originally published
https://nontheis.wordpress.com/category/anti-zionism-is-a-worldview/
Historic and Current Settler-Colonialism Through a Theological Lens
Rev. Karen Rodman
December 2018
The discrepancy between Canada’s stated foreign affairs policy regarding Palestine and the actual implementation of that policy can perhaps be understood through deep rooted theological and constitutive factors within Canadian society. The paper begins with consideration of the theological constructs of emancipation, Christendom and Zionism. Next it reviews the historical context of the shared Canadian-Israeli settler-colonial values. Finally, these theological and settler-colonial lenses are considered to attempt to understand the discrepancy of current Canadian policy in regard to Palestine with its actual implementation.
Theological Constructs: Emancipation to Christendom to Zionism
In considering the situation of modern-day Palestine, and Canada’s stance historically and currently, it is useful to consider the theological constructs of emancipation and the hijacking of emancipation movements by empires over the ages in the name of God, through the Christendom and Zionism projects.
i) The Messianic Emancipation
Be it literal or metaphorical or perhaps some combination of the two, the first century common era (CE) story of Jesus was that of an international emancipation movement. The international liberation movement told in the story of Jesus was an emancipation call to the people living under Roman rule. The story of Jesus was a call to not be subservient to empire, nor to join the more militant zealot movements in opposing the Roman Empire but rather to speak and act for liberation. The first of the Christian gospels, Markwas written around 70 CE just following the destruction of the Second Temple. In previous writings, the author of this paper has suggested “the story of Jesus was written by Mark shortly after the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE to show God was alive even without the Temple. Mark was telling a messianic story, not of a Messiah, but of hope that God was alive beyond the temple.”[1] Thus, I contend that
Jesus as a non-violent resistor showed radical dismantlement. His alternate path to peace, was that of justice, and included focal points such as radical forgiveness, Sabbath, table fellowship, Samaritans, women, and the corruption of the Temple. Jesus’ story combined the “love God and neighbor” (Mark 12:28-34) from love God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love neighbor (Leviticus 19.18). Jesus added to love our enemies (Matthew 5:38), invited the marginalized to the banquet (Luke 14:12-13), and said not pay back those who harm us (Matthew 5:38-42). Thus, the Newer Testament provides the message that we are to love those we do not like or who we consider enemies, and that this good news is available not just to one’s own people but to the world.[2] This love for enemy and religion beyond one’s own tribe or people provides the hallmark of Christianity.[3]
Thus, Christianity evolved as a political liberation or emancipation movement within Judaism. In previous writing I have indicated that “unlike most prominent religions which were developed by the ruling class Judaism was a religion of the ‘underdog.’ As such, it was filled with hope for a better future. The ruling class might be fine with the status quo but the oppressed continue to hope for improvement and look forward, waiting and expectant.[4] This hope was personified in the messianic or Messiah.”[5]
ii) Christendom from Constantine through Colonialism
Around 312 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine recognized the merit of Christianity becoming the state religion. With this christus victor atonement emerges replacing the internationalist liberation post-temple movement. Thus, Christendom begins its 1600-year rule. The atonement theology of christus victor is the reverse of the Jewish messianic evolution of Christianity taking Judeo-Christianity back to what Walter Brueggemann refers to as the Davidic salvation call of God, and what I would suggest is the call of God for a nation-state with a king.[6] The messianic grace is that shown in Second Isaiah after the first temple is destroyed. The messianic journey involves the people looking to Yahweh (God) for life beyond the Davidic reign, the temple, and their exile.[7]
Through the end of Roman rule and into the Early Middle Ages, this mantra of triumph of victory over evil supported the culture of religious conquest and defense. At the end of the first millennium, Scholasticism developed in European Society, and with-it Anselm’s rational logic based penal satisfaction atonement theology emerged. This understanding of God served the Roman Catholic Church to rally the troops for the eleventh through thirteenth century Crusades.[8] Anselm’s theology allowed for understanding that God’s grace would provide salvation and forgiveness for those things one has done, and so this proved to be a durable message of Christendom persisting from the end of the first millennium through the settler-colonialism era and two great wars of the twentieth century.
In 1517, Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses provided the first crack in the wall of Christendom as he exposed the Roman Catholic Church corruption, naming it as theologia gloriae (theology of glory) or triumphalism. Luther called for a way of humility which he labelled called theologia crucis, theology of the cross.[9] From here the Protestant Reformation began the process of separation of state and church. During the next several centuries the exclusive hold of the Roman Catholic Church over Christendom was lost to the modern nation states that began to form; and then was the emergence of non-religious States through the French and American Revolutions in the late eighteenth-century creating a supposedly secular world.
Even as Luther was nailing his Theses on the Wittenberg cathedral door, the Christian empires were moving quickly on conquer and conquest of new promised lands in the name of God. The Roman Papal Bull of 1493 provided by Pope Alexander VI to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain upon the return of Christopher Columbus from ‘discovering’ the Americas was the lynchpin of this new approach. From this ecclesiastical basis, the Doctrine of Discovery and the legal concept of terra nullius (empty land) emerged. These provided the framework for Christian explorers to have sovereign control of any newly discovered lands that were not inhabited by Christians, with the understanding that non-Christians are savage and not human. Under the legal concept of terra nullius, the land was empty, and could be taken in the name of God. In this manner land acquisition, and the subjugation, exploitation and domination of indigenous people, their land and its resources were permitted and even blessed and sanctified.[10] With this, the settler-colonial framework was developed within the context of Christendom.
Thus, after 450 years of aggressive colonization in the name of the Christian God, under theologies of Augustine’s christus victor, Anselm’s penal satisfaction and the theology of glory or triumphalism, with the end of the Second World War, Christendom was drawing its last breath. After 1600 years of Christendom, the twentieth century wake up call to the possibility of nuclear annihilation seemed to dampen quickly the glory of conquest in the name of God. However, it bears noting that Canada itself was founded as a colony of the British and French Empires based on this understanding of Christendom, and that this is part of the historical memory and foundational basis for the current state.
iii) Zionism Emerges as Christendom Fades
Zionism was one of the by-products of the Protestant Reformation where as early as the seventeenth century Christian religious leaders both in Europe and in the Americas called for the return of the Jews to the Holy Land. With the printing press and increased literacy, and the Bible translated from Latin, the Protestant denominations began to translate the Bible more literally through their own reading, with this leading to the interpretation of the book of Revelations as teaching that when the Jews return to the Holy Land, then Jesus Christ can come again. It is thought that the first call for the return of Jews was made by Puritans from the Netherlands in 1649 asking the British to return Jews to the land of their forefathers.[11]
Zionism, the call for the return of the Jews to the Holy Land continued to evolve through the next several hundred years, within the context of Millenarianism. Millenarianism is the belief that at the End Times, Jesus would reappear literally and rule the world for a Thousand Years. This was thought to be dependent on the Jews being restored to the Holy Land and the Temple being rebuilt in Jerusalem. This anti-semitic Christian movement was the beginning of what would become the base by the nineteenth century for the Jewish secular Zionist movement. Christian Zionism rejected equality and citizenship for Jews and therefore had no problem “expelling them to Palestine as they did not fit within the “Christian” world. In this sense Christian Zionism was anti-semitic at its root and made common cause with secular Zionism. Based loosely on the Bible, Zionist campaigns by both Jews and Christians for a safe haven for Jews grew through the nineteenth century but added to Jewish secular Zionism was threads of the current time socio-thoughts including Marxism, secularism, capitalism and yes, also colonialism[12]. The secular Jewish Zionist movement made strange bedfellows with the Christian anti-semitic movement; even as both religious Christian and secular Jewish Zionism were based on the Biblical premise that God’s chosen people should return to the land God had promised the followers of Moses some thirty-five hundred years before. This Zionist movement was to the horror of Orthodox Jews who understood that only the Messiah would lead Jews back to a promised land.[13]
Zionism is commonly understood to have been kicked off by Theodor Herzl in 1898. The welcome signs this past year at the Tel Aviv airport reminding those passing by that Herzl said “Zionism is an infinite ideal…as it will not cease to be an ideal even after we attain our land, the Land of Israel. For Zionism…encompasses not only the hope of a secured homeland for our people…but also the aspiration to reach moral and spiritual perfection.”[14]
For many, early secular Jewish Zionism had also served a sense of necessity for Jews in Eastern Europe. In 1882, the year after the initial pogroms in Russia, a group of Jewish settlers left to settle in Palestine seeking safety and with a vision of creating a new model. Their vision was a new way of socialism, but not with the notion of building a new Israel.[15] In some ways this way forward offered for these setters the best of the messianic nature of Judaism even as it was a secular socialist movement. This is not so surprising, as was as mentioned above, the original basis of Judaism personified in the messianic or Messiah. In previous writings I have indicated that
at the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE, the people began to hope for a redeemer who could ‘ingather of exiles.’ Built on the hope of throwing off the yoke of oppression and a promised land that waited, the messianic, the Hebrew title of the anointment was chosen. When the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, Messiah was used to designate the person who could rescue the diaspora. For many First Century Jews, messiah meant a human figure who would bring the reign of God, a new world order and a new natural order where peace would prevail (Isaiah 65:17-25; 11:7).”[16]
There had been many proclaimed Messiahs both before and after Jesus, but none had brought a new world order. Thus, for Jews suffering centuries of discrimination and annihilation including during the Christian Crusades and Spanish Inquisitions, the messianic expectations were about social and natural progression, not about a magic redeemer. The messianic was about emancipation and liberation not colonization or conquest and empire. However, that was not the vision of the Christian Zionist movement, nor those who joined with Herlz in 1898. Rather they sought to create the Jewish state of Israel, where Jerusalem would be the capital.[17]
A land-based settlement movement can only be based on a model of privilege and superiority for the setters, and dispossession, subjugation and exploitation for the indigenous of the land. So just as the indigenous populations who were decimated by the call of Christendom under terra nullius so was the stage set for this same to happen in Palestine under Zionism. Karen Armstrong suggests that Zionism wiped out the centuries of Jewish development, returning the religion to the Deuteronomistic perspective of the book of Joshua.[18] This then becomes its own form of idolatry, and continues in a long history of what Armstrong calls “belligerent righteousness” of worship of a tribal deity, that was “murderously partial to his own people.”[19] By denying human rights of others on a basis of being a chosen people highlights Zionism as the worst of a Judeo-Christian traditions, and in fact is based on a settler-colonial pattern of occupation that has persisted through the ages of conquer and conquest in the name of God. It was on this basis the 1918 Balfour Declaration led the way for the colonization of Palestine under the British Mandate and led forward to the establishment of a Jewish state through the UN Partition Plan in 1947.
Zionism in Canada from Its Christendom Roots
In Canada, Christian Zionist Henry Wentworth Monk was working even prior to Canadian Confederation to establish the first Jewish Zionist agricultural settlement in Palestine. Then in 1875, Monk began the Palestine Restoration Fund to raise money for the Jewish colonies in the Holy Land. He later launched a campaign to establish a Bank of Israel to finance Jewish resettlement, and then in 1881 proposed setting up a National Jewish Fund.[20] Monk was first influenced around 1840 by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury who is said to be the first to conflate the Millenarianism call for Jews to return to the holy land with British imperial foreign policy.[21] Monk was not alone at that time, with various clergy, politicians taking up the Zionist cause. For example, the Niagara Bible Conference being held annually in Niagara-on-Lake for fifteen or so years during the late nineteenth century. This American-Canadian conference was key to the burgeoning influence of the Millenarianism mission to spread the message of the need for the Jewish return to the Holy Land to fulfill the Bible’s promise of a second coming.[22]
Following Herzl’s first Zionist conference in Basel in 1897, Zionist Jewish Canadian organizations were established in Toronto, Kingston, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal, and the Canadian Zionist Federation found good support from the Canadian Christian establishment.[23] Canadian Zionists be they Jewish or Christian were supportive of the call for a “land for a people without a land,” as the Earl Shaftesbury had called for, even though there indeed were Indigenous people in the land called Palestine. Thus, by the end of the First World War, the stage was set for Zionism being a new theocracy, where a call of God this time of Judeo-tradition was being used to create a settler-colonial project of the British empire. The Dominion of Canada was very much present in supporting its imperial motherland’s Zionist agenda, with Prime Minister Robert Borden having participated in the British War Cabinet that decided the fate of Palestine.[24] Tauber suggested that Zionism was in fact part of British nationalism.[25] Canada until 1931 did not have its own independent foreign policy and so officially adhered to the Balfour Declaration in regard to Palestine.[26] with Canada’s Christian political base continuing to foster Zionism throughout the years of the British Mandate in Palestine.
Shared Setter-Colonial Roots & Shared Values in the Present
In May 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Canada and Israel are closely linked in heart and in mind by common democratic values and close people-to-people connections.”[27] This matches the usual indication from Canadian government officials that Canada and Israel share common values. Trudeau goes on to say that Canada is committed to fight anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. This is an irony in that Zionism by its Christian nature was in fact anti-semitic rejecting equality for Jewish citizens in their countries, calling for their return to Palestine in order to realize a second coming of Jesus Christ. Zionism by its very nature is racist based on its modality of establishing a claim on a land for a chosen people. However, Trudeau’s statement is not so surprising in that both Canada and Israel were founded as heirs of the British Empire, though settler-colonialism. Canada and Israel were founded based on the principle of terra nullius (vacant land). To understand Canada’s support of a Jewish state, we first need to consider Canada’s own founding.
i) Canada From Colony to Constitutional Nation
Canada was settled by colonists who came to pioneer the rich but rough geographic terrain for the French and British empires. These settlers saw this as their own their own promised land that allowed them to escape the poverty of the industrializing Europe, as well as famine and peasantry under feudal-like landlords. Unlike the Americans to the south, the Canadian settlers stayed loyal to the British Crown. Even as waves of new migrants began to come from elsewhere in Europe, they too were devoted to improving the land given to them by the Crown on behalf of God. Thus, it perhaps it is not so surprising that the pioneer Zionist Jewish settlers were even into the twentieth century seen as bringing civilization to an undeveloped land and people. The existing indigenous people were not taken into consideration at all, and only the white European settlers were considered, the land being deemed “empty” and rightly belonging to the Europeans who “discovered” it.
The colonial roots set out by the Doctrine of Discovery not only provided the ethos for this settler worldview but provided the legal basis to pre-empt indigenous rights in the new world. In Canada’s case, such laws incorporating this principle were integrated into Canadian constitutional and common law and provide only the right of land occupation and use to the Indigenous people.[28] This pushed Indigenous people into dependence on the colonial government and courts, with the legal basis living on today even as we are supposedly in a post-colonial world. Thus, the Doctrine of Discovery according to Reid “is not simply an artifact of colonial history. It is the legal force that defines the limits of all land claims to this day and, more fundamentally, the necessity of land claims at all.”[29] This doctrine was specifically incorporated in official doctrines of the Catholic Church.
The roots of the fifteenth century Roman Papal Bulls can be traced through: i) the history from Augustine’s just war theology or christus victor used in Constantine’s co-opting of the early Christian emancipation movement; ii) the Catholic church’s meddling in international affairs through the Crusades which invaded other people’s territories and used Canon Law to determine property rights or dominium of Muslims, and iii) the series of Papal Bulls during the fifteenth century that allowed the invading of lands in the name of Christendom and the claim of sovereignty as part of the holy and laudable work of expanding Christianity. With the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus, Christendom moved from a conquer and conquest mode, to the settler-colonial discover and acquire mode. The fifteenth-century Papal Bulls became the legal foundation for the colonization of the new world, with doctrine that explicitly indicated that Indigenous people had no sovereign rights to their own land. By the sixteenth century cannon and international law had blended together. The premise of no-sovereign Indigenous land rights has remained the base of international jurisprudence through the centuries and in Canada continues to be embedded in the Royal Proclamation of 1763.[30]
We may consider ourselves to live in a post-colonial period, but the sovereignty for indigenous land rights still rests with the Crown, with the Crown maintaining pre-emptive right. Land claims are not the same as private land ownership. Therefore, even as s.35(1) of the Canadian Charter of rights recognizes the aspiration for Indigenous self-government and requires courts to consider the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty claims with respect to Indigenous people, s. 25 of the Charter mentions the principle of limited title as expressed in the 1763 Royal Proclamation, and so leaves Indigenous rights subject to the parameters set by Pope Alexander VI in 1493. Christendom thus continues in Canadian Constitutional Law through the international law created by the Roman Catholic church in the fifteenth-century that provided the legal context of settler-colonialism.[31]
ii) The Birth of a Jewish-National State through Modern International Law, but No Less a Settler-Colonial State
If Canada’s formation was that of Christendom based in ecclesiastical fifteenth-century international law, Israel was surely founded based on the modern, post-colonial contemporary international human rights law embodied in the newly formed United Nations under Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. The new UN apparatus might have seemed modern, but the action and the implementation were those of settler-colonialism. During the subsequent year over 750,000 Palestinians were exiled from their land and 626 documented villages destroyed.[32]
The UN certainly offered the hope of post-world war international human rights regime that would save future generations from the damage realized through the two great wars of the twentieth century.[33] The International Bill of Human Rights, UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 217[34] was adopted on December 10, 1948. The day after, December 11, 1948, the UNGA voted in favour of Resolution 194 outlining the details for the Right of Return for the over 750,000 Palestinians who had been exiled from their land with the creation of the State of Israel. In 1949, the Fourth Geneva Convention provided updated basis for the protection of civilians during the time of war and occupation. However, even though for approximately 200,000 Palestinians remained under Military Law in the state declared as independent Israel, the Fourth Geneva Convention did not apply as they were not considered occupied. Subsequently over the decades other UN conventions such as the rights of children were developed. These with the International Bill of Human Rights provides a modern international human rights law framework[35] that were to move the world beyond the settler-colonial international framework inherent in the Doctrine of Discovery.
One of the earliest actions of the UNGA was Resolution 181, the Partition Plan. The Plan outlined the British colonial power withdrawal from mandatory Palestine, and the establishing of a Jewish state within historic Palestine.[36] Canada played a crucial role in both the formulation and the adoption of the Partition Plan, with the original UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSOP) chaired by Canada’s Under Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson. For example, when there was a block on details around timing and approach for the Partition Plan between the USSR and the USA, Pearson negotiated that the UNGA would appoint a committee and it would report to the UN Security Committee. Also Mr. Justice Ivan Rand from the Canadian Supreme Court served as a main architect of the plan, indicating that for Palestine to be an Arab state would be a betrayal to the Jewish people, that a binational state would result in deadlock and a federal state would be equivalent to an abortion. The Canadian Jewish lobby kept in constant contact with Pearson and the Canadian team, but despite attempts to influence him by the small Arab Canadian community it seemed they had no impact.[37] Pearson became known as Canada’s Balfour. Only Elizabeth MacCallum the Middle East policy expert supporting the Canadian team cautioned against the Plan predicting that it would set the Middle East up for 40 years of war.[38] It would seem that Ms. MacCallum was correct but underestimated the duration of the impact.
As colonies around the globe were achieving nationhood being granted their independence by their colonizers, so a Jewish state was carved from within historic Palestine provided a way of colonizing under a new instrument of UN based international law.
As Banakar, suggests
the modern concepts of ‘nation-state’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘sovereignty’ [that] were inscribed in the Peace of Westphalia…have enjoyed considerable epistemological, ideological and mythical prominence for nearly four hundred years, particularly in the development of modern Euro-American law. Moreover, these concepts historically provided justification for the imperial strategies of European states and these states’ overseas oppression and exploitation of colonised peoples.[39]
It would seem even as the imperial empires had set aside the colonization they had achieved under the call of Christendom, and were ‘facilitating’ independence of their colonies, that the concept of the Westphalia nation-state persisted. Within this context, the Jewish state named Israel was founded as a nation-state within the international sphere of the newly formed UN, using imperial strategies that continued to be based on centuries old concepts of superiority of the Western way or what Edward Said would later call Orientalism.
Professor Edward Said developed the word “Orientalism” to describe how Europeans saw themselves compared to the Arab and Muslim world.[40] Said says Orientalism is based on the belief that the European identify is superior, and that the domination by Britain and France of the Levant from the beginning of the nineteenth century was replaced after the Second World War by the USA. Said suggests there is nothing mysterious nor natural about Western authority over the Arab and Muslim worlds.[41] Orientalism according to Said provided the intellectual framework and language that perpetuates the belief that a society can only improve itself when its nationalism imitates the West. Edward Said indicated that in fact a new form of imperialism (Orientalism) by the late 1970s had been adopted for the Arab world.[42] It was almost as though in saying this Said was spelling out the next step in global power, that of neoliberal globalization.
In 1948, the settler-colonial pattern was implemented with the ethnic cleansing of 80 percent of Palestinians from what would become the state of Israel. During the 1948 Nakba. 615 towns and villages were destroyed, and 750,000 Palestinians were displaced.[43] Resolution 194 was adopted by the UNGA in December 1948 to provide protection and Right of Return for those displaced. This Right of Return is yet to be realized, with each year, including 2018, the UNGA by voting to reaffirm this right.[44] Canada in 1948 supported Resolution 194, but in more recent years including in December 2018, Canada has voted against the annual renewal resolution.[45]
In 1967, Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, Gaza and the Sinai Desert from Egypt and the West Bank including Al Quds (Jerusalem) from Jordan. With the Sinai returned to Egypt, today Palestinians living in Gaza, and the West Bank including Al Quds (East Jerusalem) remain under occupation by Military Law. War crimes contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention including building of illegal settlements continue, along with human right violations.[46]
On July 19, 2018, the “Israel as Nation State of the Jewish People” Basic Law was passed by the Israeli Knesset.[47] This law enshrines Israel as the national home of the Jewish people calling for the “ingathering of exiles,” and names settlement as a natural value.[48] As a Basic Law it is considered to have constitutional stature, and to be overarching and more difficult to repeal. It provides the base for naming Israel as the historic homeland of Jewish people and declares unique self-determination for the Jewish people. As such it provides the formal dejure context for an apartheid state that affords different laws for those who are Jewish and its non-Jewish population. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel has documented over 65 other Israeli discriminatory laws.[49]
The parallels between the international and domestic law used to justify settler-colonialism under the fifteenth century Roman Papal Bulls, and the Jewish state pretext are uncanny, and certainly are worthy of further analysis. It may well be that on a deep psychological and historical level, the shared values between Canada and Israel that Prime Minister Trudeau refers to, are based on our inherent settler-colonial history. This would go a long way to explaining Canada’s voting record at the UN on international human rights law resolutions regarding Palestine. In December 2018, Canada again was one of only six, along with the USA and Israel, voting against reaffirming support for Resolution 194, the rights of Palestinian Refugees from 1948, and other resolutions supporting the rights of those Palestinians displaced in 1967, while also voting against or abstaining from other resolutions related to Palestine.[50]
Canadian Policy on Palestine: Reality and Possibilities
With the enshrining of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution through The Constitution Act, 1982, Canada moved into a modern human right based post-colonial era. No longer did Canadians require approval from England in order to amend their own Constitution, and so Canada had crossed the final threshold of colonial independence, complete with human rights and freedoms enshrined in its own constitution. With this important milestone Canada had officially renounced the twin doctrines of triumphant Christendom, and the Doctrine of Discovery based settler-colonialism.
- Canadian Policy Regarding Palestine and Its Implementation
Canada’s policy regarding Palestine reflects this modern human right and self-determination-based perspective. In this regard, current Canadian policy recognizes the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people and supports the creation of a Palestinian state that is sovereign, independent, viable, and democratic with contiguous territory. Canadian policy indicates that it supports the PA (Palestinian Authority) as the government entity of the West Bank and Gaza with the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Stated policy also indicates Canada is committed to working with the PA in assisting with “needed reform.”
Indication is that Canada supports “humanitarian and development,” and is providing funds towards Palestinian security, government and prosperity. Canadian policy also
- indicates supports UNGA 194 and UNSC 242 regarding Right of Return;
- responsibility by the occupier under the Fourth Geneva Convention; and
- renounces the annexation of Jerusalem by Israel, the building of the barrier, the illegal Israeli settlements and the destruction of homes and infrastructure. All of this is in the context model based on a two-state solution[51] and uses language that reflects the Declaration of Principles or Oslo Accords.
Despite the stated policy, Canada’s voting record at the United Nations does not reflect the policy of support for Right of Return, responsibilities of Israel under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In December 2018, Canada was one of six voting against 73/97 The Applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding Palestine, 73/95 the Rights of Palestinians under Resolution 194 (1948), 73/93 Support for the Palestinian Refugees from 1967 as per UNGA 2251 (July 4, 1967 and UNGA 2341 (December 19, 1967), and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 237 (June 14, 1967) and 259 (September 27, 1968). Also, one of six that voted against 73/98 condemnation of Israeli settlements in the oPt including East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, and one of five voting against 73/94 support for the Operations of UNRWA the United Nations Relief and Works Agency established in 1949. Canada was one of 10 to vote against the Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices – GA Resolution (A/RES/73/96). Canada did abstain from two General Assembly motions 73/100 regarding the Syrian Golan and 73/92 regarding UNRWA Relief.[52] Based on Canada’s voting record at the UN, that while Canada believes itself to be a leader of modern state regarding international law, its action seems to align more with the values of settler-colonialism.
- Legislative Aspects of Canadian Policy Regarding Palestine
Beyond this Canada as a high signatory of the Fourth Geneva Convention is required under Article 1 of the Convention to undertake whatever is required to uphold the Convention. This would require as a minimum action to stop violations by the Israeli occupier including annexations, extrajudicial killing, taking prisoners from into their own territory from the occupied territory, and settling their own people in the occupier territory. Beyond this international law accountability Canada has an additional human rights accountability under its own domestic law. Under Canadian domestic law Canada implements United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions regimes under the United Nations Act.[53] In addition, Canadian autonomous sanctions regimes are implemented under the Special Economic Measures Act.[54] Under the Special Economic Measures Act, sanctions are required when gross and systematic human rights violations have been committed in a foreign state. This law would align with a modern human rights principle basis approach; however, in practice despite the proven systemic human rights violations committed by Israel Canada does not act as outlined under its own domestic law.
International law remains a state-centric model, thus requires advocates and in fact victim groups themselves needing to focus on attempting to convince government to act. Thus, this means that in order to claim human rights it is necessary to have not just “justice on their side [but they] must also be politically savvy.”[55] Therefore it is important to consider the role of the Canadian courts regarding Rule of Law related to international human rights law.
The courts in Canada under constitutional order are considered the last stop for justice, both in their role to interpret and implement law. That said, Canadian courts can be “constrained when it comes to applying international law which is not binding in Canada unless it has been implemented. A Treaty can be ratified by executive branch, but in order to implement a legislative law must be passed. As a result, much of the defined international human rights law has not been directly implemented in Canada.
In one instance, Canadian law does provide assurances related to crimes against humanity and war crimes. In establishing the International Criminal Court, Canada was a leader in the 1998 Rome Statue and the related international political campaign to establish a permanent court to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. Canada enacted its obligation by including the Rome Statue when the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act on June 24, 2000.[56] In that regard, it would seem that there would be potential to consider this legislation in regard to the role of various companies, institutions and individuals in regard to direct violations of international law associated with the Fourth Geneva Convention as it relates to Canadian violations. Canada’s leadership in both establishing the International Criminal Court and in its implementation of the 1998 Rome Statue into domestic law speak to a modern international law-based values put into action including through legislation.
- Funding Policy: Development and Peace
It has now been over 25 years since Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the first Oslo agreement in September 1993. Since then, Europe and the United States have invested billions of dollars into the stimulation of economic growth and in building state institutions in Palestine. Wildeman and Marshal suggest that this liberal-technocratic approach to peace-building is predicated on the notion that politics can be separated from economics, and that prosperity and stability can be synonymous with peace even in the absence of justice and equality.[57]
The Oslo Accords were not a decolonising project. The Oslo agenda including the post-Oslo donor culture becomes inverted and reinforces the construction of a Palestinian state within a settler worldview. It was a reorganizing of the colonial architecture made to look more believable to the international community. For western donors, the Palestinian state needed to strong enough to police their own people without threatening Israel. Its authority had to be legitimate enough to maintain the Rule of Law among its own people without exercising any real possibility of sovereignty. [58] This is counter to the actual of emancipation, or any struggle for autonomy, self-determination, freedom and dignity. Thus, foreign aid which was premised on the model of security and prosperity for the occupier ran counter to Palestinian liberation, and indeed just peace for the region. The framework including the introduction of consumer debt, served to silence the resistance model, and left Israel in control of Palestinian development with an explicit agenda of de-development.[59] Thus, donor aid to the Palestinian Authority is designed to fail due to its own internal contradictions. In fact, if ever it was to succeed, Israel would have to accept the existence of an independent, functioning Palestinian state with full sovereignty over its land and resources. If western donors truly hope to see the Palestinian economy grow, they need to apply political pressure on Israel to stop actively de-developing it under occupation. Palestinians do not need hundreds-of-millions of dollars in bilateral aid to keep their economy on life-support.[60]
The Oslo peace process propped up by western donor support was according to Wideman and Marshal based on a false premise of decolonisation through a process where Israel should relinquish military control over the oPt in exchange for a pledge of peace and security from Palestinians. This would be done through the offer of a two-state solution, with this view reinforcing a bifurcated, colonial and statist vision and which understands Arabs and Jews as two historically distinct peoples each requiring their own land within specific geographic boundaries. This view, however, ignored centuries of heterogeneous coexistence in the region. It also fails to account for the ways in which Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Jewish settler presence in the West Bank preclude any delineation between two states. Beyond, this, the donor approach ultimately neglects the very nature of settler colonialism. In fact, the donor language refers to ‘conflict’ rather than using clear language to indicate that it is an occupation. Unlike European colonialism in much of Africa, Asia and the Pacific during the nineteenth century which took labour and resources from indigenous people who were ruled vicariously through local proxies, Israeli settler colonialism is closer to the settler-colonialism in Americas from the fifteenth century on, with its goal to capture land and destroy the Indigenous people.[61]
Since 1993 the international community has invested more than $24 billion in ‘peace and development’ in the oPt.[62] To suggest this development and state building to strengthen the Palestinian governance is nothing short of the Orientalism This of course should not be surprising, as critics of developmental aid understand it to be a dominating tactic used to be “rationalizing technical discourse that conceals hidden bureaucratic power, or dominance,” and since aid is provided through an unspoken intended reality it is not a “policy to be implemented, but domination to be resisted.”[63]
Over the last dozen years, the Canadian government has made $600 million of developmental aid to the occupied Palestinian territory.[64] Despite the indication that this financial assistance is to support a sovereign, independent and viable Palestine, through development projects that foster economic growth works [65] there are only $900,000 exports annually from Palestine to Canada.[66] This despite, Palestine having quality, distinct product that is being exported to other countries.
In July 2018, the Canadian government awarded contracts worth $37.6 million to “increase economic prosperity for Palestinians, including through reducing barriers to entrepreneurship, employment and employability.”[67] None of these contracts were provided to Palestinian NGOs. As Wildeman and Marshal have suggested, no amount of aid however, can bring about a just, positive, and lasting peace, until the fundamental injustices of occupation and dispossession are seen for what they are.[68] Wildeman and other colleagues suggest that Canada most recent, $37.6 million aid announcement will not be very useful as it ignores the reasons for the economic and social issues that the development is needed to address.[69] They go on to suggest this indicates how Canada does not consider Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian situation, and while the developmental aid for entrepreneurial technical innovation may seem useful, it is not the need for training but rather the inability for Palestinians to grow their economy through innovation because of restriction movement for people and good, land and other resource including water theft, and restrictive policies by the occupier such as being able to receive required inputs, and meet with potential buyers and investors. Examples include that only in 2017 was Palestine permitted to move forward with 3G, and even the summer 2018 release of 10 tons of mail held for up to eight years was considered a gesture by the occupier. Without addressing these systemic and pragmatic barriers, developmental aid simply is an optical illusion that it is possible to fix poverty and/or create a vibrant modern economy through money provided to Palestinian entrepreneurs, while the economic situation in the oPt is “structurally created by human rights violations, siege, military occupation and the theft of Indigenous resources on a massive scale.”[70]
Beyond this, the occupying force under the Fourth Geneva Convention is responsible for the well-being of those occupied. Thus, in providing financial aid, the occupier is relieved of financial responsibility under international humanitarian law. Further, research has shown that financial aid funds are transferred back to the Israeli economy through purchase of goods and services, with Aid Watch indicating over 72 percent of foreign aid ends up directly in the Israeli economy.[71]
The author would suggest that it is only resources that result in supporting the entrepreneurial skills of Palestinians to put their exports products on the shelves for consumers in Canada and around the world through exports is provided in good faith. This can only be done through removal of barriers precluding imports of Palestinians. Rather the extension of the settler-colonial framework continues even if through the façade that somehow a liberal, free market approach can result in peace through development. In considering the way forward it would seem important that work be done to bring imports of Palestinian products Canada and request the Canadian government to help in this regard both in terms of barrier removal and perhaps seed funding. Rather barriers are put in place in regard to product from Palestine.
In Conclusion
The Palestinian national movement was created as a struggle for the liberation of Palestine, including the return of its people to their land, rather than on a potential state based on negotiations that puts off the core issues including right of return and the status of Jerusalem until the end. The essence of this liberation movement has parallels to the original emancipation movement of the story of Jesus in the first century CE. It is a story based on an international movement against Empire. After 1600 years of Christendom, the evolution of the Westphalia nation state and a 120 years of an active Zionist nation building project, this paper has considered Canada’s policy regarding Palestine and how it is lived out through actions. It would seem perhaps that the deeply rooted historical psyche of Canada’s triumphant Christian and settler colonial founding is lived out through not taking real steps to halt Zionist state actions of illegal settlement, along with other human rights violations and war crimes. This is juxtaposition against Canada supporting modern justice and self-determination through stated policy and even legislation such as the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. I would contend that considering the historical theological basis of Christendom and the more recent theological context of Zionism, along with a settler-colonial foundation based on the Doctrine of Discovery help to understand this seemingly contraction. It would be in this context, that the author suggests that there are opportunities related to:
- holding Canada accountable to implement its stated policy in regard to international human law;
- upholding domestic law both in regard to the Special Economic Measures Act and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes, and
- in support for real economic development through exports from Palestine.
In considering these opportunities, sociolegal scholarship can perhaps provide a balanced view through the study of law in relationship to social relations including social breakdown[72], as it relates to the history of Christendom, Zionism, settler-colonialism and neoliberal globalization.
References
Abunimah, Ali. The Battle for Justice in Palestine. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
Andrew, Arthur. The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power: Canadian Diplomacy From King to Mulroney. Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1993.
Armstrong, Karen., Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. London: The Bodley Head, 2014.
Banakar, Renza. Law and Social Theory. Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle Edition.
Bahdi, Reem, Jeremy Wildeman, Nadia Abu-Azhra, Ruby Dagher. “Why Canadian Aid Won’t Really Help Palestinian Entrepreneur,” The Conversation. August 23, 2018.
Bhabha, Faisal. International Human Rights in Canada: At the Junction of Law and Politics. Toronto: Osgoode Hall Law School, 2014,
Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.
Cotterrell,Roger. Subverting Orthodoxy, Making Law Central: A View of Sociolegal Studies, Journal of Law of Society. Volume 29, Number 4, December 2002, 632-644.
Engler, Yves. Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. Vancouver: RED Publishing, 2010.
Toufic Haddad. Palestine Ltd. Neoliberalism in the Occupied Territory, London: London Middle East Institute, 2018.
Hall, Douglas John. The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
Hever, Shir. How Much International Aid to Palestine Ends up in the Israeli Economy? Aid Watch. September 2015.
Horsley Richard A. (ed.). In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as A History of Faithful Resistance. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008.
Ignatieff, Michael. Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Eliear, Tauber. Personal Policy Making: Canada’s Role in the Adoption of the Palestine Partition Resolution. Westwood: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Reid,Jennifer. “The Doctrine of Discovery and Canadian Law,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies. Volume 30, Issue 2, 2010, 335-359.
Robertson, Grayson R, The influence of dispensationalist theology on evangelical perceptions of Muslims post-9/11, Georgetown University: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2011,
Rodman, Karen. “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption.” Paper Winter 2014 for M.Div.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
Schehadah, Raja and Jonathan Kuttab. The West Bank and the Rule of Law. Ramallah: Al-Haq, 1980,
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Mediterranean Politics. Volume 19, Issue 3, September 2014.
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Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771.
Al-Haq
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Canadian Policy on Key Issues in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. March 4, 2018. https://international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/mena-moan/israeli-palistinian_policy-politique_israelo-palestinien.aspx?lang=eng.
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[1] From paper written by Karen Rodman in Winter 2014 for M.Div. “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption” This was précised from essays written during my M.Div. including “Jesus as Non-Violence Resistor,” Spring 2013.
[2]The Hebrew scripture focused on the elect people of Israel, but the Newer Testament is for all (aka Jew or gentile, slave or free, man or woman).
[3] Rodman, “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption.”
[4]Houston Smith, World Religions, 50th Anniversary Edition, New York: Harper One, 1991, 296.
[5] Rodman, “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption.”
[6] First Samuel 8 is a call by the people for Yahweh to provide them a king like the other nations. This marks the beginning of movement that led to the rule of the King David. First Samuel 8 warns of the fate that will follow with a nation state, where the people become slaves to the capitalist imperial war agenda. However, Yahweh says given the people what they want, realizing they will understand soon enough their fate under a nation with a king.
[7] This is from book review by Karen Rodman of Walter Brueggemann The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Book report completed for Old Testament III course at Emmanuel in Winter 2014.
[8] Rodman, “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption.”
[9] Douglas John Hall, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003, 3-7.
[10]Ingenious Corporate Training Inc., Christopher Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery, October 3, 2016, https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/christopher-columbus-and-the-doctrine-of-discovery-5-things-to-know.
[11]Regina S. Sherif, Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History, Zed Books, 1983, 24.
[12] Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, London: The Bodley Head, 2014. 372.
[13] Ibid., 372.
[14] The World Zionist Organization, 120 Years of Zionism, 2018 (booklet).
[15] Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood, p. 372.
[16] From paper written in Winter 2014 by Rodman, M.Div. “The Healing of Truth & Reconciliation: Towards a Process Theology of Redemption”
[17] World Zionist Organization, 120 Years of Zionism.
[18] Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 391.
[19] Karen Armstrong, A History of God 391.
[20] Yves Engler, Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, Vancouver: RED Publishing, 2010, 11-12
[21] Yves Engler, Canada and Israel, 12.
[22] Grayson R, Robertson, 111, The influence of dispensationalist theology on evangelical perceptions of Muslims post-9/11, Georgetown University: ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2011, 20, Accessed at:
[23] Yves Engler, Canada and Israel, 13.
[24] Yves Engler, Canada and Israel, 16.
[25] Tauber Eliear, Personal Policy Making: Canada’s Role in the Adoption of the Palestine Partition Resolution, Westwood: Greenwood Press, 2002, 51.
[26]Yves Engler, Canada and Israel, 16.
[27] Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada on Israel Independence Day, May 2, 2017, Government of Canada, Prime Minister’s Office, Accessed at:
[28] Jennifer Reid, “The Doctrine of Discovery and Canadian Law,” The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, Volume 30, Issue 2, 2010, 335-359. Accessed at https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca/docview/1009079324?pq-origsite=summon.
[29]Ibid.
[30]Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Research and mapping by Eitan Bronstein and team, (De) Colonizer, current until January 2019. See: https://www.de-colonizer.org/map.
[33] Faisal Bhabha, “International Human Rights in Canada: At the Juncture of Law and Politics Working Paper,” Osgoode Legal Studies Research Paper No. 17/2014 Vol. 10 No., 5, York University, 2014.
[34] The International Bill of Human Rights today includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR) and twin Covenants of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), https://research.un.org/en/docs/humanrights/undhr.
[35] See details of the UNDHR at http://www.un.org/en/sections/universal-declaration/foundation-international-human-rights-law/index.html.
[36] United General Assembly, Resolution 191, 1947, accessed at https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253.
[37] Eliezer Tauber, “The Jewish and Arab Lobbies in Canada and the UN Partition of Palestine,” in Israel Affairs, Volume 5, Issue 4: Israel’s Transition from Community to State, 1999. 229-244.
[38] Arthur Andrew, The Rise and Fall of a Middle Power: Canadian Diplomacy From King to Mulroney, Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1993, 79.
[39] Reza Banakar. Law and Social Theory, Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle Edition, 250.
[40] Ibid., 257.
[41] Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, 13, 16, 28-29.
[42] Ibid., 321-324.
[43] The Israeli group Zochrot is one of several sources for this information. See https://zochrot.org.
[44] December 7, 2018 United Nations General Assembly motion, to which Canada was one of six countries who voted NO along with the USA and Israel
[45]Ibid.
[46] See www.alhaq.org for outline of various cases. Al-Haq Al-Haq is an independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation based in Ramallah, West Bank. Established in 1979 to protect and promote human rights and the rule of law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the organisation has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The original work of Al-Haq, Raja Schehadah and Jonathan Kuttab, The West Bank and the Rule of Law, Ramallah: Al-Haq, 1980 can be found at: https://jonathankuttab.org/publications.
[47] “Final Text of the Jewish Nation Bill Set to Become Law,” Time of Israel, July 18, 2018/updated July 19, 2018. Accessed at:
[48]Israeli Knesset, Basic Law: Israel, the Nation State of the Jewish People, July 2019, unofficial translation by Dr. Susan Hattis Rolef. Accessed at:
[49] Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, see https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/7771.
[50] Based on UNGA data base on The Question of Palestine. See https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/general-assembly/
[51] Canadian Government, Canadian Policy on Key Issues in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, March 4, 2018, https://international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_relations-relations_internationales/mena-moan/israeli-palistinian_policy-politique_israelo-palestinien.aspx?lang=eng.
[52] Based on UNGA data base on The Question of Palestine. See https://www.un.org/unispal/data-collection/general-assembly/.
[53] United Nations Act can be found at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/U-2/index.html.
[54]Special Economic Measures Act can be found at https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/S-14.5/index.html.
[55] Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, 43.
[56] Faisal Bhabha, International Human Rights in Canada: At the Junction of Law and Politics, Toronto: Osgoode Hall Law School, 2014, 5-6.
[57] Jeremy Wildeman and Sandy Marshal, Open Democracy, London, May 2014, Accessed at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/jeremy-wildeman-sandy-marshall/by-misdiagnosing-israelpalestine-donor-aid-harms-pales
[58] Ibid.
[59] Toufic Haddad, Palestine Ltd. Neoliberalism in the Occupied Territory, London: London Middle East Institute, 2018, 261.
[60] Wildeman and Marshal, Open Democracy.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman, Unwilling to Change, Determined to Fail: Donor Aid in Occupied Palestine in the Aftermath of the Arab Uprising,
Mediterranean Politics, Volume 19, Issue 3, September 2014, 433
[63] Ibid.
[64] Based on analysis using the Canadian International Development project portal. http://cidpnsi.ca/civil-society-and-development-projects/.
[65] Backgrounder, Global Affairs, July 2018
Accessed at ,https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2018/07/backgrounder–new-support-from-canada-for-palestinians.html.
[66] This is from meeting with Head of Mission from Canada to Palestine, Douglas Scott Proudfoot in his office in June 2018, with Karen Rodman, Jonathan Kuttab and Michaela Lavis.
[67] Global Affairs, Press Release “Minister Bibeau Concludes Trip to the West Bank and Announces New Support for Vulnerable Palestinians,” July 29, 2018. Accessed at: https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2018/07/minister-bibeau-concludes-trip-to-israel-and-the-west-bank-and-announces-new-support-for-vulnerable-palestinians.html.
[68] Wildeman and Marshal, Open Democracy.
[69] Reem Bahdi, Jeremy Wildeman, Nadia Abu-Azhra, Ruby Dagher, “Why Canadian Aid Won’t Really Help Palestinian Entrepreneur,” The Conversation, August 23, 2018, accessed at: https://theconversation.com/why-canadian-aid-wont-really-help-palestinian-entrepreneurs-101731.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Shir Hever, How Much International Aid to Palestine Ends up in the Israeli Economy? Aid Watch, September 2015.
[72] Roger Cotterrell, Subverting Orthodoxy, Making Law Central: A View of Sociolegal Studies, Journal of Law of Society, Volume 29, Number 4, December 2002, 639.
