Dual Loyalty?: Canadian Jewish Military Service in the Canadian Military versus the IDF
As I have been progressively documenting in this series of articles about jewish military service; the so-called ‘anti-Semitic myth’ of jewish cowardice, lack of loyalty to non-jewish states and also lack of military service relative to their numbers is not a myth at all but rather the truth. I’ve documented this in the case of British and German militaries in the World War One (1) as well as the American military in the Vietnam War (2) and the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (3)
I have also recently documented how jewish citizens of non-jewish countries are willing to serve in the IDF in large numbers, but are significantly and disproportionately underrepresented among those in the US military itself (4) as well as the British (5) and Australian militaries. (6)
This has long been difficult to prove absolutely in that how many foreign jews serving in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) (and from where) has long been a closely guarded Israeli state secret, but which has begun to be exposed with relatively figures for jews from the United States having been released by the Washington Post earlier this year (2024).
We have the benefit of a reasonable media estimate of the number of Canadian jews in the IDF although no clear number about how many jews serve in the Canadian military. Now before we take a look at the number of Canadian jews in the IDF; let’s check into how many jews serve in the Canadian military.
Unfortunately, the Canadian military no longer tracks it religious demographics – or at least no longer publishes them – (7) in part because one suspects that suspects they would be rather embarrassing and highlight how little so-called ‘new Canadians’ and ethnic and religious minorities in Canada contribute to the country’s defence and safety. This combined with the rather bizarre quest within the Canadian government to expunge religion – read Christianity – from the Canadian military (8) renders our task of identifying how many jews are in the Canadian military very difficult.
However, we do have some indirect evidence of the situation in the form of the Canadian military’s chaplaincy literature. We know that – for example – despite alleged ‘mass’ jewish service in the Canadian military from 1939 to 1945 – which I will cover in a separate article – the Canadian military inexplicably had no rabbis in its chaplaincy from circa 1945 to 2006. (9) This only changed in 2006 with the appointment of modern Orthodox Rabbi Reuven Bulka to the chaplaincy team of the Canadian Armed Forces, which had risen by another rabbi to a total of 2 by 2014. (10)
Now before you get all excited and suggest this as evidence of rising jewish participation in the Canadian armed forces; Rabbi Bulka revealed in conversation 2014/2015 that the Canadian Jewish Congress - when arguing with Rabbi Reuven Bulka over his joining the chaplaincy team of the Canadian Armed Forces in 2006 - pointedly told him that ‘there were hardly any Jews in the Canadian military’. (11)
Bulka also separately notes there are very few jews in the Canadian military (12) and that he was employed by the chaplaincy team solely because the Canadian military hoped that he might be needed ‘in the future’ not because there was in fact a need for a jewish chaplain (due to so few jews being in the Canadian military). (13)
Indeed, Bulka remarks that having 2 rabbis on the chaplaincy staff is a ‘massive overrepresentation’ compared to how many jews are actually in the Canadian military. (14)
This then indicates that there are very, very few jews in the Canadian military and although we don’t have the numbers. A very generous estimate of 100 jews would be more than sufficient given the respective published numbers in both Great Britain and Australia. (15)
Now at this point it is well to point out that while some might try to argue that jews are ‘not open about their jewishness’ because ‘they are not religious’ and thus ‘wouldn’t see the chaplaincy team’ so thus Rabbi Bulka and the Canadian Jewish Congress would be unaware they were in fact jewish. This argument does not hold any water because statistically jews in Canada are actually one of the more religious populations with a significant number regularly attending shul. (16)
So this argument cannot be used because jews in Canada are relatively religious and unless evidence is presented that there are lots of ‘secret’/‘secular’ jews in the Canadian military who are utterly different from this trend then this claim holds absolutely no water.
If we take the generous estimate of 100 jews being in the Canadian military and note that there are 95,000 personnel (including reserves) in the Canadian military as of 2021 (17) then this equates to 0.1% of the Canadian military being composed of jews.
Now there are 335,295 jews in Canada as of the 2021 Census (18) and they represent circa 1.4% of the Canadian population.
This then means that even our very generous estimate of 100 jews is actually 14 times less than it should be relative to the proportion of jews within the Canadian population, which is telling indeed.
What is even more telling is when we take these numbers and look at the number of Canadian jews voluntarily serving in the IDF.
We know from a CBC estimate from 2017 that ‘at least’ 230 jews from Canada were voluntarily serving the IDF at that time. (19) Further we know from anecdotal evidence from jewish testimony and publications that after the successful Hamas assault on Israel on 7th October 2023 and the resultant ongoing Israeli-Hamas war in the Gaza strip that a significant number of jews from Canada have gone to Israel to join the IDF to fight Hamas. (20)
Further due to the work of Jeff Shantz and Naomi Klein we have some idea of the scale of how many jews from Canada have gone to Israel in the past and also how they have ducked under the radar so-to-speak.
They explain how it works as follows:
‘Indigo has long been the target of boycotts because of the actions of its CEO Heather Reisman and her husband Gerry Schwartz. Reisman and Schwartz — who control 68% of the company’s assets — established the HESEG Foundation, which provides academic scholarships and stipends to foreigners, known as “Lone Soldiers”, who serve with the IDF.
According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME): “Each year, the HESEG foundation rewards hundreds of ‘Lone Soldiers’ with more than CA$3 million worth of scholarships for further academic studies in Israel.”
Writer Naomi Klein has reported that the foundation provides “all kinds of perks as a reward for military service” with the IDF. She also notes that HESEG “is listed as the first source of scholarships on the ‘Draft IDF’ website”.’ (21)
In essence then the jewish owned and run HESEG foundation pays north of CA$3 million per year to jews from Canada who go to Israel to fight as part of the ‘Lone Soldier’ program – which I have discussed elsewhere – (22) to pursue further studies in Israel as part of the benefits package and which acts as a direct incentive for jews from Canada to volunteer for IDF service and also shows that the ‘Lone Soldier’ program is used as a way – and a legal fiction - for jews to escape the obvious charge of treason for voluntarily serving in a foreign military rather than serving in the non-jewish military of the country of birth/residence and/or citizenship.
If we use the 2017 figure of 230 jews serving in the IDF and we add a conservative speculative estimate of 70 additional jews having volunteered for the IDF due to the ongoing Israeli-Hamas war – likely an severe underestimate with Australia’s similar figure going from over 100 to over a 1000 in a similar time period but a much smaller jewish population – (23) then we get 300 jews serving in the IDF which is already 3 times the number of our very generous estimate of the number of jews serving in the Canadian military above.
The probability however is that like Australian there are north of a 1,000 jews from Canada serving in the IDF at the present time which if we take a yardstick from Australia would suggest that the real number is between 2,000-3,000 jews.
This is however speculative but it does demonstrate nicely why the Canadian government isn’t keen to officially disclose how many jews are in the Canadian military as well as why they also aren’t keen to publicize how may jews are currently serving in the IDF, because it would force them to answer very awkward questions about why jews are at least three times more likely to volunteer to serve in the IDF than the Canadian military.
And no it isn’t because of ‘anti-Semitism’.
References
(1) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-military-service-britain
(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-military-service-the-united
(3) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-the-military-the-united
(4) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-american-jewish-military
(5) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-british-jewish-military
(6) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-australian-jewish-military
(7) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canadian-military-seeks-muslim-recruits-1.599390
(8) https://nationalpost.com/news/directives-to-military-chaplains-urge-expunging-god-religion-from-remembrance-day-public-ceremonies
(9) Michael Peterson, 2015, ‘The Reinvention of the Canadian Armed Forces Chaplaincy and the Limits of Religious Pluralism’, Published Masters Thesis: Wilfred Laurier University, p. 72
(10) Ibid., p. 146
(11) Ibid., p. 72
(12) Ibid., p. 93
(13) Ibid., p. 72
(14) Ibid., p. 174
(15) See my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-british-jewish-military and https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-australian-jewish-military
(16) https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2021001/article/00010-eng.htm
(17) https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/transition-materials/defence-101/2020/03/defence-101/caf-101.html
(18) https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E
(19) https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/idf-israel-canada-lone-soldiers-1.4670746
(20) For example: https://globalnews.ca/news/10022028/israel-hamas-canadian-reservists/; https://www.cp24.com/news/toronto-born-israeli-reservist-describes-chaos-on-frontlines-of-gaza-border-1.6600845; https://thecjn.ca/news/canadian-parents-with-children-in-the-israeli-army-keep-hoping-no-news-is-good-news-as-they-wait-to-hear-from-the-front/
(21 https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/canadian-lone-soldiers-fighting-israeli-forces-gaza
(22) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-american-jewish-military
(23) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/dual-loyalty-australian-jewish-military