Professing Faith and Friendship

"We know they did not vote in our favour [at the UN] but we respect their decision and hope circumstances will change and we will reach deeper relations than they are currently.
"Millions of heroes, or millions of free men are marching on Jerusalem ... We do not seek death but we welcome martyrdom if it happens."
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

"[It is in Canada's long-term interest to back a country where freedom, democracy and the rule of law are threatened by] those who scorn modernity, who loathe the liberty of others, and who hold the differences of peoples and cultures in contempt.
"Either we stand up for our values and our interests here in Israel -- stand up for the existence of a free-democratic and distinctive Jewish state -- or the retreat of our values and our interests in the world will begin.
"Criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself, necessarily anti-Semitism. But what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns the Jewish state, effectively denying its right to defend itself, while systematically ignoring the violence and oppression all around it.
"It is easier to foster resentment and hatred of Israel's democracy than it is to provide the same rights and freedoms to their own people."
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Israeli Knesset

There are those back in Canada snidely charging that this is a public relations event for Prime Minister Harper. That his passionate defence of Israel and his pledges on behalf of Canada are meant to curry votes at home in preparation for the next election in 2015. Those disingenuous allegations are absurd as theories, given the paltry population of voting Jews, even if they voted en bloc, and the far larger numbers of Muslim-Canadians and Arabs who will react in their outrage over what they see as favouritism and injustice.

News media coverage back in Canada alludes repeatedly to the expense involved in currying such electioneering favour by an official delegation of impressive numbers and a surprisingly large invited delegation of non-government agents, business people, and members of Jewish organizations and rabbis. All of whom, other than those invited to fly with the Prime Minister, his Cabinet colleagues and entourage, will be paying for their own flight to Israel. It is, in any event, the prerogative of the Prime Minister to invite those he feels to be involved in such a mission.

In his travels abroad elsewhere on similar missions, not just solidarity with another democracy, but a trade mission as well, he, as well as his predecessors -- think of the huge delegations that accompanied Jean Chretien on his missions to China -- took along countless interested business, legal and academics who might have been thought to be useful to the mission's goals. "Their presence will play a valuable role in helping to strengthen Canada's ties to this very important part of the world", said Steven Lecce, a spokesman for the Prime Minister, of the delegation which "consists of business and community leaders from across Canada".

This is as much a goodwill visit by a friendly country which has come to the side of another country embattled by political/religious/ideological cliques seeking to isolate it on the world stage, despite that it represents a liberal democracy respectful of human rights, extending the rights of citizenship to all its population, irrespective of ethnicity, culture, religion. Living within a hotbed of oppressive dictatorships whose populations have become restive to the point of insurrection, apart from those that have dissolved into violent dissent and conflict.

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper touches the stones of the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, during a visit to Jerusalem's Old City January 21, 2014. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Prime Minister Harper did what most people who travel to Israel have done; visiting Judaism's most holy site, the Western Wall (Wailing Wall), to pray himself, and to sign a visitor's book when he visited the country's memorial to the Holocaust, Yad Vashem, where he wrote: "They are remembered always, in our hearts, in our prayers and most importantly in our resolve. Never again."

His intention was to also visit the Dome of the Rock in east Jerusalem that sits atop the Western Wall, but those plans went awry when his Jewish bodyguard was refused entry.

Mr. Harper did have some observations to make himself of the news media and their incessant efforts to draw him out on the vibrantly contentious issue of West Bank settlements when he reaffirmed that his government's position is that unilateral action as he named it, "is unhelpful". He would not be stirred to comment further on the topic: "When I'm in Israel, I'm asked to single out Israel. when I'm in the Palestinian Authority, I'm asked to single out Israel. And in half the other places around the world, you ask me to single out Israel."

Israeli President Netanyahu had his own take on the visit and the questions surrounding it, validating that Mr. Harper had pressed him on the matter of the settlements. He refuses outright the condemnation issued from all points within Europe that the lack of a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is the cause of unrest in the Middle East. "Look almost everywhere, from Gibraltar to the Khyber Pass, and the whole place is imploding", he said, countering accusations with the reality that the dangers emanate from Syria, Yemen and Libya, not Israeli intractability.

As for the issue of the settlements, he said, Canada holds a "different position from Israel. I guarantee you that's the case. But the settlement issue has to be resolved and will be resolved in the context of peace negotiations. But it is not the core of the conflict.We know that because this conflict raged for half a century before there was a single Israeli settlement.
"To have genuine peace between us and the Palestinians, there must be a Palestinian acceptance finally of a nation state for the Jewish people. If the Palestinians expect me and my people to recognize a nation state for the Palestinian people, surely we can expect them to recognize a nation state for the Jewish people.
"After all, we've only been here four millennia."