Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Canada will be on the sidelines in search for Middle East peace

John Baird take note: the world’s greatest Holocaust scholar doesn’t have much use for politicians who shamelessly pander to Israel or use that dread event to advance their agendas.

Canada’s Foreign Minister should add Professor Deborah Lipstadt to his reading list. This is what she had to say after watching Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in a debate sponsored by the Republican Jewish Committee, as their appearance degenerated into an obsequious competition to see which candidate could offer the most unequivocal and fact-twisting declaration of support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel:

“It was unbelievable. It made me cringe. I couldn’t watch it…Israel doesn’t do everything right.”

Her opinion of the candidates hadn’t improved much by the time Newt Gingrich decided at a later debate that the Palestinian people were an illusion. He reached that conclusion after cashing a cheque for $5 million donated to his campaign by an American billionaire who is also a powerful supporter of Israel.

“You listen to Newt Gingrich talking about Palestinians as an invented people – it’s out-Aipeckiing AIPAC, it’s out-Israeling Israel. There’s something about it that’s so discomforting. It’s not healthy. It’s a distortion.”

Lipstadt vaulted to world celebrity in 2000 after she defended herself and her publisher from a libel suit brought by the most infamous Holocaust denier of them all, David Irving. Lipstadt, an American Jew who is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory College in Atlanta, demolished Irving so completely with her courtroom exposition of the facts that the London Times wrote: “History has had its day in court and scored a crushing victory.”

Looking at the dreadful impasse in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, in which 14,500 people have perished over years of war and intifadas, Lipstadt is overwhelmed at the lack of dialogue, diplomacy and fair play by politicians charged with making peace. The calm voice has been replaced by the shriek; good faith by threat; honesty with endless subterfuge. This is how she put it during a recent trip to Israel:

“People go nuts here, they go nuts. There’s no nuance, there’s no middle ground, it’s taking any shade of grey and stomping on it. There are no voices of calm, not in this country, not in Israel.”

That is a good description of the Harper government’s Middle East foreign policy. In Ottawa’s one-sided world, there is no UN Resolution 232; no human catastrophe of millions confined to refugee camps for decades; no international right of return; no excessive force or collective punishment against a civilian population; no such thing as Arab East-Jerusalem; no illegal settlements; no Janine refugee camp atrocity; no brutal assault on Lebanon; no Gaza. And of course there is no such thing as the 1967 borders. There is only unequivocal support from the Harper government to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The rich potential of Canadian diplomacy has been dumped in favor of a one-sided, fact-shifting, personal statement of undying support, no matter what, for Israel’s right-wing government.

So Deborah Lipstadt would not be terribly surprised to learn that when John Baird went to Israel this week, he kicked off his first day by attending the opening of a new Holocaust education facility in Jerusalem. Would she approve, knowing that the Holocaust has nothing to do with Baird’s face-to-face meetings with the antagonists in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and everything to do with the obligatory photo-op that symbolizes our one-dimensional Middle East policy? Probably not.

“When you take these terrible moments in our history, and you use it for contemporary purposes, you mangle history, you trample on it,” Lipstadt told an Israeli newspaper.

As he always does, John Baird stuck slavishly to the prime minister’s mantra – undying support for Israel, and nothing but blame for the Palestinians. He thereby guaranteed that Canada will be on the sidelines as the world’s longest running human rights tragedy lurches towards resolution or total chaos. It is a very different Canada than the one that played a major role in ending apartheid in South Africa with the help of brilliant diplomatics and a proactive prime minister. Brian Mulroney dared to lead a reluctant Commonwealth away from P.W. Botha and towards Nelson Mandela and guess who turned out to be on the right side of history?

Baird’s lowest moment in his pointless sojourn to the Middle East was his statement that Israel “embodies principles that Canada values and respects. It is a beacon of light in a region that craves freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.”

At best, his exuberance is filled with half truths. He seems to have forgotten that Prime Minister Netanyahu openly supported President Mubarak when he was killing his citizens in Tahrir Square. Netanyahu later expressed nostalgia for the dictator when he was finally deposed. How strange it must have been for the Israeli prime minister when his own citizens started demonstrating against their government, carrying signs that read “Walk Like an Egyptian.”

When it comes to “Canadian values” embodied in contemporary Israel, one can only wonder what Mr. Baird is referring to. Could it be those self-proclaimed, watch-dog organizations that make lists of Israeli academics who are suspected of being anti-Zionist? Perhaps our foreign minister could make time during his trip to meet with Professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University. Commenting on his making the list of 1000 Israeli authors, journalists and public intellectuals who are seen as not being with the program, this is what Professor Gordon said:

“There is a real concern for the future of Israeli democracy and about McCarthyism against anyone who criticizes the government’s policies in the occupied territories.”

Perhaps Mr. Baird was thinking of the Israeli legal system when he mentioned Canadian values. The Likud-dominated Knesset has passed a law making it illegal to call for boycotts of Israeli settlements, which international law says are illegal. Prime Minister Netanyahu also asked his justice minister how the settlements might be made “retroactively” legal.

Another Israeli law punishes “cultural, academic, and other institutions or municipalities” that commemorate the Nakba, the terrible moment after the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost everything and became permanent refugees. The law’s aim is to ban another peoples’ remembrance of their history.

Was it Canadian values when the Israeli Defense Force arrested the Speaker of the Palestinian parliament, Aziz Dweik, and 23 other Palestinian MPs and threw them in jail for six months without trial? Or when government housing committees refused to sell apartments to Israelis of Ethiopian origin, sparking 5000 Israel citizens to protest in front of the Knesset with signs that read “Our Blood Is Only Good For War”?

Does the Israeli law that prevents the Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens from obtaining citizenship or even permanent residency reflect Canadian values? If Mr. Baird thinks it does, perhaps he should take time on his trip to speak with Dan Yakir of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and ask him why he had this to say about the law, which was endorsed by Israel’s high court: “It is a dark day for the protection of human rights and for the Israeli Supreme Court.”

Is it really a Canadian value to entrench in law a provision that says a Palestinian married to an Arab Israeli citizen has no right to a family life together, that Palestinian men over 35 and women over 25 who are married to an Israeli face a life of short term residency permits, limited permits to work, and no benefits? And is the legal principle used by the Israeli Supreme Court a Canadian value – that human rights do not override security concerns? Would Mr. Baird endorse a law that said establishing a family with a foreign spouse is grounds for withholding constitutional protection?

Perhaps he could speak with Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab-Israeli MP in the Knesset who has warned of a “wave of racism” sweeping through Israeli institutions, accelerated by each fresh court ruling that differentiates between people in Israeli society on the basis of race.

And how about Israel’s new Anti-Infiltration Law and its bearing on Canadian values. Passed by a 37-8 vote in the Knesset, it empowers the military to take workers from Africa deemed to have entered Israel illegally and throw them into prison for three years – without trial – a measure the government’s critics have called undemocratic and inhuman.

And maybe if Mr. Baird wants to see another example of Canadian values in Israel he should speak to Koji Yamashiro. He got his BA and MA from Hebrew University and won a presidential scholarship to carry on with his PHD. Despite the full support of the university and hundreds of scholars and fellow students, Koji was rejected. The Immigration Authority decided to deport the Japanese student. Why? It was decided that the budding scholar on monotheistic religions “might sink roots in Israel.” Would we do that in Canada?

Israel has no civil marriage. Rabbis rule on weddings and divorces and control the personal status of every Israeli citizen. Ultra-orthodox males have been involved in a spate of attacks on women, who have been punched, sexually harassed and ordered to the back of public buses.

The youngest victim was Na’ama Margolese, age 8, who was spat on for “immodest” dress, even though she herself came from a religious family. Most recently, Natali Mashiah was beset by a mob of ultra-orthodox men who smashed the windows out of her car and poured bleach inside. When she tried to flee the scene, Natali was hit in the head with a rock. A crowd surrounded Mashiah’s car during the attack, but no one came to her rescue. Her screams of “I am Jewish” did not deter her attackers.

Here is a Canadian value John Baird understands very well, since he recently accused African and Caribbean countries of having regressive and punitive laws on the books against homosexuality. The Population Administration of Israel’s Interior Ministry prevents the spouses of gay Israeli citizens from obtaining citizenship. The government can, however, collect taxes and national insurance payments from same-sex couples as though they were married. And should the Israeli spouse die, and there are children, the remaining spouse may lose custody. Could that happen in Canada where the law says that all discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegitimate and violates foundational liberties?

The Harper government’s policy on the Middle East is uninformed and crassly political. Perhaps that is why the prime minister and his cabinet, including John Baird, advance the notion that criticism of the Israeli government is the new anti-semitism, an absurdity with the handy benefit of killing all debate about this vitally important issue.

They seem not to understand that turning a blind eye to obvious injustice imperils Israel far more than the usual list of enemies. If there is no true, two-state solution, Israel will become a bi-national state with a large and growing Palestinian population. Under those circumstances, the country will be unable to retain either its democracy or its Jewish identity.

Even Stephen Harper is not exempt from the law of unintended consequences.

Original Article
Source: iPolitics 
Author: Michael Harris  

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