Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The vote in the Canadian parliament this week to halt new arms exports to Israel is of great symbolic importance in ways that may not be apparent on the surface. The measure called for no new arms and military technology transfers to Israel, for support for the International Court of Justice (which is investigating Israel for genocide), and for sanctions on Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
The nonbinding resolution, which Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said her government would abide by, was spearheaded by the New Democratic Party. The NDP is a small social democratic party headed by Jagmeet Singh, a Sikh Canadian and the first Indo-Canadian to head a national party. It has 25 seats in a parliament of 338. The ruling Liberal Party is in coalition with the NDP and needs its support. In parliamentary systems, if the largest party doesn’t quite have a majority, it seeks a partner to get its vote count to 51% so that it can rule and reliably pass legislation. That arrangement gives the smaller party enormous sway, since if it walks away from the deal, the government falls and there are new elections.
The NDP website quoted NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Heather McPherson as saying last week before the vote: “New Democrats have been calling for a ceasefire for nearly six months – but the horror in Gaza continues, and we are further away from peace and an end to occupation than we have ever been. At least thirteen thousand Palestinian children have been killed in a war that the International Court of Justice says might be genocide – and Canada does nothing to stop it. The children of Gaza are traumatized and starving to death. These children are not Hamas.”
She said the party has received half a million messages from Canadians upset about the way Israel is prosecuting its war on Gaza.
She isn’t wrong. Already last November a poll showed that 71% of Canadians wanted a ceasefire in Gaza. And among young Canadians 18-34, about half see Israel as “a state with segregation similar to Apartheid.”
So the NDP are not leftist outliers on this issue. They represent a supermajority of the Canadian public on this issue. It is the Liberals and the conservative parties who are out of step.
At one political event in February, Singh deplored Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism and antisemitism. He was challenged by a Palestinian Canadian who complained that Singh had not specifically called out anti-Palestinian racism and who also complained about horribly insensitive things outgoing British Columbia minister Selina Robinson had said about Gaza, calling it “a crappy piece of land with no one on it.”
Singh replied, according to The Eyeopener, “It was harmful. There’s no question about it. In terms of the Palestinian racism, you’re absolutely right. I have often said that, but today, in my response I did not… It’s not just Islamophobia and antisemitism. But there’s very clearly, specifically, what should be deemed as anti-Palestinian racism that exists as well.”
The NDP motion was modest in its gains. They did get a ban on new arms sales and military technology transfers, on the grounds that Canadian law forbids weapon sales to countries if they might be used contrary to Canadian law. In essence, the vote endorsed the finding of the International Court of Justice on January 26 that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Canada only sells Israel on the order of $21 million in arms a year, a tiny amount given that Israel’s arms purchases are in the billions.
Moreover, several key provisions that the NDP had pushed for were dropped, including the Canadian recognition of a Palestinian state, and the suspension of “all trade in military goods and technology with Israel.” That language, which was modified, would have halted not just new arms transfers but existing arms deals made last fall.
The Liberal Party, like the Democratic Party in the United States, has strong commitments to Israel, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly had pushed for even softer language, attempting to continue to allow technology transfers with military implications, but the NDP refused. As it was, three Liberal MPs of a Zionist orientation voted against the measure and say they are reconsidering their future with the party.
Some journalists are calling the resolution a nothingburger. They are wrong. An Indo-Canadian voice, sympathetic to Palestinians, was heard in Canada in an unprecedented way. The white Canadian establishment would not have passed this resolution. Further, the Canadian left made its voice heard, forcing the Liberals to take a stand when they really would have preferred not to.
Moreover, despite its low-key approach to world affairs, Canada, a country of 40 million, is important. It has the tenth-largest gross domestic product in the world, ahead of Russia, Mexico and South Korea. It is a NATO member. It is much more important than people tend to think.
For this reason, the real issue for Israel is not the potential loss of a paltry $21 million in arms this coming year. It is the possibility that other countries will be emboldened by what happened in Ottawa to take the same step. It is the clear conclusion that South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice against Israel for genocide is reverberating around the world. And it is the possibility that Jagmeet Singh is the future of Canada and perhaps of a new multicultural North that will be much less sympathetic to the white nationalist project of militant Zionism.
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