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When the UN Human Rights Council voted in March to
condemn Israel for a recent armed invasion of the Gaza Strip that claimed
more than 120 lives, many of them civilian, and accused Israel of war
crimes, the lone dissenter was Canada. The vote was 33 to 1, with13
countries abstaining. (Israel and the U.S. are not members of the UNHRC.)
That vote was not a radical departure from the past
position of Canadian governments, which backed the creation of the
Zionist state in 1947 at the expense of the Palestinian people. But it
does denote a more blatant backing of Zionist apartheid.
Since 1997, Israel and Canada have had a free-trade
agreement, and two-way commerce has more than doubled since then.
The Stephen Harper Conservative regime was the first
government in the world to cut off aid to Palestine after Hamas won the
Palestinian election in January 2006.
In January 2008 Canada announced it was pulling out of
a UN anti-racism conference slated for next year in Durban, South Africa,
due to fear the gathering will express opposition to Israeli apartheid,
as occurred at a similar meeting there in 2001.
Even Washington, Israel’s main financial supporter and
supplier, is more critical of Israel than Ottawa. During a visit to
Jerusalem in January, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke out
against continuing Israeli housing construction in East Jerusalem on land
it annexed in 1967 and now occupies illegally, as far as most of the
world is concerned. But, only days later in the same city, Canada’s
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxine Bernier declined to express specific
opposition to Israeli settlement activity in East Jerusalem.
While Canada keeps a diplomatic office in Ramallah, the West
Bank capital, and contributed a paltry $39 million in aid to Palestine in
2006-07, Harper excused the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in August 2006,
and backs the military encirclement and starvation of Gaza’s population
to the present day.
While not a political rupture, these moves do
constitute a deepening of Canadian imperialist hostility towards
Palestinians and oppressed peoples everywhere, and clearly call for a
renewed effort of challenge and resistance across Canada.
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