John Value
That is the primary publish in a two-part sequence primarily based on a not too long ago revealed article within the Worldwide Journal, “Resisting Palestine’s Partition: Elizabeth MacCallum, the Arab World and UN Decision 181(II).” The second publish within the sequence is out there right here.
“I’m a Zionist,” declared Justin Trudeau simply earlier than stepping down as prime minister.
“Nobody in Canada,” he said, “ought to ever be afraid to name themselves a Zionist.”
Trudeau’s remarks got here throughout a Nationwide Discussion board on Combatting Anti-Semitism. In response, the Israeli embassy in Ottawa welcomed his remarks, whereas UN Particular Rapporteur on Human Rights, Francesco Albanese, asserted that preventing antisemitism is an obligation however that Zionism infringes on Palestinian’s proper to self-determination.
These opposite responses replicate sharp divisions in Canada about Israel-Palestine and likewise in regards to the definition of antisemitism. For supporters of Zionism, the main target is on Hamas and its October 7 assault that killed roughly 1200 folks together with civilians. Supporters of Palestine level out that the Israeli response has been disproportionate and indiscriminate with over 50,000 in Gaza killed, primarily ladies and youngsters.
Each side assert the need of countering antisemitism however differ on what constitutes antisemitism.
Reasonably than serving to to make clear these complicated points, Trudeau’s declaratory efficiency merely aligned himself with one aspect in what has arguably been a protracted and sophisticated historical past of anti-Jewish, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab racism in Canada.
The Nazi genocide and its aftermath marked a watershed second on this historical past, one which Elizabeth MacCallum needed to navigate as a newcomer to Canada’s Division of Exterior Affairs.
Anti-Jewish Racism and Zionism
The traditional examine None is Too Many vividly recounts the historical past of anti-Jewish racism in Canada, together with the deplorable M.S. St. Louis affair in 1939 when Canada refused to let lots of of German Jewish refugees enter Canada.
Earlier than this, nevertheless, most individuals of Jewish heritage in Canada had little time for Zionism, the motion to create a Jewish state in Palestine. “I’ve personally by no means had any religion within the Zionist thought however in apply the scenario has change into way more difficult,” wrote former NDP chief David Lewis in 1938. As Nazi atrocities turned identified and with anti-Jewish racism in Canada persisting, Zionism gained momentum.
In Palestine, a three-year Arab revolt in opposition to British management over Palestine prompted the UK authorities to subject a 1939 White Paper declaring {that a} separate Jewish state in Palestine was not potential. It additionally said {that a} additional 75,000 Jewish emigrants can be allowed to settle in Palestine over the following 5 years however after 1944, no additional immigration can be permitted “until the Arabs of Palestine are ready to acquiesce in it.”
This coverage prompted Zionist organizations in Canada, and elsewhere, to mobilize in opposition to the White Paper. In March 1944, a delegation of the Canada Palestine Committee (CPC) met with the prime minister, Mackenzie King, to ask that he intercede with the British Authorities to reverse the coverage outlined within the 1939 White Paper.
The Canada Palestine Committee was a strong foyer group that was introduced collectively to help Zionism. It included premiers, MPs, senators, and distinguished labour folks together with A.R. Mosher and Pat Conroy, president and secretary-treasurer respectively of the Canadian Congress of Labour; Percy Bengough, president of the Trades and Labour Congress; and Stanley Knowles and M.J. Coldwell of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), predecessor to the NDP. After assembly King, the CPC submitted a 40-page doc to the prime minister who requested the Division of Exterior Affairs to reply. Exterior Affairs officers turned to a newly employed clerk, Elizabeth MacCallum to answer the CPC temporary. Why MacCallum?
Born to missionary dad and mom in Turkey, MacCallum spoke Arabic and Turkish and was, in actual fact, an completed author and analyst on the Center East, having labored for the Overseas Coverage Affiliation in New York for a few years. Ladies, nevertheless, weren’t allowed to change into diplomats and he or she was thus categorized as a clerk when first employed in 1942. Her experience quickly turned evident and MacCallum basically turned Exterior Affairs’s “Center Jap Desk.” “Not one of the males had been ,” she recalled a few years later.[1]
Taking over her pen to answer the CPC temporary, MacCallum wrote a outstanding 17-page overview, “Palestine: Postwar Coverage and the 1939 White Paper”, a doc that right this moment rests among the many papers of Mackenzie King in Library and Archives Canada. In it, MacCallum attested that “Nazi persecution has taken a kind and reached an extent unprecedented in historical past,” bringing to a head the demand for a Jewish state.[2] She disputed the CPC suggestion that bringing European refugees to Canada would pit them in opposition to returning veterans. To recommend that European Jews ought to as an alternative go to Palestine, she stated, bordered on anti-Jewish racism: “This isn’t the primary time it has been instructed to Canadians that it will be to their benefit to help unrestricted immigration into Palestine as a way to cut back the variety of candidates for admission to this nation.”
MacCallum anxious that CPC help for Zionism by “Canadians who consciously or unconsciously discriminate in opposition to Jews socially, professionally or economically, give substance to the worry that anti-Semitism is making ready to dress itself within the respectable garb of a philanthropic coverage…”. Writing over eighty years in the past, she revealed how anti-Jewish racism and help for Zionism may very well be complementary, a query that continues to be related right this moment.
MacCallum additionally challenged CPC assertions that Canada, as a member of the League of Nations, was obliged to help the Balfour Declaration as a part of the British Mandate over Palestine: “…the Meeting was not consulted. Neither had been the Arabs.” Moreover, she insisted, the Balfour Declaration solely promised a homeland for Jews not an unbiased Jewish state.
Ultimately, King refused to take up the CPC request to oppose the 1939 White Paper.
MacCallum’s report gained the respect of Exterior Affairs officers however just a few, together with the up-and-coming Lester Pearson, dissented. Appointed ambassador to the US in 1945 after which deputy minister for overseas affairs the next 12 months, Pearson sympathized with Zionism, stating that he “personally thought partition was the simply and solely resolution to the Jewish drawback.”[3]
Regardless of Zionist pressures, the UK authorities maintained its positions outlined within the 1939 White Paper throughout and after the conflict. By the top of 1946, nevertheless, US president Harry Truman signaled his help for the Zionist mission. The UK-US disagreement put Canada in a pivotal place in its self-assigned position as a bridge between the 2 highly effective states. Nevertheless, with its empire in decline after the conflict, the UK authorities ceded management on Palestine to the US. The 2 powers agreed to carry the difficulty to the UN however in a approach that prevented any dialogue of Palestinian self-determination. As an alternative, they known as for the creation of a particular committee to check the way forward for Palestine.
Lester Pearson performed a sign position on the particular session of the UN that led to the formation of the UN Particular Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) that was to offer suggestions on Palestine for the autumn sitting of the UN. The Arab states protested: “The phrases of reference have truly prevented concepts and ideas like freedom, independence, self-determination, democracy, the Constitution, unity, concord, peace and justice.” Pearson, as chair of the proceedings, refused to just accept these complaints.
The King authorities appointed as its consultant on UNSCOP, Ivan Rand, a supreme courtroom justice who had brokered what turned generally known as the ‘Rand Method’ for union dues throughout a strike at Ford motors in Windsor. Assigned by the federal government to help Rand, MacCallum ready a briefing word wherein she emphasised that each Jewish and Arab peoples had been striving for change.[4] She identified that whereas the plight of Jewish peoples was “unhappily well-known,” the Arab story was not: “Due to the misunderstanding which have divided Christendom from Islam – from the time of the Crusades till the autumn of the Ottoman Empire in our personal day – there was no sufficient data within the West of the historical past of the Arab folks to stability the data it has of the historical past and current place of the Jews.”
MacCallum additionally pointed to views amongst distinguished Jewish leaders who had been against partition together with “extracts from speeches on the proposal for a bi-national state – by Dr. Buber, a famend Hebrew scholar, and Dr. Judah Magnes of the Hebrew College of Jerusalem.” After assembly with Rand earlier than his departure for Palestine, MacCallum recorded that she anxious about his pro-Zionist tendencies. Because it turned out, Rand did embrace the Zionist mission, serving to to writer the UNSCOP majority advice for partitioning Palestine, a narrative advised in David Horowitz’s State within the Making.
UNSCOP additionally produced a minority report, authored by the representatives of India, Yugoslavia, and Iran titled a “Plan for A Federal-State”. This alternate plan would have created a single federal authorities and established distinct Jewish and Arab provinces. One of many architects of this plan, Sir Abdur Rahman of India wrote a protracted and impassioned essay (Vol. II) as a part of the UNSCOP report to the UN, mentioning that “it will be a travesty of information, nevertheless a lot it might be utilized for the aim of propaganda for the creation of a Jewish state, to label the hate for the Zionist as one primarily based on anti-Semitic feeling.”
The UNSCOP report was the premise for UN deliberations on Palestine that passed off on the second common session of the UN that started in late September 1947. Fifty-seven states had been represented on the UN when it started its session in New York. The Canadian delegation alone consisted of over 70 folks and included cupboard ministers, parliamentarians, and advisors. Among the many latter was Elizabeth MacCallum who, together with three different ladies, had damaged the glass ceiling at Exterior Affairs to change into diplomats.
Over the 2 months of proceedings, MacCallum would problem Lester Pearson at each flip as UN delegates debated the UNSCOP Report and the way forward for Palestine.
John Value is a historian and anti-racist educator on the College of Victoria. He’s the writer of Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific (UBC Press, 2011); The BC Authorities and the Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, 1941-1949(2020); and co-author of each Difficult Racist “British Columbia”: 150 years and Counting (2021), and 1923: Difficult Racisms Previous and Current(2023).
Notes
[1] All quotes of Elizabeth MacCallum are from “Interview with E.P. MacCallum,” July 25, 1980 (Jewish Public Library/Archives, David. J. Bercuson Fonds, Subseries 2, File 182). See full article in Worldwide Journal for particulars.
[2] Elizabeth MacCallum, “Palestine: Postwar Coverage and the 1939 White Paper,” W.L.M. Papers, Memoranda and Notes, 1940-1950 (LAC, MG 26 J 4, V. 310, C214206-C214936).
[3] As cited in David J. Bercuson, Canada and the Delivery of Israel: A Examine in Canadian Overseas Coverage (Toronto: College of Toronto Press, 1985), 51.
[4] Elizabeth MacCallum, “Memorandum for Mr. Justice Rand, Historic Background of the Palestine Downside,” Could 31, 1947 (RG25, V 4219, 5475-CD-1-40, Pt. 1, LAC).
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