Israel last week celebrated the 60th anniversary of its establishment as an independent state, still a besieged and beset nation whose very existence is threatened by its neighbours and its enemies scattered around the world, including in Canada.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper had an anniversary present for the Jewish state that might bring it some small comfort in the midst of its continuing troubles. He delivered a speech that was perhaps the strongest, the most unequivocal statement of support for Israel that any Canadian prime minister has ever delivered, equating a threat to Israel with a threat to Canada itself.
"Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada," he said in a comment that might be easy to ridicule with its connotations of the world's democracies as a little band of brothers constantly under threat from international villains.
But he was not really exaggerating. Israel today, as Mr. Harper said, remains a country under threat -- "threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist... because they hate Israel just as they hate the Jewish people."
These groups and regimes hate democracy as much as they hate Israel -- hence the threat to the Canadian way -- so it is encouraging to hear any Western leader, but particularly a Canadian one, define so clearly the problem that Israel faces today and always. A succession of Liberal governments had taken a far more equivocal position, claiming that their lukewarm -- or complete lack of -- support for the Jewish state was in the interest of playing 'honest broker' among the conflicted factions in the Middle East and this is the position that Canadians are more in the habit of assuming.
Since the Conservative government was elected in 2006, however, Mr. Harper has left no doubt that Canada on his watch will be an unswerving ally of Israel and its right to exist in safety and security. His impassioned speech last week -- Israel is a "symbol of hope and faith," he said, "a miracle in the desert" -- should not, then, come as a great surprise, although it will have caught many Canadians, accustomed to a greater diffidence in their nation's foreign policy, perhaps a little off guard.
But Mr. Harper is right and his critics are wrong. Israel is a natural ally of Canada, a beacon of the potential that exists for all Mideast nations if they would only emulate it. It is, as they can be, a prosperous, industrialized nation and a vigorous democracy, an oasis of hope in a region ruled by despair.
If Israel were to be destroyed by its enemies, the Canadian democracy would continue -- the two nations are not that closely linked -- but Mr. Harper is right in believing that Canada and all the world's democracies would be diminished for having allowed that to happen to this unlikely little nation that continues to set an example for the world.
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