"It is great to be back in Israel. This is my fifth trip, but my first as Minister of Foreign Affairs [of Canada]. I am delighted to meet the Foreign Affairs Minister of the new government. We have lots to talk about."

"At this point, our number one priority, our number one advice is that we need to lower the temperature."

"The continued building of settlements, and the evictions and demolitions in East Jerusalem should cease, and so that was the message we carried, because we think that is potentially provocative."

"Gaza was hit hard, not only with the loss of life, but also with the destruction of many homes, and also infrastructure that is essential to carry out the normal life."

"We [Garneau, new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Affairs Minister Yair Lapid] talked about strengthening co-operation in a number of areas, including research and development."

"I reaffirmed Canada's long-standing position that a two-state solution is the best path to comprehensive, just and lasting peace for both Israel and Palestinians."

"The indiscriminate barrage of rocket attacks fired by Hamas into populated areas of Israel is absolutely unacceptable and must cease immediately."

"Canada supports Israel's right to live in peace with its neighbors within secure boundaries and recognizes Israel's right to assure its own security."

"Solemn moments @YadVashem with SE @IrwinCotler. We have a collective duty to remember the victims of the Holocaust & pay tribute to the resilience of survivors."

"Canada is firmly committed to advancing Holocaust education, remembrance & fighting #antisemitism & Holocaust denial."

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marc Garneau 

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid meets his Canadian counterpart Marc Garneau in Jerusalem, Sunday, July 4, 2021.   (photo credit: AVI HAYUN)

The current Government of Canada fancies itself an intermediary in the intransigent standoff between the state of Israel and the Palestinians who resent a Jewish state occupying a tiny sliver of land as representative of its ancient hereditary homeland. A tiny geography that shrank exponentially from Judea's original geography but held nonetheless as a precious possession on which the tiny number of Jews worldwide, close to 15 million people, can find haven from a world that historically failed the human rights of diaspora Jews, culminating in a systematic cull to the death of the Jews of Europe.

Canada was one of many countries that had the opportunity to save a shipload of Jews sailing on the M.S.St Louis but which was refused entry from one port after another, at a time when the-then prime minister of the country felt that Canada could not possibly sustain the entry of any more Jews who were systematically discriminated against, refused entry to private clubs, summer camps or rental properties when signs were posted that 'no dogs blacks or Jews allowed', and Jews were refused attendance at universities. 

The disputed territories -- once a part of Judea, latterly occupied by migrating Arabs chiefly from Egypt and Jordan though traditional Orthodox Jews never left the land of their ancestors while Arabized Jews living in Muslim countries for millennia after Rome destroyed the second Temple of Solomon and partially razed Jerusalem were tolerated as second-class residents under Islam -- seize the attention of the international community. The Arabs, who purloined the name 'Palestinians' from its original possessors, the Jewish community, consider themselves and Israel itself 'occupied'.

"We feel that it is very important for the democratic process and the fact that many Palestinians would like to vote, [in the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority] and many, many Palestinians have never voted in their life because the last elections were so long ago. And this is an opportunity for them to express themselves democratically", Mr. Garneau said while visiting Ramallah after his stay in Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appealed to Canada through Mr. Garneau, to help stop Israeli 'aggression' against the Palestinians.

 

Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau meets with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, July 5, 2021. (Twitter)

 

This is the Palestinian leader who exhorts Palestinians to 'resist' the presence of Israel, to become martyrs, teaching vulnerable children from an early age through school curricula and television programs that the presence of Jews is an unforgivable assault on the rights of the Palestinians, whose duty it is to kill Jews, that being the language that Jews understand -- violence, hatred and murder. And so the aggression he speaks of emanates not from Israel, which is forced to defend itself from the vile murderous attacks of those taught to hate as a sacred duty, but from the Palestinians, both Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas governing Gaza.

Mr. Garneau doubtless made an effort, as an honourable man, and a diplomat, to be as courteous and non-offensive as possible toward the two entities he visited; Israel and the Palestinians, but the violent hatred from the latter toward the former is undeniable, and observable in the acts committed on an almost daily basis, from casual lethal knifings of innocent Jewish civilians to rocket barrages shot from Gaza into Israel, many of which misfire falling back into Gaza and find Palestinian victims perishing in the fall-back.

Time after time over a period of 70 years, Israel has attempted to mollify and reach agreements with the Palestinians, with all attempts abysmally failing, even on those occasions when Palestinian 'negotiators' made impossible demands, many of which were finally agreed to by Israeli negotiators. From the very time that the United Nations agreed on a partition plan for the principles, Jews and Arabs, the Palestinians rejected the offer of their sovereign territory, while the Jews embraced an Israel reborn. 

 

Palestinians mourn the loss of what they never had. Jews living in Muslim countries, from Iraq and Syria to Egypt and Morocco, Algeria to Tunisia, were forcefully exiled, their goods and properties absorbed by the state when Israel established itself. An estimated 600,000 Palestinians bemoan their lost paradise in Israel, while an estimated 800,000 Jews found themselves homeless, thrown out of their Arab, Muslim homelands, and refound themselves in Israel. No Middle East Arab country absorbed any of the Palestinians who fled Israel as citizens, with the exception of Jordan.

 

And while Arab countries are virtually Judenrein, twenty percent of the population of Israel is non-Jewish, Palestinian Arabs numbering over one and a half million Israeli civilians. Many of whom are loyal to Israel, while many are not. Among Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens there are members of Israeli police, military, judiciary, medical community, scientists, academia, and elected members of the Knesset.

Jews need no advice from a Canadian emissary, however well-intentioned he is himself, on how to proceed, faced with a neighbour that chooses violence, reprisals, hatred, unending threats, slanderous attacks on the world stage in an effort to destroy the presence of a Jewish state they want dismantled. The funding received from the world community to support the Palestinians has been spirited away by its leaders, it has been expended in efforts to destroy a neighbour, while the time and energy this has all taken, distract from the vital need to build a decent community with proper infrastructure, employment and full advance of a democratic country offering opportunities to all its inhabitants.

Instead the Palestinian elite choose to pay 'salaries' to those among them who have terrorized, threatened and murdered Jews. Paid to support the families of those who have died as 'martyrs' by slaughtering innocent civilians in mass murder events. Named streets, squares, public structures, schools and social centres in memory of those who succeeded in the mass slaughter of Jews. And who speak of Jews as their oppressors who commit human rights offences against the poor innocent Palestinians victims of Jewish self-defence.

On 7 June 1939, 907 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis were denied entry to Canada. The ship returned its passengers to safe harbour in four European countries. Sadly, 254 of its passengers later perished in the Holocaust.