Foreign Ministries

Key Findings:

Vivian Bercovici, former Canadian ambassador to Israel, calls attention to the pervasive antisemitism within diplomatic services.

The author references an event related to the 7 October attack, when Canadian officials remained silent as news broke that a Canadian-Israeli citizen, Judith Weinstein Haggai, was killed by Hamas. When Bercovici condemned the response, or lack thereof, she was met with hostility from another former Canadian diplomat. Such hostility is not uncommon, as Jewish ambassadors are faced with antisemitism on a consistent basis. 

Bercovici references instances in history when diplomacy failed Jews, including the Evian Conference in 1938 and post-Holocaust times when Western nations refused Jewish refugees. When Israel was in its founding stages, diplomats openly opposed Jewish statehood due to other interests at hand, failing to once again, nurture Jewish interests. 

Currently, the diplomatic corps still exhibits bias against Jewish diplomats, against Jews, and against Israel. When speaking of her tenure, the author states “My Jewish identity, some said publicly, impaired my ability to fulfill my professional duties with honor. I was, by definition, disloyal.” Matthew Gould, another Jewish ambassador to Israel, shared a similar negative experience. “As with every Jewish diplomat serving in the Middle East, his religious and ethnic identity indelibly tainted his integrity in the eyes of many.” 

To combat antisemitism in foreign-policy departments, the author suggests that senior officials should enforce discipline and hire individuals with more diverse backgrounds to ensure a variety of viewpoints. Second, elected governments should have the power to hire or fire officials at all levels to break the permanent bureaucracy.