We hope Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, is returned to office in the Canadian elections on October 19. The three-term prime minister, a staunch supporter of Israel in the international arena, faces a tough reelection bid because of collapsing oil prices.
Mr. Harper, the first Canadian prime minister to address the Knesset, electrified Israeli lawmakers in January 2014 when he closed his speech with the declaration “Through fire and water, Canada will stand with you.”
Mr. Harper has long gone well beyond the usual official expressions of support for Israel one typically hears from western leaders. In his Knesset address he accused Israel’s critics of moral relativism. He also said that while criticism of Israeli government policy isn’t in and by itself “necessarily” an indication of anti-Semitism, “what else can we call criticism that selectively condemns only the Jewish state and effectively denies its right to defend itself while systematically ignoring – or excusing – the violence and oppression all around it?”
The “new anti-Semitism,” he said, “targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel and attempts to make the old bigotry acceptable for a new generation.”
Mr. Harper’s voice is one that needs to continue reverberating in the international arena.