A friend of mine once told me, “Of
course I vote Liberal. I’m Jewish!” This seems to be a reflexive refrain from
most Jews in Canada.
The explanation is an entirely different essay, but lately, there appears to be
a shift in political allegiance with the Jewish vote.
Ask those who have switched their
vote, and it’s because the Conservative Party of Canada has been a steadfast
friend of Israel and the Jewish people, compared to the Liberal Party record.
The issue came to the fore recently
when the Conservatives mailed out a series of ‘ten percenters’ – partisan
leaflets that promoted their accomplishments. In Nov. 2009, one mailing tackled
the Conservatives’ position on Israel
versus the Liberals’ - causing a flap.
Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition went
into immediate damage control.
Thornhill federal Liberal candidate
Karen Mock, for example, paid for a half-page advertisement in community paper
the Thornhill Liberal [unrelated to the party]. Her rejoinder? She touted
select words from Ignatieff’s May, 2009 speech to Canadian Jewish Congress --
and claimed a Liberal victory for putting Hamas and Hizbollah on the terror
watch list. (She also accused the Conservatives of underhanded tactics,
peddling half-truths and a smear job.)
Each
Party, it seems, claims that they do protect the best interests of the Jewish
people in Canada,
and claim to have the best foreign policy towards the State of Israel.
A
party’s written platform might outline their policy toward towards Israel.
But a policy is mere words. A political party’s words and actions, through
individual MPs or as a group, demonstrate where they stand more than anything
else.
No question, the Harper government
is a steadfast ally of the State of Israel, and the Jewish people. Can the same
be said, historically and recently, of the Liberals?
The Liberals’ perceived recent
anti-Israel bias infuriated Ariela Cotler, the wife of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler,
enough such that she publicly quit the Liberal party over it. (She has since
rejoined.) But that’s the latest of a long line of suspicious Liberal policy
visavis the Jewish people.
Recall, that the Liberals as far
back as 1996 refused to join the International Holocaust Task Force.
In 2009, however, Prime Minister
Harper sent Jason Kenney to Prague
to submit Canada’s
participation. One source close to Mr. Harper had harsh words for PMs Chretien
and Martin.
“The [Liberal] PMO previously felt
that they did not want to elevate the Shoah [Holocaust] over other genocides.
But the Shoah is and was different. It was a worldwide conspiracy against Jews.
The Nazis abandoned their war time aims to gas Jews. You can’t study the Shoah
in the abstract. The Shoah is a case study of genocide.”
On PM Chretien’s watch, Canada
voted in favour of countless biased U.N. resolutions, slamming Israel.
In May, 1996, for instance, the Liberals strongly condemned (but Oslo Accords
approves) of Israel
for merely opening a door in a water tunnel that Jews built thousands of years
ago.
As if that weren’t enough to
demonstrate where the Liberals positioned themselves, they bowed to anti-Israel
resolutions at the La Francophonie conferences. At the Francophonie Summit in
2006 and 2008, however, it was the Harper government that stopped the
one-sided, anti-Israel resolution from being passed.
To be sure, we knew where Mr.
Chretien stood when it came to Israeli-Arab negotiations. In April, 2000, he
said: “Palestinians should use the threat of a unilateral declaration of
independence as a bargaining chip during peace talks.”
In Beirut,
in October 2002 Chretien met with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of
Hezbollah -- a terrorist organization devoted to destroying Israel.
When called on it, Chretien plead ignorance: “I didn’t know who he was.”
Liberal Deputy Prime Minister John
Manley as well as Chretien had opposed putting Hezbollah on the terrorism list, based on the flawed notion
that it does some charity work. (That’s the “yes but Hitler built the autobahn”
argument.) A year later, in December 2002, the Liberals finally got around to
banning Hezbollah. But it wasn’t truly voluntary. Bnai Brith was threatening
the Liberal government with a lawsuit to do it, and Mr. Chretien and his Liberals said ‘uncle’.
Moreover, Hezbollah’s ten-year
support and growth in Canada
had coincided almost exactly with Chretien’s tenure in office. Liberal Elinor
Caplan, on her watch as minister of citizenship and immigration, was the person
many say was most responsible for Canada’s
reputation as a haven for terrorists.
Chretien’s
successor fared about the same.
In 2004, Paul Martin’s Liberals
appointed Yvon Charbonneau, a former Quebec
Liberal MP and Palestinian sympathizer, as Canada’s
ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). (The organization ostensibly works with many countries promoting
peace initiatives and development projects.)
After the appointment, Stockwell
Day in the House of Commons recalled an incident in 1983 when Charbonneau
directed teachers in schools and colleges to put up posters referring to the
“genocidal war of the Israeli government” against Palestinians during the first
Lebanon war. In
that same year, Charbonneau supported a large demonstration in Montreal,
protesting a visit by Ariel Sharon, which infuriated Jewish groups across Canada.
On April 2002, following a month in
which Palestinian suicide bombers murdered 79 Israelis, Charbonneau delivered a
speech before the House of Commons, equating Palestinian terrorism with the
“terror campaign waged by Israel”
and accused Sharon’s
centrist-Kadima government of “turning Israel
into a rogue state.”
Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister
Pierre Pettigrew defended the Government’s appointment of Charbonneau. In yet
another twist of the knife, Paul Martin instructed Mr. Pettigrew to lay a
wreath at terrorist Yasir Arafat’s grave.
Once again, in an example of
not-so-subtle support of terrorists, in August 2006, Liberal MP Denis Coderre
attended a Montreal anti-Israel
rally, where Hizbollah flags were proudly flown. Some demonstrators were
chanting support for the terrorist organization, which calls for the
destruction of Israel,
while the MP stayed silent on the matter. Coderre, up until recent months, was
Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s defense critic.
Mr. Harper, in contrast,
unwaveringly supported Israel’s
right to defend itself in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict. During that same
time period, Michael Ignatieff vocally accused Israel
of “war crimes,” thus whitewashing the terrorist attacks against the Jewish
State. (Over a year later, when it was time to put in a leadership bid, he
publicly reconsidered his views).
For many Jews, it didn’t come as a
surprise, given Ignatieff’s past publicized beliefs.
In London’s
Guardian newspaper in 2002 Iggy compared Israel
to “crusaders” and “an Apartheid state.” So too, he wrote that Israel is
brutally repressive, he said that it is an “excellent idea” to swamp Israel
with the “entire Palestinian population,” and accused Israel as “extremist, and
part of a death cult, like the terrorists.”
It certainly didn’t help the Grits’
relationship with Canadian Jewry when, in December 2006, Liberal leader Bill
Graham during a parliamentary session sickeningly compared Conservatives to
Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. No apology was ever issued.
The Liberals consistently refused
to offer security funds for Jewish communities (except during the 2008
election, when they flip-flopped, pledging to outdo any spending on the
Conservatives’ platform).
Liberals repeatedly refused to
redress the St. Louis incident,
where 900 Jews fleeing the Nazis were sent back to Poland
from Canada
during the Holocaust. For the record, it was the head of immigration in Liberal
Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s administration who played a key role in that
incident, and, was responsible for Canada
holding the record for the fewest accepted Holocaust-era Jewish immigrants of
any Western country. Of the millions of Jewish refugees struggling to flee Europe,
only 5,000 were admitted into Canada
from 1933 until 1945.
The Harper government, however, in 2009
pledged funds to memorialize the St. Louis,
and MP Jason Kenney spoke on those efforts at a recent Bnai Brith conference on
the topic.
And while PM Harper giveth, he also
taketh away. In one of his first acts as head of state, he yanked funding from
the Palestinian Authority. It was Liberal leader Stephane Dion who demanded
that funding increase for the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority.
And in the two years since becoming
Prime Minister, Harper paid personal visits to Auschwitz
and the Mumbai Chabad House, and has been awarded the Simon Weisenthal Award -
and received an award from Canadian Jewish Congress.
Sure, Michael Ignatieff pledged his
support for Israel
in a 2009 Canadian Jewish Congress speech. I’m asking whether we can completely take
his word for it, or his party’s, given that both he, and his party, have uneven
track records on Israel.
Can mere words ensure to the Israel
supporters of Canada
that the Liberals are going to walk the talk from this day forward?
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