Canada elections: Israel loses ‘best friend’ as Justin Trudeau defeats Stephen Harper
Orlando Crowcroft
By Orlando Crowcroft
October 20, 2015 13:11 BST
Updated 56 min ago
Israel has seen its foreign policy allies dropping like flies in 2015, with momentum building behind the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the Palestinian flag being raised at the United Nations and relations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama at historic lows.
Now Jerusalem has lost one of its staunchest allies in Canada’s Stephen Harper in the landslide election victory by Justin Trudeau, the 43-year-old son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who won 184 out of 338 seats in parliament in a surprise win for the Canadian Liberal Party.
“I’m not here to single out Israel for criticism”
- Stephen Harper, 2014
Harper was known for his refusal to condemn Israeli settlement construction – illegal under international law – and support for Israeli opposition to the P5 + 1 deal between Iran, the US and Europe, which brought to an end Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme and raised the prospect of ending decades of isolation for the country.
An editorial in the Times of Israel ahead of the elections claimed Harper was “undoubtedly the world leader most supportive of Israel” and that Israel “was about to lose one of its best friends on the international stage... the Harper administration one Benjamin Netanyahu’s dream team”.
TI’d be willing to bet Trudeau’s win had more to do with a fevered female electorate than it did anything the jug eared boob in the White House did.