
Lebanon, Youtube screenshot.
Canada is working to further subordinate Lebanon to US and Israeli dictates. And it’s been doing so for some time.
Recently the Globe and Mail published an article on the importance of Canadian and western support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Academic Bessma Momani argued that “investing in the LAF is crucial, not just for Lebanon’s political future but also for thwarting unwelcome Iranian influence in Arab countries. For the LAF to effectively play the role of an army serving Lebanon’s national defence, it must be given the tools to achieve its mandate, rather than allow Hezbollah to use the LAF’s weakness to perpetuate its mantra of resistance against Israeli occupation.”
Underlying Momani’s argument is an assumption that US and Canadian influence is well meaning despite those two countries assisting Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon, its sixth in less than fifty years. In the fall Israel killed over 3,000 Lebanese, injured tens of thousands, displaced a quarter of the country and destroyed a significant amount of its infrastructure.
Canada assists the Israeli military in various ways and Ottawa justified their violence in Lebanon. After Israel killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and dozens of others by dropping dozens of 2000-pound bombs in a suburb of Beirut Justin Trudeau celebrated it.
Canada’s assistance to the LAF is a way to help Israel and the US. Through the Canadian Training and Assistance Team-Lebanon Ottawa has donated tens of millions of dollars in equipment and other support to the LAF. They’ve also trained over 2,000 LAF personnel. In 2023 Canadian Ambassador to Lebanon Stefanie McCollum oversaw a ceremony in which $6.5 million in equipment was given to the Lebanese military. The past three Canadian ambassadors have met LAF head Joseph Aoun and often on multiple occasions, including in December. The Commander of Canadian Joint Operations, Major General JR Auchterlonie, and Canadian Brigadier General, Louis Lapointe, participated in at least two of those meetings. In Beirut eight months ago foreign affairs minister Melanie Jolie met Aoun who was selected to be president on Thursday.
On multiple occasions the Canadian, British and US ambassadors have met the head of the LAF together, including in October. Canada also partnered with Britain on a project to support the LAF, which has received substantial assistance from London. About half of the Lebanese military’s budget comes from the US. In announcing a $100 million new assistance package Tuesday, the US State Department explained, “U.S. support to the LAF reinforces the LAF as an important institutional counterweight to Hezbollah, which receives weapons, training, and financial support from Iran.” In 2008 the New York Times reported that Canada was following Washington’s lead in arming the Lebanese army as a counterweight to Hezbollah.
Currently the US, through its role leading the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire oversight commission, is pushing to have the LAF replace Hezbollah in the south. But the Lebanese military is completely incapable of resisting Israel. In fact, the LAF immediately withdrew from the south when Israel was about to invade in September. The Israelis would likely have marched all the way to Beirut if it weren’t for Hezbollah.
It is because Hezbollah checks Israeli power that Ottawa listed it a terror organization in 2002. As detailed in “Selectively Terrified: how Hezbollah became a terrorist organization in Canada”, the Jean Chretien government succumbed to Israel lobby pressure even though Hezbollah was one of Lebanon’s most popular political parties.
After openly defending Israel’s summer 2006 invasion of Lebanon, Ottawa bolstered its ties to the Lebanese groups least resistant to Israel’s aggression and ramped up efforts to weaken Hezbollah. A month after Hezbollah successfully held off the Israeli invasion foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay said: “Lebanon is being held hostage by Hezbollah. There can be no doubt about that. Hezbollah is a cancer on Lebanon, which is destroying stability and democracy within its boundaries.”
Ottawa’s demonization of Hezbollah gathered steam when Daniel Bellemare, a Canadian official, took charge of the international investigation into the February 2005 assassination of five-time Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. In November 2007 Bellemare, deputy Canadian attorney general and special advisor to the deputy minister of justice until the month before, was appointed commissioner of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) into the bombing that killed Hariri and two dozen others. Concurrently, he was named prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which was set to continue the UNIIIC’s work beginning in 2009. With 20 other Canadians on his staff, Bellemare politicized the investigation. Many Lebanese believe the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad had a hand in Hariri’s death yet Bellemare refused to say if he interviewed any Israeli suspects. A TV station linked to Hezbollah, Al Manar, claimed Bellemare “lost credibility” for his “politicized tribunal” because he was unwilling to investigate Israel’s possible implication in the killings. The “Israeli enemy is ‘innocent’ and will remain so in the eyes of the international community and the STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare.”
The most damning evidence against Bellemare came from the US State Department. A series of US diplomatic cables, released by Wikileaks, suggested he worked closely with the US embassy in Beirut.
Hezbollah was born in reaction to Israel’s occupation. Its resistance to the 1982 invasion drove Israel out of Lebanon.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau publicly criticized Israel’s invasion, but the opposition was at best symbolic. Ottawa failed to unequivocally condemn Israel’s 1982 invasion, let alone impose sanctions as it did when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan three years earlier or during Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands the same year. Instead of imposing sanctions (diplomatic, military or economic) for its 18-year occupation of Lebanon, Export Development Canada provided tens of millions of dollars in credits to Israel during the 1980s. Registered Canadian charities sent money to Israel, the two countries maintained various military ties and Ottawa instigated a free trade agreement with Israel in 1997. In effect, Ottawa continued business as usual with Israel.
Ottawa has long backed western imperialism in Lebanon. Seventy-seven Canadian troops were part of a 591 member UN force dispatched to Lebanon in 1958 to support the westernized elite facing pressure from secular pan-Arabism. While Canadian UN observers were in Lebanon, US troops invaded on July 15, 1958, the day after Iraq’s Western backed king was toppled. Fearing the rise of secular Arab nationalism, Canada supported this US intervention, as well as British forces deployed to Jordan two days later.
The Canadian government, reports Sean M. Maloney in Canada and UN Peacekeeping Cold War by Other Means, 1945-1970, “informed the [US] embassy that Canadian support for the Lebanese case can be taken for granted.” During the US invasion NORAD was placed on “increased readiness”.
Subsequently, Ottawa worked to increase UN involvement in Lebanon to relieve US forces and reduce tensions in the region. “The U.N. presence in the country gave the United States political cover for a speedy and reasonably graceful exit by allowing it to hand over its stabilizing mission to UNOGIL [United Nations Observation Group in Lebanon],” explains Maloney, “It was clear that Canada’s involvement in UNOGIL was intended to and did positively contribute to NATO interests in protecting the southern flank and access to Middle East oil.”
The more specific things change the more themes remain the same.