West Bank Boycott

I don’t always agree with the decisions made by the United Church of Canada, but the one they made this past summer to boycott products made in the settlements in the West Bank is one I support. (American Methodists and Presbyterians made similar decisions at their General Assemblies this year; Canadian Presbyterians are studying the matter.) The outrage the decision has provoked in Canadian Jewish circles recalls the reaction to Rev. Dr. A.C. Forrest’s book The Unholy Land, published in 1971.

Forrest was the editor of the United Church Observer and an early critic of Israel’s settlements built on territory captured in the 1967 war. The Canadian Jewish community could not tolerate his criticism of Israel.

Forrest was hounded to an early death by anonymous phone calls to his (unlisted) number in the middle of the night and burning crosses on his front lawn. His book and articles in the Observer also led to an estrangement between the United Church and the Canadian Jewish community. Rabbi Reuven Slonim, in his 1977 book Family Quarrel, described the United Church and the Canadian Jewish community as “two opposing camps viewing each other across a Maginot line.” Those tensions have erupted again, over substantially the same issue.

Forrest’s book bears re-reading. Many of his observations are as pertinent now: “You don’t pound a proud people into submission—especially when there are so many millions of them.” “Israel would like security, but not by paying the price of giving up her rich spoils of 1967. So she continues to develop the occupied territories, repress the inhabitants, expel or drive out all she can, and demand more weapons from the U.S. There is no sign that Israel will change her policies unless she is pressured by the U.S. to do so.” “Israel is like a child with a hand in the cookie jar. She would like peace but wants the cookies.” The International Court of The Hague has since upheld Forrest’s judgment that the settlements contravened Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Forrest was among the first Canadians to point to the substantial injustice that the creation of the state of Israel represented for the original inhabitants of British Palestine. He called for an acknowledgement of those wrongs and financial compensation for those who had been driven from their homes. He was also prescient in predicting that nothing would happen without a significant shift in North American public awareness of the problem: “Responsible government action will only follow pressure from informed public opinion. That is why top priority for concerned people is to get the truth about the Middle East out to the world.” That judgment looks as sound in the midst of the current American presidential race as it did when it was written.

Forrest invoked Canadian complicity in creating the problem as one reason to get involved in the messiness of Middle East politics. Canada voted in favour of partition in 1947; Lester Pearson chaired the four-nation working-group that drafted the United Nations terms that established the State of Israel in 1948. For his efforts, Israelis gave him the medal of valour and called him “Rabbi Pearson.” (Behind his back, less appreciative junior colleagues at External Affairs referred to him as “the King of the Jews.”) Israel’s first heavy artillery was a large shipment of Canadian 25-pound field guns (Second World War surplus) sold to a young Simon Peres at a discount by C.D. Howe and paid for by Montreal’s Jewish community. A few years later, Canada provided a squadron of F-86 Sabre jets to the fledgling Israeli air force.

The second reason was naked self-interest. Without a just resolution, the Palestinian problem would fester and mutate into a problem that threatened global peace. In retrospect, The Unholy Land looks prophetic. Forrest was right that the settlements would constitute a significant obstacle to peace and any plausible implementation of a “two state solution.” Forty years after he wrote this, it looks as if the United Church is finally ready to do more than mutter privately to itself; it is ready to stand up to Canadian Jewish objections and take (mostly symbolic) action in the hope of provoking long overdue public discussion.