Special report by Karin Kloosterman
Jason Kenney
Israel is a hotbed of political missions and meetings. Jerusalem shuts down at least once a month from high-end delegations coming to town. Its narrow streets blockaded off as prime ministers and presidents from around the world meet with their Israeli counterparts.
This week Canada’s Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney was in Israel, as part of his Near East tour of the region. Before coming to Israel, the Oakville, Ontario-born Kenney who was raised in Saskatchewan, was in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.
It is often the case that officials come to Israel at the end of any mission as not to irk “the neighbors,” Israel’s neighbours, who in the best of times have tense feelings to Israelis and people coming immediately from there.
Kenney, a good friend to Israel, has an interest in this region in particular, because as a tossed salad, Canada has a great number of immigrants from this part of the world.
He treats his friends well.
Elected as Canada’s best overall MP this month, Kenney was instrumental in shunning the United Nations-sponsored Durban II conference on racism in Switzerland earlier this year, which had turned out to be a platform for Middle East countries to blatantly attack Israel. Canada, thanks to Kenney, was the first to boycott the conference even before Israel did, reports the Hebrew daily newspaper Haaretz (links to translation).
For four days in Israel, Kenney is aware of the undemocratic forces that undermine Israel’s right to exist. The same forces that threaten Israel put Canada and other western countries at risk too, Kenney said. “It’s a threat that comes from profoundly undemocratic forces that don’t have the same conception of human dignity or freedom and which abuse Israel as a kind of representative of the broader West and Western liberal-democratic values,” said Kenney while in Israel.
Among his stops in Israel, Kenney met with his counterpart: Israel’s Immigration Minister Sofa Landver, an immigrant herself from the Former Soviet Union. Kenney also met with Israel’s Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman, and Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein, former chair of the Canada-Israel Friendship Group.
For more on Kenney’s visit, see the Haaretz piece.
Share the same pro-democratic values of Israel and Canada? See the charter of the Canadian-government recognized Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group for more.
And if you are a freak for everything Canada and Israel, go a step further and visit the Facebook page of the Canada Israel Committee. I’ve become a fan and have already started leaving comments.
* * *
Karin Kloosterman is a Canadian-Israeli freelance journalist, writer and blogger, originally from Newmarket, Ontario. The travel bug brought her to Israel where she took root spiritually and professionally. She is now based in Jerusalem where she writes for blogs such as TreeHugger, The Huffington Post, and Carbon Catalog and at her own blog Green Prophet, where she hopes to create some Middle East peace by way of the environment.Karin is also an associate editor at ISRAEL21c and has been published widely in newspapers and magazines around the world. She writes songs in her spare time and hopes to become a filmmaker in the near future.
Contact Karin at   karin (dot) kloosterman (at) gmail (dot) com
/cijainfo
@CIJAinfo