It's Funny How Canada Lost Its Voice

The Israeli army is back at it again, wantonly murdering unarmed Gaza Palestinians who stray within 300 feet of the border.

Did I say "murder"? Well, that's because it is state sanctioned murder and the state in question is our ally, Israel.

Canada wouldn't hesitate to righteously condemn any other country slaughtering droves of civilians, one bullet at a time. We denounce that sort of thing - or at least we once did when Canada stood for something but you would have to go back several years, back before Justin Trudeau and back before Stephen Harper.

Remember those videos we occasionally saw back when we were kids showing Jews, lined up beside a freshly dug ditch and being mowed down by SS troops? It was revolting, hard to imagine any human being callous enough to slaughter another all because of their religion, their difference.

I know, I know. The Gazans are asking for it. They chose to approach the Israeli-Gaza border, now a capitol offence. Some of our kindred pro-Israel allies, the Americans, have said the Gazans had it coming. Even East German border guards didn't open fire until their targets were actually climbing the wall.

Canada and the United States are pretty much Israel's last supporters. Our voting record in the UN General Assembly speaks for itself. It's deplorable and yet liberals still support this Trudeau government. We stand alone while all of our other allies, all of Europe, all of South America, all of Asia and Africa, condemn Israel's butchery. Not us, nosiree. We look the other way and so collude with Israel.

The Canadian Jewish News slammed Canadian journalists calling for their government, the Trudeau government, to denounce the murders.

Journalism itself became the story this week, when the group Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) called on Canada to condemn Israel for its “one-sided” use of military force against civilian demonstrators and media in Gaza, and to press for an end to “these brutal practices.” 

Respected writers and reporters took to social media to slam the CJFE for breaching journalistic standards of neutrality by openly advocating a position on the Middle East conflict. 

First out of the gate was Globe and Mail writer Doug Saunders, who wondered in a tweet whether he was “the only one disturbed that an organization called Canadian Journalists for Free expression is lobbying the Canadian government to take a specific position on Israel? Does (the CJFE) realize how such politicking can damage our reputation, and thus freedom?”

Did you get that? Canadian journalists cannot denounce atrocities - unless, perhaps, it's the wanton murder of civilians by ISIS or al Qaeda or some other officially unacceptable group. After all, they're terrorists. Israeli soldiers firing into Gaza on unarmed Palestinians are apparently different.

Hussein Ibish offered this take at Foreign Policy.

It was entirely predictable that confronted with tens of thousands of Palestinian protesters, particularly at a border area, Israel would immediately resort to deadly force, even against unarmed persons. Israeli strategic and security thinking virtually guaranteed an effort to nip the protest movement in the bud by demonstrating the level of violence protesters, particularly those that challenge the border, can expect to face. Israel’s nightmare, and Hamas’s hope, is that during these protests, the border is somehow breached and large numbers of young men cross over into what used to be their country going toward their ancestral homes and villages. Israeli authorities speak in terms of a “bloodbath” even if such “infiltrators” are nonviolent and unarmed, and history strongly suggests that this is by no means hyperbole. 

But even if the border isn’t breached, and Israel stops at almost nothing to ensure that doesn’t happen, Hamas stands to gain a great deal from this campaign of protests. Already Abbas is scrambling to not be outbid in terms of nationalistic rhetoric, commemorations, and anti-Israeli bluster. Hamas’s nationalist credibility is starting to be rejuvenated. It is attempting to connect with, and coopt, the deep-seated Palestinian public’s craving for a new politics, with popular agency and a new, grass roots-led drive to end the occupation and achieve national liberation. 

Hamas doesn’t stand for any of that, of course. But it can pretend to, and its operatives are now fully engaged in this campaign, in a manner similar to the way in which the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hopped right on the anti-Hosni Mubarak protests. The Brotherhood had done nothing to conceptualize or initiate those protests, but it usurped the movement and, ultimately, translated it into more than a year in the Egyptian presidency before it faced considerably larger public demonstrations against its own misrule. 

Hamas now has found a way forward. And even if, ultimately, this process degenerates into another full-blown war with Israel, that may provide the group with a way out of the intolerable predicament that emerged in 2017, especially if it is not blamed for having wantonly initiated it. As always, Hamas and reactionary forces in Israel are reinforcing each other’s radicalism and playing a vicious, bloody game from which both benefit at the expense of the public at large. Whatever else happens, if Israel continues to use live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators, even at the border, Hamas will continue to reap the benefits.

Gaza is now all but uninhabitable - an uninhabitable prison.

There are several reasons for Hamas’s new approach. First, it is virtually out of options. The devastation in Gaza caused by the last full-blown war with Israel in 2014 was so extensive, with most of the damage still unrepaired, that it would be difficult to publicly explain to the group’s own constituents any choice to deliberately start another major conflict with Israel. The kind of scenario whereby Hamas has previously instigated or cooperated in the development of major armed battles with Israel would now be potentially politically disastrous in Gaza.

Yet Hamas is desperate. The situation in Gaza has become increasingly intolerable. Unemployment is widespread and chronic. Hunger is rampant. Water is undrinkable. Electricity is available for only two to four hours per day. Sewage treatment plants have failed, so the once-beautiful Mediterranean coast is now a repository of human waste. And there’s still no way in or out of the territory for almost all of Gaza’s close to 2 million people.

None of this matters to the Canadian government, Tory or Liberal, who instinctively look the other way when Israel comes killing. In case you don't know what I'm talking about read these two posts, here and here, about the war crime known as Dahiyeh.