrocious death cult.
I am not sure that it is comparing like circumstances to compare Jama's results with Bobbi Ann Brady's results. Although we have heard about Jama in the news much more than about Brady, it is entirely possible that Brady has much more name-recognition in Haldimand-Norfolk than Jama has in Hamilton-Centre. Even if low by Brady's precedent, 15% of the vote share actually is quite exceptional by the standards of Independent candidates, most of whom rarely exceed 1-2% of the local vote.
This is ugly. People wonder why women and people of colour are under represented in our legislatures, it's because of abuse like this. Diversity isn't about just numbers, it's about the representation of different perspectives. Which is what Ms. Jama was doing, whether you agree with her or not. A lot of MPPs didn't get reelected last week, this is the only story I've seen revelling in one of their misfortunes. That it was targeted at Ms. Jama is certainly not a coincidence.