Some Canadians seem puzzled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s expedition to Israel last week. They wonder what benefits Canada or Israel got from it.
They wonder what political advantage Harper gained or how he helped the peace process by embracing one side of what our department of Foreign Affairs’ website refers to as the “Palestinian-Israeli dispute.”
John Bell, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and Jordan, wrote a piece for Al-Jazeera with a headline calling Harper’s politics in Israel “baffling.” He said Canada, which could be a catalyst for Middle East solutions, has as prime minister someone who is mired in 19th-century myths.
I suspect Harper is mired in several myths, as shown by his belief that punishment is justice, his faith that pipelines knit a nation and that sovereignty is all that matters in the Arctic, and his peculiar version of the War of 1812.
The most frequent criticism of his expedition to Israel — with a contingent of hangers-on and camp followers that would have done Alexander the Great proud — was that it lacked balance.
In a speech to the Knesset, he praised Israel as “the light of freedom and democracy” shining in a “region of darkness” — the only Middle East country anchored in “the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”
He made no mention of illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territories, the plight of Palestinian refugees or Israeli incursions into Gaza and Lebanon as other world leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande did in Knesset addresses.
Harper said bluntly that he would not criticize Israel, but would leave to others “moral relativism” from which “more sinister notions” grow.
At least he didn’t fudge, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself indicated that those seeking balance would have been somewhat relieved by the leaders’ private conversations.
If Harper’s declaration of solidarity didn’t please everyone in that Israeli house of factions, it certainly pleased Netanyahu, for both live the world of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong.
I don’t understand the impression being given that Harper has changed Canada’s sacrosanct policy in the Middle East suddenly.
After all, Canada was one of 33 members of the UN Special Committee on Palestine that voted for the establishment of a state of Israel in 1947, despite pressure from Britain not to, and was one of the first to recognize it as such in 1949 after it was admitted to the UN.
In 2006, Harper called the Israeli attack on Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon “a measured response” to the kidnapping of a few Israeli soldiers.
In 2009, Canada alone voted against a UN Humans Rights Council resolution condemning Israel for an attack on Gaza without mentioning Hamas rocket attacks that provoked it. European nations, more cowardly, abstained.
Yet Canada’s policy hasn’t changed at all, unless the toffs in Foreign Affairs haven’t got the message yet. The department’s website still says Israel is a country without a capital and that Canada doesn’t recognize Israeli control over “territories occupied in 1967 (the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip).”
It also calls continuing Israeli settlements in the “occupied territories” “a serious obstacle” to “a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”
Bell is reported to have asked: “Are we going to change the policy document?” Of course not: Such an amendment wouldn’t fit into an omnibus bill.
Harper wasn’t preparing the ground for a policy change. He wasn’t, with 329,000 Jews in Canada compared to one million Muslims, seeking political support. He wasn’t, with the annual value of trade with Israel the equivalent of a day’s trade with the U.S., pursuing economic goals — though the steakhouse owners and toymakers accompanying him might have been.
Our PM might not have much time for the UN, but he feels comfortable on the world stage.
Remember his climb to Davos in 2012 to announce “transformations” necessary for economic growth and prosperity in Canada and to call old folks, like me, “a threat to social programs”?
Prime ministers often say things abroad that they’d rather not say at home — just to get it off their chests.
