This quote from Peter Jones' courageous op-ed in today's Globe caught my eye;
The (US) administration needs friends and allies who will quietly roll up their sleeves and look for answers. What it gets from Canada is bluster and intransigence, as the Conservatives hew to the dictates of the Israeli right in hopes of securing votes in Canada.
That's as close as any opinion content in the Globe has ever come to admitting that Canada's Middle East policy is dictated by the Likudniks in Jerusalem. Not too long ago FM Baird accused Richard Falk of antisemitism for saying half as much.
Where I think Professor Jones' analysis needs a little clarification is in the claim that the Harper gang's policy vis-a-vis Israel is about vote pandering. It is, but we're not talking about the Jewish vote. We're talking about the Harper base of extreme fundamentalist end-times aficionados; the folks who have been reading the Book of Revelations to find out what's going to happen next year.
Those are the Canadian voters who support Likud policies. Which is not to say Likud and the settlement project have no support among Canadian Jews, but certainly not enough to make "vote-pandering" worthwhile.
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