What is driving Canada’s support for Israel?
Canada’s foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine has a very convoluted history.
While the King government supported the 1947 UN plan which partitioned Palestine and created the state of Israel, it also maintained a “none is too many” policy on Jewish migration through the 1940s, which closed the country’s doors to tens of thousands European Jews fleeing the genocidal Nazi persecution.
Similarly, while Canada supported partition and has consistently refused to recognize Palestine as a state and voted against Palestine’s membership at the UN, it did support UN Resolution 242 which called for Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after the 1967 war and imposed an arms embargo on Israel following the outbreak of the First Intifada in December 1987.
Clearly, Canada’s overall position has always been pro-Israel.
But within that framework, it has generally voiced consistent – albeit very soft – support for Palestinian statehood based on the 1967 borders. Canada also supported the creation and funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and it did not recognize the West Bank settlements as being part of Israel.
Over the past 10-15 years, that approach has hardened into a bluntly pro-Israel (specifically pro-Zionist) line which we see now. While this position was most aggressively promoted by Stephen Harper, it is reflected by both the Conservative and Liberal parties and, to varying extents, by other parties in Parliament.
One of the key elements of this foreign policy shift is the adoption by governments at all levels – federal, provincial and municipal – of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This definition is being increasingly institutionalized in laws and regulations and is used deliberately to demonize and shut down Palestine solidarity movements.
Policy follows economics
The development of Canadian foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine generally corresponds to the significant growth of Canada’s economic interests in the Middle East and North Africa region. This is particularly noticeable since the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA, first adopted in 1997) was updated in two rounds between 2014 and 2018. CIFTA notably covers products from the Occupied Territories in Palestine as well as Syria (Golan), marking a significant change from the previous official government position that the West Bank settlements are not part of Israel.
In the context of the deal’s updates, Canada’s trade with Israel has increased sharply to over $2 billion annually. In discussing CIFTA, the Canadian government singles out the area of military industry: arms exports to Israel have skyrocketed from around $7 million in 2014 to nearly $28 million in 2022.
But trade benefits with Israel do not alone account for Canada’s shameful support for the genocide in Gaza and they certainly do not explain Ottawa’s participation in efforts to foment a wider regional war, through such provocations as airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
There is a regional dimension to Canada’s foreign policy toward Israel and Palestine.
In the immediate wake of the 2014 CIFTA update, a whole series of trade deals were negotiated with countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. These include Benin in May 2014, Burkino Faso in October 2017, Cameroon in December 2016, Côte d’Ivoire in December 2015, Guinea in March 2017, Kuwait in February 2014, Mali in June 2016 and Senegal in August 2016.
The bulk of these deals are specifically aimed at facilitating and protecting Canadian foreign investment in those countries. As a direct result, Canada’s economic presence in the Middle East and North Africa region has greatly expanded. Global Affairs identifies the region as an economic priority for Canada, noting that trade with the area is growing at a pace that exceeds Canada’s overall global trade growth.
Regional instability and changing zones of influence
Of course, Canada is not the only big capitalist power with economic interests in the region. The US, Britain and European Union countries are all jockeying to protect and expand their control over trade routes and land resources, particularly oil and gas, which converge in the Middle East and North Africa.
This constant drive by the big (imperialist) powers to divide and redivide the world’s territory helps explain why the United States has nearly 30 military bases spread across the region including in Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and the UAE.
It also helps explain the participation, to various extents, of Canada, Britain and European countries in the US-led military overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011 and the ongoing proxy war on Syria and efforts to impose “regime change” there, which began in 2011.
The situation has become more unstable for imperialist countries, through the growing influence of China in the region. In particular, China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” provides a different conduit for international trade and development, one which many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (and beyond) see as an alternative to the Western-oriented models to which most have been chained.
This competition for influence is made more urgent by increased instability in the region in recent years. Since 2020 there have been six coup d’états in North Africa’s Sahel region alone, and virtually all of them have been oriented, to greater or lesser degree, against Western (especially French) economic interests. In at least one case, Mali, Canadian mining corporations have been involved in supporting a segment of coup forces, with the purpose of profiting from that country’s economic reorientation away from France.
Clearly, countries like the US, France and Canada – all of which have heavy economic interests in the region – stand to lose their grip, either to one another or to Russia or especially China, or even to the peoples of the states in the region itself. (Sudan, for example, has a massive popular democratic movement which is pressing for sovereignty and independence.)
In this context, we start to understand the motives and urgency for Canada to forcefully intervene in an effort to protect its economic interests – control over resources, trade routes and markets – and potentially expand them at the expense of other foreign powers.
Israel as a beachhead for imperialist interests
A big factor here is the urgent need for a stable base of operations in the region, and Israel – with a well-developed, Western-oriented economy and a longstanding political interdependency with the West – fits that role.
As foreign powers become increasingly frantic about shoring up their power and protecting their zones of influence, they are more and more willing to support increasingly aggressive and brutal Israeli policies, as long as they are a stepping stone to stability. “Stability” means, of course, protection and expansion of imperialist interests in the region.
Canada is part of this competitive drive, and this in turn shaped Canada’s foreign policy toward Israel, which has deteriorated to the point that it is supporting the genocidal siege of Gaza and opposing and even actively blocking efforts to achieve a ceasefire and withdrawal by Israel.
Dave McKee, Toronto Association for Peace and Solidarity (TAPS)