Bell: Nenshi grovels to Loony Left after snapshot with Israel ambassador

NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi caves to militants. Really?

This is not a personal attack. It is the witnessing of a sad sight. It is always a sad sight when a person who you think should know better does not do better.

Instead, Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi is missing some critical body parts these days. A spine, some guts, the part of the brain you use to exercise good judgment. When it counted this week, facing the backlash of the anti-Semitic fanatics who push their weight around whenever they see an opening, whenever they find someone they can intimidate, wherever there is an easy target, Calgary’s former mayor and wannabe Alberta premier did not stand tall.

Nenshi caved to whatever pressure he felt. He grovelled on demand. And for what?

Having his picture taken with the Israeli ambassador, one of many politicians who posed with the diplomat during the Stampede This is a mortal sin for those who do not consider terrorism any kind of sin, at least as long as it’s about raping and killing Jews and therefore all for a good cause.. Nenshi likes getting his photo taken with people. Even your scribbler has a snapshot with Nenshi taken one sunny afternoon in the East Village.

But the radicals got to him. There is a video of a protester challenging Nenshi and the NDP leader replied: “Am I supposed to tell him to f-off at a public event?” The protester wanted Nenshi to do exactly that.

Nenshi says that’s not how it works. Alas, in the end, Nenshi did the bidding of the never satisfied and the always hostile, just as former mayor Jyoti Gondek skipped a traditional menorah lighting in Calgary and bought into the gibberish about the festive Jewish event being some kind of war rally. The militants got to him.

People who are no doubt accepted in the NDP tent. It is not my mother’s NDP. I recall recently walking along with a down-with-Israel march in Calgary.

I recall offering to interview any of the marchers. A straight question and answer interview. You know, hearing their side of the story.

Hearing what they consider the Palestinian view, calmly expressed and slogan free and absent of hate. They could discuss the actions of Israel in Gaza. I have friendly relations with many Jewish people and with many Arabs, particularly from the Lebanese community.

I remember writing a high school essay on the conflict in the Middle East. This was soon after the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics in Munich, 54 years ago. I grew up at the time of the wars of Israel and their neighbours.

I had only one condition and I thought it would be easy to fulfill. Just denounce and condemn the vile Hamas terrorists. Just denounce and condemn the attacks of Oct. 7, the barbarism committed when most folks throughout the world had not even heard of Gaza.

Cut ties with Hamas and the voice recorder goes on. No one stepped up. I was cast as just another Jew-loving fascist.

Anyway, in Nenshi’s public confession for having his photo taken with the Israeli ambassador, the NDP Leader says he talked to many people and is so sorry. Nenshi says he better understands the immense hurt people felt. He says he and his party believe strongly in human rights and international law, leaving me wondering where were the human rights and international law located on Oct 7 after a massacre and hostage-taking the militants see as heroic.

End of story. Not! Predictably, Nenshi is told he did not do enough.

He did not do it fast enough. He did not do it strong enough. He didn’t use the word genocide.

He did not ramp up the rhetoric. It was not a proper apology. His mea culpa is not sufficient.

Its content is weak sauce and its delivery does not have near the proper amount of revolutionary fervour. A message from Naheed Nenshi pic.twitter.com/VARwsRW20Q — Naheed Nenshi (@nenshi) July 16, 2026 Perhaps Nenshi needs more intense re-education to see the errors of his ways.

Or perhaps Nenshi will learn as Gondek had to learn. Going down the rabbit hole with this crew is a dead end. When he was mayor of Calgary, Nenshi often spoke of building community.

This latest episode doesn’t help. rbell@postmedia.com