The Domestic Battleground This page intentionally left blank The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict t Edited by David Taras and David H. Goldberg McGill-Queen's University Press Kingston, Montreal, London © McGill-Queen's University Press 1989 ISBN 0-7735-0705-1 Legal deposit second quarter 1989 Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Domestic battleground : Canada and the Arab-Israeli conflict Includes index. ISBN 0-7735-0705-1 1. Canada - Foreign relations - Middle East. 2. Middle East - Foreign relations - Canada. 3. Israel - Arab conflicts. I. Taras, David, 1950- II. Goldberg, David Howard FC244.M53D65 1989 327.71056 089-090130-9 F1O29.5.M627D65 1989 Contents Acknowledgments vii David Taras and David H. Goldberg Influencing Canada's Middle East Policy: The Domestic Battleground 3 DOMESTIC ACTORS David J. Bercuson The Zionist Lobby and Canada's Palestine Policy 1941-1948 17 David Taras From Passivity to Politics: Canada's Jewish Community and Political Support for Israel 37 Howard Stanislawski Canadian Corporations and Their Middle East Interests 63 David Taras A Church Divided: A.C. Forrest and the United Church's Middle East Policy 86 David H. Goldberg Keeping Score: From the Yom Kippur War to the Palestinian Uprising 102 THE GOVERNMENTAL STAGE Anne Trowell Hillmer "Here I Am in the Middle": Lester Pearson and the Origins of Canada's Diplomatic Involvement in the Middle East 125 contents George Takach Clark and the Jerusalem Embassy Affair: Initiative and Constraint in Canadian Foreign Policy 144 David Dewitt and John Kirton Foreign Policy Making Towards the Middle East: Parliament, the Media, and the 1982 Lebanon War 167 John Kirton and Peyton Lyon Perceptions of the Middle East in the Department of External Affairs and Mulroney's Policy 1984-1988 186 David H. Goldberg and David Taras Collision Course: Joe Clark, Canadian Jews, and the Palestinian Uprising 207 THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT: A CANADIAN ROLE Canada and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Discussion with Irving Abella and John Sigler 227 Contributors 249 Acknowledgments This has not been an easy book to edit. Assembling willing contributors who understood the distinction between scholarship and polemic on a subject where it is all too easy to be drawn into the latter has been a long and arduous process. Without the patience and forbearance of our contributors, this book would never have been brought to completion. Our greatest thanks goes to them. David Taras would like to thank Irwin and Sheila Taras for their love and support and for many years of listening to their son's first thoughts on this subject. Daphne Gottlieb Taras gave encouragement and advice and sustained hope when it appeared to fade. Matthew and Joel Taras were not even born when this project was begun. The late John Holmes, David Taras' thesis supervi- sor at the University of Toronto, was gracious always and gave needed perspective and criticism. David Goldberg would like to thank his wife Sheri for her devotion and understanding. Daughters Adara and Shayna have been a great joy even as they have distracted their father from working on this volume. Dianne Fox at the University of Calgary helped shepherd the manuscript through to completion, and Brian Mussington and Randy Pelletier worked at various stages as re- searchers. We owe them a debt of thanks. We would also like to thank Philip Cercone at McGill-Queen's Uni- versity Press for his professionalism and for believing in this project. Marion Magee did a magnificent job of copy-editing, and Joan McGil- vray, the co-ordinating editor at McGill-Queen's, was exceedingly help- ful and a pleasure to work with. Two anonymous reviewers for the Social Science Federation of Canada helped immeasurably with their criticisms. The Aid to Publications Programme of the Social Science Federation of Canada must be thanked for its generous support. This page intentionally left blank The Domestic Battleground