Federal cabinet minister Stockwell Day and the Israeli Ambasador Miriam Ziv will be joining members of the Israeli government and local parishioners next month to “celebrate Israel” at Peace Tower Church in Centretown.
Three members of the Israeli Knesset will tour Canada to drum up support for Israel among Canadian residents at the beginning of April.
The tour, called “Canada Celebrates Israel: The Land, the People,” stops in Ottawa April 6. Special guests at the Bronson Avenue church will be Ziv and Day who is the Treasury Board president who recently announced he won’t be seeking re-election in the next federal vote.
Israeli Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara and Knesset members Shai Hermesh and Robert Ilatov will tour Canada for four days, attending events in Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto.
The three members of Knesset are part of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus. The caucus reaches out to Christian leaders internationally to “build a direct line of communication, co-operation, and co-ordination between the Knesset and Christian leaders around the world,” says the group’s website.
“It’s really a celebration,” said Donna Holbrook, Canadian director for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. Holbrook is organizing the Toronto event.
Songs, dances and speeches will celebrate Israel and the mutual interests of Jewish people and Christians, say officials.
“There’s common cause between certain wings of Christianity and the fundamental existence of Israel,” said Mira Sucharov, a professor on Israeli-Palestinian relations at Carleton University.
Organizers are playing down the political tensions that surround Israel and the longstanding controversy surrounding the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the Middle East.
A letter announcing the Ottawa event said the tour is “to celebrate and proclaim our unceasing support for the state of Israel and Canada’s unwavering stand in the midst of international pressure.”
The caucus is touring Canada for a fourth time. “They enjoy the show of support,” says Rev. Guilio Gabeli, who’s organizing the Vancouver event.
Holbrook says that, “each event will have a different flavouring.”
The Vancouver gathering is being held in a native longhouse, the Montreal event at a Jewish conference centre and the Toronto event at a synagogue.
“They’re nice, varied venues,” she says, adding that each event shows the co-operation between Christian and Jewish groups at a national level and at a local level.
Gabeli says this won’t be a political tour, but an outreach effort to Jewish and Christian communities to show support for Israel.
Nevertheless, with a senior Conservative cabinet minister attending the Ottawa event and the government’s strong pro-Israel policies recently in the spotlight during the Bev Oda affair, Peace Tower’s celebration of Israel isn’t devoid of politics, says Carleton University professor of human rights Bill Skidmore.
Minister of International Co-operation Bev Oda was recently accused of cutting funding to a Christian aid organization, Kairos, because of its pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The Canadian government’s support for Israel is inherently political, says Skidmore.
“They basically are trying to turn attention away from the problems of how Israel treats the Palestinians,” says Skidmore. “What they’re attempting to do is say: ‘Don’t look at that, look at the great things about Israel’, as though that would excuse the harm that is done to the Palestinians.”