ANALYSIS | Israel’s new hard-right government presents new problems for Justin Trudeau | 24CA News

Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian teams in Canada do not agree about a lot, however the coalition authorities now being fashioned by Benjamin Netanyahu has each side frightened in regards to the future.

The arrival of Israel’s most right-wing authorities ever may even problem the Trudeau authorities — which has pursued the identical pro-Israel course as Stephen Harper, albeit with much less fanfare.

Netanyahu has at all times been on the appropriate of Israeli politics — it is his companions which have modified. A stream of corruption scandals rendered him poisonous to the extra centrist politicians who used to type coalitions with him, forcing him to show to events beforehand exterior the mainstream.

As the value of their cooperation, these extremist events have demanded and acquired key posts within the new authorities.

The scenario is a product of Israel’s freewheeling democracy, mentioned Shimon Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

“It allows groups with a very narrow perspective to be able to achieve some electoral success, but their very success is raising questions about the stability of Israel’s democratic values,” he mentioned.

Fogel is the primary to confess that the ensuing authorities will make his job of defending Israel’s pursuits and picture in Canada a lot tougher.

He mentioned he is hoping Netanyahu — and the realities of governing — will tame the extremists.

“What I can confirm is that there is some unease within the Canadian Jewish community,” he mentioned. “I think it represents a concern for ensuring that Israel reflects the same values it historically has, and that people here associate with it. So it’ll be an intense time going ahead.

“It’s inescapable to acknowledge that it’s going to symbolize a problem for Israel throughout the worldwide neighborhood.”

Israeli establishment sounds the alarm

That view is widely shared in the Israeli establishment.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog was recently caught on an open mic describing coalition partner Itamar Ben Gvir as someone “that the entire world round us is anxious about.”

Ben Gvir was convicted by Israeli courts of supporting terrorism and spreading hatred. He threatened the life of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the run-up to his assassination. Now, he’s taking over the ministry of national security, giving him control over policing in Israel and the West Bank.

Ben Gvir emerged from the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane — which was banned as a terrorist group by Canada, the U.S. and Israel itself. His new political vehicle is the Jewish Power Party.

Benny Gantz, the outgoing defence minister and former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Force, cautioned that Ben Gvir was building a “non-public military” in the West Bank. Former Jerusalem police chief Arieh Amit warned that under Ben Gvir’s control, Israel’s “police could possibly be serving to to carry in regards to the finish of democracy.”

‘Open season’ on Palestinians

This has already been a violent year in Israel and the Occupied Territories. James Kafieh, president of the Canadian Arab Federation, said things look set to get much worse.

“The apparent implication is that there’s nothing and nobody who will help and shield Palestinian human rights,” he told 24CA News. “It’s open season on the Palestinian inhabitants residing below this brutal Israeli occupation.” 

Ben Gvir has demanded the dying penalty for Palestinians who kill Jews — however not for Jews who kill Palestinians. 

“(Ben Gvir) is the quantity two associate on this coalition,” Kafieh said. “But it goes down like a rogues gallery.”

While Ben Gvir will control police in the Territories, coalition partner Bezalel Smotrich — another West Bank settler who has also spent time in jail — will have control over the Israeli civil administration there.

Mainstream U.S. Jewish organizations have denounced the inclusion of figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich in the new government. The Anti-Defamation League warned that their presence “runs counter to Israel’s founding ideas.”

Ex-PM calls coalition partner ‘extreme, racist’

The new government’s social policies are also seen as a threat by many secular Israelis.

“The most excessive and harmful figures in Israeli society are going to be essentially the most dominant in our youngsters’s schooling,” warned outgoing Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid.

He singled out Netanyahu’s coalition partner Avi Maoz — who will run Israeli schools’ outside programs and partnerships — as “excessive, racist, homophobic and harmful”.

Maoz ran on an openly anti-gay platform and has championed the cause of conversion therapy, now banned in Canada.

The Biden administration has sent warning signals to the new government regarding both the Occupied Territories and social policies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States expects to see respect for “core democratic ideas, together with respect for the rights of the LGBT neighborhood and the equal administration of justice for all residents of Israel.”

“We will gauge the federal government by the insurance policies it pursues somewhat than particular person personalities. We will maintain it to the mutual requirements we’ve got established in our relationship over the previous seven a long time,” Blinken said, adding that the U.S. will “work relentlessly to forestall any events from taking actions that might additional increase tensions and push the two-state answer even additional out of attain.”

The Trudeau government, meanwhile, has remained silent about Netanyahu’s government. It did not respond to a 24CA News request for its position on the new government.

Antisemitism rising

Fogel said he fears the new coalition could inflame an already alarming situation for Jews in North America who are witnessing the mainstreaming of antisemitism.

The hate has come from the right — as represented by the Holocaust denier who dined with a former U.S. president last month, along with the openly antisemitic Ye (Kanye West). It’s also come from the left, as in the case of Laith Marouf, who received over $600,000 in Canadian taxpayer money as an “anti-racism” trainer despite an open record of online expressions of hatred against Jewish people.

Jewish groups have also expressed outrage at the presence on Parliament Hill of activists who’ve expressed positions that aren’t merely anti-Zionist, however brazenly racist in opposition to Jews.

Palestinians, in the meantime, level out that Canadian politicians also recently met with extremists from the other side, such as Chaim Silberstein.

“The Jewish neighborhood is palpably extra anxious now than it was two years in the past, and for certain 5 or 10 years in the past,” Fogel told 24CA News. “We noticed a major spike when hostilities or battle broke out in Gaza a yr in the past final May, and that has probably not abated.”

With extremists seizing the levers of power in Israel, Fogel said he worries the Jewish community in Canada may suffer because of words and actions it has never endorsed.

“Some of the positions that they stake out are, if not antithetical, then no less than in important distinction to these issues that we take with no consideration,” he said. “Even the language that they use is oftentimes problematic.”

A shrinking coalition of strange bedfellows

The new coalition could put further strain on the Trudeau government’s increasingly isolated diplomatic stance.

The past month has seen Canada vote at the UN in support of Israel with a very small group of like-minded countries, while most of Canada’s allies lined up on the other side.

That’s because the Trudeau government has adopted the position of the Harper government and of successive U.S. administrations — that there is too much focus on Israel at the UN. To protest that, it opposes even those motions consistent with Canadian law and policy.

This past week, Canada and the U.S. opposed a motion calling on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. The only other nations to take that position were Israel itself, the Liberian government of evangelical former footballer George Weah, and Palau and Micronesia, two Pacific microstates that always vote with the United States.

Two weeks ago, the Trudeau government voted against a motion calling for a “complete, simply and lasting peace.” It was joined by the same small group of nations, plus two other U.S.-affiliated Pacific statelets (Marshall Islands and Nauru) and the pariah government of Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

Allies such as Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom have shifted their voting patterns in recent years away from Israel. That trend may accelerate under the new government, particularly if it pursues destabilizing actions such as building more settlements or changing the status quo around access to holy sites in Jerusalem.

Coalition members are currently in discussions about doing both of those things.

Ukraine, Canada disagree

On Monday, Dec .12, Canada will vote against a motion to refer the Israeli occupation to the International Court of Justice.

“Canada opposes initiatives on the United Nations and in different multilateral boards that unfairly single out Israel for criticism,” Global Affairs spokesperson Grantly Franklin told 24CA News. “Canada rejects one-sided resolutions at such boards that search to politicize such points.”

Kafieh said that Canada’s diplomatic shielding of the Israeli occupation is at odds with its stated principles. 

“It’s arduous to advocate that you just’re in opposition to a rustic occupying anyone else’s land in Ukraine, however not have any drawback with Israel occupying anyone else’s land in Palestine, within the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem,” he said.

“There is quite a lot of hypocrisy internationally, however Canada is within the embarrassing place of being one of many only a few international locations on this planet which might be nonetheless in lockstep with the State of Israel.”

While Canada rejects such comparisons, Ukraine itself has supported the motion to refer Israel to the ICJ. That led Israel to rebuke the government of its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

U.S. support getting shakier

Fogel said he hopes Canada will continue to vote with Israel at the UN. The bigger concern for Israel right now, he said, is what the U.S. might do.

“If the Biden administration finds that the presumptive Israeli authorities that ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu will type crosses crimson traces that it sees as incompatible with American values, it could search to precise these in not blocking condemnatory resolutions on the Security Council,” he said.

“That’s, I believe, one of many metrics that we would be able to use over the approaching interval to see whether or not the actual complexion of the Israeli authorities we assume goes to emerge has an impression on Israel’s standing throughout the worldwide neighborhood.”

Should the U.S. change its voting pattern, the Pacific island states that vote with it — which have a combined population smaller than that of Kelowna, B.C. — likely would shift as well, leaving Canada essentially alone with Israel.

Kafieh said the Trudeau government has shown a pattern of hostility to Palestinians that puts it out of step with both the world and domestic public opinion.

“They discuss a two-state answer, however they undermine it at each flip,” he told 24CA News. “Canada may as properly be on the market within the occupied territories constructing Jewish-only settlements for the Israelis. They do all the pieces they’ll to facilitate an unlawful occupation of those Palestinian lands.

“Canada was for South African apartheid until it wasn’t, until one day Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney sat together and they they realized that this was not viable. And there was wild support from the Canadian public for that initiative, which was decades overdue.

“The identical factor will at some point occur with regard to the State of Israel. The lid cannot be saved on. This is simply not a viable establishment.”