Six days after beginning its offensive, the IDF announced that it had already dropped 6,000 bombs or 4,000 tons of explosives on one of the most densely populated areas in the world. 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have no access to water, food, medicine, electricity, oil and gas. A million of them had to move. According to a preliminary assessment by the Gaza authorities, more than 3,400 Gazans, including more than a thousand children, have been killed and 12,000 injured since the start of the war.

And all this is not enough for Justin Trudeau’s government to call for an immediate ceasefire!

The prime minister states that he supports Israel’s right to defend itself “in accordance with international law,” while the United Nations, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, affirms that “the imposition of sieges that threaten the lives of Endangering people.” The deprivation of vital goods to civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”

Recall that last year, regarding Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, the Prime Minister declared that “indiscriminate attacks against innocent people are a war crime.”

Obviously, the massacre of Israelis by Hamas is condemnable. We’ll come back later. But Canada has a great responsibility in the current situation that the mainstream media is not highlighting.

Canada’s Role in the Partition of Palestine

In the discussions that led to the creation of the State of Israel, Lester B. Pearson chaired the first UN Palestine Committee, tasked with developing proposals for a political solution and originally affiliated with the UN Special Committee on Palestine, established in May 1947 belonged. Canada was one of the eleven “neutral” countries that sat on the committee, which was boycotted by Arab countries.

Canada’s representative on this committee was Supreme Court Justice Ivan C. Rand – famous for his decision giving unions the right to collect dues (Rand Formula) – who was sympathetic to Zionism.

In his book The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (Red Publishing)Journalist Yves Engler argues that Judge Rand was one of the main supporters of partition and an opponent of the solution of a unified Jewish-Arab state.

After the committee produced majority and minority reports, a special ad hoc committee chaired by Lester B. Pearson, then Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was established to find a solution.

The latter played a central role in pushing through the partition solution, so much so that Zionist groups gave him the nickname “Lord Balfour of Canada” or even “Rabbi Pearson.”

In State in the makingDavid Horowitz, the first governor of the Bank of Israel, quoted by Yves Engler, writes: “Lester B. Pearson was the dynamic force, the one who showed the way.” His support for the pro-partition forces was a crucial moment. His influence as one of the most respected figures in the United Nations was considerable. It can be said that Canada, more than any other country, has played a crucial role in the various phases of the Palestine debate. »

On October 17, 1947, Canada was actually among the group of 14 countries that supported the principle of partition, while 13 other countries opposed it. Canada supported a plan that gave the new Jewish state most of Palestine, even though the Jewish population owned only 6% of the territory and made up only a third of the population.

A decision guided by anti-Semitism

Yves Engler explains in his book that it is not a sudden sympathy for the Jewish people that leads the Canadian government to take such a position. Nor is it, as is claimed in certain circles, the strength of the Jewish lobby that has forced the Canadian government to act.

In the book None is too much: Canada and the Jews of Europe, 1933-1948 by Irving Abella and Harold Troper (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983), cited by Yves Engler, details the Jewish community’s inability to reverse Canada’s anti-Semitic immigration policies before, during, and immediately after World War II. Between 1933 and 1945, Canada accepted fewer than 5,000 Jewish refugees.

In fact, it is the anti-Semitism of the Canadian ruling class that partly explains support for the creation of Israel. In Ottawa, as in Washington and other capitals, the creation of the State of Israel made it possible to redirect the flow of refugees knocking on their doors to this part of the world.

geopolitics

But even more than the immigration issue, Engler says it is geopolitical considerations that best explain Canada’s position. Canada was very concerned about the disagreement between Great Britain and the United States over Palestine, which risked favoring the USSR, one of the first countries to recognize the existence of Israel, precisely to exploit the disagreement between the two Anglo-Saxon countries to emphasize it, if possible.

It is important to remember that relations between Britain and the United States were so strained after the war that a current within the Soviet leadership speculated about the outbreak of an armed conflict between the two countries. England saw its empire slipping away as the United States sought to replace it as the imperial power in the former colonies.

In the Middle East, England, although it had approved the creation of an Israeli state with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and had received a corresponding mandate from the League of Nations, was now targeted for fear of angering the Arab countries and endangering oil supplies. In this transfer of power between Great Britain and the United States, in this change of empire, Canada and especially Lester B. Pearson would play a key role.

The Jewish lobby

Since then, the Jewish lobby has become a major player in Canadian politics, joining the Liberal Party. Remember that in 2013, Justin Trudeau recruited his friend Stephen Bronfman to finance his race for the leadership of the Liberal Party. The latter quickly raised $2 million, which subsequently earned him appointment as chairman of the Liberal Party’s finance committee. In one year, Bronfman had already raised nearly $16 million, more than the Liberal Party had ever raised in any year in the previous decade. Stephen Bronfman was honored. He was the only person who was not from the Prime Minister’s family, a member of the government or a political staff, who was invited to the reception hosted by Barack Obama for Justin Trudeau at the White House.

Quebec-Palestine

Quebec has long expressed its support for the Palestinian people. We will remember a famous photo by Michel Chartrand with Yasser Arafat. This was during the time of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was a secular organization that united various political tendencies of the Palestinian people, with a democratic program calling for the self-determination of the Palestinian people and socialist inspiration.

Then the world changed. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Capitalism wins. American imperialism dominates. Socialist ideas are being discredited and neoliberalism is emerging as the dominant ideology.

But twelve years earlier, another major political event occurred: the Iranian Revolution, which opposed American imperialism in the name of Islam. In the ideological vacuum created by the virtual disappearance of socialist ideas, radical Islam is emerging, especially in Arab countries.

One of the most important resulting transformations is the replacement of the national factor by the religious factor. Gradually, the populations of the Middle East and the Maghreb are no longer identified by their national character (Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Palestinians, etc.) but by their religion, even if other religions are represented in these countries. It is an extraordinary historical, ideological and political step backwards.

Political groups will form with the program, no longer with the self-determination of the peoples and socialism, but with the program of political Islam, the creation of the caliphate on a global scale.

The history of this emergence of political Islam is too complex to summarize here, but it is proven that it benefited from the support of Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and even non-Muslim countries.

Today, for example, it is emphasized that Israel financed and encouraged the rise of Hamas to counter the Palestinian Authority. We will remember that the United States, with financial support from Saudi Arabia, armed the Taliban to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, only to see on September 11, 2001, the Saudis, led by Osama Bin Laden Towers of the World Trade Center attacked. We are seeing a similar turnaround with the Hamas attack.

In this new political landscape, it is clearly impossible for progressives to support Hamas militants who slit civilians’ throats and kill children while shouting, “Allah is the greatest!” »

But of course that does not prevent us, on the contrary, from denouncing the Israeli bombing of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing that Israel has practiced since its founding and which continues actively today with the fascist settlers supported by the army in the West Bank and which we suspect is the Intention with the order to evacuate the northern Gaza Strip.

It is our duty to denounce the Trudeau government’s support for the current Israeli government and its alignment with American policies. To strongly support Palestine’s right to self-determination and to extend our support to the democratic Palestinian forces.

To further investigate the issue, we recommend reading the following two articles:
Canada and Palestine, a deep illusion
From Rachad Antonius

A single democratic and secular state for Palestine/Israel
An interview with the late Palestinian Rezeq Faraj by Andre Le Corre