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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 9/7/11

Canada's Shameless Record Getting Worse

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"In 1979, at the instigation of Israeli PM Menachem Begin, short-lived Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark announced plans to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the city.  Arab threats of economic sanction pushed the CEOs of Bell Canada, Royal Bank, ATCO and Bombardier, which all had important contracts in the region, to lobby Clark against making the move.  And embarrassed federal government backtracked, more worried about an important sector of corporate power than the pro-Israeli Jewish lobby."

There is another motivator that better accounts for Stephen Harper's Israel first, "whatever the costs" policy -- it has been suggested that it has to do with mobilizing his rightwing evangelical base.  As in the US, the connection to Israel is particularly strong among evangelicals who believe that the return of the Jews to Israel will hasten the second coming of Christ and the Apocalypse.  It was reported that a Conservative member of parliament recently gave a speech at a major Christian event in Toronto -- The MP for Essex delivered greetings from Prime Minister Harper, and said, 

"The creation of the state of Israel fulfills God's promise in Deuteronomy to gather the Jewish people from all corners of the world."

Engler notes that about 10 percent of Canadians identify as evangelicals (including a number of MPs in the government).  The president of the rightwing Canadian Centre for Policy Studies was quite explicit when he said, 

"The Jewish community in Canada is 380,000 strong; the evangelical community is 3.5 million.  The real support base for Israel is Christians."

Stephen Harper is himself a devout evangelical Christian, the third to lead the Canadian right (all from Alberta), and the first to attain national power.  He is renown for his absolute control over government messaging, and has thus maintained a relatively low public profile on the issue of evangelicals.  But the religious right in Canada know that Harper is one of their own -- the Founder of Canada's premier Christian talk show, 100 Huntley Street proclaimed "We've got a born-again prime minister!".  They see Harper as an image-savvy evangelical who will keep his signals to them under the radar, but it is clear that his faith will be translated into policies that will remake the fabric of the country -- and the evangelical influence is already strongly felt in Ottawa.

And so with respect to the pending UN resolution on Palestinian statehood, it is no surprise that Canada has already signaled its intent to reject any such outcome. Given its deep commitment to evangelical Christians, the Harper government is quite prepared to accept all criticism for its "slavish" support for Israel, and for turning a blind eye to the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people.  In a recent interview with a leading Mideast analyst, Rami Khouri, our reputation as a country that practiced "a sense of decency and fairness in its foreign policy" is increasingly being called into question.  Khouri had this to say,

"I think the critical point for any Western government -- Canadian, American, British -- is to differentiate between supporting the security of Israel and opposing the colonization policies of Israel.  Israel within its 1967 boarders is a phenomenon the world accepts, even the Arabs.

Any real friend of Israel should tell Israel, 'we support you, your security but we don't support what you're doing'."

Canada's reputation, as Rami Khouri says, is that of a fair and honest broker.  Under Stephen Harper's leadership of the Conservative Party, that reputation -- earned or not -- will suffer greatly, and the country will continue to veer hard to the right.  To appease his evangelical base, Harper will perpetuate the misery of millions of Palestinians, as we forfeit any semblance of moral standing in the world.

It is a frightening prospect that Stephen Harper now has a full four years to govern -- he is virtually unopposed in his power to implement his will and prerogative.

Postscript.  The power of the Jewish Lobby in the US has been well documented by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.  Their widely cited paper, as you may recall, set off a fire-storm of protest and recrimination by AIPAC and its operatives -- a sure sign that the authors were on to something.  If you haven't read the paper, do so this very minute.  (Read also the book by Yves Engler, Canada and Israel.)  Pat Buchanan famously called Congress "Israeli occupied territory", and it is well known that senators and representatives who don't rigorously uphold the interests of Israel will be targeted for elimination in the next electoral cycle.  And every presidential hopeful must make a pilgrimage to the national AIPAC convention to publicly acknowledge and proclaim their fealty to a foreign entity, often to the detriment of their own country.

There is something terribly wrong with a political system that funds another country to the tune of $3 billion annually, and then meekly allows that country to spy against it repeatedly. The interests of America and Israel are not the same (nor are the interests of Canada and Israel the same), yet politicians here in North America proclaim Israel first, "whatever the costs".

And then, of course, there's the evangelicals. Upon that base rests the power of the Jewish Lobby.  In America, and now increasingly in Canada, the separation of church and state is disintegrating, and with it the last vestiges of democratic liberalism.  

End.

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David Ruhlen is a writer and musician living in Canada. He notes with great alarm the profoundly negative trends that will increasingly affect us all. And the trends that have come to so completely reflect the human condition are these: (more...)
 
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