Since Israel has unleashed its genocide in Gaza the Palestine solidarity movement has grown rapidly across the country. This growth has led many people in Canada to learn of the history and dynamics of Zionism for the first time, and through this process, many have been exposed to the activities of lobbying organizations like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), as well as cultural campus organizations like B’nai Brith and Hillel.
While the legitimate power and influence of these groups are not to be underestimated, and should be opposed in the strongest terms, there has been an idea picking up steam that, through these organizations and their counterparts across the west, collectively termed the ‘Zionist lobby’, Israel actually controls the collective west, and dictates what its foreign policy should be regarding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
This theory is advanced in many forms, some outwardly reactionary and others only naively so, but in general, regardless of who forwards this theory, it stems from either a conscious mystification, or unconscious misunderstanding, of imperialism.
The most widespread form of the ‘lobby theory’ on the broadly conceived ‘left’ claims that there is no political or economic reason for the west to support Israel, and that even if there was a time when it was politically and economically advantageous to support Israel, that time has surely passed. This leads to the conclusion that, barring an effective cost benefit analysis, the west must be infiltrated, coerced, or otherwise influenced by the Zionist lobby, which convinces or blackmails politicians to act in the interests of a foreign country, even to their own country’s detriment.
This view was expressed by Liam Meisner in his debate with Tara Alami on the subject in The Maple. According to Meisner, America’s support of the genocide can primarily be attributed to the Zionist lobby, and Canada’s support can be attributed to their subservience to America. Meisner posits that Israel’s barbarism precludes potentially advantageous imperialist alliances in the MENA region, and that Israel is in fact more of a hindrance to ‘empire building’ than it is a useful imperial outpost. In his own words, “[i]t isn’t the Cold War anymore; there’s no threat of communism the empire needs a bulwark against. Palestinians certainly aren’t a threat to the U.S., and the only reason anyone pretends that they are is because Israel wants them to do so”.
However, rather than falling back on the influence of the lobby, a proper evaluation of Canadian policy toward Israel must centre the economic basis of imperialism.
As Dave McKee of the Toronto Alliance for Peace and Solidarity points out, Canada has ample business interests tied up in Israel. First adopted in 1997, the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) has recently gone through two rounds of renewal in 2014 and 2018, expanding to cover products from the 1967 Occupied Territories as well as occupied Syria (Golan Heights). In this context, Canadian trade with Israel increased to over $2 billion annually, with arms export increasing from $7 million in 2014 to nearly $28 million in 2022.
However, McKee correctly notes that “trade benefits with Israel do not alone account for Canada’s shameful support for the genocide in Gaza and they certainly do not explain Ottawa’s participation in efforts to foment a wider regional war”. To account for this we must view the regional dimensions of Canadian and American imperialism which leads to continued support for Israel’s genocide. Israel serves as an indispensable gateway of trade to the broader MENA region, where Canada has begun to consolidate a range of financial interests. In addition to the CIFTA, McKee points out other Canadian trade deals in the region, including “Benin in May 2014, Burkino Faso in October 2017, Cameroon in December 2016, Côte d’Ivoire in December 2015, Guinea in March 2017, Kuwait in February 2014, Mali in June 2016 and Senegal in August 2016”.
Due to the ample interests of Canadian finance capital, and barring an independent foreign policy from the U.S., focus must also be paid to the U.S.’s desire to maintain their political and economic influence in the MENA region.
The imperialist drive to divide and redivide the world’s territory amongst themselves inevitably leads to war for the expansion of one or the other imperialist sphere of influence, which explains U.S. militarism in the region, most aptly represented by the presence of nearly 30 U.S. military bases in addition to billions in military aid and arms shipments to Israel.
As Lenin evaluated, re-division amongst the imperialist powers occurs through war where the balance of power allows, and unless such a balance presents itself, imperialists are typically content plundering the world under the auspices of ‘peaceful’ alliances. Such a balance of power which allows for ‘peaceful’ imperialist exploitation cannot exist if the popular national and democratic demands of Palestinians, and of the Arab region as a whole, are allowed to express themselves through efforts at national liberation and anti-imperialist resistance.
In order to enforce imperialist exploitation in the region, the American and Canadian ruling classes need to ensure, first of all, that the economies in MENA are weak, underdeveloped, and susceptible to capital penetration, and second of all, that the people in these regions are not able to resist underdevelopment through organized resistance. U.S. and Canadian support for the current genocide serves the purpose of destroying and completely erasing such resistance, which poses a very real and very imminent threat to the interests of American and Canadian finance capital.
Further, from the perspective of the American and Canadian ruling classes, China’s growing influence in the region—particularly through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—poses a significant challenge to their own influence. Many regional governments view the BRI as a viable alternative to Western-led development, which they have historically relied upon. This shift, in addition to the expansion and intensification of efforts for Palestinian national liberation, threatens to greatly diminish the hegemony of U.S. influence in the region.
This convergence of interests for the expansion of finance capital and its protection through maintaining spheres of influence requires a foothold in the region—a base of operations from which economic, political, and military directives can be carried out. For decades the U.S., and to a lesser extent Canada, have been pouring money into Israel for just this purpose. Israel’s status of a base of western imperialism in this regard is proven decisively by its role in assisting U.S.-led regime change in Libya and Syria, as well as its assistance in proxy-wars and sanctions regimes against Lebanon, Iran, and others. As Max Ajl points out, Israel is a “unique asset” serving not only as a regional ally, but as “an offshore arms factory; a regional irritant to Arab peace, stability, and popular regional development; a destructive gyro of world-wide counterinsurgency; a black hole drawing in regional surpluses and devoting them to endless defensive and offensive armament, away from social-popular welfare spending and non-military development.”
Therefore it’s not the lobby that is the primary source of support for the genocide amongst the Canadian ruling class, and it is not the case that Israel writes Canadian foreign policy. It is definitively within the interests of the capitalists, specifically the monopoly corporations, to maintain a sphere of influence in the Arab region, for which they need a base of operations to direct and protect Canadian finance capital. Of course, as is being shown every day of this genocide, this can only be done at the expense of Palestinian and broader Arab self-determination.
In the final analysis, the capitalists are incapable of finding a way out of this constant cycle of war, destruction, and genocide—no matter if it is Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or China in the crosshairs—precisely because this process secures profits and spheres of influence for finance capital.
Having the correct understanding and coming to the correct conclusions about the Canadian state’s shameful support of the genocide in Gaza is an imperative, not only to have theoretical clarity of the situation, but also to formulate the correct strategy and tactics for resistance.
However, if the primary source of support for Zionism in the Canadian state comes from the Zionist lobby, then it would make good sense to direct all of our efforts as anti-imperialists at the lobby rather than directing our energy toward the imperialist system as a whole, with a particular focus on Canadian interests in the MENA region. This strategy flies in the face of reality. If, hypothetically, the lobby vanished tomorrow, Canadian financial interests in the MENA region, and the dynamics of U.S.-led imperialism, would remain the exact same as they are today, with the potential exception being that the capitalists would need to find a new vector for intense propaganda and warmongering.
To defeat the influence of the lobby would certainly be a win for the Palestine solidarity movement, however, if it means keeping imperialism in place, then the material basis of Zionism in Canada would not be changed one iota.
With this understood, as anti-imperialists, we recognize that the best tool to build a mass-movement toward the end of undermining Canadian imperialism in the region, is the call for BDS. With this set of tactics, those of us in the peace movement can struggle to unite the broadest sections of the population, including and specifically the labour movement, towards fundamentally undermining the basis of Canadian support for the genocide. By helping to build these mass-movements, and by injecting a clear understanding of imperialism into these movements through our organizing work, we can help to win the most conscious and most active members of the mass-movements to the cause of anti-imperialism, peace, and socialism.