The Liberals still feign outrage over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s contention their party elite is anti-Israel.
This feigned outrage stems from the flop-flops Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff made on whether Israel had a right to defend itself against hundreds of Russian-built rockets raining down on its soil or whether by defending itself it was committing a war crime.
Phew!—and Ignatieff is supposed to be an intellectual.
The basic truth—the irrefutable truth—is even if the Liberal party en masse isn’t anti-Israel, the Jean Chretien/Paul Martin government surely was.
In the column “Captain hypocrisy,” (April 11, 2004) I noted during the period when Chretien was PM and Martin finance minister—the second most powerful man in the cabinet—a staggering 113 anti-Israel resolutions came before the UN.
The resolutions condemned Israel for supposedly being a racist nation, chastised it for allegedly illegally occupying Palestinian lands, and other sham sins.
What did the representatives of the Chretien/Martin regime do about these resolutions at the UN against the only democratic state in the Mideast? Surely, Canada would defend Israel?
Guess what?
Not once did we do that.
Of the 113 resolutions, the Chretien/Martin duo backed 78 of them. On the other anti-Israel resolutions, Canada abstained.
We didn’t oppose one of these vile actions.
Just hid like cowards.
After Martin himself be-came prime minister, he told a Jewish audience Canada’s position at the UN would now change.
It never did. Not until Harper became PM.
An anti-Jewish tinge of Liberal governments goes back decades.
As the Second World War loomed, when Jewish men, women and children were fleeing Nazi-occupied Eur-ope and trying to enter Canada, Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King’s regime had that infamous policy: “None is one too many.” Jewish refugees were denied entry, sent back to Europe and ended up in the death camps.
Let’s look at the revered ‘Great Helmsman’ of the party, Pierre Trudeau.
He certainly didn’t have much time for Jewish people.
In a just pub- lished book by Max and Mon-ique Nemni, Young Trudeau: Son of Quebec, Fa-ther of Canada, 1919-1444 (McClelland and Stewart) it is revealed as a young man Trudeau was openly anti-Semitic, and admired Adolf Hitler and fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Here we should note the Nemnis are admirers of Trudeau, not detractors.
Yet, did Trudeau change his opinions later in life?
Hardly. As prime minister, when Jewish men, women and children were fighting against discrimination in the Soviet Union, trying to practise their religion unhindered and emigrate to Israel, rather than defend them he regarded them as “hooligans.” One of those supposed “hooligans” was the admired Natan Scharansky, who spent years in labour camps and is now a cabinet minister in Israel.
In the column “Canada bellies up to the PLO,” (March 3, 1999) I noted how then Liberal trade minister Sergio Marchi signed an independent economic co-operation agreement with the Palestinian Authority, and was pictured beaming and shaking hands with one of the world’s worst terrorists, Yasser Arafat.
In the column “Israel browbeaten by UN,” (Oct. 11, 2000) I noted how Chretien himself had not only been photographed shaking hands with Arafat, but urged Arafat to declare a unilateral declaration of independence from Israel.
The disgraceful Liberal record on Israel and its anti-Jewish stance in so many cases is impossible to deny.
Stephen Harper is giving our nation back its principles.
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