Canada has, in the past, rarely done anything to anger anyone. It has a history of being moderate, balanced and generally unjudgmental in its foreign policy. On the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular, it always took a middle-of-the-road line, its policies being rooted in seeing both sides of the problem. Unlike other Western countries, it has also maintained a welcoming open door to migrants from other parts of the world, notably to Arabs and even more notably to Palestinians. If generalizations can be permitted, it has been a Palestinian-friendly country — in marked contrast to its southern neighbor.
No longer. The decision by Canada to vote against a motion in the UN Human Rights Council condemning Israel’s brutal onslaught in Gaza and calling for an investigation into Israel’s human rights violations — the only country among the 47 nations in the body to do so — is astounding and abhorrent. This one-time principled country has thrown fairness to the wind and decided that it backs Israel all the way. To do so at any time would be bad enough; to do so when Israeli bombs are killing innocent Palestinian men, women and children in their hundreds is particularly repugnant. We reject Canada’s claim that the motion was unnecessary. If it thought so, it could have done as the Europeans did and abstained. To oppose it and call it inflammatory just because it did not blame Hamas for starting the conflict by firing rockets at Israel is downright offensive. It is Canada that is being inflammatory with such craven and disgraceful support for Israel. At a stroke, it has lost its credibility, honor and friends in the Arab and Muslim world.
There will be many who say that this is all the doing of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has rebuilt Canadian conservatism in the neocon image of the US Republican Party across the border and whose contempt for Canada’s liberal traditions is rarely far from the surface. There is a good deal of truth there. Only last week, in what looks like an act of appeasement, the first American woman soldier, who had sought asylum in the country to prevent herself being redeployed to Iraq, was deported back to the US. This is the same Canada that once accepted deserters from the US.
When it comes to Israel, Harper has certainly shown himself as determined an ally as George W. Bush. In 2006, when Israel invaded Lebanon in its botched but bloody attempt to destroy Hezbollah, Harper defended “its right to defend itself” and ludicrously called its action “measured” — although how anyone can see the 1,200 Lebanese who died in the conflict as being a measured response to Hezbollah’s killing of three Israeli soldiers and seizure of two others must be beyond most people. Not to Harper. He laid the Lebanese deaths wholly at Hezbollah’s door. Clearly since then, as his present unconditional support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and his determination to lay all the blame on Hamas both show, he has become even more of a pro-Israeli zealot.
There is, though, more to this latest wholesale backing of the Israelis than the neocon agenda of Harper. Opposition Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff also supports Israel. A week ago, he too said that Israel is justified in taking military action to defend itself against attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
Canada’s famed evenhandedness seems to have vanished. It has been replaced by blindness and hardheartedness. It is truly shocking.
