United Church of Canada and the State of Israel: the impact of the Holocaust

Traces the shifting and ambivalent attitudes of the United Church of Canada to Jews and the State of Israel during and since World War II. In the war years, the Church expressed anti-Semitic sentiments while also advocating the admission of Jewish refugees into Canada. From 1956, however, the Church adopted an unequivocally pro-Arab policy, arguing that, with the creation of the Jewish State, one refugee problem had been replaced by another, equally unfair and unjust. The church viewed the State of Israel as solely created by Christian guilt over their silence during the Holocaust. Later, the Church somehow contrived to express sympathy for Jews without also expressing sympathy for Israel.