Canadian government indifferent to Israel’s murder of eight of its citizens

Prime Minister Stephen Harper caused a shiver of uneasiness the other day when he talked about "the initial attack" that sparked the current violence between Israel and Lebanon. It was the statement of a new boy, a neophyte in the unhappy world of the Middle East.

It was not wrong that the prime minister felt he should make some kind of statement about the violence that had then cost dozens of lives and has now cost hundreds. Politically and morally it is never a bad thing to deplore violence.

But in the Middle East there is no longer any "initial attack." The history of the past 60 years has been an unbroken continuum of attack and counter-attack, and it is impossible to say how it began, when who did what to whom.

Whether he intended it or not, Harper was taking sides. He was putting himself firmly in the camp of Israel, where the only other presence of note is George W. Bush and the United States. The rest of the world has by now taken note.

About this dispute, one point must be clear. This is not about the right of Israel to exist. That is not debatable and has not been since the United Nations decreed that Israel should exist. But this dispute is about what can be done to ensure that existence.

For half a century Canada has taken some considerable satisfaction in its credibility as an international good fellow on matters relating to the Middle East. That status flowed directly from Lester Pearson's volunteering of Canada for a peacekeeping role after the disastrous 1956 Suez invasion.

More
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/realitycheck/20060720gray.html