Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid book launch

Edmonton book launch of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid
with author Yves Engler
Wednesday, March 31 (4:30 pm – 6:30 pm)
Telus Building Room 236/238, U of A Campus
(Click here for map)

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Despite most Canadians’ strong desire for this country to be an honest broker and peacekeeper in conflicts around the world, Canada’s foreign policy has become the most pro-Israel in the world, says Yves Engler, author of the new book Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, available now from Fernwood Publishing.

“Our government has taken Canada’s foreign policy, which was always at least 80 per cent pro-Israel and moved it to 99.9 per cent pro-Israel at a time when the most right-wing government in the history of Israel is in power,” said Engler. “I believe most Canadians will be shocked to read how one-sidedly pro-Israel Canada has been and is today.”

Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid is the first critical primer about Canada’s ties to Israel. It is a revealing account of Canadian complicity in 20th and 21st century colonialism, dispossession and war crimes. The book documents the history of Canadian Christian Zionism, Lester Pearson’s important role in the United Nations negotiations to create a Jewish state on Palestinian land and the millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations used to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It argues that while both Liberal and Conservative governments have taken one-sided pro-Israel foreign policy stances, Canada’s current foreign policy is the most pro-Israel in the world.

This book is the first critical primer about Canada’s ties to Israel. It is a devastating account of Canadian complicity in 20th and 21st century colonialism, dispossession and war crimes. The book documents the history of Canadian Christian Zionism, Lester Pearson’s important role in the United Nations negotiations to create a Jewish state on Palestinian land, the millions of dollars in tax-deductible donations used to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service ties to Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (Mossad).

Former Vice President of the Concordia Student Union, Yves Engler is a Montréal activist and author. He has published three books: The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy; Playing Left Wing: From Rink Rat to Student Radical; and (with Anthony Fenton) Canada in Haiti: Waging War on The Poor Majority.

Praise for Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid

“Yves Engler’s meticulously researched volume refutes, for anyone who still believes it, the myth that Canada is or ever has been an honest broker in the Middle East. Reading Engler’s work leaves one with the inescapable and sad conclusion that the essence of Canadian policy has always been support for the establishment and continued dominance of an expansionist Zionist state in the territories that now comprise Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. As a former Zionist youth leader, I thank Engler for setting the record straight and can only lament our country’s historical and ongoing contribution to the tragedy enveloping the long-suffering peoples of the Promised Land, Arab and Jewish.” – Gabor Maté, Physician and author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction.

Praise for Engler’s Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy

“Yves Engler’s penetrating inquiry yields a rich trove of valuable evidence about Canada’s role in the world.”
-Noam Chomsky

Praise for Yves Engler

“Yves became a foreign-policy expert by working as a night doorman in Montreal…He’s in the mould of I. F. Stone, who wasted no time with politicians, who all have an agenda, but went instead straight to the public record.”
– Rick Salutin, Globe and Mail