Yves Engler

Canada and Israel

Building Apartheid

• Date: March 16th
• Time: 19:30
• Place: Alumni Hall, New Academic Building, University of King’s College, 6350 Coburg Road, Halifax
• Co-sponsor: Canadians, Arabs and Jews for a Just Peace (info@forjustpeace.org)

Details

Despite most Canadians’ strong desire for this country to be an honest broker and peacekeeper in conflicts around the world, Canada’s foreign policy has become the most pro-Israel in the world, says Yves Engler, author of the new book Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, available now from Fernwood Publishing. “Stephen Harper’s government has taken Canada’s foreign policy, which was always at least 80 per cent pro-Israel and moved it to 99.9 per cent pro-Israel at a time when the most right-wing government in the history of Israel is in power,” said Engler. “I believe most Canadians will be shocked to read how one-sidedly pro-Israel Canada has been and is today.”

Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid is the first critical primer about Canada’s ties to Israel. It is a devastating account of Canadian complicity in 20th and 21st century colonialism, dispossession and war crimes. The book documents the history of Canadian Christian Zionism, Lester Pearson’s important role in the United Nations negotiations to create a Jewish state on Palestinian land and the millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations used to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It argues that while both Liberal and Conservative governments have taken one-sided pro-Israel foreign policy stances, the current Harper government foreign policy is the most pro-Israel in the world.

“Yves Engler’s meticulously researched volume refutes, for anyone who still believes it, the myth that Canada is or ever has been an honest broker in the Middle East. Reading Engler’s work leaves one with the inescapable and sad conclusion that the essence of Canadian policy has always been support for the establishment and continued dominance of an expansionist Zionist state in the territories that now comprise Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. As a former Zionist youth leader, I thank Engler for setting the record straight and can only lament our country’s historical and ongoing contribution to the tragedy enveloping the long-suffering peoples of the Promised Land, Arab and Jewish.”

— Gabor Maté, Physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.