As the Canadian federal election approaches, Canadian Jews are faced with a serious dilemma. While Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative party have consistently voiced strong support for Israel and have backed up this rhetoric in their voting pattern at the UN, the Liberals and NDP have taken more equivocal stances. Although these two parties officially support Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, their support on other related issues is inconsistent at best, and some of their candidates have even voiced outright anti-Israel positions.
The dilemma is: what’s a Jew to do? With global anti-Semitism on the rise and with many European countries taking increasingly anti-Israel positions, the well-being of the Jewish State is one of the top concerns for many Canadian Jews who have a strong connection to their homeland. A number of Jews take the position that, with the Conservatives as the only party that wholly and consistently takes a moral stance on Israel and the Middle East, how can any principled Canadian Jew justify voting for any other party? This approach has the benefit of validating the Conservatives’ pro-Israel position and ensuring that there is a dominant Jewish voice in one of Canada’s leading parties.
I vehemently disagree with this approach.
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This was originally published in the Times of Israel and was written by Trevor Sher, President of University of Windsor’s Emet for Israel group.