The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research cordially invites you to its
23rd Anniversary Gala
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim
450 Avenue Kensington, Westmount, Quebec, CanadaDISTINGUISHED KEYNOTE SPEAKER
MOSHE ARENS
Former Israeli Defense Minister and Ambassador to the U.S.
Also Featuring
Prof. Barry Rubin
Outstanding internationally-renowned Middle East analyst
Tax receipts will be issued for the maximum allowable amount
For additional information. or to register for the 23rd Anniversary Gala,
please call Yvonne at 514-486-5544 or contact us by e-mail at yvonne@isranet.com.
HARPER COURAGEOUSLY DEFIES OBAMA, IN SUPPORT OF ISRAEL
Conrad Black
National Post, June 4, 2011
As befits a modest country unaccustomed to leading the world other than by homogenized measurements of the quality of life, Canada seems not to have noticed that Stephen Harper has kicked off his new term as head of a majority government with the assumption of the moral leadership of the world (in the usual unobtrusive Canadian way); and even more astoundingly, has done so by successfully contradicting the President of the United States.
Canadian prime ministers have only rarely publicly taken issue with American presidents, and never successfully. John Diefenbaker did a U-turn and refused nuclear warheads in Canada, but bought the American missiles that were supposed to deliver them anyway; John F. Kennedy quietly disdained the whole affair, and Mr. Diefenbaker was voted out as prime minister in 1963. Lester Pearson gave Lyndon Johnson his under-informed and unoriginal views on Vietnam in a convocation speech in Philadelphia, and LBJ conspicuously ignored him. Pierre Trudeau opposed Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (which produced the Euro-missile Treaty and led to the end of the Cold War), and his inane pursuit of arms control was ignored by Reagan and every other leader in the world except…the subsequently overthrown and executed Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu, and the terminally forgettable head of the unlamented state of East Germany, Erich Honecker. Jean Chrétien dissented from the American invasion of Iraq, and was ignored by George W. Bush, and the operation proceeded.…
But at the G-8 meetings in Paris last month, Stephen Harper prevented the group’s approval of Barack Obama’s call for Arab-Israeli peace “on the basis of the 1967 borders.” It was an outright veto by Canada, standing up to the Americans, and in non-confrontational dissent to all the others, who were prepared to let this stale bromide pass yet again. Mr. Harper had done the same thing at a Francophonie Conference in 2006, but that was only France, which has been playing footsie with the Arabs ever since Charles de Gaulle departed Algeria in 1963, leaving the oil behind and importing the Islamic problem into France. By killing it in the G-8 (U.S., Germany, Japan, the U.K., France, Italy, and Russia), Stephen Harper became the moral leader of the world’s statesmen, as the first head of an important country to debunk the 1967 fraud upon which the Arab-Israeli crisis, the longest-running and most definitive moral litmus test in the geo-political world (and least successful extended negotiation in history) is based.…
The Arabs started and lost the 1967 War; and in wars, the status of aggressors and defenders, and of winners and losers, is not interchangeable. The pre-1967 borders were entirely accidental, and left Israel nine miles wide at its narrowest, and the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem in Arab hands. They had no legitimacy and even the United Nations resolutions called for agreed and defensible borders, and a two-state solution. Israel has accepted a two-state solution and Palestine, its government comprised of both Hamas and Fatah, has not, and has shown no disposition to agree on borders, especially any that Israel could defend. It has been clear for decades that the pattern of international intervention in the Middle East has been to promote tangible and practically irrevocable concessions of land by Israel in exchange for insubstantial, easily and instantly revocable professions of reduced hostility, supposedly culminating in peaceful co-existence, from the Arabs. This is the problem of Land For Peace: Israel cedes the land but gets no closer to peace.
President Obama’s urging of the parties two weeks ago to “work it out” is a shabby euphemism for Israel to concede more land in exchange for more empty words in Arabic from the same entities that have yet to implement the Oslo obligation pledge of 1993 to acknowledge the right to exist of Israel as a Jewish state. That is what negotiations mean: preemptive, unilateral, ex gratia concessions by Israel, which is already the most legitimate country in the world, as Israel was created by unanimous vote of the United Nations Security Council permanent members, not merely admitted as a founding member or applicant. It is also the only one of the world’s 195 countries (including Taiwan, Palestine and the Vatican) under serious and constant threat of being eliminated as a country and exterminated as a population.
Also to be “worked out” under the Obama formula is the right of return, which is a euphemism for America abandoning its long commitment to Israel as a Jewish state while the Palestinians displaced from what is now Israel when that state was set up in 1947, may return in numbers to be negotiated, both to Israel, destabilizing it as a Jewish state, as well as to the Palestinian State to be established to accommodate them.
Those who oppose the existence of the State of Israel, for whatever motive, know that unless there is an unanswerable nuclear attack on Israel, which will not be possible even if Iran deploys deliverable nuclear weapons, given Israel’s retaliatory capability, Israel can be eliminated only by extracting gradual concessions. Keep bickering about settlements, while Palestine receives international recognition as an independent state; keep arguing about borders as the Palestinian population bulks up from returning alleged fugitives on both sides of the disputed and indefensible border; and never agree until the two states are one big, happy bi-sectarian and multi-cultural commonwealth. Then, absorb, enslave, expel, or massacre the Jews, yet again, as so often in their history, while the world sits in professedly righteous silence.
It might be that the world would be a quieter place without Israel. Europe, desperate for non-Muslim immigration, especially of skilled people, would probably admit the Jews, as would the countries of the Americas and the Antipodes, unlike the policy of most of the countries in these areas in the 1930s and 1940s, when half the world’s Jewish population was murdered, in what Mr. Churchill called “the long night of Nazi barbarism…made more sinister and more protracted by the lights of perverted science.” But it would be a collective capital crime on the soul and conscience of Western Civilization.
If what Obama, heir to the presidents who saved the Old World, sponsored Israel, and contained and defeated totalitarian communism, is advocating comes to pass, our civilization, morally, will die before, and less honourably, than that of the Jews, from which it came. And only Stephen Harper and the incumbent pope, among the world’s prominent current leaders, will have seriously dissented.
Whatever may come, Mr. Harper has brought great distinction on Canada, largely unrecognized, as proverbially happens among one’s countrymen, and upon himself.
HEED THE LONELY VOICE OF REASON OF CANADA’S PRIME MINISTER
Marvin Hier & Abraham Cooper
JTA, June 1, 2011
Pundits already are busy deciphering the performance of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his new foreign policy team at the just completed Group of Eight Summit in France. The G-8 meeting was convened amid pivotal crises ranging from global debt to human rights to nuclear energy safety, and how to nurture the complex Arab Spring impacting on 400 million people in the Middle East.
Canada is no injury-time substitute in this game. It has paid in blood and treasure in Afghanistan, is involved in the NATO campaign in Libya against Moammar Gadhafi and is a respected international aid donor.
So this time, what Harper had to say surely got a serious hearing from his peers, including President Obama, as nations as diverse as Russia, England and Japan strove for consensus.
They found some. The official communique discussed the role of the Internet, nuclear safety and support for development of the sub-Sahara region in Africa. G-8 leaders also apparently agreed that Gadhafi and Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, must go. On Syria, however, the leaders could agree only that they were “appalled” by the regime’s actions and demanded an end to the killings of protesters. Most significant, the leaders sent a powerful signal of continued support for the Arab Spring by announcing $20 billion in assistance for the democratic transformations in Egypt and Tunisia.
And then the G-8 leaders added, “We are convinced that the historical changes throughout the region make the solution of the Israeli-Palestine conflict through negotiations more important, not less.… We urge both parties to engage without delay in substantive talks with a view to concluding a framework agreement on all final status issues.”
That declaration came close to doing something that the overwhelming majority of protesters from Tunisia to Damascus never asked for: linking their drive for freedom to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Historically, such emotional pandering has been cynically deployed by every Mideast tyrant, from Saddam Hussein to Bashir Assad, to deflect from serious domestic problems. And it never helped a single Palestinian.…
It is no secret that Harper was the only G-8 leader who rejected Obama’s new push for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. Harper ultimately prevailed against the pressure to go along with the posturing of the majority.
While consensus building, especially in diplomacy, is an important goal and powerful tool, Harper’s position is that this time the majority is wrong. For Israelis who have fought five wars and absorbed suicide bombers and thousands of missiles, size counts. Even including the West Bank and the Golan Heights, Israel is 2,700 square miles smaller than Vancouver Island.
Israelis cannot go back to an “adjusted” version of its indefensible pre-1967 lines—dubbed the “Auschwitz borders” by the late Foreign Minister Abba Eban. If they did, they would still be facing 60,000 Iranian-supplied missiles from Hezbollah at the Lebanese border in the North and genocidal Hamas in Gaza. Israelis also would have to fear a renewed wave of suicide bombers who could literally walk from the West Bank into major Israeli urban areas, including Jerusalem.
Speaking of the Holy City, since 1967, the undivided city has facilitated millions of pilgrims—Jewish, Christian and Muslim—and maintained the status quo of the Muslim presence on the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism. No Israeli would ever agree to have to show their passport in order to pray at the Western Wall.
Stephen Harper has gained the trust and admiration of citizens of Israel and supporters of the Jewish state. On core issues of human rights, the United Nations and the Middle East, he has often broken loose from the obscurity and safety of the pack and exhibited real leadership.…
Harper often has been a lonely voice struggling against the din of politically correct attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and security. We can only hope that as he begins his new term as Canada’s leader that his lonely voice of reason will help calm the roiled Middle East and help set the stage for Israeli-Palestinian talks based on mutual respect and sacrifice.
(Rabbi Marvin Hier is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the center’s associate dean.)
O CANADA
Charles BybelezerCanadian Institute for Jewish Research, June 4, 2011
As someone who relates as closely to the land of his Forefathers as to the land of his birth, my “Canadianness” has for most of my life been relegated to the status of afterthought. But in fact a metamorphosis is currently taking place: I am growing fonder by the day of the country that is my home—Canada.
I need not convince anyone of Canada’s present standing as Israel’s most stalwart defender; this role has been assumed by Israel’s government, whose voice is much louder and infinitely more persuasive than my own. And for good measure, the Canada-Israel relationship is fundamentally strong, and morally correct.
This bond was further strengthened last week, when Canada afforded Israel an important diplomatic victory. At a summit in Deauville, France, Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper defied the overwhelming pressure exerted upon him by seven of the world’s most powerful countries and refused to include in the G8 leaders’ final communiqué any reference to an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders (not as a stipulation for signing an “historic” peace agreement with the Palestinians, mind you, but rather as a precondition for jump-starting negotiations). In the words of one European diplomat familiar with the internal proceedings, “The Canadians were really very adamant, even though Obama expressly referred to 1967 borders in his speech last week.”
In the words of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, during an appreciative phone call to his Canadian counterpart John Baird following the conference, “Canada is a true friend of Israel.”
It is not an exaggeration to say that at no point during Israel’s tumultuous history, has the Jewish state enjoyed such unwavering support from a country of Canada’s stature. Canada is by no means a superpower—its words do not carry the weight of a U.S., for example—nor is Canada a “game changer” in the international political arena. However, Canada is also not a “Palestine”-endorsing third world dictatorship, nor is Canada deserving of the bevy of stereotypical criticisms levied against it: “eh, Canada, eh.”
What Canada is, though, is a country globally perceived as moral, as good, as true. Canada maintains a position in the world that is both respected and admired (just ask the countless number of U.S. citizens who travel overseas with the Canadian maple leaf prominently displayed on their backpacks.) And so, when Canada stands side-by-side with Israel, the world takes notice. If Canada is just—and we know it is—then perhaps so too is Israel. This effect is real.
Canada has transformed into what the U.S. used to be claimed to be, Israel’s best friend. Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s leadership, Canada has routinely cast the lone vote against anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Human Rights Council, including a 2009 vote to condemn Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and a 2007 vote to place Israel’s “human rights violations” permanently on the Council’s agenda. Mr. Harper also infused a much-needed counterweight to the overwhelming anti-Israel discourse in the UN following Israel’s 2006 military incursion into Lebanon, calling Israel’s intervention a “measured” response to Hezbollah’s relentless terrorism.
Under Prime Minister Harper’s leadership, Canada has twice been the first country, preceding even Israel, to announce a boycott of the UN’s Durban conference (both Durban II in 2009 and the upcoming Durban III anti-Israel hate fest scheduled for September); Canada has greatly reduced government funding for anti-Israel “NGOs”; Canada has slashed its contribution to UNRWA, the UN organization founded to perpetuate the Palestinian refugee crisis; Canada has steadfastly supported Israel’s legitimate “blockade” of the Gaza Strip; Canada has repeatedly refused to criticize Israeli “settlement” construction in the Jewish people’s biblical heartland.
In 2006, Canada was the first country after Israel to cut off financial aid to the elected Hamas government, going so far as to openly refer to Hamas as “genocidal”; in 2009, when Venezuela expelled Israel’s diplomatic Mission, Canada swiftly moved in to represent Israeli interests in Caracas; Canada recently vehemently denounced the group Canadian Boat to Gaza, for its plan to sail to the Strip as part of a 12-boat flotilla next month; Canada continues to call for the immediate release of captive Israeli solider Gilad Shalit. The list goes on and on…and on…and what a marvellous list it is. But, most significantly, and in the words of Jerusalem Post editorialist Evelyn Gordon, Canada has “succeeded in making pro-Israel positions both respectable and electable.”
Yet this consensus was not always so widespread.
Indeed the skeptics were out in full force on November 8, 2010, the day Mr. Harper, at a conference on anti-semitism held in Ottawa, most explicitly avowed his loyalty to the Jewish state, the day he delivered the most impassioned pro-Israel speech ever given by a foreign leader. Perhaps, in retrospect, the doubters had merit; Harper’s words were indeed sensational. And a plethora of less overt promises had been made before to the Jewish state by other “leaders”, only to be violated at the first possible opportunity.
On that day, Mr. Harper affirmed: “When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.… Whether it is at the United Nations, or any other international forum, the easy thing to do is simply to just…go along with this anti-Israeli rhetoric…and to excuse oneself with the label of ‘honest broker.’ There are, after all, a lot more votes, a lot more, in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But, as long as I am Prime Minister…Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost.”
Mr. Harper’s comments may very well have been consigned to the too-good-to-be-true annals of history, if not for the fact that Mr. Harper himself can be described in this manner. Mr. Harper’s words resonate loudly today—he has steadfastly adhered to his convictions; he has fulfilled his oath to the Jewish people; he has been honest. Desptie serious backlash. Mr. Harper stared down the perverse global campaign to demonize Israel, along with its pervasive acceptance amongst the world’s political elite, and said no—no to tyranny, and yes to what is right, to what is true, to Israel.
This is the definition of integrity; it is the tangible representation of honor, a badge that Mr. Harper has earned, deserves, and proudly wears. It is the badge sported by a principled man, a true friend of Israel.
Yet Mr. Harper, like you and me is not perfect. And as good friends do, he must also be critiqued when it is warranted. For on the day of his unprecedented speech—November 8th 2010—Mr. Harper did, in fact, blunder.
On that day, Mr. Harper made one mis-step—it seems that, contrary to the Prime Minister’s assertion, there are not, “after all, a lot more votes, a lot more, in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand.” This was undeniably disproved when the Canadian people on May 2nd bestowed upon Mr. Harper his first Conservative majority government.
(Charles Bybelezer is Publications Chairman at the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
He can be reached at charles@isranet.com.)
