Will Canada Join Israel’s Next War?

Since taking office in 2006, Stephen Harper’s minority federal Conservative government has shifted Canada’s foreign policy sharply to the right. It has championed Canada’s role in the Afghan war and the use of “hard power” in foreign affairs and loudly proclaimed Ottawa’s allegiance to US foreign policy objectives and support for Israeli aggression in Lebanon and Gaza. Now, a junior cabinet minister has implied that the Canadian Armed Forces would fight alongside Israel in the next Middle East conflict.

On February 12, Shalom Life, the online magazine of the weekly Jewish newspaper Shalom Toronto, published an interview with Peter Kent, the minister of state for foreign affairs (Americas). “Prime Minister Harper,” Kent told Shalom Life, “has made it quite clear for some time now and has regularly stated that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

Whilst Harper, a proponent of Canadian participation in the illegal US-British invasion of Iraq in 2003, has lost no opportunity to voice his and his government’s support for Israel, he has not made any such remark, at least publicly.

The implication of Kent’s statement, reflecting as it does the wording of the NATO treaty, is that if Israel were to find itself at war, Canada would automatically deploy the Canadian Armed Forces to fight by Israel’s side. More