Conrad Black:Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s address to the Israeli Knesset this week was one of the greatest speeches ever delivered by a Canadian leader, ranking (in content if not delivery, though that was quite adequate) with Sir John Macdonald’s defence of his conduct in the Pacific scandal in 1873, Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s parliamentary response to conscription in 1917, and Pierre E. Trudeau’s speech at the end of the Quebec sovereignty referendum campaign in 1980. The content of the Knesset speech was generally accurately reported in Canada, but not widely recognized as a brilliant address, as a great milestone in the rise of Canada as a power in the world, a clarification of the moral basis of this country’s foreign policy, and as an episode that brings distinction on the whole country. The prime minister emphasized the historic connection between our country and the Jews, who have been in Canada for 250 years. He said that the pride in Israel exhibited by Canada’s 350,000 Jews is perfectly compatible with their Canadian patriotism. This was a worthwhile rebuttal of the hackneyed claim that Jews are compromised by “divided loyalties.” In its most extreme form, this libel became the basis of Hitler’s charge of treasonous betrayal in World War I, and of Stalin’s infamous persecution of Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans.”
Mr. Harper declared: “After generations of persecution, the Jewish people deserve their own homeland and the right to live peacefully in that homeland.” It was on this basis exactly that the United Nations created Israel, as opposed to merely admitting it as a member state, as the UN’s five founding members did with Canada and the world’s other nations. In the aftermath of the genocidal murder of half the world’s Jews in the death camps of the Third Reich (along with 6-million non-Jews), it was agreed that the Jews should have a homeland in the land of Israel. Read here.
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