OTTAWA—When it comes to Israel, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is considered a hawk, not a dove.

And while it may seem an unusual legacy project, the Jewish community of Toronto plans to honour Harper for his staunch support by building a migratory bird interpretive centre in his name, in Israel.

The Jewish National Fund’s arm in Canada is raising money to build the “Stephen J. Harper Hula Valley Bird Sanctuary Visitor and Education Centre” in a nature park in a northern valley bordered by the Golan Heights to the east and the Naphtali Range of mountains to the west.

Harper has never been to Israel. He often proclaims his love for cats, but has never displayed — publicly anyway — an interest in birds (although his government did announce Tuesday it intends to protect the endangered Greater Sage-Grouse in Alberta and Saskatchewan.)

Nevertheless, Harper agreed to lend his name to the Israel project after he was approached about the plan, said Josh Cooper, chief executive officer of the JNF Canada.

“The prime minister has a strong love of animals: cats, dogs, pandas,” he said. “It plays off his whole love of animals.”

“The prime minister obviously has final say on anything he’d be a part of,” said Cooper, but he declined to say whose idea it was in the first place, and who pitched it to the PM.

The PMO refused comment altogether whether when contacted by the Star.

Harper’s bird centre will be a “world-class scientific and educational facility,” said Cooper, to commemorate the Canadian prime minister’s friendship with Israel.

“The Jewish community is extremely proud and honoured, and the JNF is proud and honoured, to have a chance to honour our prime minister whose unwavering support of Israel” stands out, he added.

Since coming to power, Harper has backed the Jewish state in its conflicts with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the anti-Israeli regimes in Syria and Iran in domestic debates and on the international scene.

On its website, the Jewish National Fund’s branch in Canada calls Harper “an extraordinary world leader” who took Canada through the global recession, rebuilt its military, and “staunchly defended victims of crime and restored Canada’s strong voice on the world stage.”

“Under the direction of Prime Minister Harper, Canada is now a leader in the international fight against anti-Semitism and raising awareness of the heinous crimes of the Holocaust. At the UN, Canada stands tall as a nation of principle by defending the freedom and dignity of all people,” says the JNF Canada website.

It is promoting a Dec. 1 dinner in Toronto as a tribute to Harper which will “benefit” the construction project, which Cooper said the prime minister will attend.

He added the “kickoff” to the fundraising campaign actually began Monday night, when more than 3,000 people gathered at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue to hear Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier who spent five years in Hamas captivity, speak.

But the showcase fundraiser is the December tribute to Harper, which Cooper said is being organized by individuals of “all political stripes” and will offer a chance to big donors to rub shoulders with the prime minister.

Tickets are $200 apiece, and the JNF is soliciting corporate and individual donations of up to $100,000, eligible for a charitable tax receipt. Major donors of $100,000 or more will be invited into a “leadership circle” reception; $50,000 and up gets a donor into a VIP reception, and donors of $6,000 and more will be recognized “in perpetuity” at the centre, says the website.

Cooper declined to say what the fundraising target is, suggesting numbers on fundraising and ticket sales would be available closer to the event, which he said would be open to the media.

Proceeds will go to building a 4,000-square-metre facility where only makeshift structures now stand, said Cooper. Architectural drawings for the Stephen J. Harper migratory bird centre have been drafted. Cooper said shovels are ready to go into the ground, but the whole project could take up to two years to complete.

The December dinner has not sold-out but Cooper said he is aiming for a big crowd at Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre.

The Hula valley, once drained of its natural lake, is being restored as a wetland rehabilitation project by the quasi-governmental agency that has charitable status, and has helped the Jewish state acquire land, extend settlement, and rehabilitate the environment. The Israeli government promotes the Hula Valley region as the site of large bird migrations and an attractive tourist destination. It says more than 400 species migrate in the skies over Hula Lake.

Several high-profile Conservatives on Harper’s team are among the organizers, including: Sen. Linda Frum, Sen. Irving Gerstein (who chairs the Conservative Fund — the party’s main fundraising arm), Manitoba Sen. Don Plett (past party president) and the dinner’s advisory committee made up of Conservative MPs Mark Adler, Peter Kent, John Carmichael, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver.

Among the top donors listed in the leadership circle are RioCan, RBC, the Gerald Swartz and Heather Reisman Foundation. Other major corporate donors listed for the dinner include CIBC, Scotiabank, BMO Financial, Cineplex Entertainment, First Capital Realty/Gazit-Globe (Canada’s largest developer and operator of supermarket and drugstore-anchored shopping centres), the audit firm Deloitte (which has done audit work for the Conservative party as well as for the Senate on the expenses scandal); investment and wealth management firms like Gluskin Scheff and Associates and RP Investment Advisors, and the Conservatives’ political marketing company in the 2011 election campaign, RMG Responsive Marketing Group Inc.

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Many other large donors are private individuals or family foundations. Also listed among them is the Manitoba Police Association.

Harper’s support for Israel has been more vocal but the Liberals contend it is not strikingly different from that of the previous Liberal government. Harper, however, loudly rejected what he called the Liberals’ “moral relativism” when it comes to the Middle East.

He brushed aside critics of Israel’s 2006 offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon calling it “measured;” voted against Palestinian statehood at the UN; refused to join global condemnation of Israel’s expanded Israeli settlement in the occupied territories or its actions in violently attacking a protest flotilla bound for Gaza. This spring, Harper’s foreign affairs minister John Baird met his Israeli counterpart in her East Jerusalem office in apparent disregard of Arab claims to the eastern side of the city.

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