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His victory this week over the third-place NDP candidate is perhaps the more significant because of that backstory.

According to his public comments Manly has maintained that the NDP rejected him for petty political reasons, not because he said anything about Israel that violated its policies. The Green Party and NDP did not provide comment for this story before deadline, but at the time, a spokesman for the NDP said “issues” had arisen during its “confidential” vetting process.

“I have done nothing illegal or immoral, nothing that I am embarrassed about or which breaks the NDP constitution. The reason my candidacy is being blocked is political,” Manly wrote in an announcement on his Facebook page June 30, 2014.

“I have not received a written reason for this refusal and was told I will not receive a written reason. I was told verbally on the phone, that the reason was in relation to ‘what I said and did when my father was in Israel.’ There was also concern that I was running to make Israel and Palestine an election issue.” Manly went on to say he’d had no intention of bringing the conflict, which remains a divisive issue in Canadian politics writ large, into his campaign.

Photo by Handout/File

In the public letter Manly detailed how his father Jim had been detained by Israeli authorities in international waters in October 2012, with a humanitarian mission that had been trying to breach Israel’s sea blockade of the Gaza strip. The former MP was released after three days, but not before his family made vocal appeals for his release.