December 9, 2019: Canada’s sudden shift on support for Israel at the UN

By Michael Regenstreif

The Jewish community in Canada, and the broader pro-Israel community (you don’t, as the old ad said, have to be Jewish to like bagels – or to support Israel), were shocked on November 19 when Canada reversed its position and voted “yes” on a nonbinding motion at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly affirming Palestinian self-determination; attacking Israel’s occupation of “Palestinian territory,” including East Jerusalem; and the construction of the separation wall by “Israel, the occupying Power.”

The motion – sponsored by North Korea, Egypt, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, and the “State of Palestine” – was one of the same recurring, one-sided anti-Israel votes that are passed each year at the UN. This year, the motion was supported by 164 countries while nine (including Australia) abstained.

The only countries to vote against the motion this year were Israel, the United States, and three Pacific island nations – the Marshall Islands, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia – that are heavily dependent on U.S. aid and generally follow its lead on UN votes.

Between 2006 and 2018, under prime minister Stephen Harper, and during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s first term, Canada reliably voted against this motion and the other one-sided, anti-Israel motions at the UN.

Although Harper’s Conservative government may have been slightly louder than Trudeau’s Liberals in its support for Israel, until now, at least, there was little difference between the two approaches. Official government policy including support for a negotiated two-state solution and opposing settlements in occupied territories, has remained unchanged.

So why the sudden change in that particular UN vote?

As Joel Reitman and Jeff Rosenthal, co-chairs of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) said in a statement the day after the vote, “the reversal of 15 years of Canadian opposition to the annual UN ritual of Israel-bashing represented far more than a let-down. It contradicted explicit commitments made by Liberal candidates during the recent election to maintain the principled opposition to the 20 annual resolutions whose sole purpose is to isolate and delegitimize Israel. This about-face felt more like a betrayal.”

The timing of the sudden shift was strange. There was absolutely no indication during the campaign for the October 21 federal election that a change in direction of Canada’s support at the UN was being contemplated.

Israeli Ambassador Nimrod Barkan told the Globe and Mail that Israel was only given a few hours notice that Canada intended to vote yes on the UN resolution.

“It was a surprise … We had no inclination or hint that Canada would change its vote on the regular annual UN resolutions and we trusted Canada, knowing that this is a circus of anti-Israeli resolutions,” he said.

Further to the timing of the vote, it took place just weeks after the election, and less than 24 hours before the new cabinet was sworn in. By then, Chrystia Freeland would have been well aware that she would no longer be our foreign affairs minister, and the identity of the new foreign affairs minister was still to be confirmed.

So where did the impetus to change the vote come from? Was it from bureaucrats at Global Affairs or officials in the Prime Minister’s Office? Was it from the outgoing cabinet or incoming Liberal caucus? Was it from Freeland or Trudeau? Or from Freeland’s successor, François-Philippe Champagne? We don’t know the answers to those questions.

A number of explanations have been floated for Canada’s about-face on the motion. One unnamed source at Global Affairs Canada told the CBC the vote was an objection to the Trump administration’s announcement the day before that the U.S. no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal. If that’s the case, the decision was sudden and made at the very last moment.

Another possible explanation is that the move was part of Canada’s campaign to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council in 2021. Canada’s support for Israel was the explanation for Canada not winning a seat there in 2010. But, surely, Canada’s “no” votes on other anti-Israel motions won’t make a Security Council seat any more likely.

As I write, on November 29, Trudeau has offered no explanation, while Champagne after being sworn in as foreign affairs minister said only, “I think people in the Jewish community in Canada and across the world see Canada as an ally but there are times when we must express our opinion and our position as we did yesterday at the UN.”

Meanwhile Liberal MP Michael Levitt reflected the views of many in the Jewish community when he wrote on Facebook: “If the intent of yesterday’s resolution on Palestinian self-determination was to affirm international support for a two-state solution, its lack of context, failing to recognize the historic and current security threats faced by Israel, undermines that cause.”

The sudden turn on the motion by a government that until now has maintained solid support for Israel at the UN – and, indeed, Canada voted no on other anti-Israel motions at the UN last month – and which embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and absolutely rejected the anti-Israel BDS movement, while also supporting Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution, is highly concerning. CIJA has launched a campaign to demand the government return to its previous position.

Campus anti-Israel acts show antisemitism

Meanwhile, there have been two recent incidents on Ontario university campuses in which criticism of Israel blatantly crossed over the line to antisemitism.

On November 14, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) rejected a proposal to support the availability of kosher food at university cafeterias specifically because the group lobbying to make kosher food available was the university’s Hillel branch, which it deemed pro-Israel. After much coverage in the local media, the UTGSU issued an apology for the wording of its original response to the proposal for kosher food availability, while stressing it had not yet actually “deliberated the request.” Meanwhile, the University of Toronto Students’ Union, which represents undergraduate students, did offer its support for the availability of kosher food.

And at York University, a pro-Israel event on November 20, was attacked by a violent mob chanting slogans like, “Intifada, Intifada, go back to the ovens,” references to the violent Palestinian uprisings that killed more than 1,000 Israelis, and to the Holocaust, in which the Nazis murdered six million Jews.

As the IHRA definition of antisemitism clearly states, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” These incidents, though, went well beyond legitimate criticism into antisemitism.

July 23, 2018: A few troubling sore spots

By Michael Regenstreif

Almost three years ago, after Justin Trudeau led the Liberal Party to victory in the federal election, I wrote a column suggesting Canada’s strong friendship with Israel would continue unabated under the new government (From the Editor, November 9, 2015). Stephen Harper, then the outgoing prime minister, had often been lauded for his strong support of Israel.

Indeed, Canada and Israel have maintained strong ties since Trudeau became prime minister. Just a few months after taking office, Trudeau’s Liberals joined with the Conservatives in passing a motion strongly denouncing the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. In the debate, Liberal cabinet ministers denounced the BDS movement as a modern-day form of antisemitism. And, on May 28, a modernized and more comprehensive Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement was announced by the two countries.

So while the relationship between Canada and Israel has remained strong, there have been a few “sore spots” in the relationship, which have troubled many in the Canadian Jewish community.

One is that the Trudeau government declined to follow the U.S. lead and move the Canadian Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That decision reflects the policy that “Canada considers the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Canada does not recognize Israel’s unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem,” and that an Embassy move should only take place after a settlement has been reached.

Former prime minister Harper has since stated that Canada should follow the U.S. lead and move our Embassy to Jerusalem as well. However, Harper made no move to take that lead himself while he was in office from 2006 until 2015 – and the official policy on Jerusalem quoted above is unchanged from the Harper era.

Two other sore spots came up recently over Canada’s response to Palestinian deaths during the violent protests on Israel’s border with Gaza.

On May 16, Trudeau issued a statement condemning the use of excessive force against the demonstrators and the loss of life and injuries. Trudeau’s statement came in the wake of a Palestinian-Canadian doctor being wounded while treating injured Palestinians on the front lines in Gaza. Trudeau’s major sin of omission was that he failed to mention the role of Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza, in engineering the violence or that many of the Palestinians killed were actually Hamas terrorists.

Then, on June 13, Canada abstained from a United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Israel for the violence in Gaza. The vote passed by a margin of 120-8 with Canada being one of 45 countries that abstained. (Canada did however support a failed U.S. amendment that would have recognized the role of Hamas and its ongoing campaign of rocket attacks in the conflict.)

There was a not-unjustified feeling among many in the community that Canada abstained rather than voted against the resolution condemning Israel because of Canada’s campaign to win one of the temporary seats on the UN Security Council in 2021. Canada’s support for Israel was seen as a reason it failed to win a seat in 2010. If that was the motivation, I doubt that an abstention will be seen as enough for the overwhelming anti-Israel bloc at the UN.

Disturbed by Trudeau’s statement and the UN abstention, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) arranged a meeting with the prime minister on July 5.

After the meeting CIJA CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel issued a statement saying, “The discussion was frank, constructive, and encouraging. The prime minister was very receptive and responsive to the issues we raised. He absolutely recognized the destructive role played by Hamas. He expressed full confidence in Israel’s capacity and will to hold its troops to a high ethical standard, rather than be singled out for an inherently biased international investigation. And he reaffirmed Canada’s support for Israel, and committed to be more vigilant in countering anti-Israel resolutions at the UN.”

Although we’ll have to see how future developments unfold, I would certainly feel encouraged by the results of the July 5 meeting.

June 20, 2016: Is there a lesson for Canada in the recent Israeli political upheaval?

By Michael Regenstreif

In my column last issue, I wrote about the recent upheaval in Israeli politics. At the time of writing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the process of replacing defense minister Moshe Ya’alon – formerly a distinguished general in the Israel Defense Forces who served as the military’s chief-of-staff – with Avigdor Liberman, who rose only to the rank of corporal in his brief military service.

Liberman’s appointment to the defense ministry – perhaps the second most important job in the Israeli cabinet after prime minister – had nothing to do with merit or qualifications. It was a purely political move. Netanyahu’s governing coalition was as weak as could be with 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, and Liberman brought with him the six seats of his Yisrael Beiteinu party. Netanyahu had no breathing room with a one-seat majority, but will be somewhat more secure with a seven-seat majority.

Liberman, who led Yisrael Beiteinu to just 5.11 per cent of the vote in the 2015 election, was able to demand – and receive – the defense ministry, even though it meant losing perhaps the most qualified cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s own Likud party.

There may be a lesson in this for Canadians as a parliamentary committee begins to consider alternatives to our first-past-the-post electoral system.

In our system, geographic ridings elect members of Parliament. With multiple parties and independent candidates, it is the candidate with the most votes – the one who is first past the post – who becomes the MP, even if he or she does not receive a majority of votes in the riding. It is then the party with the most MPs elected that forms the government. Most governments – even majority governments – in Canadian history have been formed by parties that have received less than 50 per cent of the popular vote. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau formed a majority government with 39.47 per cent of the popular vote in 2015. In the previous election in 2011, the Conservatives under Stephen Harper formed a majority with a very similar 39.62 per cent.

The last time a Canadian party formed a majority government with an actual majority of the popular vote was in 1984, when the Progressive Conservatives under Brian Mulroney took 50.03 per cent. They were re-elected in 1988 with 43.02 per cent.

One of the Liberal Party’s platform planks in last fall’s federal election campaign was the replacement of first-past-the-post.

“We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system,” said Trudeau in speeches on the campaign trail.

Proportional representation – in which a party’s seat-count in Parliament reflects its percentage of the popular vote – is one of the alternatives to first-past-the-post that some in Canada advocate. In the last election, if proportional representation had been in effect, the Liberals would have won the most seats, but would have needed to form a coalition with one or more other parties to form a governing majority. With proportional representation in a multi-party system, it becomes virtually impossible for any party to form a stable majority government on its own. Proportional representation also allows for the electoral success of small, often single issue, parties.

Countries like Israel that have proportional-representation systems are governed by coalitions. In the 2015 Israeli election, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud was first among the many parties with 23.4 per cent of the vote.

So, Netanyahu had to wheel and deal with other parties in order to cobble together a coalition. That’s why the two religious parties, which together received just over 10 per cent of the vote, are able to impose haredi Orthodox control on many aspects of Israeli society – from who may marry to which gender may read from the Torah at the Western Wall, and much more.

And that’s why Liberman – leader of a party that received just 5.11 per cent of the vote – was able to demand and receive control of Israel’s most important ministry.

Who knows what the parliamentary committee tasked with studying alternatives to first-past-the post will come up with? But I dread the possibility of small parties wheeling and dealing for control of important ministries.