concerns about the clear reality of nazi collaboration in western continental europe aside, the invasion of the atlantic coast of europe, which canada participated in, was largely a liberating process. sort of. the first thing the anglo-american forces did was slaughter the socialists, of course. during the war, the resistance to the nazi occupation was more aligned with stalin, as the russians were fighting a real war, and the british were fighting a phony war. the nazis merely meant to occupy france; they meant to depopulate russia. hitler's attack on stalin was stupid, and the russians were going to win, regardless. it was a matter of time before the red army drove into berlin, paris and probably on to madrid, where they would have set up puppet states out of the resistance to the german occupation. so, had the forces of capitalism not come in from england to "save europe", the result would have been the socialist soviet republics of france and spain, and probably of italy, too. the anglo-americans had to kill all of them socialists as the first order of business, to make sure the continent was safe for investment. this is not taught history, but there were large massacres by incoming british, canadian and american soldiers.
but what is at least true is that they didn't support the nazis. they may not have wanted an american occupation, but at least it wasn't the nazis. all evidence suggests that the dutch and french are appreciative of canadian efforts to undo the german occupation, even if the resultant american occupation wasn't their intended or desired outcome.
in historical israel, on the other hand, there was a war going on between the then current occupiers (the english and french) and a previous occupation group (the arabs), as the long standing hegemon, the turks, also an occupier, had been replaced. nobody welcomed british troops to the mandate area as liberators. the arab tribal leaders were aligned with the nazis, and fighting to overthrow the british. these troops were in place to occupy the region and prevent an uprising, not to liberate it.
it's easy to condemn the arab groups for aligning with the nazis out of free will rather than being forced to submit to them, although it's clear they had a common enemy: not the british, but the jews. however, that's not really relevant. the british should not have held on to the area so long after world war one. if the arabs wanted to join the axis powers, and hitler and mussolini would have them, that was their prerogative. the next step would be to blow them up as axis powers rather than occupy them to stop them from joining the axis powers, and that would have been a better outcome, with a more clear result. had the british blown up historical israel in the second world war instead of protecting it, it would not be having the problems it is having today. if 1945 is year zero, the calendar in historical israel was never reset. that's the problem.
it is fundamentally incorrect to equate graves of colonial soldiers in gaza with fields of dead canadians in belgium or france.