Canadian Jewish Groups Decry Country’s ‘Betrayal’ of Israel at UN

BY HUGH FITZGERALD, JIHAD WATCH

Justin Trudeau’s anti-Israel vote at the U.N.  is a “betrayal” but not, alas, surprising. When it comes to Israel, Trudeau is no Stephen Harper. He’s now shown he is willing to join the jackals.

The story is here:

Top Jewish groups in Canada have expressed disappointment after the country voted in favor of an anti-Israel UN General Assembly resolution earlier this week.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the advocacy arm of the Jewish Federations of Canada, called the move a “betrayal.”

“It contradicted explicit commitments made by liberal candidates during the recent election to maintain the principled opposition to the twenty annual resolutions whose sole purpose is to isolate and delegitimize Israel,” said CIJA co-chairs Joel Reitman and Jeffrey Rosenthal.

Since 2006, both conservative and liberal Canadian governments had rejected the resolution in question, which comes up for a vote annually.

Sponsored by North Korea, Egypt, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe and the Palestinian Authority, the resolution called for “an end to the Israeli occupation that began in 1967” and the preservation of “territorial unity, contiguity and integrity of all of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” It also criticized Israel’s West Bank security barrier.

Israel in 1967 did not begin an “occupation” of the West Bank. It began to enforce its preexisting legal right to the West Bank, which was, according to the Mandate for Palestine, part of the territory that was supposed to become the Jewish National Home.

As for the “contiguity” of some future Palestinian entity, that is linking Gaza and the West Bank, that could only be achieved by cutting Israel in two. Is that what Justin Trudeau wants Canada to support?

And the resolution deplores Israel’s security barrier without even a syllable about the Arab terrorist attacks that that barrier was supposed to prevent, and very largely has done so.

B’nai Brith Canada slammed Canada’s backing of the measure.

“In our view, the core of the conflict remains the refusal by Palestinian leaders and their supporters to recognize the Jewish People’s indigenous ties to the Land of Israel,” said B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn. “This is what the UN — and Canada — should be condemning.”

The “core of the conflict” is even more disturbing than Michael Mostyn states. It is not merely the refusal to recognize the Jewish People’s ties to the Land of Israel, but also reflects the refusal  of Muslims and Arabs to accept that any land that was once ruled by Muslims should be ruled by anyone else, and especially by the “despised and hated Jews.”(Qur’an 2:65).

“We call on Canada and the rest of the international community to press the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table, and to stop harmful practices such as rewarding terrorists and their families,” he added.

If Mahmoud Abbas still refuses to return to the negotiating table, despite all the imprecations from world leaders, including the Saudi Crown Prince, he is unlikely to do so now. Why should he, when at the U.N. Canada has “betrayed” the Jewish state by voting for an anti-Israel resolution, one it had voted against for the past two decades? Such a switch gives him hope that he will win more at the U.N. by standing fast in his refusal to negotiate with Israel. And if Abbas has continued the Pay-For-Slay program, despite seeing a reduction in the funds transferred by Israel to the PA in the exact amount that is included in that Pay-For-Slay program, he’s not going to care what Canadian Jewish leader Michael Mostyn, or anyone else, says.

Meryle Kates, executive director of the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs Canada, wrote her group was “stunned and disheartened” that Canada has joined “oppressive regimes like North Korea to condemn Israel at the UN.”

“The resolution harshly criticizes Israel’s security barrier, with no acknowledgement that it was built to stop a brutal wave of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada,” she noted. “It makes no mention of the 450+ rockets fired at Israel earlier this month by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. It also effectively labels the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem ‘occupied Palestinian territory,’ denying the history and rights of the Jewish people to the holiest site in Judaism.”

Liberal MK Michael Levitt expressed his concern about the vote on Facebook, arguing that UN anti-Israel resolutions “unfairly singled out Israel of [sic] condemnation, ignoring the crimes being perpetrated by many of the resolutions’ sponsors.”

“For example,” he pointed out, “Assad’s Syria was the subject of just one resolution, compared to eight targeting Israel. The situation in Venezuela, where the illegal Maduro regime is starving millions of Venezuelans and causing the largest refugee crisis in our hemisphere’s history, was entirely ignored.”

Michael Levitt could also have noted that all five sponsors of the anti-Israel resolution — Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, the Palestinian Authority (a quasi-state) – are among the world’s worst police states.

Israel has long been the favorite whipping-boy at the U.N. Most of us are aware of that, but few realize just how extraordinarily lopsided has been the attention focused on, and the denunciation of, the Jewish state. Of the 26 resolutions the General Assembly tabled this fall, 20 condemn Israel. Meanwhile, the police states of Iran, North Korea, and a handful of others have this year had one condemning resolution each. The disproportionate focus on Israel is also evident in both the Security Council and the U.N. Human Rights Commission (UNHCR). Just between 1967 and 1989, the UN Security Council adopted 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab–Israeli conflict, all of which were critical of Israel. And there were many  more anti-Israel resolutions at the Security Council that would have been adopted, had not the United States exercised its veto. Since 2006, when the UNHCR was founded, 46% of its resolutions have been about Israel, almost as many as for the entire rest of the world. Yet Israel is a democracy, with a strong human rights record and an independent judiciary that zealously guards human rights. Arab Israelis have full legal equality with Jewish ones; Arabs serve in the Knesset, in the upper echelons of the diplomatic corps, on the Supreme Court, and even — but only if they so desire — in the IDF, with some Arabs having risen to the rank of Major.

It is in this U.N environment that Canada, like other Western nations, has generally, though not always, voted against the most outrageous anti-Israel resolutions. But now, under Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, Canada has apparently chosen to side with the Arabs and Muslims.

The sudden shift by Canada raised questions about whether the vote was a response to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s declaration on Monday that Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank did not violate international law.

One Canadian government official confirmed that the move was meant to send a message to the US.

If the Canadian government takes issue with Secretary Pompeo’s statement that Israeli settlements “do not violate international law,” it need not have “sent a message” by wrongly joining in the latest gang-up against Israel at the U.N. It has other ways – they are called diplomatic channels – to express its disagreement with American policy. Canada’s Foreign Ministry could, if it wished, make public a statement taking issue with Secretary Pompeo. No need to bash Israel at the U.N. to “send a message” to Washington. And how good it would be if the Canadians charged with responding to Secretary Pompeo would surprise us all, by first studying carefully the legal status of those settlements. They should read the Mandate for Palestine and study the Mandate maps. They will discover that the West Bank was always included in the territory that was assigned under the Mandate for Palestine to constitute the Jewish National Home. They will further learn that Jordan was juridically the “occupying power” in the West Bank from 1948 to 1967, and that Israel had as much legal right to the West Bank as it did to Tel Aviv or Haifa or Ashdod. Only after the Six-Day War, however, was it possible for Israel to enforce that pre-existing legal right.

Rumors also circulated that Canada’s last-minute switch was meant to curry favor with Arab states as the country vies for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2020.

This strikes one as altogether likely. Matters of morality mean little for the likes of  Justin Trudeau, the self-aggrandizer who wants Canada — and thus himself – to play a larger role on the world stage. If he has to secure Arab and Muslim support for a Canadian seat on the U.N. Security Council by being among those throwing Israel to the wolves, he’s ready to do it.

“This resolution will do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians together for peace talks,” Kates said. “All it does is harm the Canadian government’s moral standing at home and abroad.”

One would like to think that this vote will indeed harm the Trudeau’s government’s “moral standing,” but so few, other than committed supporters of Israel, are paying attention to matters of morality at the U.N., and to the monstrousness of Canada’s last-minute vote change on that U.N. vote. Many people are inured to, seem almost to accept as a given, even if they don’t themselves approve, the great unfairness at the U.N. toward Israel. It is that mistreatment of Israel that former Ambassador Nikki Haley denounced so eloquently and ferociously at the U.N. during her time at the General Assembly and, one hopes, will continue to do so, from an even bullier pulpit, if she runs, as so many are hoping, for President in 2024.