Prime Minister Justin Trudeau kept the suspense going as long as possible. For several days now, the opposition parties, as well as several members of the Liberal caucus, have been calling on the government to clarify Canada’s position regarding the request filed before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). South Africa accuses Israel of committing “acts of genocide” in Gaza. The Prime Minister finally offered a semblance of an answer during a press briefing on Friday in Guelph, Ontario, where he had gone to announce a subsidy for housing construction. He responded as if it were an incidental question, while the whole world only talks about the hearings held in The Hague, where the Jewish state is in the dock.
The file is likely to arouse controversy. The conflict between Hamas and Israel was already giving Western governments of all political persuasions a hard time well before October 7 — a date that went down in history as the day of Hamas’ bloody attack on Israeli civilians, which resulted in the death of nearly 1,200 people. But since Israel launched its counterattack against Hamas, triggering an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza, even the Jewish state’s most ardent allies have struggled to defend its actions in the face of the destruction of the territory and the death of more than 23,000 Palestinians.
This is certainly the case for the Trudeau government, which is trying to reconcile Canada’s traditional support for Israel with the expectations of its own progressive electorate, for whom the Palestinian cause is of particular importance. Mr. Trudeau aroused the ire of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November by urging Israel to show “utmost restraint” in its campaign against Hamas.
Leading organizations representing the Canadian Jewish community strongly condemned Canada’s decision, a few weeks later, to support a resolution before the United Nations (UN) General Assembly that demanded “a ceasefire immediate humanitarian response” in Gaza. This gesture broke with the principle of solidarity which had until then guided Canadian action at the UN, where the Jewish state has continued to be the target of resolutions tabled by enemy countries aimed at isolating it and to ostracize him.
The filing, on December 29, of South Africa’s request before the ICJ caused consternation in Ottawa. Incidents of anti-Semitism recorded by police authorities were already on the rise in Canada since October 7. In Toronto, pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied an overpass overlooking Highway 401 in the heart of a densely Jewish neighborhood for several days in a row, sowing fear within this community. This request raises fears of an intensification of the harassment of which many Canadian Jews were already complaining.
However, the silence of the Trudeau government regarding this request could not last indefinitely. NDP MP Heather McPherson wrote Tuesday to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to ask that Canada follow France and “not oppose South Africa’s request” in addition to committing to “accept the decision of the Court”. M’s letterme McPherson reminded Mme Joly that “Canada has an obligation under international law to prevent genocide wherever it may occur.” In the event of an ICJ decision in favor of South Africa, “Canada and any other state supplying weapons and military technologies to Israel would be considered complicit” in the genocide, she continued.
Liberal MP Salma Zahid spoke for several of her Muslim colleagues by saying she hoped Canada would support South Africa’s request; his Liberal colleagues Anthony Housefather and Marco Mendicino, whose respective ridings have the second and third concentrations of Jewish voters in the country, have argued that Canada reject it outright. According to Mr. Mendicino, this request “completely and inappropriately shifts the burden of proof to Israel to defend itself against the accusation of genocide, when it is Hamas which explicitly declares its intention to annihilate the Jewish people.” .
In an opinion article published in the Globe and Mailformer Supreme Court of Canada justice and daughter of Holocaust survivors Rosalie Abella, known as a champion of progressive causes when she sat on the country’s highest court, wrote that South Africa’s request South “represents a scandalous and cynical abuse of the principles underlying the international legal order established after the Second World War.”
His comments were echoed by Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, whose riding of Thornhill has the largest number of Jewish voters in Canada, and Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, who wrote in the National Post : “Trying to turn Israel’s defense of its own people against this genocidal enemy into an assertion of genocide against Israel is a perverse inversion of international law. »
In short, the table was set for Mr. Trudeau to finally reveal Canada’s official position. “Our support for the International Court of Justice and its processes does not mean that we support the premise of the question posed by South Africa,” he limited himself to saying, while promising “a ministerial declaration complete in the coming hours. However, at the end of the day, Ms. Joly did not have much to add, other than to specify that the prosecution must rely on “irrefutable evidence”. Such an ambiguous answer will satisfy no one, except the liberal monks who have mastered the art of keeping things together.