RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was clear that it wouldn’t take long for Canada’s new government to sink its liberal fangs into Israel. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s loss to Justin Trudeau in October virtually guaranteed an end to the honeymoon between Ottawa and Jerusalem.

Sunday’s message from Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion to the Jewish state, then, though contemptible, was not the least bit surprising.

Borrowing a page from the U.S. State Department’s playbook — and emulating an abusive marriage — Dion professed his love and commitment while throwing a punch.

“As a steadfast ally and friend to Israel,” his statement read, “Canada calls for all efforts to be made to reduce violence and incitement and to help build the conditions for a return to the negotiating table.”

This little of piece of immoral parity came on the heels of a couple of particularly horrifying stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists against two Israeli women — one slashed to death in front of her traumatized teenage daughter; the other wounded while pregnant.

But the above brutal assaults are merely drops in the bucket of the uprising that began in September and has been continuing daily without letup.

Nor is the purpose of this “lone-wolf intifada” — spurred by incitement on social media and given the stamp of approval by Palestinian Authority officialdom — to bring about a “return to the negotiating table.” It is, rather, to beat the Jewish state into submission and defeat. Because the terrorists have not succeeded in this mission, a number of Israel’s good “friends” in the West have been trying to lend a hand.

In Europe, which is now having its own experience with Islamist terrorism, Israel is literally and figuratively being labeled as the culprit of the Palestinian war being waged against it.

The idea is that if settlements in Judea and Samaria ceased to exist, both peace and Palestinian statehood would emerge.

The United States under President Barack Obama also holds this preposterous position, as its ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, made clear in his speech last week at a national security conference in Tel Aviv. In his bosses’ eyes, there are “two sides” to the Palestinian-Israeli violence, and each has to do its part to curb it.

In other words, Israel has to cease adopting policies that cause terrorists to go out and murder innocent people.

But Canada — O Canada — had a different approach. Harper and his foreign ministry did not qualify their country’s loyalty to the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. The sole conditions about which they spoke were those that had to be met by the PA.

It was thus with a heavy heart that the Israeli government and conservatives in Canada and elsewhere parted with Harper and watched an Obama clone replace him.

Indeed, it was the Canadian Conservative Party that responded most loudly to Dion’s statement for “equat[ing] … terrorist attacks with Israeli settlement construction. This is unacceptable.”

On Monday, as Shapiro “apologized” for the poor timing of his comments from the previous week, Dion’s spokesman, Joe Pickerill, “clarified” Canada’s reprimand and explained why a longer “tough message” to Israel was soon to be delivered.

“We’re not necessarily equating the violence by any means on both sides,” Pickerill said. “But there have been issues, and we need to be in a position to point that out.”

These words coincided with a stabbing attack on two women at a grocery store in a Jewish community northwest of Jerusalem. The terrorists were killed by a security guard before they had the chance to detonate the pipe bombs they had brought with them to maximize carnage.

Shame on you, Canada.

Ruthie Blum is the web editor of The Algemeiner (algemeiner.com).