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Robert Fowler hasn't been reading Yves Engler's books
I've just watched retired diplomat Robert Fowler's speech on Canadian foreign policy at a Liberal policy conference.
And I couldn't help but think that Fowler was giving Canada far more credit than it deserves for its international conduct since the end of the Second World War.
Those foreign-policy misadventures were covered extensively in The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (Fernwood Publishing, 2009) and Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid (Fernwood Publishing, 2010), by Montreal writer Yves Engler.
I expect that Fowler's speech will be presented in fawning terms by liberal commentators in the mainstream media.
He's a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and former deputy minister of defence, providing him with all the right credentials to be giving Liberals advice.
Fowler was also kidnapped in 2008 by al-Qaeda while on a UN mission in Niger, which gives him moral authority to speak about terrorism.
Fowler began his speech by acknowledging that the Conservative government saved his life, though he didn't say exactly how. One can assume it was because somebody somewhere made a deal.
That didn't prevent him from excoriating the Conservative government for using foreign policy as a tool to win votes from ethnic communities.
In particular, he cited the Conservatives' willingness to blindly support Israel in the pursuit of votes from Canadian Jews.
Fowler also said that he believes the Liberal party has lost its way in foreign policy.
He cited Liberal politicians' willingness to cozy up to supporters of the Tamil Tigers and an independent Khalistan. He noted that some Liberal politicians have appeared at parades that glorify people who bombed an Air India flight in 1985.
"To this observer it seems that Liberals today don't stand for much in the way of principle," Fowler said. "I have the impression that they will endorse anything and everything which might return them to power and nothing which won't, whatever the merits of either.
"It's all about getting to power, and it shows," he continued. "I believe Liberals seem prepared to embrace an infinite array of special interests in order to shill for votes rather than forging a broad-based principled alliance founded in deep liberal traditions, one with a distinct social contract and an independent Canadian character which would protect, project and defend core liberal values at home and abroad."
He reiterated his view that the Afghan war was unwinnable.
Fowler's underlying message was that Liberals used to be fair-minded players when it came to foreign policy. He also claimed that Canada had a widely admired reputation for fairness and justice in the Middle East.
Engler's books suggest that this reputation came about, in part, because former Liberal prime ministers Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau effectively convinced the Canadian public that they were evenhanded.
Engler argues that the reality was quite different. In his latest book, he shows how Canada has always been a reliable ally of Israel, and suggests that it's a myth that the Harper government has suddenly changed policy directions.
To burnish his arguments, Engler describes how Canada has allowed registered charities to raise money to fund Jewish settlements in land seized by Israel.
Fowler said that the growth of these settlements is a driving force behind Islamic terrrorism around the world. But Fowler didn't acknowledge the role that Canada has played in promoting their growth through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Engler argues that Canadian policy in the Middle East is not really about winning Jewish votes because there aren't enough Jewish votes to make a big difference in Canadian elections. (As an aside, I've spoken to several Jewish people in Vancouver who opposed Israel's attack on Gaza in December 2008.)
Fowler, on the other hand, claimed that this was the main motivation for the Harper government's policies in the Middle East.
Instead, Engler maintains that the real goal of Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East is to support the American empire, which benefits from having a strong ally such as Israel in an oil-rich region.
Fowler didn't talk about the American empire in his speech. This leads me to conclude that this veteran diplomat probably hasn't read any of Engler's books on foreign policy.
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I can only assume Fowler either has not done his homework - or - he's actually a Zionist conspiracy nut (because that would be the only way to explain his belief that such a tiny percentage of Canadians could be so important and influential that they had to be wooed by politicians).
And no, I'm not Jewish
In doing so, he adopts Noam Chomsky's position, that the power of the 'Israel lobby" is exaggerated, and applies it to Canada, something Engler freely admits. However, in 2006, Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer published the essay, and then book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. In it, they argue that the U.S. does NOT benefit from its 'special relationship' with Israel. Quite the opposite. Their position is that the unconditional support the US provides to Israel is a net liability for US strategic, diplomatic and economic interests. Nor can it be justified on moral grounds. They also add that, absent the power of the lsrael lobby, the U.S. would, in all probability, not have invaded Iraq. (They are careful to point out that the invasion of Iraq was not solely a war for Israel's benefit.) Therefore, the argument goes, since support for Israel cannot be rationally justified on any of the above grounds, the only thing that can explain that support is the power of the Israel Lobby. (Their definition of the lobby includes Christian and Jewish Zionists.) Jeff Blankfort, James Petras, Gilad Atzmon, Uri Avnery, Stephen Sniegoski and a host of others think Chomsky (and, by extension, Engler) are wrong to downplay the power of the Israel lobby to the extent that they do. W and M argue that it would actually be in Israel's long term best interest if the U.S. treated it no differently than any other country, since it would then act less belligerently and recklessly toward its neighbors and would have more independence in formulating its own foreign policy.
Either way, I think the relationship between Israel and Canada should be an election issue and it won't be if Canada's political parties have their way. If they can have this debate in Ha'aretz, I don't see why we can't have it here.
And most fundamental or evangelistic Christians believe that God deals with nations in relation to how nations deal with Isreal. (The Abrahamic Covenant).
One of the more famous US Christian Zionists, Pastor/Professor George Bush, 1796-1859, first cousin of the great great great grandfather of the well known late 20th Century Bush political family, wrote a book titled, "The Life of Mohammed" (1831). Bush's book was the first book on the prophet published in the US and his opinions were often negative towards his subject calling Mohammed an "imposter" and has "foisted an arch delusion on his followers". The support for a Jewish state in Palestine among Christian Puritans (who considered themselves the New Jews) had been well voiced for a long time and Bush the Pastor was its outspoken mouthpiece in the decades just prior to the US Civil War (antebellum period).
This Bush called for "elevating" the Jews "to a rank of honorable repute among the nations of the earth" by re-creating their state in Palestine. This new state of Israel Bush wrote "will blaze in notoriety".
It is estimated that over 50 million of the 90 million Christian Evangelists in the US support Zionism. The Moral Majority movement, led by Jerry Falwell (a significant movement that significantly determined the election of one-time B-actor Ronald Reagan), had as one of its four principals the reinstatement of Israel on traditional Palestine soil.
Falwell led not only a Christian movement but a political movement that at its heyday had 400 radio stations and 80,000 pastors directly associated with the Moral Majority network. Falwell himself demanded that "every American Christian should be exerting all influence available to him in guaranteeing that his government is ever in total support of this land of Israel."
Now about Canada and its evangelists...
Many Canadian evangelists share the deeply conservative views of their US counterparts. The Canadian evangelist movement has a significant following in Canada and has become highly politicized in recent years with the election of the minority Conservatives and its leader Stephen Harper. When evangelists held a rally in Ottawa against same sex marriages in 2005, 20,000 of its followers showed up to hear its keynote speaker Stephen Harper say "we can win this fight". Prior to the federal election in 2006, the evangelists were lining up at Conservative riding nominations and getting several of their candidates nominated.
So rather than using population statistics to show that Jewish voters in Canada and the US don't amount to much, one should look at the number of Christian evangelists in both countries to see if this block of voters do attract opportunist political parties.
In the US voter turnout, prior to the Obama phenomenon, was very low, so even the 1-2% of Jewish voters could make a difference if they all voted.