Harper's Ethical Insight into Israel

The Arab rejection of the Jewish state has been the main obstacle for peace in the region. Canada is right to give Israel our diplomatic support.

Perhaps no foreign-policy file, apart from Canada’s bilateral relationship with the United States, stirs more domestic controversy than Ottawa’s role in the Middle East, particularly under the present stewardship of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Critics view the strong public support Harper and his ministers have given Israel since 2006 as undermining Canada’s long-standing balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict.

For Harper’s critics, the troubling reality is that Ottawa has abandoned the constructive role of previous governments similar to that of the European Union to broker a peace settlement in the region.

The fact is, however, that there is not much for Canada to broker in this conflict, when Israel remains a besieged entity and her enemies remain publicly committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

It is to the credit of the Harper government that it recognizes the brutal reality surrounding Israel and that it sets aside the false idea that brokering peace requires treating Israel and her enemies even-handedly.

In the midst of the 22-member Arab League and the 57-member Organization of Islamic Conference – representing the Arab-Muslim bloc of member states voting together in the UN and regularly receiving support from most other Third World member states – there is only one Jewish state. It is the sheer disparity of these numbers that tilts the world body unfairly, even threateningly, against Israel.

The deep-seated hostility of the Arab-Muslim states and population against Israel cannot be explained on rational grounds of secular politics and history. Hence, any Arab or Muslim leader contemplating a diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by recognizing the historical rights of the Jewish people to have a state of their own in Palestine is haunted by the murder of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt for making peace with Israel.

Since the establishment of the Jewish state on the basis of the UN partition plan for Palestine of November 1947, it has been for the Arab states to recognize Israel as a sovereign entity in the Middle East. Any honest reading of this history shows it is the Arab rejection of Israel that has been the obstacle for peace in the region.

In these circumstances, an even-handed approach in dealing with Israel and her Arab enemies should mean giving the Jewish state “uneven” diplomatic support by leaning heavily in her favour. This would let the Arab-Muslim world know in no uncertain terms that Canada’s support for Israel is grounded in ethical concerns for the well-being of Jews and in recognition of their historic rights in Palestine with Jerusalem as their capital.

Such “uneven” support for Israel by Canada is ethically right, and it sends out multiple messages at home and abroad.

At home, it can help ease the terrible and deeply shameful memory of Canada’s refusal to open her doors to European Jews when they most desperately needed a safe haven to flee from Hitler’s Third Reich and his Final Solution.

And abroad, the message is Canada will oppose any effort that weakens Israel and encourages her enemies.

This message reaffirms Canada’s significant role in discussions that led to the UN partition plan and her commitment to the principle of that plan for a Jewish state and an Arab (Palestinian) state side-by-side in what was once the Palestine Mandate.

This support is ethical because Canada has not allowed itself to be misled by the niceties of diplomacy and has recognized that blame should not be apportioned equally for the subsequent wars in the region and their consequences.

Even-handedness in the Arab-Israeli conflict is simply conceding to the weight of Arab-Muslim numbers in world politics and leaving the Jewish state more exposed and vulnerable to her enemies. Even-handedness, moreover, is the unprincipled pragmatism of trying to appease the extremely belligerent forces in the Arab-Muslim world that refuse to make any concession to Jews and Israel and remain intent on eliminating the Jewish state.

Canada is geographically distant from the conflict of Arabs and Jews, while Israel is a small country and a lonely outpost of democracy in the Middle East. But how Canada, or any western democracy for that matter, relates to Israel is indicative of whether this relationship is grounded in ethical concerns or not.