Tag Archive for: Israel

PM Harper Spreading Schmaltz All Over Israel

According to a report on tonight’s World at Six on CBC Radio One, Stephen Harper was at a banquet in Jerusalem tonight where he was feted by his obsequious Israeli hosts. He sang “Hey, Jude” off-key and told the hall that his mother–who isn’t Jewish, he added to a laugh–nonetheless would appreciate the honourary doctorate he was given in Israel this week. I found it all obnoxious–Harper all week has been saying only things that Israeli Likudniks want to hear, pandering to them.

I’ve seen US Jewish political pandering and I’ve rarely seen it done more unctuously than Harper is doing it on the overseas trip. It’s politically nauseating. I think he and his advisors see their way to winning the 2015 federal election as appealing to voter groups they’re appealing with the trip. Harper continues to go to school on the history of George W. Bush’s presidency, who earlier tried to merge votes of rural, conservative Christian voters with the more conservative, older Jewish voters. As a US observer of Canada, it all gives me very unpleasant flashbacks to the Bush era.

Early Targeting of Voters by Stephen Harper with His Israel Trip

I detest how Canadian PM Harper often apes George W. Bush and the policies and communications style of the last US administration. This week Harper’s doing it on his trip to Israel, in regard to Middle East policy, with his scarily tight alliance with Netanyahu and the Likud government. He traveled with a 208-person delegation, probably paid for largely by Canadian taxpayers. I see in this an early targeting of voters for the upcoming Canadian federal election, to take place in 2015. I think Harper’s clearly planning to try and appeal to what he and his political team believes are Canadian versions of GW Bush voters. From what I’ve read about the Canadian electorate, I suspect these are rural voters, many of them in western Canada. They are non-urban, non-cosmopolitan, largely church-going voters. As to Jewish-Canadian voters, I don’t think that a wish to appeal is them is driving this primarily–Harper is a sincere and vehement pro-Israel politician. He will be glad to reap conservative Jewish voters, and use them as props, but I think this is planting seeds with his base.