[R-G] Canada’s government and opposition trumpet Israel’s “right” to wage endless war in Gaza

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/cana-j10.shtml

Canada’s government and opposition trumpet Israel’s “right” to wage  
endless war in Gaza
By Carl Bronski and Keith Jones
10 January 2009

Canada's political establishment has given its full support to the  
Israeli state's bloody onslaught against the Palestinian population in  
the Gaza Strip.

Canada's minority Conservative government has been amongst the most  
strident state supporters of the assault on Gaza. Since Israel  
launched its attack on Gaza two weeks ago, ministers in Stephen  
Harper's government have repeatedly echoed the cynical pronouncements  
emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv. This has included arguing  
against an "immediate ceasefire," laying all blame for the conflict  
and for the large number of civilians killed by Israeli air strikes  
and artillery barrages on Hamas, and otherwise apologizing for Israeli  
war crimes.

The new leader of Canada's official opposition Liberals, Michael  
Ignatieff, has followed suit, denouncing Hamas, which won Palestinian  
Authority elections in 2006, as a "terrorist organization" and  
asserting Israel's right to kill scores of Palestinians daily until  
Hamas cedes to its demands.

A day after the aerial bombardment of the densely populated  
Palestinian enclave began on December 26, Lawrence Cannon, the  
Minister for Foreign Affairs, gave full support to the attack. "Israel  
has a clear right to defend itself against the continued rocket  
attacks by Palestinian militant groups which have deliberately  
targeted civilians," said Cannon. "First and foremost those rocket  
attacks must stop."

As the carnage visited upon the Palestinians in Gaza escalated with  
the advent of the Israeli ground invasion, statements emanating from  
the Canadian Foreign Office were among the most supportive of all  
Israel's allies.

When 42 people, many of them women, children and the elderly, were  
killed and 55 wounded January 6 in an Israeli barrage on a clearly- 
marked United Nations-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, Peter  
Kent, the minister of state for Foreign Affairs—Cannon's deputy—told  
the Globe and Mail, "Hamas bears a terrible responsibility for this  
and for the wider deepening humanitarian tragedy. The burden of  
responsibility is on Hamas to stop its terrorist rocketing of Israel."

Parroting the line of an Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokesperson on  
the incident, Kent, a former news anchor for the Global television  
network, ignored unequivocal UN reports from the refugee camp that  
only civilians were in the school at the time of the attack. Said  
Kent, "We really don't have complete details yet, other than the fact  
we know that Hamas has made a habit of using civilians and civilian  
infrastructure as shields for their terrorist activities, and that  
would seem to be the case again today."

According to the BBC, 770 Palestinians, including hundreds of  
civilians, have so far died in the fighting and thousands more have  
been injured. Severe food and medicine shortages affect the entire  
Gaza population and the lack of potable water and sewage disposal  
capabilities has raised the spectre of disease. There have been 14  
Israeli fatalities, almost all of them IDF personnel.

When asked about the disproportionate use of force—Israel, thanks to  
US patronage, has one of the world's best-equipped and powerful  
militaries—and the huge difference in casualty rates, Kent responded  
that "numbers are a mug's game in this sort of situation."

The Conservative government has echoed the line of the Bush  
administration and the Israeli government in regard to entreaties from  
European Union leaders for a ceasefire: Unless any ceasefire agreement  
is "durable," the IDF had every right to continue its attack, declares  
Ottawa. In the parlance of diplomatic double-speak, "durable" means  
only when all IDF objectives in its Gaza invasion have been attained.

The callous indifference of the Canadian government to the plight of  
the people of Gaza is underlined by its failure to take timely action  
to evacuate Canadian citizens from the tiny, war-torn enclave. Only  
after the US and five other countries succeeded in getting their  
nationals out of Gaza on January 2 did Canadian government officials  
even contact the Israeli government to discuss the evacuation of  
Canadian passport-holders.

"I don't know of the relationship of those timings," said Kent in  
answer to criticism of the government's failure to provide timely  
assistance to the Canadians, all or almost all of them of Palestinian  
ethnic origin, trapped in Gaza as it was being pummelled by Israel  
with the support of Canada's government.

On Thursday, i.e. six days after the original evacuation, 48 Canadian  
citizens were able to leave Gaza in a deal worked out with Israel.  
Several others were reportedly too scared to report to an  
International Committee of the Red Cross rallying-point because of  
constant Israeli bombing.

Even as they left, the evacuees were given a gruesome demonstration of  
the wanton slaughter being carried out by the Israeli military.  
According to news reports, the evacuation was held up for hours after  
the Canadians witnessed the death of a UN relief worker, who had been  
shot by Israeli forces while moving wheat on a forklift truck. The  
Israeli military had been fully informed by the UN of its relief effort.

Israel's actions have caused a growing international outcry, with even  
the UN and International Committee of the Red Cross issuing  
increasingly forceful denunciations of Israel for targeting civilians  
and creating a humanitarian disaster.

None of this, however, fazes Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, a  
purported expert in human rights and international law. Speaking in  
Halifax on Thursday, Ignatieff reaffirmed his and his party's support  
for the Israeli assault on Gaza: "Canada has to support the right of a  
democratic country to defend itself. Israel has been attacked from  
Gaza, not just last year, but for almost 10 years."

Ignatieff denounced Hamas as a terrorist organization, blithely  
ignoring the dispossession of the Palestinian people and the state  
terrorism practiced by Israel, as well as the electoral mandate Hamas  
has received from the Palestinians of Gaza.

"Hamas," he declared, "is a terrorist organization and Canada can't  
touch Hamas with a 10-foot pole."

Ignatieff justified Israel continuing to kill scores of Palestinians  
on a daily basis. Canada, he said, should stand ready to provide  
humanitarian relief to the people of Gaza, but only after Hamas has  
ceded to Israel's demands for "security."

Canada's nominal left-wing party, the New Democratic Party or NDP, has  
remained all but silent on the Israeli blitzkrieg in Gaza. On Dec. 29  
it issued a brief statement, which made a pro forma appeal for an end  
to all hostilities and failed to condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza.  
The NDP, it should be recalled, recently repudiated its demand for the  
immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan in the hopes  
of forming a coalition government with the big business Liberals.

Like the Conservatives and Liberals, the editorial pages of most of  
Canada's major dailies have echoed the war propaganda of the Israeli  
government and endorsed Israel's war aims. Time and again, the  
Canadian press has asserted that Hamas broke a truce with Israel—no  
matter that Israel twice violated the truce by staging bloody strikes  
on Gaza in November and had long failed to implement pledges to ease a  
devastating economic blockade against the tiny Palestinian enclave.

The reaction of Canada's media is typified by an editorial published  
in Tuesday's Globe and Mail and titled "Israel in Gaza: Measured  
action on the ground." Canada's ostensible newspaper of record asserts  
that Israel has a "right" to wage unending war, irrespective of the  
cost to Palestinian lives, declaring "If the Israeli Defence Forces  
have to return again and again, to suppress new supplies of rockets,  
so be it."

Especially heinous was the Globe's dismissal of the mounting number of  
Palestinian corpses—men, women, and children. "It is true," said the  
Globe, "that many more Palestinians than Israeli civilians have been  
killed in the current conflict. But the government of Israel, like  
that of any other nation-state, is above all answerable for the safety  
of its own people ..."

The three-year-old Harper Conservative government has shifted Canada's  
foreign policy sharply right, parroting the stances of the Bush  
administration on one issue after another. This is especially true in  
respect to the dispossession of the Palestinian people and the Arab- 
Israeli conflict.

The Harper government fully supported the 2006 Israeli invasion of  
Lebanon, declaring Hezbollah "responsible" for the vast civilian  
casualties caused by Israeli bombs and tanks. Harper went so far as to  
provide alibis for the Israeli Defence Force when it targeted a UN  
observation post for attack and killed a Canadian Armed Forces' officer.

The Conservatives boast that theirs was the first government in the  
world to announce a cut-off of aid to the Palestinian Authority after  
Hamas came to power in 2006.

The Harper government has championed war as an instrument of state  
policy. It has significantly expanded the plans of the previous  
Liberal government to rearm and increase the size of Canada's armed  
forces. With the help of the Liberals, it has extended Canada's  
leading role in the Afghan war for a further 5 years to the end of  
2011. And in the summer of 2006 and again today it has  
enthusiastically supported Israeli invasions aimed at perpetuating the  
subjugation of the Palestinian people—invasions in which the Israeli  
Defence Forces have committed numerous war crimes, even according to  
the narrow definitions of great-power international law.

The unconditional support of the Liberal Party and the Canadian  
corporate media for the Israeli assault on Gaza demonstrates that the  
embrace of militarism and imperialism is not limited to the  
Conservatives and the self-avowed political right. It is the new  
consensus of the Canadian elite.