…and other nefarious developments.
Among the recent books published on Israel recently, several already anticipate the next phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Apartheid phase, in which Palestinians continue their battle for self-determination inside a group of bantustans, located within a greater Eretz Israel, which will extend from the Jordan River to the sea.
Added to Uri Davis’ Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within and Ben White’s, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide comes Yves Engler’s Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid.
In this article, Canada’s neoconservative turn (The Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2010), Engler describes a dramatic shift in Canadian foreign policy toward Israel under the right wing conservative government of Stephen Harper, which implicates Canada in helping Israel build an Apartheid state for the Palestinians.
Conservatives have launched a more extreme phase of Israel advocacy. Groups in any way associated with the Palestinian cause have been openly attacked and Ottawa has taken a more belligerent tone towards Iran. In the beginning of February, Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money has been reallocated to Palestinian Authority judicial and security reforms in the West Bank. At the same time, Canada doubled the number of troops involved in US Lt. General Keith Dayton’s mission to train a Palestinian force to strengthen Fatah against Hamas and to serve as an arm of Israel’s occupation.
In Engler’s view, Canada is (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world. Peter Kent, the junior Foreign Minister, even went so far as to claim: “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.” He further reports that, since the book went to print a couple of months ago the Conservatives launched a more extreme phase of Israel advocacy. “Groups in any way associated with the Palestinian cause have been openly attacked and Ottawa has taken a more belligerent tone towards Iran.”
In the beginning of February, Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money has been reallocated to Palestinian Authority judicial and security reforms in the West Bank. At the same time, Canada doubled the number of troops involved in US Lt. General Keith Dayton’s mission to train a Palestinian force to strengthen Fatah against Hamas and to serve as an arm of Israel’s occupation.
Only a few weeks earlier, Israel apologists sang Harper’s praise when his government chopped $7 million from Kairos, a Christian aid organization that had received government money for 35 years. During a visit to Israel, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Canada had “defunded organizations, most recently like Kairos, who are taking a leadership role” in campaigns to boycott Israel. Palestinian advocacy was also the reason Ottawa failed to renew its funding for Montreal-based Alternatives, an international solidarity organization, which received most of its budget from the federal government.
The Conservatives chose a different tactic with the arm’s-length government agency Rights and Democracy. Instead of cutting its budget, they stacked the board with hard-line supporters of Israel. Last week, Maclean magazine reported that “The Rights and Democracy board is now predominantly composed of people who have devoted much of their life to an unequivocal position: that no legal challenge to Israel’s human rights record is permissible, because any such challenge is part of a global harassment campaign against Israel’s right to exist.”
The new “Israel no matter what” board members hounded the organization’s president, Remy Beauregard, until he died of a heart attack after a “vitriolic” meeting a month ago. Once in charge, the new board voted to “repudiate” three $10,000 grants given to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups (B’Tselem, Al-Haq and Al Mezan). On Wednesday, the Toronto Star reported that the “Conservative-appointed [Rights and Democracy] board secretly decided to close the agency’s Geneva office, distancing itself from a United Nations body it viewed as anti-Israeli.”
Internationally, Harper has used his pulpit as host of this year’s G8 to pave the way for a possible US-Israeli attack on Iran. “Canada will use its G8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime,” explained the prime minister on 9 February.
While Ottawa considers Iran’s nuclear energy program a major threat, Israel’s atomic bombs have not provoked similar condemnation. The Harper government has repeatedly abstained on votes asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) controls.
A week ago Ottawa criticized China, a key trading partner of Iran, for refusing to follow Western dictates regarding the Islamic Republic. “I think China should step up to the plate and do something here,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said.
While they are silent on the appalling record of the pro-West monarchy in Saudi Arabia and the dictatorship in Egypt, Canadian officials regularly berate Iran. “This regime continues to blatantly ignore its international obligations, and this threatens global security,” Cannon said last week.
At times Canadian words have been even more menacing. A 17 February Toronto Star article was headlined: “Military action against Iran still on the table, Kent says.” Peter Kent, the junior foreign minister, explained that “It may soon be time to intensify the sanctions and to broaden those sanctions into other areas.” He added: “I think the realization [is] that it’s a dangerous situation that has been there for some time. It’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious preemptive action.”
“Preemptive action” is likely a euphemism for a bombing campaign. Canadian naval vessels are already running provocative maneuvers off Iran’s coast and by stating that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada,” Kent is trying to create the impression that Iran may attack Israel. But isn’t it Israel that possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to bomb Iran, not the other way around? Of course that would be a reality-based analysis, not something George W. Bush’s Canadian clones favor.
So now we have Canada carrying water for the Israelis, whose main trajectory, given Netanhayu’s recent “dictations” on Palestine (Saeb Erakat), is helping to transform it into an Apartheid state. With the Obama’s recent withdrawal from the peace process, it seems inevitable that Israel will push for Eretz Israel and the annexation of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians in several isolated bantustans.
Apartheid is now the central concept in discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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(TIME) – In reply, Lieberman told Obamas chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, “Let us know what you want us to do.” Emanuel replied with a laundry list …
For all the public rancor, Lieberman has emerged as one of Obama’s more unexpected, if not always reliable, wingmen. “There’s a certain irony to this,” Lieberman says as he considers the situation in his Senate office. “I have been called in to help the Obama Administration for the very reason that has made some Democrats unhappy with me, which is that I have ongoing, trusting relationships with some of the Republicans.”
(Mondoweiss blog) – Forgive my cynicism, but I’m leaning toward “invincible.” Obama caved to Netanyahu, of all people. And the Administration went out of its way to shield Joe Lieberman, and then when it was Lieberman versus Dean on Medicare expansion — you know, after Lieberman decided to break his promise about that? — the Administration sided against Howard Dean. Howard Dean. Former chair of the Democratic Party. The man whose Fifty State Strategy helped put Obama in the White House. The man who actually has professional and political gravitas behind his perspective on health care reform.
If this story in Time has merit, I’m beginning to understand to turn to the right on foreign policy issues, especially Obama’s stance on Israel, Netanyahu and settlements. Domestic issues are getting priority … at a cost!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Thanks for the upgrade, Oui. For a while, I thought that Obama just put Israel on the back burner, to concentrate on domestic issues, via, medical care reform. But neither Clinton nor Mitchell are involved on the domestic side. Hence, the only conclusion is Obama’s recent admission, he overreached and expected too much. Well, that might be true, but there’s no question that he acquiesced to Netanyahu, who is now running the show, and it is heading straight into the Apartheid resolution.
A big disappointment. Said B. Clinton, “who’se the superpower around here, anyway?” I think he finally learned and maybe Obama has too. It’s disgusting.
See my comment below.
And your own take is right on the mark:
http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2010/2/28/62745/3171
Roger Cohen said on a cspan program, that several JEWISH democrats would not support Obama Health Care unless he backed off of Israel.
Bet he won’t put that in print.
Looking for a link. Thanks for the input.
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President Obama repeated the canard that Israel was created because of the Holocaust and not because Israel is our homeland.
[Found the link to his NY Times column – Oui]
“As readers of this blog know, Roger Cohen is not a wise man. His latest column in the New York Times gives further evidence of this.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
RABINOVICH: You know, President Obama [has begun] distancing from Israel. His expectation was that the Muslim and Arab world would applaud. The real reaction was, give us more, we will not come to the negotiations, you have to deliver Israel. And Roger, when you say, think out of the box about the Hamas charter, I don’t know how to think outside the box about that. I would rather be in the box. You can negotiate with a secular nationalist movement like the Fatah. Hamas is a radical religious fundamentalist organization, and you cannot negotiate with it.
COHEN: Our policies up to now have failed. But any adjustment in U.S. policy toward Israel is extremely difficult. There is a state called Florida, with a large Jewish community, a calculation not lost on America’s leadership. President Obama, I understand, has been told by some Jewish congressmen, if you want your health bill, step back on Israel.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."There are nonJewish congressmen, like Hoyer, who are more proIsrael than some Jewish congressmen, or equally so. My biggest disappointment among them is Henry Waxman, who appears to juggle his sense of liberalism from day to day. Well, he’s another exceptionalist.
Thanks for these links.