By Jim Miles

“Today, while we celebrate Israel’s independence, we also reaffirm our commitment to fight anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on May 2.

Really?

First of all, the Jewish people are not the only Semites living in the region, especially as Palestinians are Semites as well. Even David Ben-Gurion, the father of Israel (or at least of its nuclear weapons), recognized that the indigenous Palestinians were more than likely descendants of historical Semitic people in the region.

Moreover, many Jewish people are not Semitic, having become Jewish through conversion – one can convert one’s ideology, but not convert one’s biology.

That is old news, as old as the Zionist movement and one of its biggest manipulations and false accusations made against anyone that speaks out against Zionist ideology. It is the commitment to fight anti-Zionism that stands out as a radical turn to the right.

Zionism is – or at its origin it was – a secular ideology using the Jewish religion as a means to obtain its goals. Well before the holocaust, the Zionists advocated ethnic cleansing of the region, built the lie of “a land without people for a people without a land”.

Ethnic cleansing was accepted to the point where genocide was also an acceptable idea.

Along with these good Canadian values are more modern Canadian values. This includes military laws for the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, imprisonment of all of Gaza and denial of all humanitarian rights, the abuse, torture, and imprisonment of children, destroying Palestinian civic structures, a variety of civic laws that deny equal treatment in most areas of civilian life.

Of course, Canada need only to look at its own history and current actions in relation to its indigenous people to recognize why many of these Canadian values are so readily acceptable by Trudeau and company today.

Given a Foreign Affairs Minister with a neoNazi bent, and ridiculous statements about supporting another country’s ethnic cleansing/genocidal ideology the current “Liberal” government is much more in alignment with U.S./EU neoconservative ideologies than anything to do with anything truly liberal (“generous” as per the Oxford dictionary) or progressive. Combine that with a sycophantic following for deep state U.S. foreign policy and the question continues.

I do not expect an answer, at least not one that actually responds to specific criticisms. For Israel I would expect the usual drivel about a right to protect itself (even though Israel militarily dominates the region and oppresses the indigenous Palestinians) and the usual never to be realized two state solution – in reality now a de facto unitary state with its own system of apartheid (oops, another bad and soon to be banned word in Canada – but then look at our own indigenous population ..).

Canada makes a great pretense of being a progressive government, and has successfully used women’s rights and the Syrian immigrants in the media for its exemplary characteristic. But for Canada’s Foreign Policy in alignment with the U.S. and many of its domestic policies in alignment with corporate elites the Trudeau government leans far to the right.

– Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor and columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.