Jewish Liberals in Canada are slowly awakening to "what Liberal foreign policy is about."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper hit a raw nerve when he declared “virtually all” of the candidates vying to replace Paul Martin as Liberal Party leader were taking anti-Israeli positions.  Harper made the remark after leadership frontrunner Michael Ignatieff accused Israel of committing a war crime when civilians were killed in Qana during the 34-day conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon this summer.  Ignatieff made these remarks while being interviewed on a radio station in Quebec last weekend.  Earlier Ignatieff had drawn the ire of Quebec’s Lebanese community when he said he had not lost any sleep over the civilian deaths at Qana.  Well, he certainly made up that ground.

Ignatieff, who up until last year had taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, responded by describing Harper’s comments as “a disgrace” and that the Prime Minister had a “one-sided, black-or-white, blind-to-the-realities-of-the-world approach” to the Middle East.  But he did not back down from his assertion that Israel had committed a war crime at Qana, adding only that war crimes had been committed by both sides.  “Where crimes were visited on Israeli civilians, they were visited on Lebanese civilians,” said Ignatieff.  

Susan Kadis, a Liberal Member of Parliament from Toronto, resigned as Co-Chair of Ignatieff’s campaign in the Greater Toronto Area.  Kadis said she found Ignatieff’s remarks “troubling” and that she thought “he would have a better handle on the Middle East given his years of experience on human rights and international law.”  Ignatieff has since announced that he will travel to Israel and visit with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert next month.  However, Ignatieff can talk with Olmert until he is blue in the face.   Ignatieff will still call Israel’s action in Qana a war crime.  He will not admit that he was wrong.

Ignatieff’s chief rival in the Liberal leadership race, Bob Rae, angrily reacted to Harper’s remarks on a personal level, as his wife and children are Jewish.  “It’s untrue.  It’s a big lie.  It’s a big smear.  And it isn’t going to work on me.  And if he thinks he can get away with it, he’s sadly mistaken.”  To be fair, Rae did call Ignatieff’s ‘war crime’ quip to be “most unwise.”  However, during the summer, Rae was critical of Harper’s strong stance in favor of Israel and argued that Canada should take the lead in bringing about UN peacekeepers on the Israeli-Lebanon border — though he stopped short of calling upon the deployment of Canadian military to do so.  “The issue is not simply Israel’s right to defend itself – it is how to police borders, how to resolve tensions.”  But how does one resolve tensions with Hezbollah, whose raison d’être is the eradication of the State of Israel?

I was intrigued by Rae’s comments that it was dangerous “to suggest there is a pro-Israel in party and an anti-Israel party in Canada.”  Let’s rewind time back 4½ years ago.  In April 2002, Rae publicly broke with the NDP over then-NDP Member of Parliament Svend Robinson’s assertion that Israel was guilty of “state terrorism.” In an article he wrote in The National Post titled “Parting Company with the NDP,” he wrote:

Svend Robinson, the federal New Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs, has gone to Ramallah to show solidarity with Yasser Arafat.  In a recent interview, Mr. Robinson described Israel as a terrorist state and proudly declared that he had “taken sides.”

Mr. Robinson’s views are apparently now the official stand of the federal New Democratic Party.  They are not mine.

Rae concluded the NDP’s anti-Israel position, amongst other things, was “a vision of social democracy not worthy of support.”  When one reads Rae’s 2002 article one is clearly left with the impression that Rae left the NDP in part because it was an anti-Israeli party.  So how is it dangerous for Harper to suggest there is one pro-Israel party and one anti-Israel party in Canada?  Perhaps he should have suggested there are two anti-Israel parties in Canada.

For his part, Harper has stood by his remarks.  Of the eight Liberal Party leadership candidates, Harper said only Joe Volpe and Scott Brison condemned anti-Israel comments made by a number of Liberals during Israel’s fight against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Indeed, Volpe and Brison have paid a price among Liberals for their support of Israel.  When Volpe expressed support for Israel in its fight with Hezbollah, his campaign manager, Jim Karygiannis, resigned in protest.  In July, Brison said, “Israel does have a right to defend itself against unprovoked attacks from Hezbollah.  The fault in the initiation of this conflict was Hezbollah’s.  We should avoid a knee-jerk anti-Israeli positioning on this issue.”  Brison was lambasted by Liberal Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy, who stated that Brison, a former Conservative, “doesn’t really understand what Liberal foreign policy is about.  He’s almost at the forefront of a very small group of nations who say whatever Israel does is right . . . We’re becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution.”  Axworthy, now President of the University of Winnipeg, did not have any solutions to offer other than to keep Brison in line with what “Liberal foreign policy is about.”  Brison and Volpe are currently running seventh and sixth in a field of eight candidates.  

Along with Ignatieff and Rae, Gerard Kennedy and Stephane Dion are considered the only other candidates who have a shot at winning the party leadership this December in Montreal.  Kennedy, a former Ontario Minister of Education, called upon Israel to exercise the “utmost restraint” in defending itself while deploring “the fact that extremists from Hezbollah and Hamas have once again hijacked the agenda in the Middle East.”  Ummm, and what exactly was the agenda in the Middle East before Hezbollah and Hamas hijacked it?  Kennedy would only describe Hezbollah as a terrorist organization not to be negotiated with, when one of his prominent supporters, Boris Wrzesnewskyj, a Toronto area Liberal Member of Parliament, called upon the Canadian government to take Hezbollah off its list of terrorist organizations.  In an article that appeared in The Globe & Mail on August 3rd, Stephane Dion criticized  “Stephen Harper’s unconditional approval of the Israeli government’s military strategy, his apparent indifference to the plight of the Lebanese people, and his refusal to call for a rapid cessation of hostilities.”  The title of Dion’s article was, “The Liberal Party and Israel: a friendship based on frankness.”  Frankly, with friends like Dion, who needs enemies.

Well, Harper might have the last laugh.  Jewish Liberals are slowly awakening to “what Liberal foreign policy is about.”  The husband and wife team of Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman publicly left the Liberal Party this past August.  One might not think much of it except that Schwartz was once the President of the Liberal Party of Canada and Reisman at one time headed up the Liberal Party’s National Policy Committee.  Schwartz, who is currently the President of the Onex Corporation, and Reisman, who is the CEO of Indigo Books, joined six other individuals and took out an ad in the Cornwall Standard Freeholder praising the Harper government’s stand on Israel during the Conservative Party caucus retreat in Cornwall, Ontario this past August.

More recently, Ariela Cotler, the wife of former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, wrote a letter to The National Post announcing that she was leaving the Liberal Party over Ignatieff’s comments.  Mrs. Cotler accused Ignatieff of lacking moral integrity and of sacrificing the truth for political gain.  

Is the Liberal Party of Canada facing the same dilemma the Democratic Party is in the United States concerning Jewish voters?  In recent years, Jewish Democrats such as former New York City mayor Ed Koch, actor Ron Silver and director David Zucker have found that the Democratic Party has moved away from supporting Israel.  While they disagree with most of Bush’s domestic policies, they have expressed public support for President George W. Bush for his support of Israel and aggressive posture in the war on Islamic terrorism.  Similarly, most Canadian Jewish Liberals are likely to disagree with Stephen Harper on gay marriage, gun control and the environment, but a growing number of this group are willing to put those considerations aside and are prepared to cast a Conservative vote for someone who publicly recognizes the difference between a democratic Israel and Hezbollah terrorists.  This is what really has virtually all of the Liberal leadership candidates up in a lather.