Israel,
Palestine And Canad
By John Chuckman
25 October, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Canada's
Thirty-Percent Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, just made a speech at
a B'nai Brith banquet. Normally, there would be nothing notable in this,
but his words this time reinforced controversial statements he made
while Israel savagely bombed Lebanon. He also continued driving an ugly
new Republican-style wedge into Canada's national politics after calling
Liberal leadership candidates "anti-Israel."
Harper said that his government
supports a two-state solution in the Middle East. That is the policy
of most Western governments, and there was nothing original in Harper's
way of stating it. It was the kind of vague, tepid stuff we might hear
from Olmert himself.
"Our government believes
in a two-state solution -- in a secure democratic and prosperous Israel
living beside a viable democratic and peaceful Palestinian state."
It is interesting to note
the lack of symmetry in Harper's "secure democratic and prosperous
Israel" versus "a viable democratic and peaceful" Palestine.
I don't know why prosperity does not count for Palestinians, but as
anyone who understands developmental economics knows, prosperity is
key to developing modern, democratic institutions. You only get the
broad middle-class which makes democracy possible out of healthy growth.
I suspect Harper was signaling,
while calling for peace with two states, hardly a stirring theme for
a B'nai Brith audience, that he saw no equivalency to the two sides.
If not, perhaps he will explain another time what he did mean.
Harper did not define what
he means by viable. Palestine, as anyone familiar with the situation
knows, cannot be viable as a walled-off set of postage-stamp Bantustans,
the only concept of a Palestinian state Israel has ever considered.
The key element in Harper's statement is what he means by democratic
and peaceful. Those words are not so self-explanatory as they may first
appear. Both these adjectives are regularly twisted in meaning, particularly
by the United States.
Hamas won an honest and open
election in Palestine, internationally scrutinized, but the result of
that election was rejected by Harper and others, inducing chaos into
Palestinian affairs, the very thing Israel's secret services likely
intended when they secretly subsidized Hamas years ago to oppose Fatah.
Hamas has not learned the required mantra about recognizing Israel,
yet Hamas is no threat to Israel, or plainly Israel's secret services
would never have assisted it in the first place.
Hamas is not well-armed,
nor is it, surrounded and penetrated by Israel, in a position to become
so. Israel speaks as though not recognizing Israel is an unforgivable
defect, but governments often fail to recognize other governments. The
United States has a long list of governments it has not recognized in
the past and ones it does not recognize now. This is not always a smart
thing to do, but it is not a crime, it is not even a faux pas, and it
may just be a negotiating point.
Hamas has not invaded Israel,
nor has it conducted a campaign of assassinating Israeli leaders - both
actions Israel has repeated against Palestinians countless times. Every
time some disgruntled individual in Gaza launches a home-made, ineffectual
rocket, Israel assassinates members of Hamas or sends its tanks into
Gaza, killing civilians. Presumably, a peaceful Palestine would be one
either where there were no disgruntled people or where an efficient
police-state stopped them all.
This is a preposterous expectation.
It simply can never be. With all of Israel's violent occupations and
reprisals, it has never been able to impose absolute peace, not even
on its own territory. There have been scores of instances of renegade
Israeli settlers shooting innocent Palestinians picking olives or tending
sheep, and there have been mass murders of Palestinians a number of
times, as at the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount. How much less
able is any Palestinian authority to enforce absolute peace when Israel
allows it pitifully limited resources and freedom of movement?
Realistically, the expectation
for absolute peace should be interpreted as a deliberate barrier to
a genuine peace settlement. Why would Israel use a barrier to peace
when its official statements never fail to mention peace?
Because most leaders of Israel,
probably all of them, have never given up the frenzied dream of achieving
Greater Israel, a concept which allows for no West Bank and no Palestinians.
Not every leader has spoken in public on this subject, but a number
have. Other prominent figures in Israel from time to time also have
spoken in favor of this destructive goal.
There seems no rational explanation,
other than wide support of this goal, for Israel's persistent refusal
to comply with agreements which could have produced peace, the Oslo
Accords perhaps being the greatest example. Israel worked overtime to
destroy the Oslo Accords, always attributing their failure in public
to the very Palestinians who had worked hard to see the Accords born.
More extreme Israeli politicians openly rejected the Accords from the
start.
The crescendo statement in
Harper's speech, his voice rising in force and his audience literally
rising to its feet, was, "The state of Israel, a democratic nation,
was attacked by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization -- in fact a terrorist
organization listed illegal in this country," and "When it
comes to dealing with a war between Israel and a terrorist organization,
this country and this government cannot and will never be neutral."
Harper's definition of democracy
appears to be the American one: those governments are democratic who
agree with American policy. We know America has overthrown many democratic
governments in the postwar world, including those in Haiti, Chile, Iran,
and Guatemala. Today it threatens a cleanly-elected government in Venezuela
and utterly ignores a cleanly-elected government in Palestine.
America shows itself always
ready to work with anti-human rights blackguards when it feels important
interests are at stake, General Musharraf of Pakistan and some of the
dreadful Northern Alliance warlords in Afghanistan being current examples.
There were dozens more during the Cold War, including the Romanian Dracula
Ceaucescu and the Shah of Iran, put into power by a coup that toppled
a democratic government. The American definition of democracy is highly
selective at best.
Israel has demonstrated a
similar understanding of democracy from the beginning. Israel was ready
to help France and Britain invade Suez in the 1950s, an action which
represented a last ugly gasp of 19th century colonialism. Israel worked
closely for years with apartheid South Africa, even secretly assisting
it in developing and testing a nuclear weapon (weapons and facilities
were removed by the United States when the ANC took power). Savak, the
Shah's secret police, whose specialty was pulling out people's finger
nails, was trained by American and Israeli agents.
Harper's statement of total
support for Israel in Lebanon is not in keeping with traditional Canadian
views and policies. Canadians want balance and fairness. Unqualified
support for Israel is tantamount to giving it a free pass to repeat
the many savage things it has done, things most Canadians do not support.
Israel has proven, over and
over again, it needs the restraining influence of others. Criticizing
Israel does not make anyone anti-Israeli. Israel, sadly, has done many
shameful things that demand criticism from those who love freedom and
human rights, starting with its keeping a giant open-air prison going
for forty years.
Harper should know that when
Israeli leaders such as Olmert or Sharon speak of two states, they do
not mean the same thing that reasonable observers might expect.
They mean a powerless, walled-in
rump state in which elections must consistently support Israel's view
of just about everything, a state whose access to the world is effectively
controlled by Israel, and a state whose citizens have no claims whatsoever
for homes, farms, and other property seized by Israel. The hundreds
of thousands of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, living on
property taken bit by bit since the Six Day War are there to stay. Palestinians'
property rights to homes and institutions in Jerusalem, from which they
are being gradually pushed, are being voided.
Israel has invaded Lebanon
twice with no legitimate justification. It killed many thousands the
first time and about 1,600 the last time. It flattened the beautiful
city of Beirut the first time and a fair portion of the re-built city
last time. It dropped thousands of cluster bombs, the most vicious weapon
in the American arsenal, onto civilian areas. In effect, this action
created a giant minefield, an illegal act under international treaty,
with mines which explode with flesh-mangling bits of razor wire.
The Hezbollah that was Israel's
excuse for invading Lebanon last time never invaded Israel. They launch
their relatively ineffective Katysha rockets only when Israeli forces
violate the border, which they do with some regularity in secret. Hezbollah's
main function, despite all the rhetoric about terrorists, has been as
a guerilla force opposed to Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
Israel has long desired to expand its borders into that region, and
there are statements on record to that effect, another aspect of Greater
Israel. Israel occupied southern Lebanon for many years after its first
invasion, and still held on to an enclave after its withdrawal.
Democratic values are not
just about holding elections now and then. Otherwise, apartheid South
Africa would have deserved our support. So would Northern Ireland when
it repressed Catholics for decades. So, in fact, would the former American
Confederacy. These states all had elections but only some people could
vote, and other people were treated horribly.
Democratic values must reflect
respect for human rights, which apply to all, something about which
Israel has been particularly blind. There are no rights for Palestinians.
Indeed, Israel has no Bill or Charter of Rights even for its own citizens
because of the near impossibility of defining rights in a state characterized
by so many restrictions and theocratic principles.
The relatively small number
of Arabic people given Israeli citizenship, roughly 19% of the population,
descended from 150,000 who remained in Israel after 1948, mainly those
who were not intimidated by early Israeli terror groups like Irgun and
the Stern Gang into running away or who simply could not escape. Despite
subsidized immigration to Israel, accounting for the bulk of Jewish
population growth, Israeli Arabs have managed roughly to keep their
fraction of the population through high birth rates. They are, however,
under constant pressure, often being treated as less than equal citizens.
On many occasions, prominent Israelis have called for their removal.
According to a recent study
of Jewish Israeli attitudes, 41 percent think Arab citizens should be
encouraged by the government to leave Israel, and 40 percent want segregated
public facilities for Arabs. The survey also found 68 percent of Israeli
Jews would not live in an apartment building with Arabs, and 46 percent
would not let Arabs visit their homes.
Harper's dichotomy between
democracy and terror, the crescendo subject of his speech, is simply
nonsense. It mimics Bush's garbled words about terrorists versus American
freedoms or everyone's being with us or against us. Israel is not so
admirable a democracy nor is Hezbollah so terrible a group as he would
have us believe.
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