The reasons for Canada’s ‘unwavering’ support for Israel

On the day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled it was “plausible” Israel was committing genocide and called for it to allow aid into Gaza, Canada suspended its assistance to refugees in the coastal strip. Failing to even note that Israel is legally bound by the World Court, Canada acted immediately after Israeli officials claimed 12 out of 13,000 Gaza employees at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) were implicated in Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

Two weeks earlier, on the eve of South Africa presenting its case to the ICJ against Israel’s genocide, Justin Trudeau posted a message on X with Israeli flags in the background boasting about Canada’s “unwavering” commitment to the country. 

Canada’s prime minister wrote, “to the members of the Jewish community who spoke with us today: Thank you. Thank you for speaking so candidly about your pain, your anger, and your grief. I hear you. I want you to know that our commitment to you – and to Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state – is unwavering.”

As Trudeau’s post suggests, Canadian support for an apartheid state committing genocide is linked to Israeli nationalist lobbying and Israel’s “antisemitism” shield. But other factors drive Canada’s pro-Israel position, including imperial geopolitics, settler solidarity, and Christian Zionism.

The roots of Canadian (Christian) Zionism

Like in Europe, Zionism’s roots in Canada are Christian. They flow from a more literal reading of the Bible that came out of the Protestant Reformation. At the time of Confederation, Canada’s preeminent Christian Zionist was Henry Wentworth Monk, who “took part in the first attempt at a Zionist agricultural settlement in Palestine,” his biography boasts. Six decades later, Prime Minister R.B. Bennett told a national radio broadcast for the 1934 launch of the United Palestine Appeal that the Balfour declaration and the British conquest of Palestine represented the beginning of the fulfillment of biblical prophecies. 

Bennett declared, “When the promises of God, speaking through his prophets, are that the home will be restored in the homeland of their forefathers … Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled. The restoration of Zion has begun.”

The son of a Methodist minister, Lester Pearson’s Zionism was partly rooted in Christian teachings. The memoirs of Canada’s most influential ever foreign policy practitioner refer to Israel as “the land of my Sunday School lessons,” where the diplomat who helped impose the unjust 1947 partition plan learned “the Jews belonged in Palestine.”

The influence of Protestant Zionism has waned as religious adherence has declined. Today, Zionism is particularly strong among evangelicals who believe Jews need to “return” to the Middle East to hasten the second coming of Jesus and the Apocalypse. Between five and ten percent of Canadians identify themselves as evangelicals. Canada’s most prominent evangelical Zionist activist is Charles McVety, head of Canada Christian College, John Hagee Ministries in Canada, and Canadians United for Israel. A number of Conservative Party MPs, such as Canadian Parliamentary Israel Allies Caucus Chair Leslyn Lewis, are evangelical Zionists.

While Christian Zionism is now associated with socially regressive right-wingers, it has a long history on the left as well. Famed NDP/CCF leaders Tommy Douglas and Stanley Knowles’ aggressive Zionism was partly motivated by biblical teachings. Knowles and Douglas were Protestant ministers and, as an indication of the extent to which religion shaped Douglas, his main biography is titled Tommy Douglas: The Road to Jerusalem.

Aggressive Christian Zionism still crops up in progressive circles. When I spoke about the Conservatives’ losing their bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2010 to a Council of Canadians meeting in Delta BC, an older woman interrupted me to ask: “are you criticizing Harper’s support for Israel? Doesn’t the Bible say Israel is the Jewish homeland?” 

As I’ve detailed, Green Party leader Elizabeth May studied to be a priest in an Anglican church with a long history of Zionism. In an expression suggesting she was influenced by Christian Zionism, May praised the colonial Jewish National Fund in 2013 for “the great work” it did in “making the desert bloom.”

Since Britain seized Egypt in 1882, Christian Zionism has been deeply intertwined with imperial politics. In an expression of this thinking, solicitor-general (and later prime minister) Arthur Meighen told a Jewish audience in 1915, “I think I can speak for those of the Christian faith when I express the wish that God speed the day when the land of your forefathers shall be yours again. This task I hope will be performed by that champion of liberty the world over — the British Empire.”

Once British strategic thinkers began to see Palestine as potentially valuable, Zionists became dynamic Europeans who could bring energy, skills, and capital to a “derelict” region inhabited by “a primitive people,” in the words of a 1945 letter quoted in Parliament from Herbert Mowat, head of the Canadian Palestine Committee. Just as French and English settlers in Canada were seen as a manifestation of God-approved European power and expansionism, so too were Jewish settlers in Palestine. Settler solidarity has long influenced Canadian Zionism. 

A reliable imperial outpost

Support for Israel has been based on the idea that it is a valuable Western military outpost. Of central importance to Canadian support for the 1947 partition plan was the belief that a Middle Eastern Jewish state would serve Western interests. An internal report circulated at External Affairs during the UN negotiations explained: “The plan of partition gives to the western powers the opportunity to establish an independent, progressive Jewish state in the Eastern Mediterranean with close economic and cultural ties with the West generally and in particular with the United States.”

Five years later, External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson explained this thinking in a 1952 memo to cabinet: “With the whole Arab world in a state of internal unrest and in the grip of mounting anti-western hysteria, Israel is beginning to emerge as the only stable element in the whole Middle East area.” Pearson went on to explain how “Israel may assume an important role in Western defence as the southern pivot of current plans for the defence” of the eastern Mediterranean.

Politically, culturally, and economically dependent on North America and Europe, Israel has been a dependable Western imperial outpost in the heart of the (oil-producing) Middle East.

Due to its Jewish/white supremacist character, Israeli society is overwhelmingly in opposition to its neighbors, heightening its geopolitical reliability. In all other US-backed Middle Eastern countries, for instance, the population wants their government to have less to do with Washington, while Israelis want closer ties. Israelis’ European and North American colonial character is seen to make them reliable.

Canadian intelligence has close ties to its Israeli counterparts and elite affinity towards that country is partly motivated by the large political, cultural, and economic role the military plays in Israel’s affairs. Israel is a successful Euro-American military outpost, and Canadian policy in the Middle East has generally been designed to enable U.S. imperial designs on a strategic part of the planet.

The role of the pro-Israel lobby

Bolstered by imperial logic, settler solidarity, and Christian Zionism, the pro-Israel Jewish lobby is highly organized. A slew of Jewish organizations campaign for Israel, and no other country/ethnicity/religion-focused lobby is near as well-resourced or organized.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is the leading force with over 40 staff and a $10 million annual budget. In addition, B’nai B’rith has a handful of offices across the country, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center Canada’s budget is $7-10 million annually. These groups work closely with StandWithUs Canada, CAMERA, Allied Voices for Israel, Israel on Campus, Honest Reporting Canada, and other Israeli nationalist political organizations. Additionally, more than 200 registered Canadian charities assist projects in Israel and engage in at least some pro-Israel campaigning domestically. There are also numerous Jewish private schools, summer camps, synagogues, and community centers that actively promote Israel.

All these groups are backed by substantial wealth. Patron of CIJA, the Jewish federations of Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Windsor, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Atlantic Canada raise $200 million annually and have over $1 billion in assets.

A large amount of private wealth also strengthens Israel lobby groups’ influence. Since 2013, the chief fundraiser for the Trudeau Liberals has been Stephen Bronfman, scion of an arch-Zionist family. Bronfman has millions invested in Israeli technology companies, and over the years, the Bronfman clan has secured arms for Israeli forces and supported its military in other ways. Bronfman openly linked his fundraising for Trudeau to Israel. 

In 2013, the Globe and Mail reported: 

“Justin Trudeau is banking on multimillionaire Stephen Bronfman to turn around the Liberal Party’s financial fortunes in order to take on the formidable Conservative fundraising machine…. Mr. Bronfman helped raise $2-million for Mr. Trudeau’s leadership campaign. Mr. Bronfman is hoping to win back the Jewish community, whose fundraising dollars have been going more and more to the Tories because of the party’s pro-Israel stand. ‘We’ll work hard on that,’ said Mr. Bronfman, adding that ‘Stephen Harper has never been to Israel and I took Justin there five years ago and he was referring at the end of the trip to Israel as ‘we.’ So I thought that was pretty good.’”

Other notable Canadian corporate moguls have long histories of ensuring ties between Israel and Canada. Worth more than $3 billion prior to his death, David Azrieli was among the richest Canadians. In his youth, he served in the paramilitary Haganah group during the 1948 war. His unit was responsible for the Battle of Jerusalem, including forcibly displacing 10,000 Palestinians. Azrieli was also a real estate developer in Israel, and in 2011, he made a controversial donation to Im Tirtzu, an organization an Israeli court deemed “fascist”.

Worth $1.6 billion, Gerald Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman created the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides millions of dollars annually for non-Israelis who fight in the IDF.

In recent years, Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams has plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into various sports and cultural initiatives to rebrand Israel. Other Canadian billionaires, such as Larry Tanenbaum, Mark Scheinberg, David Cheriton, Daryl Katz, Seymour Schulich, as well as the Zekelman, Reichmann, and Sherman families, all back Israel.

While substantially smaller, Canada’s Jewish community is more Zionistic than its U.S. counterpart. Eighty percent of adult Canadian Jews have visited Israel, which is twice the U.S. rate. On average, they’ve visited five times, and one in six have lived there for six months. According to a figure circulated by some in Canadian government circles, 5,000 to 6,000 Canadians currently live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

There are a handful of electoral ridings where Canada’s 400,000-strong Jewish community is a significant minority of the electorate. The most pro-Israel MPs in the Liberal caucus, Marco Mendicino and Anthony Housefather, represent ridings with a Jewish plurality.

While it taps into and stokes latent anti-Muslim sentiment, the Israel lobby wields a unique and powerful stick: The ability to play the victim and smear those advocating for justice as racist. Genocide apologists cry antisemitism whenever it suits their cause. In response to a November statement in which the PM said, “the killing of women and children, of babies … has to stop,” former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici posted, “Justin Trudeau is and always has been an antisemite.” While Bercovici staked out an extreme position, former Liberal MP Michael Levitt and other commentators expressed some variation of this perspective in response to the PM expressing opposition to the killing of babies (in the statement, Trudeau repeatedly condemned Hamas and even failed to explicitly call for a ceasefire).

Trudeau has repeatedly assisted the Israel lobby in bolstering the antisemitism shield. In a stark example of counterposing antisemitism with Palestine solidarity, the Trudeau government recently criticized South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel for purportedly impacting Canadian Jews, noting, “We must ensure that the procedural steps in this case are not used to foster Antisemitism and targeting of Jewish neighbourhoods, businesses, and individuals.” 

So, an international legal case to end a genocide is objectionable because it may impact Canadian Jews!

In a more sustained example of the Liberals strengthening the antisemitism stick, the Trudeau government established a Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism designed to deflect criticism of Israel. The initial envoy was Irwin Cotler, who began labeling criticism of Israel as the “new antisemitism” 40 years ago, and the current envoy is Deborah Lyons, who organized a pizza party for Canadians in the Israeli military when she was ambassador in Tel Aviv.

In The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, Norman Finkelstein details how the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry is used as an ideological cover for Israeli crimes. He links the rise of the Holocaust industry to the geopolitical service Israel provided Washington when it destroyed pan-Arabism in the 1967 war and cites the promotion of the “uniqueness doctrine” of Jewish suffering as offering Israel cover to violate all manner of international norms.

The most obvious current manifestation of the Holocaust industry is the apartheid lobby’s campaign to convince every Canadian educational institution and level of government to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism. Adopted by the federal government, the IHRA definition precludes calling Israel a racist endeavor even though it was born in ethnic cleansing and practices the crime of apartheid.