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Harper said Canada finds it “deplorable” that some in the international community still question the legitimacy of Israel’s existence.

“Our view on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable.”

Harper said that he refuses to single out Israel for criticism on the international stage, arguing that such action is not a “balanced” approach to foreign policy, and is, in fact “weak and wrong.”

“We live in a world where that kind of moral relativism runs rampant. And in the garden of such moral relativism, the seeds of much more sinister notions can be easily planted.

“And so we have witnessed, in recent years, the mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism and the emergence of a new strain.”

Harper said the old-anti-Semitism was “crude and ignorant, and it led to the horrors of the death camps” in Nazi Germany in the 1940s.

“Of course, in many dark corners, it is still with us. But, in much of the western world, the old hatred has been translated into more sophisticated language for use in polite society.

“People who would never say they hate and blame the Jews for their own failings or the problems of the world instead declare their hatred of Israel and blame the only Jewish state for the problems of the Middle East.”

The prime minister added that whereas there was once a time when Jewish businesses were boycotted, some “civil-society leaders” now call for a boycott on Israel.

“On some campuses, intellectualized arguments against Israeli policies thinly mask the underlying realities such as the shunning of Israeli academics and the harassment of Jewish students.”