Gone are those days when Canadian government refused to allow European Jews to enter Canada. MacKenzie King recorded in his diary that any action permitting an appreciable number of Jews to settle in Canada would undermine the unity of the nation: “This is no time for Canada to act on humanitarian grounds, but that Canada must be guided by realities and political considerations” – meaning Christian hatred toward the Jews and the World Zionist Movement’s need for increased Jewish population in the British mandated Palestine. Three Quebec MPs, Wilfrid LaCroix, C.H. Leclerc, and H.E. Brunelle lead the anti-immigration campaign. In the House of Common, Brunelle was reported saying: “Jews have caused great difficulties wherever they have lived”.
Irving Abella in the book ‘None is too Many’ says that while 125,000 European Jews were admitted by the British Mandate authority – Canada took only 5,000 of European Jewish immigrants.
How things have changed since then? Well, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper told the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee in May 2008: “Anti-Israel sentiments are really just a thinly disguised veil for good old fashioned ‘anti-Semitism’.” In March 2006 – Harper’s government became first member of the UN after the Zionist entity, which cut-off humanitarian aid to the Palestinian Authority as the result of the victory of Islamic Resistance group, Hamas, in an internationally supervised election. On February 24 – Harper’s two ministers, Bev Oda and Lawerence Canon blamed Israeli victims: “Hamas precipitated the recent crisis by its rocket attacks.” Contrary to these pro-Israel sentiments – Eva Bartlett, a Canadian human right activist, who was in the occupied Palestine during the 23-day Israeli aggression on 1.5 million Gazans, wrote on her Blog: “I was being shot at by Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence.”
The PM was proven right – when recently the Israel Lobby proclaimed the Jewish and Christian actors, academics and anti-Zionist activists as “self-hating Jews” and “anti-Semites”- who dared to protest the screening of Israeli propaganda movie Tel Aviv by the Toronto International Film Festival.
Yves Engler, a Canadian author, in a recent article entitled Canadian Government\’s Fig Leaf of Anti-Semitism, wrote:
“Today, Jews are largely seen as white people. Canada’s Jewish community is well represented among institutions of influence in this country and there is very little in terms of structural racism against Jews (which is not to say there isn’t significant cultural stereotyping, which must be challenged). But in an inversion of reality, the more anti-Semitism declines as a social force the more it concerns the political elite. Why? As a way to silence critics of Israel, of course. More generally, the Conservatives, supported by the Jewish establishment, allege anti-Semitism to advance a broadly pro-empire foreign-policy.
Despite the fact that Muslims and Blacks are more likely to be targeted – Jewish organizations have received 84 per cent of the funding announcements under a federal program that provides security for groups at risk of being attacked in hate crimes.
In April 2009 – two Liberal MPs presented a petition to the House of Commons claiming an increase in state-backed anti-Semitism in Venezuela. Former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said Venezuela has seen a “delegitimization from the president on down of the Jewish people and Israel.”
Canada was the first country to withdraw from last April’s World Conference on Racism in Geneva. Defending Israel was part of the Harper government’s motivation for pulling out of the conference; they also had little interest in discussing the dispossession of First Nations, colonialism or the African slave trade. An “anti-Semitic anti-West hate fest dressed up as anti-racism conference” is how one unnamed Canadian official described the meeting….”