[R-G] The Iggy We Know

[Anthony Fenton]

March 9, 2009
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2509

The Iggy We Know
Liberal leader backed Israeli assaults on Lebanon, Gaza

by Jon Elmer

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Even Micheal Ignatieff couldn’t pass up a chance for a photo op with  
Barack Obama during his recent visit to Ottawa. Photo: J.M. Carisse

VANCOUVER–Confronted by his first international crisis as the newly- 
anointed leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff’s handling of  
Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza marked a continuation of the current  
Liberal-Conservative consensus on Canadian foreign policy in the  
Middle East and Central Asia.

On December 27, 2008, without warning and at the height of the midday  
bustle in the overcrowded Gaza Strip, Israel unleashed the single most  
devastating aerial attack in its 41-year occupation of Gaza, killing  
230 people and overwhelming hospitals with more than 750 wounded in a  
single day.

Many of those who died were killed in the first five minutes of the  
bombings, as Israel used a ‘shock and awe’-style massacre intended to,  
in the words of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, “totally change the rules  
of the game.”

Three days after the attack was launched, Ignatieff broke his silence  
with a written statement. Despite a death toll that had risen to 350  
Palestinians along with two Israelis after 72 hours, Ignatieff began  
his message by expressing concern for the victims “on all sides,”  
before “unequivocally” condemning Hamas and “affirm[ing] Israel's  
right to defend itself.”

For their part, the Conservatives were pointedly silent on Israel’s  
assault as well; when they did speak, it was only to blame Hamas and  
its rocket fire from Gaza and back Israel’s bombardment. “Canada  
maintains that the rocket attacks are the cause of this crisis,”  
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said.

The statements by both parties once again staked Canada’s position as  
unreserved support for Israel, well beyond norms in the diplomatic  
community, and out of all proportion to the scale of Israel’s long- 
running devastation of Gaza.

Since 2000, Palestinian rocket fire has killed 16 people in Israel,  
according to Israeli government numbers; during that same time, more  
than 4,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza  
alone.

The Economist noted during the invasion that “Gazans have long felt  
they lived in an open prison; now they are trapped in a shooting  
gallery.”

Following Israel’s shelling of a United Nations shelter on January 6,  
calls for a ceasefire grew louder. The head of the UN agency that  
oversees Gaza’s 1.1 million refugees, John Ging, appealed emphatically  
to the international community to intervene. “There's nowhere safe in  
Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized,” Ging said.

When Ignatieff spoke publicly for the first time, on January 8 at a  
town hall in Halifax, he was unwilling to concede that the bombardment  
should end. He offered only that perhaps “we are approaching the time  
when a ceasefire will be appropriate,” according to a transcript  
published in the Canadian Jewish News.

Indeed, Ignatieff went so far as to cast doubt on the gruesome images  
of civilian carnage coming from Gaza, particularly children, which had  
shocked the world. “We have to understand that many of the images we  
see out of Gaza are structured and created and organized by Hamas,”  
the former human rights professor said when asked about Israel’s  
shelling of a United Nations elementary school-turned-shelter, which  
killed 42 people.

Ignatieff offered no evidence for his remarkable claim, which - though  
indistinguishable from Conservative Party official statements - was  
more than even Israel’s spokespersons were willing to assert in the  
hours and days before the army finally admitted to shelling the  
school. “What happened in the UN school was not a mistake,” foreign  
minister Tzipi Livni told Der Spiegel, one week after the attack.

Ignatieff also used the crisis to reiterate his support for Israel’s  
punitive and devastating siege of Gaza which followed Hamas’ decisive  
election victory in the winter of 2006. “Canada can't touch Hamas with  
a 10-foot pole,” he said, casting Canada’s significant diplomatic  
support for the extraordinarily cruel blockade into a cheap sound bite.

None of this is new territory for Ignatieff. When Israel attacked  
Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Ignatieff, then a leadership contender,  
notoriously broke a three-week silence only to characterize Israel’s  
brutal massacre of 28 civilians in the village of Qana, most of whom  
were children, as “frankly, inevitable.”

At the time of Ignatieff’s statements on Israel’s bombing of the  
civilian shelter, news reports indicated a toll of more than 50 dead.  
To that, Ignatieff observed: “This is the kind of dirty war you’re in  
when you have to do this and I’m not losing sleep about that.”

Ignatieff’s message was clear: these terrible crimes are part and  
parcel of diplomatic support for Israel’s dirty wars. Indeed, the  
Liberal party made no effort to distance themselves from Ignatieff’s  
statements on Qana as “inevitable.” The record clearly shows that  
Ignatieff – however vulgar his phrasing – had simply stated the effect  
of party policy.

In both invasions, Israel’s principle diplomatic concern was avoiding  
an immediate ceasefire; in both cases, the Liberals and the  
Conservatives actively pursued Israel’s objectives as the terrible  
civilian toll mounted – 1,200 dead in Lebanon and 1,400 in Gaza.

While the Liberal-Conservative consensus on foreign policy in the  
Middle East predates Ignatieff, the crises in Gaza and Lebanon show  
that the new Liberal leader intends to strengthen it.

Jon Elmer is an independent journalist and researcher who covers the  
Israel-Palestine conflict.