Bravo, Stevo

I have some Canadian friends: there’s Mark, Maya, Marina and Mateus (who’ve visited me in Mole Creek [1]), Dieter (Maya’s father, who’s currently here [2]) and my cyberfriends Chrows25 [3] and Wordsmith [4] (whom I’m yet to meet in person). I wonder if they know that last Monday and Tuesday in the Canadian Parliamentary Buildings in Ottawa, their country hosted the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism’s [5] second annual conference [6]. I don’t know what they think of their current prime minister Stephen Harper [7], but I reckon the speech he gave to the conference [8, 9] was honest and honourable. He said that ‘when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand’. He added that though Israel is not beyond fair criticism, Canada must oppose demonisation, double standards and de-legitimisation ‘Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us’. He added that Canada did not secure a UN Security Council seat [10] due to its failure to ‘go along with this anti-Israel rhetoric’. How brave of Canada to put principle above self-interest. Bravo, Mr Harper. And bravo Canada. I salute you.