There is nothing wrong with Canada criticizing the Israeli government. Settler violence deserves condemnation. Illegal activity should be prosecuted. Settlement policy can and should be debated — including vigorously within Israel, as it already is. The problem is the glaring double standard. Seven weeks before Israelis vote, the Carney government is joining European allies in announcing measures targeting Israeli settlements, even as Israeli police make arrests, its Supreme Court intervenes, and political leaders condemn settler violence. Meanwhile, where is the comparable pressure on the Palestinian leadership? Hamas remains armed. The Palestinian Authority has yet to deliver the fundamental reforms Canada was promised. General elections have not taken place. Mahmoud Abbas remains in power more than two decades after being elected to a four-year term. And Canada already recognized a Palestinian state anyway. Taken together, these decisions send a remarkably distorted message: Israel is the obstacle to peace, while Palestinian leaders are entitled to recognition and legitimacy before fulfilling the conditions supposedly required of them. That is not balanced diplomacy. And it has consequences far beyond the Middle East. For years, Israel has been portrayed as uniquely responsible for a conflict involving Hamas terrorism, Palestinian rejectionism, Iranian proxies, and decades of failed Palestinian leadership. When our government repeatedly singles out Israel while minimizing Palestinian agency, it lends credibility to that false narrative. And those narratives do not remain overseas. When the Jewish state is continually presented as uniquely malevolent, uniquely deserving of punishment, and principally responsible for the absence of peace, that demonization inevitably contributes to the environment Jewish Canadians are now confronting at home. Criticize Israel. Criticize Netanyahu. Criticize settlements. But apply the same moral and political standards to everyone else. Anything less isn't principled foreign policy. It's a double standard — and increasingly, a dangerous one. shorturl.at/73YkK h/t @accessd