From the latest issue of Middle East International

From Ian Williams

In January, Canada stopped contributing to the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency (UNRWA). It is the latest in a series of decisions
that have seen Ottawa ‘out-Israeling’ Washington. It had previously
stopped funding KAIROS (Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives), an
NGO that had been supporting human rights groups in Israel and the
Occupied Territories. In each case, the government of Stephen Harper
seemed to be responding to, or rather pandering to, rabidly pro-
Israeli Jewish groups in Canada. Israel itself has certainly never
encouraged an end to the funding of UNRWA, an institution that for
decades has, in effect, been paying some of the bills for the
occupation.

Although camouflaged internationally by a similar drift in British and
Australian policy, Ottawa has moved far from its own earlier
positions, and possibly farther than either London or Canberra.
Indeed, the Obama administration’s muted criticisms of Israeli policy
sound relatively ferocious compared with Canada’s gestures towards the
administration of Binyamin Netanyahu.

Once upon a time, Canada was a paragon of international virtue:
supportive of the UN and happily putting distance between itself and
its southern neighbour on the Middle East. Then came Stephen Harper.
Ottawa did not join the Iraq war, but that was more a function of
strong Canadian public opinion and Harper’s parlous electoral position
than any considered choice.

Canada led the walk-out at the Durban conference on racism and was the
first to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority when Hamas won the
Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. It applauded Israel’s
right to “defend itself” against Hizbullah (a “measured response”,
according to Harper), and against Hamas in Operation Cast Lead.

The move in the Conservative Party has also pulled the Liberal Party a
significant distance from the principles of Pierre Trudeau, leaving
only the New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois to uphold international
law. Indeed, the first turns in policy came under the previous Liberal
government, ironically with human rights stalwarts in its ranks like
Irwin Cotler and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who, in 2006,
suggested correctly that Israel’s shelling of the UN post at Qana in
southern Lebanon (in which a Canadian officer was killed) was a war
crime.

Ignatieff was criticised so strongly for his remark that he ended up
apologising for it, and last May he commented on the Conservative bid
for Jewish votes: “It is beyond reckless for political leaders to try
to score points by branding one another as ‘anti-Israel’ — to try to
win votes by claiming a monopoly on supporting Israel. My party will
never claim to be the only genuine defenders of Israel in Canadian
politics because I don’t want my party to be alone in the defence of
Israel. I want all parties to be genuine defenders of Israel.”

Yet why would anyone want to defend another country so uncritically,
let alone one that had killed a Canadian soldier? How did these
sincere defenders of human rights allow themselves an Israeli exception?

It is not just the multilateralism and commitment to the UN that have
been a cornerstone of Canadian policy since 1945, it is also the
particular application of that policy to the Middle East. To look at
the official Canadian Foreign Affairs website, a Likudnik might think
it had been drafted by the PLO’s legal department. Canada does not
recognise the annexation of East Jerusalem, considers the territories
to be occupied and the settlements to be contrary to the Geneva
Conventions. It calls the West Bank barrier illegal and supports the
Arab peace initiative, which is, of course, based on the 1967
boundaries.

Which leads to the basic paradox: why is Ottawa so fervent in support
of an Israeli government that flaunts its denial of all these
positions, whose prime minister only a week ago was declaring that the
settlement in which he was planting a tree would always be part of
Israel, and whose administration is evicting Palestinians from East
Jerusalem and building that illegal barrier?

If you delve into the official US State Department positions you will
find a similar, if somewhat less explicit, exposition of and support
for the accepted international legal position on the issues. But the
gap between Canada’s legal position and its diplomatic gestures is
amazingly wide.

On one level, it is a cynical electoral ploy. Canada’s Jewish vote is
small but concentrated in areas that include key marginal ridings
(constituencies). By pandering to Israel, Harper hopes to dislodge
enough votes to swing the balance. Some Canadian observers also
suggest it appeals to the evangelical element in the Western prairie
states that provides much of the Conservative vote.

On the face of it, the strategy could backfire since there are
approximately three times as many Canadian Muslims as Jews. Indeed, in
the absence of adequate polling, it is possible that ‘official’ Jewish
leaders, like many of their colleagues in the US, exaggerate the
degree of support for Netanyahu’s Israel in their traditionally
Liberal and liberal community.

It is also possible that they have gone too far with defunding UNRWA.
Penalising refugees to pander to groups of fanatics with dubious
political support seems to have provoked a backlash from many
Canadians, who want to know who made this decision, when and why.