Israel's new hard-right government presents new problems for Justin Trudeau

Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups in Canada don't agree about much, but the coalition government now being formed by Benjamin Netanyahu has both sides worried about the future.

The arrival of Israel's most right-wing government ever will also challenge the Trudeau government — which has pursued the same pro-Israel course as Stephen Harper, albeit with less fanfare.

Netanyahu has always been on the right of Israeli politics — it's his partners that have changed. A stream of corruption scandals rendered him toxic to the more centrist politicians who used to form coalitions with him, forcing him to turn to parties previously outside the mainstream.

As the price of their cooperation, those extremist parties have demanded and received key posts in the new government.

The situation is a product of Israel's freewheeling democracy, said Shimon Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

"It allows groups with a very narrow perspective to be able to achieve some electoral success, but their very success is raising questions about the stability of Israel's democratic values," he said.

Fogel is the first to admit that the resulting government will make his job of defending Israel's interests and image in Canada much harder.

He said he's hoping Netanyahu — and the realities of governing — will tame the extremists.

"What I can confirm is that there is some unease within the Canadian Jewish community," he said. "I think it represents a concern for ensuring that Israel reflects the same values it historically has, and that people here associate with it. So it'll be an intense time going ahead.

"It's inescapable to recognize that it is going to represent a challenge for Israel within the international community."

Israeli establishment sounds the alarm

That view is widely shared in the Israeli establishment.

Israel's President Isaac Herzog was recently caught on an open mic describing coalition partner Itamar Ben Gvir as someone "that the whole world around us is anxious about."

Ben Gvir was convicted by Israeli courts of supporting terrorism and spreading hatred. He threatened the life of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in the run-up to his assassination. Now, he's taking over the ministry of national security, giving him control over policing in Israel and the West Bank.

Ben Gvir emerged from the Kach Party of Rabbi Meir Kahane — which was banned as a terrorist group by Canada, the U.S. and Israel itself. His new political vehicle is the Jewish Power Party.

Benny Gantz, the outgoing defence minister and former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Force, cautioned that Ben Gvir was building a "private army" in the West Bank. Former Jerusalem police chief Arieh Amit warned that under Ben Gvir's control, Israel's "police could be helping to bring about the end of democracy."

'Open season' on Palestinians

This has already been a violent year in Israel and the Occupied Territories. James Kafieh, vice-president of the Palestinian Canadian Congress, said things look set to get much worse.

"The obvious implication is that there is nothing and no one who will support and protect Palestinian human rights," he told CBC News. "It's open season on the Palestinian population living under this brutal Israeli occupation." 

Ben Gvir has demanded the death penalty for Palestinians who kill Jews — but not for Jews who kill Palestinians.  

"(Ben Gvir) is the number two partner in this coalition," Kafieh said. "But it goes down like a rogues gallery."

While Ben Gvir will control police in the Territories, coalition partner Bezalel Smotrich — another West Bank settler who has also spent time in jail — will have control over the Israeli civil administration there.

Mainstream U.S. Jewish organizations have denounced the inclusion of figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich in the new government. The Anti-Defamation League warned that their presence "runs counter to Israel's founding principles."

Ex-PM calls coalition partner 'extreme, racist'

The new government's social policies are also seen as a threat by many secular Israelis.

"The most extreme and dangerous figures in Israeli society are going to be the most dominant in our children's education," warned outgoing Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid.

He singled out Netanyahu's coalition partner Avi Maoz — who will run Israeli schools' outside programs and partnerships — as "extreme, racist, homophobic and dangerous".

Maoz ran on an openly anti-gay platform and has championed the cause of conversion therapy, now banned in Canada.

The Biden administration has sent warning signals to the new government regarding both the Occupied Territories and social policies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States expects to see respect for "core democratic principles, including respect for the rights of the LGBT community and the equal administration of justice for all citizens of Israel."

"We will gauge the government by the policies it pursues rather than individual personalities. We will hold it to the mutual standards we have established in our relationship over the past seven decades," Blinken said, adding that the U.S. will "work relentlessly to prevent any parties from taking actions that could further raise tensions and push the two-state solution even further out of reach."

The Trudeau government, meanwhile, has remained silent about Netanyahu's government. It did not respond to a CBC News request for its position on the new government.

Antisemitism rising

Fogel said he fears the new coalition could inflame an already alarming situation for Jews in North America who are witnessing the mainstreaming of antisemitism.

The hate has come from the right — as represented by the Holocaust denier who dined with a former U.S. president last month, along with the openly antisemitic Ye (Kanye West). It's also come from the left, as in the case of Laith Marouf, who received over $600,000 in Canadian taxpayer money as an "anti-racism" trainer despite an open record of online expressions of hatred against Jewish people.

Jewish groups have also expressed outrage at the presence on Parliament Hill of activists who have expressed positions that are not merely anti-Zionist, but openly racist against Jews.

Palestinians, meanwhile, point out that Canadian politicians also recently met with extremists from the other side, such as Chaim Silberstein.

"The Jewish community is palpably more anxious now than it was two years ago, and for sure five or 10 years ago," Fogel told CBC News. "We saw a significant spike when hostilities or conflict broke out in Gaza a year ago last May, and that has not really abated."

With extremists seizing the levers of power in Israel, Fogel said he worries the Jewish community in Canada may suffer because of words and actions it has never endorsed.

"Some of the positions that they stake out are, if not antithetical, then at least in significant contrast to those things that we take for granted," he said. "Even the language that they use is oftentimes problematic."

A shrinking coalition of strange bedfellows

The new coalition could put further strain on the Trudeau government's increasingly isolated diplomatic stance.

The past month has seen Canada vote at the UN in support of Israel with a very small group of like-minded countries, while most of Canada's allies lined up on the other side.

That's because the Trudeau government has adopted the position of the Harper government and of successive U.S. administrations — that there is too much focus on Israel at the UN. To protest that, it opposes even those motions consistent with Canadian law and policy.

This past week, Canada and the U.S. opposed a motion calling on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. The only other nations to take that position were Israel itself, the Liberian government of evangelical former footballer George Weah, and Palau and Micronesia, two Pacific microstates that always vote with the United States.

Two weeks ago, the Trudeau government voted against a motion calling for a "comprehensive, just and lasting peace." It was joined by the same small group of nations, plus two other U.S.-affiliated Pacific statelets (Marshall Islands and Nauru) and the pariah government of Hungary's Viktor Orban.

Allies such as Australia and Germany have shifted their voting patterns in recent years away from Israel. That trend may accelerate under the new government, particularly if it pursues destabilizing actions such as building more settlements or changing the status quo around access to holy sites in Jerusalem.

Coalition members are currently in discussions about doing both of those things.

Ukraine, Canada disagree

On Monday, Dec .12, Canada will vote against a motion to refer the Israeli occupation to the International Court of Justice.

"Canada opposes initiatives at the United Nations and in other multilateral forums that unfairly single out Israel for criticism," Global Affairs spokesperson Grantly Franklin told CBC News. "Canada rejects one-sided resolutions at such forums that seek to politicize such issues."

Kafieh said that Canada's diplomatic shielding of the Israeli occupation is at odds with its stated principles. 

"It's hard to advocate that you're against a country occupying somebody else's land in Ukraine, but not have any problem with Israel occupying somebody else's land in Palestine, in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem," he said.

"There is a lot of hypocrisy internationally, but Canada is in the embarrassing position of being one of the very few countries in the world that are still in lockstep with the State of Israel."

While Canada rejects such comparisons, Ukraine itself has supported the motion to refer Israel to the ICJ. That led Israel to rebuke the government of its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  

U.S. support getting shakier

Fogel said he hopes Canada will continue to vote with Israel at the UN. The bigger concern for Israel right now, he said, is what the U.S. might do.

"If the Biden administration finds that the presumptive Israeli government that 'Bibi' Netanyahu will form crosses red lines that it sees as incompatible with American values, it may seek to express those in not blocking condemnatory resolutions at the Security Council," he said.

"That's, I think, one of the metrics that we'd be able to use over the coming period to see whether the particular complexion of the Israeli government we assume is going to emerge has an impact on Israel's standing within the international community."

Should the U.S. change its voting pattern, the Pacific island states that vote with it — which have a combined population smaller than that of Kelowna, B.C. — likely would shift as well, leaving Canada essentially alone with Israel.

Kafieh said the Trudeau government has shown a pattern of hostility to Palestinians that puts it out of step with both the world and domestic public opinion.

"They talk about a two-state solution, but they undermine it at every turn," he told CBC News. "Canada might as well be out there in the occupied territories building Jewish-only settlements for the Israelis. They do everything they can to facilitate an illegal occupation of these Palestinian lands.

"Canada was for South African apartheid until it wasn't, until one day Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney sat together and they they realized that this was not viable. And there was wild support from the Canadian public for that initiative, which was decades overdue.

"The same thing will one day happen with regard to the State of Israel. The lid can't be kept on. This is just not a viable status quo."