ESSAY
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The Cairo Clique: Anti-Zionism and the Canadian Left
Islamist chic: Hezbollah flags at a Toronto demonstration, August 2006. Credit: http://rainfallsoneveryone.com
THE PHENOMENON THAT Dr. Ely Karmon of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism has called "a growing trend of solidarity between leftist, Marxist, anti-globalization and even rightist elements with Islamists"[1] has lately emerged as the dominant trend in "anti-war" activism in Canada.
Central to the phenomenon is a strategic collaboration between ostensibly left-wing activists in and far-right Islamists that animates the leadership of Canada's main "anti-war" organizations. It has accommodated Israel's most committed and unambiguously antisemitic enemies, and has enjoyed particular success in framing public debates about Canada's role in the NATO-led mission serving in Afghanistan.
The Canadian left has exhibited a peculiar reluctance to face up to it, despite repeated warnings, perhaps most noticeably from progressive Canadian Muslims. The overall trend Ely Karmon describes has also implicated important public policy debates in Canada with respect to Israel, Iran, and even Darfur. It has advanced rapidly, almost completely eluding the notice of the Canada's news media. It is marked by a tendency to isolate Canada's mainstream Jewish activists.
The trajectory of this trend in Canada has been quite straightforward. It has run largely unencumbered through a distinctly Canadian version of the confusion that has prevailed across much of the Euro-American left in the wake of 9/11, a phenomenon that has been closely observed by such academics and journalists as Fred Halliday, Nick Cohen, and Paul Berman. [2]
While anti-Zionism became a central feature in the politics of the New Left after the 1967 War, the 2006 Second Lebanon War further entrenched anti-Zionism and an overt identification with Israel's enemies as a ubiquitous element of left-wing politics in Canada.
In the United States, the trend has been largely isolated by leaders of the American anti-war movement. [3] But its politics thrive in Canada, owing to uniquely Canadian expressions of the New Left "ideational package" outlined by the historian Shulamit Volkov: anticapitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, and if not outright antisemitism, then its first cousin - a strident and irrational anti-Zionism. [4]
We're Canadians. It's Different Up Here.
Canadians of all political tendencies have long harbored deep misgivings about the United States, and about the exercise of American military power, but Canadian nationalism is not merely a reactionary anti-Americanism. It's more in line with the kind of progressive nationalism that aims to secure economic and political self-determination against a much larger and more powerful neighbor.
While anti-Zionism became a central feature in the politics of the New Left after the 1967 War, the 2006 Second Lebanon War further entrenched anti-Zionism
Unabashed and heartfelt pro-American sympathies were commonplace following the events of September 11, 2001, and there was little opposition when Canadian soldiers joined with NATO and American troops in the initial overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Iraq was a different matter. Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien won wide praise across the country when he decided to keep Canada out of any formal enlistment in the Anglo-American coalition, but even then, the Canadian engagement in Afghanistan was properly regarded as a separate matter.
However, during the tenure of Chretien's Liberal successor, Paul Martin, Canadian troops assumed full control of the strategically vital and hyper-violent Afghan province of Kandahar, as part of their duties with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Soon, Canadian soldiers were dying in Afghanistan at a per-capita rate roughly three times that of American troops, and at least twice the rate that American soldiers were dying in Iraq. [5]
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