The following is the full transcript of remarks made by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Israelâs Knesset on January 20th, 2014.
âShalom.
âAnd thank you for inviting me to visit this remarkable country, and especially for this opportunity to address the Knesset.
âIt is truly a great honour.
âAnd if I may, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my wife Laureen and the entire Canadian delegation, let me begin by thanking the government and people of Israel for the warmth of your hospitality.
âYou have made us feel extremely welcome.
âWe have felt immediately at home.
âLadies and gentlemen, Canada and Israel are the greatest of friends, and the most natural of allies.
âAnd, with your indulgence, I would like to offer a reflection upon what makes the relationship between Canada and Israel special and important because the relationship between us is very strong.
âThe friendship between us is rooted in history, nourished by shared values, and it is intentionally reinforced at the highest levels of commerce and government as an outward expression of strongly held inner convictions.
âThere has, for example, been a free trade agreement in place between Canada and Israel for many years an agreement that has already proved its worth.
âThe elimination of tariffs on industrial products, and some foodstuffs, has led to a doubling in the value of trade between our countries.
âBut this only scratches the surface of the economic potential of this relationship and I look forward to soon deepening and broadening our mutual trade and investment goals.
âAs well, our military establishments share information and technology.
âThis has also been to our mutual benefit.
âFor example, during Canadaâs mission to Afghanistan, our use of Israeli-built reconnaissance equipment saved the lives of Canadian soldiers.
âAll such connections are important, and build strong bridges between us.
âHowever, to truly understand the special relationship between Israel and Canada, one must look beyond trade and institutions to the personal ties of friendship and kinship.
âJews have been present in Canada for more than 250 years.
âIn generation after generation, by hard work and perseverance, Jewish immigrants, often starting with nothing, have prospered greatly.
âToday, there are nearly 350,000 Canadians who share with you their heritage and their faith.
âThey are proud Canadians.
âBut having met literally thousands of members of this community, I can tell you this:
âThey are also immensely proud of what the people of Israel have accomplished here of your courage in war, of your generosity in peace, and of the bloom that the desert has yielded, under your stewardship.
âLaureen and I share that pride, the pride and the understanding that what has been achieved here has occurred in the shadow of the horrors of the Holocaust;
âthe understanding that it is right to support Israel because, after generations of persecution, the Jewish people deserve their own homeland and deserve to live safely and peacefully in that homeland.
âLet me repeat that: Canada supports Israel because it is right to do so.
âThis is a very Canadian trait, to do something for no reason other than it is right even when no immediate reward for, or threat to, ourselves is evident.
âOn many occasions, Canadians have even gone so far as to bleed and die to defend the freedom of others in far-off lands.
âTo be clear, we have also periodically made terrible mistakes as in the refusal of our government in the 1930s to ease the plight of Jewish refugees but, as a country, at the turning points of history, Canada has consistently chosen, often to our great cost, to stand with others who oppose injustice, and to confront the dark forces of the world.
âIt is, thus, a Canadian tradition to stand for what is principled and just, regardless of whether it is convenient or popular.
âBut, I would argue, support today for the Jewish state of Israel is more than a moral imperative it is also of strategic importance, also a matter of our own, long-term interests.
âLadies and gentlemen, I said a moment ago, that the special friendship between Canada and Israel is rooted in shared values.
âIndeed, Israel is the only country in the Middle East, which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
âThese are not mere notions.
âThey are the things that, over time and against all odds, have proven to be the only ground in which human rights, political stability, and economic prosperity, may flourish.
âThese values are not proprietary; they do not belong to one nation or one people.
âNor are they a finite resource; on the contrary, the wider they are spread, the stronger they grow.
âLikewise, when they are threatened anywhere, they are threatened everywhere.
âAnd what threatens them, or more precisely, what today threatens the societies that embrace such values and the progress they nurture?
âThose who scorn modernity, who loathe the liberty of others, and who hold the differences of peoples and cultures in contempt. Those who, often begin by hating the Jews, but, history shows us, end up hating anyone who is not them. Those forces, which have threatened the state of Israel every single day of its existence, and which, today, as 9/11 graphically showed us, threaten us all.
âAnd so, either we stand up for our values and our interests, here, in Israel, stand up for the existence of a free, democratic and distinctively Jewish state or the retreat of our values and our interests in the world will begin.
âLadies and gentlemen, just as we refuse to retreat from our values, so we must also uphold the duty to advance them.
âAnd our commitment as Canadians to what is right, fair and just is a universal one.
âIt applies no less to the Palestinian people, than it does to the people of Israel.
âJust as we unequivocally support Israelâs right of self-defence, so too Canada has long-supported a just and secure future for the Palestinian people.
âAnd, I believe, we share with Israel a sincere hope that the Palestinian people and their leaders⌠will choose a viable, democratic, Palestinian state, committed to living peacefully alongside the Jewish state of Israel.
âAs you, Prime Minister [Netanyahu], have said, when Palestinians make peace with Israel, Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations â it will be the first.
âSadly, we have yet to reach that point.
âBut, when that day comes, and come it must, I can tell you that Israel may be the first to welcome a sovereign Palestinian state, but Canada will be right behind you.
âLadies and gentlemen, support â even firm support â doesnât mean that allies and friends will agree on all issues all of the time.
âNo state is beyond legitimate questioning or criticism.
âBut our support does mean at least three things.
âFirst, Canada finds it deplorable that some in the international community still question the legitimacy of the existence of the state of Israel.
âOur view on Israelâs right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable.
âSecond, Canada believes that Israel should be able to exercise its full rights as a UN member-state and to enjoy the full measure of its sovereignty.
âFor this reason, Canada has spoken on numerous occasions in support of Israelâs engagement and equal treatment in multilateral fora.
âAnd, in this regard, I should mention that we welcome Israelâs induction this month into the western, democratic group of states at the United Nations.
âThird, we refuse to single out Israel for criticism on the international stage.
âNow I understand, in the world of diplomacy, with one, solitary, Jewish state and scores of others, it is all too easy âto go along to get alongâ and single out Israel.
âBut such âgoing along to get along,â is not a âbalancedâ approach, nor a âsophisticatedâ one; it is, quite simply, weak and wrong.
âUnfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we live in a world where that kind of moral relativism runs rampant.
âAnd in the garden of such moral relativism, the seeds of much more sinister notions can be easily planted.
âAnd so we have witnessed, in recent years, the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain.
âWe all know about the old anti-Semitism.
âIt was crude and ignorant, and it led to the horrors of the death camps.
âOf course, in many dark corners, it is still with us.
âBut, in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society.
âPeople who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world, instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.
âAs once Jewish businesses were boycotted, some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel.
âOn some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities, such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students.
âMost disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state.
âThink about that.
âThink about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: a state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism.
âIt is nothing short of sickening.
âBut this is the face of the new anti-Semitism.
âIt targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel and attempts to make the old bigotry acceptable for a new generation.
âOf course, criticism of Israeli government policy is not in and of itself necessarily anti-semitic.
âBut what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to defend itself while systematically ignoring â or excusing â the violence and oppression all around it?
âWhat else can we call it when, Israel is routinely targeted at the United Nations, and when Israel remains the only country to be the subject of a permanent agenda item at the regular sessions of its human rights council?
âLadies and gentlemen, any assessment â any judgment â of Israelâs actions must start with this understanding:
âIn the sixty-five years that modern Israel has been a nation, Israelis have endured attacks and slanders beyond counting and have never known a day of true peace.
âAnd we understand that Israelis live with this, impossible calculus:
âIf you act to defend yourselves, you will suffer widespread condemnation, over and over again.
âBut, should you fail to act, you alone will suffer the consequence of your inaction, and that consequence will be final, your destruction.
âThe truth, that Canada understands, is that many of the hostile forces Israel faces, are faced by all western nations.
âAnd Israel faces them for many of the same reasons we face them.
âYou just happen to be a lot closer to them.
âOf course, no nation is perfect.
âBut neither Israelâs existence nor its policies are responsible for the instability in the Middle East today.
âOne must look beyond Israelâs borders to find the causes of the relentless oppression, poverty and violence in much of the region, of the heartbreaking suffering of syrian refugees, of sectarian violence and the fears of religious minorities, especially christians, and of the current domestic turmoil in so many states.
âSo what are we to do?
âMost importantly, we must deal with the world as we find it.
âThe threats in this region are real, deeply rooted, and deadly and the forces of progress, often anaemically weak.
âFor too many nations, it is still easier to scapegoat Israel than to emulate your success.
âIt is easier to foster resentment and hatred of Israelâs democracy than it is to provide the same rights and freedoms to their own people.
âI believe that a Palestinian state will come, and one thing that will make it come is when the regimes that bankroll terrorism realise that the path to peace is accommodation, not violence.
âWhich brings me to the government of iran.
âLate last year, the world announced a new approach to diplomacy with the government in tehran.
âCanada has long held the view that every diplomatic measure should be taken to ensure that regime never obtains a nuclear weapon.
âWe therefore appreciate the earnest efforts of the five permanent members of the security council and germany.
âCanada will evaluate the success of this approach not on the merits of its words, but on the implementation and verification of its promised actions.
âWe truly hope that it is possible to walk the iranian government back from taking the irreversible step of manufacturing nuclear weapons.
âBut, for now, Canadaâs own sanctions will remain fully in place.
âAnd should our hopes not be realized, should the present agreement prove ephemeral Canada will be a strong voice for renewed sanctions.
âLadies and gentlemen, let me conclude with this thought.
âJe crois que lâhistoire dâisraĂŤl est UN très bel exemple pour le monde entier.
âI believe the story of Israel is a great example to the world.
âIt is a story, essentially, of a people whose response to suffering has been to move beyond resentment and build a most extraordinary society a vibrant democracy a freedom-loving country⌠with an independent and rights-affirming judiciary, an innovative, world-leading âstart-upâ nation.
âYou have taken the collective memory of death and persecution to build an optimistic, forward-looking land one that so values life, you will sometimes release a thousand criminals and terrorists, to save one of your own.
âIn the democratic family of nations, Israel represents values which our government takes as articles of faith, and principles to drive our national life.
âAnd therefore, through fire and water, Canada will stand with you.
âMy friends, you have been generous with your time and attention.
âOnce more, LKaureen and I and our entire delegation thank you for your generous hospitality, and look forward to continuing our visit to your country.
âMerci beaucoup.
âThank you for having us, and may peace be upon Israel.â
2 COMMENTS
Batya Rl
July 5, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Wow⌠amazing!!! Good for TLV
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July 5, 2013 at 1:51 pm
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