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Justified and Measured: Stephen Harper has failed to call for Peace?
By Gary Morton, July.17.2006 *Note: The main article of this file remains, but has been updated with news clips that outline the situation in the Lebanon conflict. * Now that Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to a ceasefire world leaders like Prime Minister Stephen Harper stand condemned by the words of UN Secretary General Koffi Annan. Mr. Annan's response was bitter, and he is still angry that this conflict dragged on for a month because men and women of power would not call for a ceasefire. Civilians suffered and died in Lebanon and Israel because men who should know better wanted to act for war and not peace. They wanted to sit back like armchair generals and watch a battle that was mostly the massacre of civilians. And in the end Stephen Harper made and even bigger fool of himself by greeting a ceasefire with the negative message that Hezbollah would surely be responsible if it got broken. (In fact as of Aug.20.2006 it is Israel that broke the ceasefire with a failed commando raid into Lebanon.) * Israeli and Western propaganda has it that civilian causalities happen because Hezbollah fighters hide among civilians. Truth is that Israel sends in huge bombs capable of killing for hundreds of meters around their targets. Hezbollah fighters are much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators. The fighters remain mostly unseen in hidden military posts. *July 30th Israel has committed a heinous war crime, killing 60 civilians including 27 children in Quana Lebanon. The village was bombed in the middle of the night and world condemnation has been swift. As a result Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora is refusing to meet with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying there is no point in talking unless a ceasefire takes place along with an International investigation of Israeli war crimes committed against Lebanon.
* July 26th As an addition to the article
below it must now be noted that Canadian Forces member Maj. Paeta Derek
Hess-von Kruedener, who was serving with the United Nations Truce Supervision
Organization has been killed with three other UN observers in Lebanon. The
Israelis bombed their outpost in an attack that UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan calls deliberate. The observers phoned the Israelis asking them over a
six hour period to halt the bombing and the Israeli military clearly knew the
location was a UN post. UN observers have been outspoken in their condemnation
of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and this appears to be the reason behind the
bombing. In spite of this evidence Prime Minister Stephen Harper continues to
shamelessly defend Israel, failing to even protest the killing of another
Canadian. None of the Canadian dead had anything to do with militants or the conflict with Israel. And their deaths shouldn’t come as a big surprise considering the ferocity of the Israeli attack and the Harper government’s slow response in making evacuation plans for as many as 40,000 Canadians trapped in Lebanon. As of Sunday July 16th Israel's military campaign in Lebanon has killed 162 people (The death toll is rising daily - at 900 Aug 4 - and 30,000 are now wounded, 500,000 homeless) . Like the Al-Akhrass family nearly all of the dead are civilians. Only 13 of the deaths are listed as non civilian deaths. One third of the victims are children and with the Israeli attacks expected to grow until mid week and eventually become a full scale invasion the death toll will rise considerably. Israel is currently running a double military campaign against Gaza and Lebanon. To add to the outrages in Gaza the Lebanon campaign includes the bombing of Beirut's airport, the international highway from Beirut to Damascus, civilian apartment blocks, power stations, gas stations, grain silos, water purification plants, and factories. Foreigners have fled to Syria, and Lebanon itself faces a refugee crisis as thousands have fled their homes and are sleeping in parks and the streets. The attacks are a form of the collective punishment Israel inflicts daily on the Palestinians. The air raids are ruthless and the planes and bombs are mostly American made. One cruel example is eighteen people, including nine children, who died when an Israeli helicopter gunship came out of the sky and took out their minibus. F-16s, Fighting Falcons and Apache Helicopters are among the American made weapons bringing misery to the civilians of Lebanon. These weapons have completely vaporized the bodies of some children while leaving the Hezbollah militant army mostly intact. Photos of child victims of the attacks have been circulated world wide via email though the Western media does little other than trumpet a propaganda line that looks to have been developed in Israel. With the Canadian deaths coming as a surprise to both the Tories and the Canadian media, the question arises as to whether they can address the issue and whether they can be trusted to speak for our dead. Given their unfathomable support for nearly anything Israel does it would seem that they can do little other than attempt to bury the issue. Otherwise they will have to produce spin to justify collateral damage that includes a number of Canadians. Spin that is unlikely to work considering that Canadians like Americans start to wake up when their own citizens get killed. From back in his Canadian Alliance days Stephen Harper has been a man who does not believe in moral neutrality in foreign policy. In the Middle East that means complete support for Israel and the state terrorism that promotes collective punishment against civilians and elected governments in Gaza and Lebanon. At the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg Harper pushed the US line on the current conflict. From the beginning of the crisis Harper has never requested any end to Israel’s military push into Lebanon. He initially called the Israeli response including the bombing of Gaza and Lebanon “justified and measured”, and has continued to repeat that view. Harper sees through the eyes of Bush and Israel and views Hezbollah and Hamas as being responsible for the trouble. Harper and Bush preach democracy yet neither will officially recognize an elected Hamas government. This is a contradiction and especially for Harper as he states that his unequivocal support for Israel is due to his view of that nation as part of the western democratic family. Continuing on the roadmap to a Canada that is little more than a US satellite, Harper is in line with Bush in defending all that Israel does in so-called self defense. He sided with Bush in rejecting a request by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad that other nations call for an immediate ceasefire. With US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice already stating that a longer Israeli incursion into Lebanon may be needed we wonder how long it will be before Stephen Harper is echoing those words. With the bodies of dead citizens on the doorstep can Harper continue to call Israel's attacks in Lebanon self-defense? If he does, Canadians will know that his heart lies with Israel and it propagandists, and not with the peace loving citizens of Canada. ------------------------------ * Since this writing Stephen Harper has repeated his support for Israel saying a ceasefire is not the answer. In doing so he has failed to defend the human rights of 40,000 Canadians trapped in the conflict zone. He should have at least called for a ceasefire. He didn't even ask Israel to give Canadians and others time to get out of the war zone. Stephen Harper's words are an attempt to justify the deaths of Canadians in Lebanon as he says nothing to condemn the attacks, but in fact supports them. This form of collective punishment was invented and embraced by the Nazis. Our nation fought against such ideas and now leaders like Harper welcome them when they come from Israel. Like Bush Harper fails to call for peace or diplomacy, but for Israel to have a free hand in bombing civilians in Lebanon. Bush's new slogan is called Give War a Chance. Bush knows that this Israeli war on Lebanon is not a reaction to the kidnapping of two soldiers; it was in fact planned a year ago. Harper would also be aware of this fact.
Stephen Harper's heart does indeed rest with Israel
and its war machine. * August 2006 Stephen Harper has now hijacked Canada's call for a ceasefire as per the vote of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and replaced it with his own policy in support of Israel. See the article at the bottom of this file.
--------- * The US's John Bolton went so far as to say in a roundabout way that Israeli lives are worth more than the lives of others. We now live in a world where the top leaders of North America are cheerleaders and manufacturers of war, torture, mayhem, lawlessness and the complete denial of human rights.
* Excerpt from George Galloway's article on
the attacks being self defense on Israel's part ===================
KENNEDY RENEWS CALL FOR
IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE IN WAKE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE VOTE
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