Rare Friends

"You are a great friend of Israel and the Jewish people, I am not just saying that, I mean it deeply from the bottom of my heart, and I am speaking for all of the people of Israel."
"This world is often cynical and hypocritical, and you have shown great moral leadership when it comes to fighting terrorism. You know that there cannot be any politically correct double talk, but only unequivocal condemnation and united international actions."
Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu

• Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Jan. 19, 2014. This is Harper's first official state visit to Israel, kicking off a six-day tour of the Middle East. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has taken quite the retinue with him on this, his first trip to Israel. He was accompanied by cabinet ministers, business leaders, bureaucrats, and, quite unorthodox, Jewish Canadian rabbis, among others. This is an occasion quite unlike most other such visits. Mr. Harper is held in extraordinarily high esteem in Israel by its Jewish population. And part of the reason for that esteem is Mr. Harper's reaction to the fact that this tiny nation, created as a homeland and haven for Jews has a relatively large proportion of non-Jews as citizens.

And of those non-Jews, Arabs, there will be scant love lost for Mr. Harper's and Canada's views on the need to support Israel.

As a liberal democracy, embattled on all sides by ill-will from its neighbours who have in the past given stark evidence of just how deeply engrained is that ill-will through a succession of collective military assaults for the purpose of destroying the country, Israel demonstrates its democratic credentials by its very acceptance of Christians, Arabs, Kurds and Druze, Bedouins, Africans, Vietnamese and a host of other ethic groups as citizens.

None of whom are restrained from representation in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).

Because of his unalloyed support for Israel as a Democratic nation within a geographic area noted for its rule by tyrants, dictators, oil sheiks and autocratic royalty, Israel has demonstrated its gratitude to this Canadian Prime Minister by pulling out all the diplomatic stops and more. More includes a bird sanctuary established in his name, the Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley bird sanctuary. More includes an honourary doctorate to be presented at Tel Aviv University.

Under Mr. Harper Canada stands out as unique in its relationship with Israel. But only under Mr. Harper.

Whereas previous Conservative-led governments have been friendly, as have been Liberal governments in Canada, they have all hedged their diplomatic bets, 'balancing' their support for the tiny state on a knife-edge of caution lest they incur the wrath and disfavour of Israel's surrounding Arab and Muslim neighbours.

Yet Canada too has been among those Western countries which have continued to dole out charitable donations to the vast refugee community which the Palestinians consider themselves to be, as victims of the creation of the State of Israel.

Since 1993, Canada has given $650 million to a corrupt, inefficient, and unanswerable leadership of the Palestinians. Who have used a good portion of the billions they receive annually from the EU, the US and the UN for slanderous public relations assaults against their neighbour, demonstrating in the process their prowess for manipulating international public opinion and their reluctance to use their resources to upgrade life for Palestinians.

A society so highly dependent on hand-outs it would collapse, unable to pay its bloated bureaucracy without them.

Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper surprised the world with its boycott of the Durban 'conference against racism', a thinly disguised venue to further demonize Israel as a human-rights abusing nation, and repeated its boycott in 2011. Canada supported Israel's defensive entry into Lebanon to stop Hezbollah from sending rockets over the border into Israel.

Canada opposed criticism of Israel at the Francophonie, and supported Israeli retaliation in Gaza against Hamas for sending rockets into Israel's border towns.

Canada's support for Israel at the United Nations General Assembly, its opposition to the vote to upgrade the territories at the urging of the Palestinian Authority to undercut the need for a peace agreement with Israel, giving it by stealth almost full UN membership status as a "non-voting member state" from a mere "entity", singled it out as Israel's most staunch ally.

More latterly, it appears that Canada may be on the cusp of an official recognition of the plight of the estimated 850,000 Sephardic Jews who were expelled from their traditional homelands in Arab and African countries after the creation of the State of Israel, their properties confiscated, leaving them stateless to turn to Israel for haven. At no time did the international community deign to notice this as a counterbalance to the estimated 750,000 Palestinians who fled Israel in fear and panic at its creation.

A number that has ballooned through the generations that followed to an estimated 4.9-million Palestinians who are recognized as "refugees". These refugees migrated to other Arab countries, but neither Syria nor Egypt, Lebanon nor Iraq or any country other than Jordan would give them citizenship status. Wherever they migrated to, they were barely tolerated. And from their perch in whatever country allowed them to live their lives in "refugee camps", they were encouraged to agitate for return.

And they still agitate to return to the places in Israel which they had fled, insisting that they and their children and their grandchildren have that right of "return". A return which would overwhelm the country and transform it into an Arab country. Israel's wish to be recognized as a Jewish state is refused outright for this very reason, although all the Arab countries are just that, Arab states, with no accusations levelled at them as "Apartheid" countries though they certainly made themselves Judenrein.

Israel does not ask for foreign contributions to aid its economy. The Palestinians continue to dine out on the guilt they impose on the world community to continue providing it with funding, much of which is corruptly sidelined by their leaders who spend more time instructing Palestinians not to cease "resisting" the "occupation", a circuitous harm leading to a persistent and ongoing situation where Israel must be present where it would prefer not to be to prevent attacks on its citizens by neighbours who have been taught it is their duty to do just that.

The alternative is to prepare the Palestinians to live with a neighbour able and willing to aid it to achieve a working semblance of responsible self-sufficiency, should they wish as they should morally and intelligently, to surrender their victimhood and grievance mentality for one of resolute independence.