[R-G] Canada chooses to betray Palestinians

[Anthony Fenton]

Editorial: Canada chooses to betray Palestinians
14 January 2009
  http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=118146&d=14&m=1&y=2009

Canada has, in the past, rarely done anything to anger anyone. It has  
a history of being moderate, balanced and generally unjudgmental in  
its foreign policy. On the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular, it  
always took a middle-of-the-road line, its policies being rooted in  
seeing both sides of the problem. Unlike other Western countries, it  
has also maintained a welcoming open door to migrants from other parts  
of the world, notably to Arabs and even more notably to Palestinians.  
If generalizations can be permitted, it has been a Palestinian- 
friendly country — in marked contrast to its southern neighbor.

No longer. The decision by Canada to vote against a motion in the UN  
Human Rights Council condemning Israel’s brutal onslaught in Gaza and  
calling for an investigation into Israel’s human rights violations —  
the only country among the 47 nations in the body to do so — is  
astounding and abhorrent. This one-time principled country has thrown  
fairness to the wind and decided that it backs Israel all the way. To  
do so at any time would be bad enough; to do so when Israeli bombs are  
killing innocent Palestinian men, women and children in their hundreds  
is particularly repugnant. We reject Canada’s claim that the motion  
was unnecessary. If it thought so, it could have done as the Europeans  
did and abstained. To oppose it and call it inflammatory just because  
it did not blame Hamas for starting the conflict by firing rockets at  
Israel is downright offensive. It is Canada that is being inflammatory  
with such craven and disgraceful support for Israel. At a stroke, it  
has lost its credibility, honor and friends in the Arab and Muslim  
world.

There will be many who say that this is all the doing of Prime  
Minister Stephen Harper, who has rebuilt Canadian conservatism in the  
neocon image of the US Republican Party across the border and whose  
contempt for Canada’s liberal traditions is rarely far from the  
surface. There is a good deal of truth there. Only last week, in what  
looks like an act of appeasement, the first American woman soldier,  
who had sought asylum in the country to prevent herself being  
redeployed to Iraq, was deported back to the US. This is the same  
Canada that once accepted deserters from the US.

When it comes to Israel, Harper has certainly shown himself as  
determined an ally as George W. Bush. In 2006, when Israel invaded  
Lebanon in its botched but bloody attempt to destroy Hezbollah, Harper  
defended “its right to defend itself” and ludicrously called its  
action “measured” — although how anyone can see the 1,200 Lebanese who  
died in the conflict as being a measured response to Hezbollah’s  
killing of three Israeli soldiers and seizure of two others must be  
beyond most people. Not to Harper. He laid the Lebanese deaths wholly  
at Hezbollah’s door. Clearly since then, as his present unconditional  
support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and his determination to lay  
all the blame on Hamas both show, he has become even more of a pro- 
Israeli zealot.

There is, though, more to this latest wholesale backing of the  
Israelis than the neocon agenda of Harper. Opposition Liberal leader  
Michael Ignatieff also supports Israel. A week ago, he too said that  
Israel is justified in taking military action to defend itself against  
attacks by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

Canada’s famed evenhandedness seems to have vanished. It has been  
replaced by blindness and hardheartedness. It is truly shocking.