Title: Personal Policy Making; Canada’s Role In The Adoption Of The Palestine Partition Resolution
Author: Eliezer Tauber
Publisher: Greenwood Press, Westport, CT

 

 

Is there anyone among us who doesn’t know the pivotal role in the establishment of The State of Israel played by Chaim Weizmann; or Ben Gurian; or U.S. President Harry Truman; or countless other well-known personalities?

But Lester Pearson? A Canadian diplomat and statesman, whose connections with Jews, Judaism and Israel were quite tangential and tenuous. An unlikely hero. Few “Americans” (yes even Canadians) remember his name. But we should.

Canada has always been one of the premier nations arbitrating diplomacy between east and west; communist and capitalist; major powers and “third-world” countries; etc. Since World War II, Canada, was member of both The British Commonwealth and the Pan American Union, as well as a leading founding member of The United Nations. Canada itself is the product of diplomacy, with a Federal form of government and a polyglot population made up of immigrants from almost every other corner of the world. It even has two official languages ? French and English.

Indeed, Canada’s contribution to history is that it may be shown that a nation with distinctly separate language groups and cultures (English and French) can still form a viable government and agree on those major matters that involve a democratic nation and its peoples.

Canada has a quite small percentage of Jewish population who, unlike their brethren in such places as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, don’t wield power because of bloc voting. If they have any influence on their government it is primarily because their government has always stood for “the right things” and looked after “underdogs.”

Tauber’s book chronicles the political events at the United Nations and the “Superpowers” that led up to the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the unlikely emergence of Lester Pearson, Canada’s then Under-Secretary of State, as our hero.

Pearson, who was almost given carte blanche by his government, with no specific orders, and who certainly had no personal interest (except his inclination to do what was right) was the actual person who achieved the founding of The State of Israel. He has been called “The Balfour of Canada,” and we should ever be grateful that a messianic Christian took pride in being called “Rabbi” by grateful Jews of his own time.

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