Or rather the shifting plates of the political power game and how Israel becomes a vehicle for change. Note what happened last week and which is highly significant:

Liberal power couple Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz have publicly broken with the Liberal Party line on the Middle East crisis and are turning to Prime Minister Stephen Harper because of his support of Israel.

Mr. Schwartz, a confidante of former prime minister Paul Martin and one of Canada's most influential businessmen as the head of Onex Corp., is one of the eight signatories of an advertisement placed in a newspaper in Cornwall, Ont., where the Conservatives are holding caucus meetings.

The ad welcomes the caucus to Cornwall and expresses appreciation to Mr. Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Conservative MPs for "standing by" Israel. It also lauds other G8 leaders and Australian Prime Minister John Howard for their stands on the war.

And Ms. Reisman is not without influence either as she has a virtual monopoly on book sales in Canada through the Chapters, Indigo and Coles bookstores which she controls. The first thing you have to do when you walk into one of them is to avoid the table with 'Heather’s Picks' which given her political interests I have always looked on with a fair degree of caution. Not sure if we can find Alan Dershowitz on that table now that Reisman has moved along the political spectrum, but you never know.

In any case, it was both encouraging and refreshing to hear that Harper was standing by Israel while his Foreign Affairs minister, Peter McKay, went as far a describing Hezbollah as ‘a cancer’. Even more interesting was the deep confusion that had somehow grasped Canada’s Liberal Party where the current interim-leader preached desperately for Canada to remain neutral, while the various leadership contenders wandered off in all sorts of directions in order to balance a clear moral stand with getting sufficient interest on the left-of-center flank. Notably the purported frontrunner, Michael Ignatieff who was twisting in all directions without staking out a very credible position, something he was so capable of before he moved back to Canada:

Saying nothing is no answer, either. On holiday in Europe, Ignatieff, who is supported by many of the party's pro-Israel activists, remained silent for two weeks before finally taking a stand criticized as too late, too problematic and too impersonal.

This Middle East mess is, of course, the last thing the presumed Liberal front-runner needs. It sucks attention back to his controversial support for the Iraq war, his tortured arguments on torture and his ivory tower background.

Harper will mark six months in office this month and his poll ratings were solidly in positive territory as he moved fast and decisively on a mildly conservative domestic agenda. It is ironically a foreign affairs issue that has now put a few dents into that positive track record as not all Canadians yet fully grasp the essence of what is going on between Israel and Hezbollah. That is most notably the case in notably in the province of Quebec where Harper in the end needs to make inroads to win an outright majority.

Given these dynamics, the opposition is struggling hard to find the right note as they know full well that taking a firm position on Israel and the Middle East is not without risk. But with influential and moneyed forces shifting their interests – and I somehow suspect it is not all about Israel for Schwartz and Reisman - it looks as if a less ambiguous position about the Middle East is now enabled to get more traction in Canada.

UPDATE: More here:

Senator Jerry Grafstein said he has a big problem with Liberals who suggest that Canada has a history of neutrality when it comes to dealing with aggressors such as Hezbollah, and he will encourage those vying to lead his party to clarify their positions and make the war a bigger issue.

“I have a lot of problems with Bill Graham's position and some of the leadership candidates,” he said during an interview about the interim Liberal leader. “We've never been neutralist.”

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