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June 13, 2003
Stockwell Day holds a love-in
Audience at the Vancouver JCC goes wild for former Alliance leader.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Stockwell Day may have wished that his entire career had gone more
like his recent visit to Vancouver. Despite the presence of added
security for the presentation by the former Canadian Alliance leader
at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, any potential
dissent never materialized and the meeting was nothing short of
a love-in.
The outspoken advocate of Israel was the featured speaker at the
seventh Townhall meeting organized by Vancouver's Israel Action
Committee June 3.
Day gained a standing ovation even before his speech started for
his work as foreign affairs critic for the official opposition Canadian
Alliance. Day led the charge that forced the Liberal government
to add Hezbollah and Hamas to the list of banned terrorist organizations
under Canadian law. Day has also urged the federal government to
protest Libya's election to the head of the United Nations Human
Rights Commission and has condemned Canada's anti-Israel voting
pattern at the United Nations.
The member of Parliament for Okanagan-Coquihalla said Canada has
lost its international respect and influence under the current administration,
which, he said, has abandoned its natural allies, including the
United States and Israel.
He lambasted Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for providing $7
million in funding for the Francophonie summit in Lebanon, and for
attending the summit at which the head of Hezbollah sat in the front
row. Day got laughs for accepting Chrétien's explanation
at face value:
"He said he didn't know [that the terrorist was in the audience]
and you know what? I believe him.
"But when he was informed, he said nothing," Day added.
It is in Canada's enlightened self-interest, said Day, to support
democratic nations and institutions around the world because history
has shown that democratic countries almost never go to war against
each other.
The former Albertan went further than most Jewish speakers do in
defending Israel, arguing that Jews built a country on a land that
was inhabited mostly by roving tribes who did not have the kind
of connection to the land that Jews do, and that Israel has the
right to sovereignty over the territories because they won the land
during defensive wars.
"Israel had demonstrated the right, through attack [by Arab
states], to that land," said Day. "Israel and the people
of Israel have paid a price for that land.... Israel has paid the
price in war after war after war and it should be supported."
Day, who recently returned from a trip to Israel, took the cap from
his bottled water and held it against a projection screen at the
front of the room, comparing the bottle cap to Israel and the comparatively
enormous screen to the surrounding Arab world.
"[Israel] is surrounded by a sea of dictatorships," Day
said, adding that the Arab countries should have welcomed Palestinian
refugees the way Israel welcomed Jewish refugees from around the
world, instead of engaging in five decades of attacks on Israel
for usurping the land of the Arabs' Palestinian cousins.
Israel Defence Forces retaliate against terrorist attacks and the
world views the two events as morally comparable, complained Day.
"There is a difference that should be noted in our national
media and it is not," he said. "Israeli children go to
school in armored school buses. Palestinian children do not ride
to school in armored school buses," he said. Why? "Israeli
soldiers do not attack buses with Palestinian school children."
Though Day's support for Israel and criticism of the federal government
was passionate, some of the most fervent views were spoken from
the floor during the question and answer session. One audience member
took Day's criticism of the federal government to another level
when he asked the politician to try to explain the "Liberal
love affair with evil." Another urged Jews to remember the
party's stand on Israel next time they go to vote, while another
questioner argued that Day ignored the most relevant argument for
Israel, which the speaker said was that God gave the land to the
Jews.
Day responded to the latter comment by noting he had discreetly
acknowledged this argument at the beginning of his presentation,
when he cited "shared spiritual traditions" but that he
has learned some lessons about communicating.
"In our country, whenever a politician says the word God, some
people go berserk," he said, to laughter and applause. Day's
career as party leader was cut short in part because of the image
portrayed in the media of Day's fundamentalist Christian religious
views, which some criticized as outside the mainstream of Canadian
Christianity.
Though Day's speech was popular, the audience was not as large as
the previous Townhall meeting. While there were few spare seats
at Day's presentation, organizers had been forced to rig up a closed
circuit system for an overflow crowd that showed up to the previous
meeting, which featured commentator and former Canadian ambassador
to Israel, Norman Spector.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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