History Repeats Itself with Canada’s Help

Alastair Gordon, Communications Director, Canadian Coalition for Democracies - March 11, 2004

In 1939, when the Nazi program to kill the Jews of Europe was well underway, 907 desperate German Jews aboard the S.S. St. Louis requested sanctuary in Canada. The Liberal Prime Minister of the day, Mackenzie King – who had previously flirted with Adolph Hitler and declared him to be “one who truly loves his fellow-men” – refused their request. Most died in the death camps of Europe. In 1942, 1,000 Jewish children in a French refugee camp were denied entry to Canada and, following the Nazi invasion, were shipped to Eastern Europe for liquidation. Of Jewish immigration to Canada, Mackenzie King’s immigration minister declared, “None is too many!” 

Of course today, we mourn these murdered refugees. We mourn the friends, neighbours, doctors, business people, teachers, writers, engineers, cab drivers, philanthropists, and scoundrels who would never be part of the Canadian fabric, because our Liberal government was indifferent to their fate and sought to appease their persecutors. With such a weight on our collective conscience, we will never again side with the killers of Jews. 

Or will we? 

When a Canadian Jew, Yechezkel Goldberg, along with 10 other innocents, was massacred recently by a Palestinian terrorist on a bus in Jerusalem, the Canadian Ambassador to Israel, Donald Sinclair, was ordered not to visit his grieving family because they lived in the West Bank, a place that official Canadian policy, as well as the suicide bomber and his handlers, believed should be Judenrein (Jew-free). By this order, Canada validated the racist grievance of the Jew-killers. 

How much has changed when Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is also the only country targeted for condemnation by countless United Nations resolutions? Since 1996, there have been 113 resolutions tabled at the UN condemning Israel. Canada’s vote was 78 yes, 35 abstain, and 0 no. Canada’s support for the vilification of Israel and the fact that precisely zero resolutions have been tabled criticizing the human rights violations of the Palestinian Authority tells us that this is an exercise in global bullying, not even-handed moral suasion.  

If Canada, as represented on the global stage by our Liberal government, was guided by a moral compass that reflected Canadian respect for life and freedom, we would have voted NO on every anti-Israel resolution. But what if Israel really is guilty of some imperfection that deserves censure? Until UN resolutions are applied even-handedly in the Middle East,

·        until suicide bombing is condemned as a crime against humanity,

·        until the Sudan is condemned for slavery and genocide,

·        until Syria is condemned for the illegal occupation of Lebanon and its support of terrorists,

·        until Saudi Arabia is condemned for breeding and nurturing the mass murderers of 9/11,

·        until the Palestinian Authority is condemned for its bloodstained brainwashing of Palestinian children to deny the existence of Israel and to hate and kill Jews,

·        until Algeria’s Muslim extremists are condemned for the slaughter of 100,000 fellow countrymen,

·        until Muslim nations are condemned for their misogynistic treatment of women,

then these resolutions have nothing to do with morality, and everything to do with the slander of a democratic people by those who seek to eradicate them. Instead of rewarding this one-sided persecution, Canada should vote NO loud and clear on every anti-Israel resolution, and do so until the day that such condemnation is spread proportionately among the malefactors of the Middle East. 

Some insight into the Liberal mindset was gained when Dr. Carolyn Bennett, Member of Parliament for St. Paul’s and Minister of State for Public Health, spoke recently at the Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto. Dr. Bennett is a signatory to an excellent document entitled Canada and the Middle East that questions many of the anti-Israel practices of the previous Liberal government. However, when it came to translating these criticisms into meaningful action that could impose a moral compass on our foreign policy, Dr. Bennett told the audience how the Liberal government would increasingly express its support of Israel by abstaining more often when anti-Israel resolutions were tabled at the UN, and taking baby steps toward to a more ethical Middle East policy. Abstaining? Baby steps? Where is the moral leadership in such a strategy? Of course, Dr. Bennett also said “It is essential when these attacks happen not to lay blame”. I beg to differ. Should we pretend that Israelis are randomly targeting innocent civilians? Or that it’s the Jews killing and maiming their own children in these outrages? We know that such fantasies are the lifeblood of terrorists and their supporters, and Dr. Bennett’s pretence that both sides are equally culpable, that no one side shall be singled out for blame, or that there is no rejoicing in the Arab streets whenever Jews are slaughtered, tells these propagandists and yarn spinners that their toxic mythology is working. With all due respect, Dr. Bennett, please tell your government to forget the baby steps, and just vote NO! 

But, hold on, the real reason for terrorism is the illegal Jewish occupation of Palestinian land. Our Liberals reinforce, rather than debunk, this mythology, a failure that leaves our government open to accusations of pandering rather than leading. For over 2,000 years, Jews lived and contributed throughout the entire Middle East, until anti-Semitism and physical threat drove the Jews from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Algeria, and every other Arab country. Today, the Middle East is 99.8% Jew-free and no Jew can safely live as a citizen except in a miniscule 0.2% known as Israel. This sliver of land – Israel – is all that Jews have left.  

The cleansing of Jews from the Middle East is evident in the following statistics. In 1948, the population of Jews in the Middle East outside Israel was 856,000. Today, a handful remain. By contrast, the Arab population of Israel was 160,000 in 1949, and today is 1,215,000, all full Israeli citizens. Yet, while Canada and the United Nations obsess over Palestinian displacement caused by Israel, they remain strangely silent on the displacement of Jews from 99.8% of the Middle East. 

And so here we are today, with 5 million Jews and 1 million Arabs living in a land without oil or other natural resources, and creating the only democracy in the entire region, the only country with world-class universities, hospitals, technology, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and rights for women, gays, and minorities. In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can vote for their representatives in free elections! Amazingly, Arabs are full members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and sit as judges in the Israeli judiciary. The deputy speaker of the Knesset is Abdulmalik Dehamshe, an Arab representative. Both Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have free access to the Israeli Supreme Court, and have won cases against the Israeli government.

Yet Canada’s voting record at the UN says that Israel is the only country deserving of condemnation. Our government appeases the killers of Jews hoping that, by joining the mob, “Damascus will return our phone calls”, to quote a prominent Liberal MP. Now there’s a goal that’s worth our complicity in genocide! 

Consider the foreign policy implications of the following actions:

·        Our former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, shakes the hand of the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed, after his now famous anti-Semitic speech in which he said, “today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them”.

·        That same PM exchanges pleasantries with the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrullah, who stated “I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings worldwide. Don't be shy about it”.

·        The Canadian ambassador to Israel validates the racist grievance of terrorists, and refuses to grieve with the family of an innocent victim of those same terrorists.

·        Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish says “the U.S. should cut off the $6 billion per year it sends Israel. That would get the Israelis' attention”, warning that we must not “overlook the influence of the Jewish lobby”, and of Palestinian terrorism, “It is a question of an occupied people who must resist by any means possible”.

·        Liberal MP, Pat O’Brien, calls the Israeli security fence “an atrocity” that “reduces the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the status of concentration camps” with no condemnation of the endless slaughter of Israelis, without which the fence would never have been built.

·        Our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bill Graham, last September defended Hezbollah, calling their social agencies “innocent doctors, teachers, and other people seeking to do charitable and other good works”.

When Canada consistently vilifies Israel and uses the flimsiest of excuses to defend her persecutors, we have to ask if the legacy of Mackenzie King lives on in the Liberal party of Canada. 

As Walid Shoebat, former Fatah terrorist turned Christian, said recently in Toronto, “The only illegal occupation in the Middle East is the illegal occupation of Palestinian minds by hatred”.  He also observed, “The Holocaust never ended. The only difference is that today the Jews have a country and an army”.

And so the Holocaust continues, and our Liberal government chooses to condemn its victims and appease its perpetrators. Can someone please tell me what’s changed since 1939?