Blog : Ragazou

By (CJN)

 

Comments last weekend by former Canadian diplomat Robert Fowler claiming that Canada's Middle East policy is based on narrow domestic political considerations have been slammed by the Canada-Israel Committee as ?outrageous and odious.?

 

?Shimon Fogel, the CIC's chief executive officer, said in a statement:

 

?CIC views [Fowler's] comments' as both outrageous and odious.?

 

He added, ?Accusing the Jews of, in effect, controlling Canadian foreign policy heralds back to some of the most base anti-Semitic canards.?

 

In a speech to the Liberal party in Montreal on Sunday, Fowler accused the Conservative government of pandering to Jewish voters and favouring Israel.

 

Fowler, Canada's former ambassador to the United Nations and a foreign policy adviser to prime ministers Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and John Turner, delivered his remarks at a ?thinkers' conference attended by Michael Ignatieff, the current Liberal party leader, and Paul Martin, one of his predecessors and Canada's former prime minister.

 

In a tough appraisal of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Mideast policy, Fowler said it panders to Jewish voters.

 

By doing so, the Conservatives ?sell out our widely admired and long-established reputation for fairness and justice.?

 

Faulting Canadian politicians for trying to ?corner the ethnic vote,? Fowler said Canada's reputation has been tarnished by Canadian governments that ?have turned inward and adopted ?me-first' positions in foreign affairs.?

 

Charging that Fowler is ?wrong on the facts,? Fogel said that while ?both the current government and the Liberal one it succeeded undertook reviews of Canadian policy, they did so because officials had allowed it to drift away from a principled position.

 

?Canada should enjoy a special relationship with its only sister democracy in the region ? a fact Fowler pointedly ignored. And, contrary to his assertion, the Harper government has committed some $300 million to the Palestinians ? hardly a policy of a government that ignores stakeholders other than Israel.

 

?Finally, political parties' efforts to engage various communities does not constitute pandering. It is the essence of the democratic process. And, just because the two parties that command the support of a majority of Canadians adopt a position different than the one Fowler and his cronies would prefer does not make it any less legitimate.?

 

Fowler, kidnapped and held for 130 days by Islamic militants when he was a United Nations' special envoy to Niger in 2008, urged Harper to accept the ?iron-clad' connection between ?continuing turmoil and volatility in the Middle East and the rise [and] growing strength of international terrorism.?

 

He observed that both Liberal and Conservative politicians refuse to acknowledge that reality out of fear they will be labelled anti-Semites.

 

Fowler urged Canada to challenge  Israel's settlement policy in ?illegally occupied territories.?

 

He said that Israel is building settlements there ?in contravention of a myriad of international judgments.?

 

Calls to the Department of Foreign  Affairs for comment were not returned by The CJN's deadline.