A two-state solution?

Editorial

Successfully advocating for Israel can take imagination and innovation. The challenges the country faces in international public opinion are daunting, and helping people understand the issues in new ways is an important part of changing negative perceptions to more nuanced and positive ones. However, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), Canada’s Zionist umbrella organization, overstepped the line recently.

An article published in the Jerusalem Post by Richard Marceau, a former Bloc Quebecois member of Parliament who now works for CIJA, holds up Israel as a model of inspiration for nascent small countries.

On the face of it, the thesis is absolutely correct. Israel’s extraordinary emergence from a desolate, resource-free desert to a global powerhouse in education, technology, science, medicine, agriculture and human rights is justifiably a model for emerging countries in the developing world and elsewhere. In the 1950s and ’60s, Israel offered its experience to the newly independent nations of Africa, a partnership that was effectively shattered when the Arab world pressured the African states to break off relations with Israel after the 1967 war. The loss suffered by emerging nations as a result of Arab politics is incalculable. Israel still does an immense amount of work in the developing world, but it is far more controversial than it should be, due to political calculations that defy the self-interest of Israel’s partner countries.

In his article, Marceau speaks supportively of Israel’s achievements in propagating a minority language in an otherwise unilingual sea. He emphasizes the high-tech economy encouraged by economic planners in both Israel and Quebec. He even notes the parallels of each jurisdiction’s quiet capital (Quebec City/Jerusalem) and “fun-loving metropolis” (Montreal/Tel Aviv). To his credit, he also acknowledges that Quebec has no neighbors bent on its annihilation and that no genocide has been committed against French Canadians. He writes: “For a Quebec nationalist, Zionism and its creation of the state of Israel are awe-inspiring.”

“... [I]t is good to see Israel through someone else’s eyes to realize how great an example it is – and can be – not only for Quebeckers, but for the millions of people living in small nations around the world who are proud of their identity, are proud of their heritage and do not want to be swallowed up by globalization’s powerful forces,” he adds, reflecting on conversations with “a group of Quebec nationalist intellectuals” who recently returned from Israel.

Admittedly, promoting Zionism in Quebec is a particular challenge and so it might be tempting for CIJA to grasp at whatever straws it can find, but encouraging the view of Israel as a model for breaking up Canada?

Marceau notes, “... it is fair to say that, in Quebec, Israel might not be as popular as in other parts of Canada. That is due, in part, to the sources of information available in French.”

This is something of an understatement. A study done several years ago showed a startling parallel between the attitudes toward Israel among citizens of European countries juxtaposed with attitudes toward Jews in the same cohorts. Countries whose citizens demonstrated elevated levels of antisemitism demonstrated a parallel level of anti-Zionism. Shocking, we know. Marceau’s assertion about the sources of information available in French is accurate, but perhaps too generous. For generations, a portion of the “information available in French” has been of an antisemitic nature almost unknown in most of the rest of the country.

Let us not pretend that the body politic of Quebec has not presented a difficult, troubling reality for Jews. The Catholic Church, both before and after the liberalizations of the early 1960s, which officially lifted the deicide verdict on Jews, has been a source of theological antisemitism in too many instances.

On the secular side, too, the not-very-subtle realities of linguistic politics in the province have also not been kind to the Jewish people’s hopes for welcoming acceptance in Quebec. Jewish Quebeckers overwhelmingly count English as their first language. When former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau blamed his side’s loss in the independence referendum on “money and the ethnic vote,” we can be fairly certain of a particular group he had in mind. In other words, advocating for Israel in Quebec is a serious challenge.

That being said, when a national Jewish organization, funded by Canadian citizens, appears to promote Israel as a positive model for an independent Quebec, those who support and fund the agency should be speaking out in disgust. It should be possible to build up the Jewish state without tearing down our own. It is safe to say that this is not the two-state solution most Jewish Canadians envision when they support CIJA.

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