Jean-François Lisée, the new leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ), represents a conundrum for the Jewish community.

His position on Israel in recent years has been nothing if not contradictory.

He was the mastermind behind the previous PQ government’s proposed charter of secular values, which would have banned religious attire in the public service, and has since played on French Quebecers’ fear that their identity is diluted by immigration and their way of life compromised by the demands of religious minorities.

Since becoming leader earlier this month, he said he wants to start a public conversation on whether the full-body burka, worn by a few Muslim women, should be allowed anywhere in public. He said his concern is for security.

READ: QUEBEC GOVERNMENT OPEN TO ‘IMPROVING’ CHARTER: LISÉE

Yet he has been gracious in his dealings with the Jewish community and attempted to appear flexible on the charter as opposition mounted. In his acceptance speech as leader, he specifically reached out to anglophones and other minorities.

Lisée, a longtime strategist for the PQ and leading sovereigntist intellectual, has even expressed admiration for the late novelist Mordecai Richler, which is heresy among Quebec nationalists.

Lisée, 58, was elected leader of the PQ Oct. 7 with 50.6 per cent of the votes on a second ballot. The tide turned for Lisée, who was trailing runner-up Alexandre Cloutier, late in the campaign after he accused his rival of being too close to controversial Muslim imam Adil Charkaoui.

Earlier, Lisée had chastised Cloutier, who is two decades his junior, for sending a greeting to Muslims on the holiday of Eid on the grounds that the PQ must uphold state neutrality.

While international relations minister in the cabinet of premier Pauline Marois from 2012-2014, Lisée enjoyed a warm relationship with then Israeli consul general to Montreal Joel Lion.

Together in 2013, they reaffirmed the importance of Quebec’s relations with Israel. In a statement, Lisée underlined the affinities between the two societies and said he wanted to strengthen economic ties and scientific and technological co-operation.

That year, Lisée was guest speaker at the Israeli consulate’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration, where he warmly recalled growing up in Thetford Mines, the town midway between Quebec City and Sherbrooke, where his father owned a grocery store.

He said that he liked Richler’s novels, if not his attacks on Quebec nationalism and, in particular, on one of Lisée’s predecessors, Jacques Parizeau, to whom Lisée was an adviser, as well as to Lucien Bouchard.

This past June, Lisée was one of only two MNAs to show up at the pro-Israel Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee’s social event for young adults in Montreal (the other was from the third party Coalition Avenir Québec).

Yet before he was first elected to the National Assembly for the Montreal riding of Rosemont in 2012, Lisée, a journalist by profession, was scathing in his criticism of Israel in an article in the newsmagazine L’Actualité.

That December 2010 essay was prompted by the brouhaha over Québec Solidaire co-leader and MNA Amir Khadir’s joining a pro-BDS demonstration outside a shoe store on St. Denis Street that sold footwear made in Israel.

Lisée felt it was inappropriate for an MNA, who at the time was dubbed the most popular politician in the province, to picket a small business, but he did not condemn BDS.

In fact, Lisée agreed that it is legitimate for consumers to “vote with their pocketbook” and that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is “perfectly understandable.”

“The State of Israel, in particular these days, deserves general reprobation,” he wrote.

Lisée suggested a boycott specifically of products from West Bank settlements, simultaneously with a campaign promoting Palestinian products, would be more effective. Targeting a small store selling a few Israeli products, he suggested, would only allow Israel “to sleep peacefully.”

“One can, like me, be 100 per cent for the existence of the State of Israel, wish for its permanence and security, admit that it has been the object of aggression from its neighbours throughout its existence, salute its attempts to conclude a durable peace…and in the same breath” oppose its occupation of Palestinian territories.

Lisée described the occupation and Israeli settlements as illegal under international law and Israel’s retaliation of Hamas rocket fire from Gaza “greatly disproportionate.”

Israel’s occupation meets the 2002 Statute of Rome’s definition of apartheid, he continued, in that there is “no doubt that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank [which he had visited] constitutes  ‘an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination of one racial group’ on another,” as does the blockade of Gaza.

Only two years later, Lisée, the international relations minister, and Khadir co-sponsored a motion in the National Assembly urging the Canadian government not to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority following the United Nations’ upgrading of the territories’ standing within the organization.

The motion was adopted unanimously.

Lisée later commented on his blog that this was a rare instance where the Quebec legislature had ventured into a thorny international issue and even more rare that it could find unanimity on a subject as difficult as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It spoke of “the necessity for Israel to live in peace within secure and recognized borders, as well as the right of Palestinians to self-determination and the creation of a state.”

Representatives from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) met with both Cloutier and Lisée separately in August.

“BDS was discussed, and it was clear that [Lisée] has no intention of supporting it,” said David Ouellette, CIJA’s associate director of Quebec public affairs. “He clearly does not see BDS as helpful. He disavows it today.”

Ouellette said he and Lisée had a spirited exchange airing their differences of opinion via their respective blogs when the L’Actualité article came out. Lisée had taken part in a CIJA-sponsored trip to Israel in 2008.

Overall, CIJA Quebec vice-president Eta Yudin said the meeting was “very positive” and that Lisée appeared to be “very sensitive to the priorities and preoccupations of the Jewish community.”

Harvey Levine, Quebec director of B’nai Brith Canada, declined to make any direct comment on Lisée’s election.

“We will wait until the PQ really establishes its platform in preparation for the next election… Obviously, the identity and secularism issues are always of concern, and whether they will bring that up again and how. We are always on the lookout for any comments on that, but we will wait until the party has a specific platform.” n