From Immigration To Integration
The Canadian Jewish Experience:
A Millennium Edition
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From Immigration To IntegrationThe Canadian Jewish Experience:
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David H. Goldberg
Though sometimes perceived as static and unchanging, the relationship between the State of Israel and Diaspora Jewish communities has always been characterized by a high degree of dynamism and adaptation to new circumstances and challenges. This is clearly reflected in the way in which the Jewish community of Canada has related to Israel since its establishment in May 1948. The essence of that relationship has remained generally constant, typified by a strong Zionistic impulse on the part of the vast majority of Canadian Jews - an impulse that predated statehood1 and that found both material and political expression. Nevertheless, specific elements of Canadian Jewry’s relationship with Israel - or, more precisely, the ways in which that relationship tended to be expressed-have changed in important ways over the past five decades.
Analysts normally attribute the dynamism affecting the Israel-Diaspora relationship to changes in the circumstances confronting Israel and/or shifts in the balance of forces characterizing world Jewish affairs.2 These factors certainly cannot be discounted in the case of Canadian Jewry. However, this essay argues that many of the variations over time in Canadian Jewry’s relationship with Israel also may be explained by the evolving status of Jews in Canada.3 In a word, the more comfortable and confident Jews feel as Canadians, the greater their confidence in openly demonstrating their affection for and commitment to the State of Israel.
There are three distinct phases in the evolution of the Canadian Jewish community’s relationship with Israel: 1948-67, 1967-82, and 1982-2000. Each of these phases also corresponds to important developments affecting the status of Jews in Canada.
While many of the “quotas” and other overt forms of anti-Jewish sentiment experienced in earlier generations4 were gradually disappearing, Canadian Jews nevertheless remained uncertain about their status in a Canada dominated and controlled, socially, economically, and politically, by a “vertical mosaic” comprised of anglophone white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant elites and their francophone Roman Catholic counterparts.5 Access for Jews to this leadership strata tended to be tightly restricted and episodic, and was almost always achieved only through private interventions by designated communal representatives (shtadlans6) such as the prominent Montreal businessman Samuel Bronfman,7 rather than through co-ordinated communal activism.
The limitations imposed by the “statist”8 political culture that prevailed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s slowed the early development of Canadian Jewry’s relationship with Israel.9 As was the case for all other Diaspora Jewish communities, Israel’s founding on May 14, 1948, had a profound impact on Canadian Jews.10 Although they were always sympathetically inclined toward the general concept of Jewish nationalism, with far fewer philosophical disputes among Zionist factions than was the case in the United States,11 after their 1948 support for Israel took on the dimensions of a virtual “civil religion”12 for all but the most extreme fringes of Canadian Jews. This support was manifested most immediately in significant financial contributions to Israel-based causes and institutions; in addition, a disproportionately large percentage of Canadian Jews chose to move permanently to Israel before or shortly after statehood. For even the vast majority of Canadian Jews choosing to remain in Canada and to participate in what Michael Brown calls “armchair Zionism,”13 support for Israel became an important, indeed central, element of their identification as Jews.
Ironically, as Harold Waller has noted, the internalization of support for Israel among Canadian Jewry, combined with the Jewish state’s consolidation after the 1948-49 War, had a deleterious effect on the extant Zionist organizational infrastructure in Canada.14 Important functions performed in the pre-state period by Canadian Zionist groups, including public relations (hasbarah) and the encouragement of aliyah and foreign investment, were now transferred to the governmental institutions of the new Jewish state. Moreover, other national Jewish organizations and local federations, though technically “non-Zionist” in orientation - in the sense that their mandates involved sponsoring and maintaining Jewish causes and institutions in Canada - had better organizational resources and professional expertise than the traditional Zionist groups for raising funds in support of Israel, and soon displaced the Zionist organizations in this regard. In the words of a prominent “non-Zionist” activist of this period, “Israel had become too important to be left to the Zionists.”15 So, we have the paradoxical situation of Israel’s consolidation as a core concern of Canadian Jewry at the very same time that the Zionist movement in Canada was itself searching for a new raison d’être and seeing its power and influence decline relative to other communal institutions.
In this early period of consolidation, Canadian Jewry’s political advocacy in support of Israel tended to be “intermittent, ad hoc and inconsistent.”16 There were several reasons for this. Jews had expended a great deal of their limited political capital ensuring Canada’s support for Israel’s establishment in the crucial 1947-48 period;17 it was unreasonable to assume that a community that was still in an early stage of its own development could sustain this relatively high level of mobilization indefinitely. Moreover, once it was clear that Israel had survived its first crucial years of statehood and begun to consolidate itself (including building a powerful national-defence capability and absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants), the sense of immediate urgency confronting Canadian Jewry to advocate aggressively on Israel’s behalf was somewhat ameliorated.
A second set of factors explaining the lack of co-ordinated pro-Israel political advocacy in this early period relates back to the ambivalence many Jews felt about their status in Canada. Perceiving themselves as “outsiders”18 with respect to their country’s socio-economic and political power structure, many Canadian Jews were apprehensive about being seen advocating too aggressively on behalf of a foreign country, lest such activities provoke challenges to their “loyalty” as Canadians, and, perhaps, other expressions of antisemitism as well. Far better, it was felt, to follow the time-honoured tradition of entrusting a handful of prominent shtadlans to make Israel’s case privately in the corridors of power.
To be sure, this latter approach did yield some important early results. These included Canada’s according de jure recognition to Israel in May 1949, the exchanging of ambassadors in 1953-54, the official visit to Canada of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1961, and the formation of a number of institutions to stimulate bilateral trade, such as the Canadian Palestine Trading Company (1948), Canada-Israel Corporation (1950), Canada-Israel Development Corporation (1961), and the Canada-Israel Chamber of Commerce (1962).19 The major communal player in most of these initiatives was Samuel Bronfman. He contributed the lion’s share of the seed-money for the multi-million dollar Canada-Israel Development Corporation, and Peter C. Newman relates how Bronfman, embarrassed to discover that Michael Comay, Israel’s first ambassador to Canada, was operating from temporary quarters in Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier Hotel, personally arranged for the purchase of a permanent official residence.20 However, these pro-Israel advocacy efforts tended to be ad hoc and episodic in nature, for the reasons cited above. It was not until the latter stages of this first period-when Canadian Jewry as a maturing corporate entity, faced the spectre of a unified Arab attack on Israel in the spring of 1967-that we witnessed the first evidence of a broad-based, co-ordinated, institutionalized, and sustained fund-raising and political-advocacy campaign among Canadian Jews in support of Israel. Not coincidentally, this development coincided with continued growth in the confidence of Jews as full-fledged Canadians.
By the mid 1960s, Canadian society was changing in important ways. So, too, was the status of Canadian Jewry. Though still binational in character, Canadian society was beginning to “open-up” to non-traditional cultural groups. The Jews certainly fit this definition. In what Gerald Tulchinsky describes as a process of “branching out,”21 a new generation of Jewish communal leaders - many strongly represented in the professions to which access had been arbitrarily denied their parents and grandparents - were well placed to enter positions of influence in general Canadian society. Though significant pockets of anti-Jewish sentiment still existed (especially, but by no means exclusively, among elements of the Quebec nationalist movement22), there were fewer and fewer structural impediments to Jews taking their rightful place in Canadian social, cultural, economic, and political affairs. Internally, although shtadlans still controlled important levers of the communal political process, the new generation of Jewish volunteer and professional influence-makers were gradually entering their community’s leadership cadre, which was itself expanding as national and local institutions came to play a more important role in shaping Canadian Jewry’s character.
These various developments affecting the Jewish community, including its increasing “Canadianization”23 and tendency toward institutionalization, had a significant impact on the way Canadian Jews expressed their commitment toward Israel. These processes came to a head in response to the military crisis facing Israel in the spring of 1967.
By the early 1960s, a rudimentary system of pro-Israel advocacy had begun to emerge, centred initially around the Zionist Public Affairs Committee, and then local Joint Community Relations Committees (JCRCs). However, the rapidly deteriorating security situation confronting Israel in May-June 1967, culminating with the outbreak of warfare on June 5, caused Canadian Jewry to become mobilized to an extent not seen since the Holocaust and the original campaign in support of Israel’s establishment in the late 1940s.24
The communal response to the war ran on two parallel tracks, one traditional and the other of a more novel nature. On one level, Samuel Bronfman brought together a group of shtadlans from across the country and, in short order, elicited large financial pledges in support of the war effort; in addition, Bronfman and company used their personal influence to gain direct access to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, External Affairs Minister Paul Martin Sr., and the leaders of the opposition parties in Parliament. However, according to David Taras, “no effort was made at that time to contact other parliamentarians or to carry out a more systematic lobbying effort.”25 This task was, to a limited extent, taken up by the Co-ordinating Committee for Emergency Aid to Israel, a loose amalgam of grassroots groups established in the days immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. David Taras emphasized the unsystematic nature of the campaign organized under the aegis of this committee:
As no permanent co-ordinating structure existed, the committee was, in effect, a campaign cabinet which brought together representatives from B’nai Brith, the Canadian Zionist Federation, and the Canadian Jewish Congress. A division of labour was agreed upon whereby the CZF would be responsible for sending medical supplies and volunteers [to Israel], while B’nai Brith and the CJC would handle public relations.26
Though largely ad hoc, Canadian Jewry’s emergency response to the Six-Day War produced impressive results. Public rallies were organized in Montreal, Toronto, and other communities. Medical supplies were purchased and transported and blood banks were set up. And an estimated $25 million was raised.27 Though a goodly portion of this money was attributed to Bronfman and the other community elders, a disproportionate percentage also was contributed by “average” Canadian Jews who felt the need to make painful personal sacrifices in Israel’s time of peril. Clearly, such material support would have been impossible if not for the significantly increased prosperity and self-confidence experienced by Canadian Jewry by the mid to late 1960s.
Canadian Jews drew some important lessons from their experiences in the 1967 War. Specifically, the sense of having been caught unprepared by the crisis, combined with the frustration over having failed to achieve their ultimate political goal of eliciting a formal Canadian condemnation of the provocative Arab military actions that caused the crisis in the first place, led Jewish community leaders to recognize the need for a permanent institutionalized mechanism for advocating on Israel’s behalf. The result was the establishment, in late 1967, of the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) as the designated liaison between Canadian Jewry and the federal government, as well as the Jewish community’s principal advocate for Israel before the Canadian media and public.28
Despite its more formalized mandate, the CIC’s organizational structure remained fluid. Indeed, the committee was briefly disbanded in 1971 when its founding co-sponsors, the Canadian Jewish Congress and Canadian Zionist Federation, were unable to agree on a common political agenda. It was formally reconstituted a few months later with B’nai Brith as a full sponsoring partner.
The nascent pro-Israel lobby’s “baptism under fire” came in the struggle against Reverend A.C. Forrest, the influential editor of the Observer, the official periodical of the United Church of Canada.29 Forrest, a virulent critic of Israel and advocate for the Palestinian-Arab cause, began publishing articles shortly after the Six-Day War that Jewish community groups considered to be not only anti-Zionist but also antisemitic in tone. Alan Davies, himself a member of the United Church, accused Forrest of perpetrating “an unrelenting editorial crusade against the Jewish state.” However, Forrest remained undeterred. According to David Taras, the appearance in the Observer in March 1972 of an article by John Nicholls Booth was for many Canadian Jews a final breaking point. Building upon the crassest of anti-Jewish imageries, the article, entitled “How the Zionists Manipulate Your News,” accused Israel and Diaspora Jewish organizations, including, specifically, B’nai Brith’s Anti-Defamation League, of wielding disproportionate power and of behaving in a sinister and disloyal fashion. Soon after the Booth article appeared, there was an exchange of lawsuits involving B’nai Brith, Forrest, and the United Church. Despite Forrest’s continuing vitriolic attacks on Israel and Canadian Jews, cooler heads eventually prevailed. From September 1972 to May 1973, Dr. Bruce McLeod and Dr. George Morrison, the newly elected moderator and secretary, respectively, of the United Church’s General Council, initiated a process of reconciliation with B’nai Brith and other Jewish community leaders. On May 4, 1973, McLeod, Morrison, and B’nai Brith leaders initialled a “statement of reconciliation” that, though neither legal nor binding, exhibited a desire on the part of both sides to overcome the animosity generated by Reverend Forrest and his supporters within and beyond the Church. This exercise represented a turning point in the controversy surrounding A. C. Forrest. Even during the Yom Kippur War, as Forrest used the pages of the Observer to launch a renewed diatribe against Israel, there was a discernible majority of opinion within the United Church in favour of maintaining a conciliatory approach toward Israel and Canadian Jewry. In the words of one Church activist, speaking after Forrest’s failed 1976 campaign to become moderator of the United Church: “We weren’t going to agree with Israel, but we weren’t going to be fighting with our fellow Canadians.” The pro-Israel community never did succeed in “winning over” the United Church of Canada to its cause. Nevertheless, the community’s readiness to challenge a mainstream Christian denomination reflected the extent to which Canadian Jewry was rapidly “coming of age.”
The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 was a watershed in the development of the Canada-Israel Committee and a turning point in the political evolution of Canadian Jewry.30 Mass rallies were organized, emergency meetings were arranged by the CIC with prominent federal cabinet ministers and other members of Parliament, and large sums of money were collected on Israel’s behalf. (According to one source, $54 million was raised through the United Israel Appeal’s annual fall 1973 campaign, and another $50 million through the emergency sale of State of Israel Bonds.) According to David Taras, “even though many [Canadian] Jews were still reticent about openly displaying their commitment” to Israel, such action was necessitated by the existential crisis confronting the Jewish state.31 And, perhaps much to the surprise of many Jews, their pro-Israel activism during the Yom Kippur War caused no discernible anti-Jewish backlash in the general Canadian community. Moreover, although the Canada-Israel Committee was unable to achieve its main goal of having Canada formally condemn the Arab states as the aggressors,32 its lobbying efforts in the war elicited significant sympathy for Israel’s cause in Parliament and in many segments of the Canadian public. This not only reinforced the CIC’s own growing status as a political force to be reckoned with, but also the right of Canadian Jewry as an organized community to openly express its affection for and commitment to Israel, without having to worry about challenges to its status in the Canadian cultural milieu.
This same principle continued to prevail throughout the balance of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, a period in which Canadian Jewry, working primarily through the Canada-Israel Committee, sought not only to react to developments in the Middle East, but also to effect positive change in aspects of Canada’s Middle East policy. To be sure, the CIC was not always or necessarily “satisfied”33 with the results of such efforts. For example, it failed to persuade the Trudeau government to enact meaningful federal legislation to combat the Arab economic boycott of Israel,34 and the pro-Israel community was deeply disappointed by the decision of Prime Minister Joe Clark to rescind the pledge, made during the 1979 federal election campaign, to move Canada’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.35
For the purposes of this essay, however, the major issue is a different one: by the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were no institutional or political barriers to Jews participating fully in the formulation of Canada’s Middle East policy. Equally important, there were few internal impediments to strong pro-Israel advocacy. While there were some occasional differences of opinion among pro-Israel activists about the specific methods to be employed for affecting change in specific Canadian policy, Canadian Jewry, for the most part, remained remarkably unified in its commitment to Israel.
Canadian Jewry flourished in the multiculturalism that prevailed in Canada beginning in the 1980s. Jews were not only well represented in virtually all sectors of Canadian society, they also held leadership positions in, and were making important contributions to, many of these sectors. To be sure, Canadian Jewry was still confronted by many diverse challenges, including mitigating the impact of Quebec’s chronic constitutional debate on the province’s Jewish community, antisemitism, school funding, Nazi war criminals, shifting demographic and internal migration patterns, and absorbing increasingly large numbers of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union.36 Notwithstanding these various challenges, Canadian Jewry was, by the 1980s, objectively more prosperous and secure than it had ever been.
And yet, there was a sense of unease that percolated just below the surface of the community’s collective psyche. In a word, there was the growing sense that Canadian Jewry was becoming “too successful” in integrating itself into Canada’s multicultural milieu - to the point that it was in danger of being assimilated and losing its collective identity (defined in ethnic, religious, and cultural terms).37
Manifestations of this diminished sense of collective identity were already apparent. Rates of intermarriage, though nowhere near those experienced in the United States, were nevertheless beginning to rise to uncomfortably high levels. And there was the enduring fear, expressed periodically at both the leadership and grassroots levels, that the “loyalty” of Canadian Jewry might still be subject to challenge on the basis of one or another issue. Finally, the internal cohesion on a number of core principles that had previously unified all but the most extreme fringes of Canadian Jewry was showing signs of strain.38 These issues were reflected in interesting and important ways as Canadian Jewry related to Israel in the 1982-2000 period.
One of the enduring traits of Canada’s pro-Israel community had always been its high degree of cohesion and self-discipline - especially compared to its counterpart in the United States - or, at least, its ability to keep disputes “in-house” so as to present a single, unified voice to the Canadian government, media, and general public on issues affecting Israel. The first evidence of a crack in this cohesion emerged in the summer of 1982 when mainstream elements of Canadian Jewry expressed varying degrees of concern about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, concerns that became increasingly public, concerted, and focused after the Israel Defence Forces laid siege to Beirut and after the Israel-backed Christian Phalange massacred between seven hundred and one thousand Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.39
In the end, internal dissent among Canadian Jewry over the Lebanon War dissipated rapidly and proved to be something of a tempest in a teapot. Nevertheless, the fact that the organized pro-Israel community had had to expend valuable political resources ensuring internal discipline undermined the effectiveness of the more important task of countering the increasingly strong criticism of Israeli actions in Lebanon on the part of the Canadian government and media.40 This incident also set a disturbing precedent for the breaking of internal discipline that reached a crescendo during the intifada,41 as well as in reaction to specific aspects of the Arab-Israeli negotiations that evolved out of the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference (1991) and the Oslo Accords (1993). Significant internal dissent, though cutting across different communal lines, also emerged in reaction to internal Israeli social and political developments, including the debate over conversions (“Who is a Jew?”), religious pluralism and the “identity” of the Jewish state.42 On the other hand, Canadian Jewry was generally united in assisting Israel in the areas of socio-economic revitalization (Project Renewal) and immigrant absorption, and in reacting to Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the Persian Gulf War (January 1991) and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (November 1995). The overwhelming majority of Canadian Jews also rallied to Israel’s defence against unfair criticism of its handling of widespread Palestinian rioting that began in late September 2000. Nevertheless, it was undeniably the case that the high degree of internal cohesion that had been a defining characteristic of Canada’s pro-Israel community could no longer be taken for granted by the 1980s and 1990s.
The imperative question to be asked is: why had this occurred? Why had unity and internal discipline on Israel-related issues begun to slip? At one level, the answer may lie in the increasingly controversial nature of Israeli foreign and domestic politics. In a word, as the consensus on key issues among Israelis themselves began to crack, perhaps it was inevitable that such would also occur in Diaspora communities. There is, however, another equally plausible explanation, relating to the Jewish community’s “comfort level” in Canada. David Taras and Morton Weinfeld have implied that the readiness of Canadian Jews, in this period, to openly express competing perspectives on Israel reflected the fact that the community had entered a new, higher plane in its own maturing process.43 Or to put it another way: would Jews who were still uncertain about their status in Canada have had the self-confidence to publicly voice dissenting opinions about an issue, such as Israel, that so openly identified them as Jews?
On March 10, 1988, Secretary of State for External Affairs Joe Clark, addressed the annual policy conference of the Canada-Israel Committee.44 The main thrust of Clark’s speech was a forceful and passionate attack on Israel’s human rights record, specifically its “iron fist” treatment of Palestinians participating in the intifada. According to Clark, Israel’s actions
included the use of live ammunition to restore civil order, the withholding of food supplies to control and collectively penalize civilian populations, the use of tear gas to intimidate families in their homes, of beatings to maim so as to neutralize youngsters and preempt future demonstrations.
In addition, Clark implied that it was Israeli “recalcitrance,” rather than the unremitting hostility of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its Arab-state sponsors, that was the primary obstacle to regional peace-making.45
To the vast majority of the approximately five hundred people in the audience, including most of the leaders of Canada’s Jewish and pro-Israel communities, Clark’s accusations were baseless, ill-informed, and prejudicial - and reflective of long-standing pro-Arab and anti-Israel biases prevalent throughout much of Canada’s foreign policy bureaucracy.46 There was also the sense that such excessive criticism of Israel reflected a new, more “politically correct” form of antisemitism.47 A segment of the audience made an angry exit and launched a noisy demonstration outside the lecture hall. At the conclusion of Clark’s address, the remainder of the audience enthusiastically applauded the remarks of the CIC chairman, who admonished the foreign minister for his unfounded and harmful allegations against a fellow democracy, and cautioned Clark that “Israel will have an election… as will we soon.”
Within days of Clark’s confrontation with the CIC, major newspapers, in both official languages, published editorials that crudely challenged the “loyalty” of the Canadian Jewish community. The influential French-language newspaper, La Presse, asked:
Que les membres en règle du comité Canada-Israel penseront à Israel quand ils votent au Canada? Est-ce qu’on peut avoir deux patries et une double loyauté? Il est vrai que les cardinaux de la sainte Eglise sont citoyens du Vatican. Mais cette qualité ne les entraîne pas à trahir leur patrie charnelle.
The Toronto Star editorial of March 12, 1988, declared inter alia that:
Clark’s remarks may have cost his party votes in the next federal election. But his message was a timely one. It was also a necessary reminder to members of the Jewish community in Canada that they are citizens of Canada, not Israel.
Historian Harold Troper encapsulated the overall sense of revulsion ensuing from these diatribes against Canadian Jewry:
Canadian ethnic groups remain particularly vulnerable to the disloyalty charge. Can one imagine those lobbying against free trade being smeared as disloyal? Would the [Toronto] Star feel it necessary to remind pro-life or pro-choice groups that they are Canadian? Obviously not. Why then is it necessary for ethnic communities to be subject to this form of abuse when exercising their rights as Canadians?”48
The CIC and the pro-Israel community tried to put the Clark speech and the media’s mischievious use of the “dual loyalty” canard behind them. Emergency meetings were held with Clark, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and other senior members of the federal cabinet - from those meetings were elicited “clarifications” of Canadian policy that, while not necessarily “satisfactory” to the CIC, at least provided the basis upon which Canadian Jewry could maintain a working dialogue with government on Middle East policy. This “working dialogue” was reflected in the decision of the Mulroney government to delay formal recognition of the PLO for several months after the Clark-CIC confrontation. But the scar tissue left by the distasteful “Clark affair” and, perhaps even more so, the “dual loyalty” attacks by the media, was slow to heal.
Having said this, it may be instructive to note that, when other controversies that affected the pro-Israel community arose in subsequent years, the public and media reaction was different. Whether over efforts by the Arab-Canadian community to disrupt parliamentary ratification of the Canada- Israel Free Trade Agreement (in the summer of 1986), or the reputed use of forged Canadian passports by Israeli Mossad agents in a botched assassination attempt (September 1998), or the Jewish community’s angry reaction to Canada’s support of a UN Security Council resolution unfairly critical of Israel’s handling of the widespread Palestinian rioting that began in late September 2000, there was either no reference made at all to “dual loyalty,” or such references were immediately dismissed as well beyond the boundaries of acceptable public discourse in Canada.
As noted above, by the 1990s the major challenge confronting Canadian Jewry, in the minds of many analysts, was containing (if not rolling back) the ramifications of the community’s remarkably successful integration into Canada’s multicultural milieu. For the leadership of Canadian Jewry, as in most other Diaspora communities, an important ingredient of the strategy for engendering a renewed commitment to Jewish identity among its youth was in reasserting Israel’s status as a symbol of common Jewish experience and heritage. It is perhaps not coincidental or surprising that one of the founders of the Birthright program - whereby a trip to Israel is made available to as many young Jewish people in the Diaspora as possible - is a Canadian, Charles Bronfman. For, perhaps, only someone with the experience of growing up and succeeding as a Jew in Canada, and even more so, as a Jew in Quebec, could appreciate the importance of Canadian Jews taking full advantage of the unique opportunity afforded to them to express their identity in three inter-related ways: as proud and confident Canadians, as proud and confident Jews, and as Canadian Jews deeply committed to the welfare of the State of Israel.
On October 7, 2000, during Canada’s tenure as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, it joined thirteen other Council members in voting in favour of a resolution (Number 1322) that unfairly criticized Israel’s handling of widespread Palestinian rioting. (Only one abstention, by the United States, was registered in this vote). Large segments of the Jewish community voiced dissatisfaction over Canada’s support for this outrageous resolution and subsequent UN General Assembly criticisms of Israel.49 Much of this concern, reinforced by influential elements in the general media,50 found political expression during the subsequent federal election campaign. In this campaign, many of the principal targets of Jewish political activism were Jewish members of parliament, including senior Cabinet ministers. The specific aspects of the incident aside, the entire episode speaks to a more profound reality. For what could be more indicative of the confidence and stability of Canadian Jewry at the start of the twenty-first century than a situation in which Canadian Jewish voters were publicly challenging senior Jewish elected officials about specific elements of Canada’s policy toward Israel and the Middle East?