Canada Ping!
Posted on 01/20/2014 10:32:25 PM PST by Squawk 8888
After Stephen Harper’s speech to the Knesset, we can perhaps put one idea to rest: the notion that his government’s unwavering support for the state of Israel is mere politics, aimed at sewing up the Jewish vote and little else. I have been watching Harper for 20 years. This was Harper to the core, as passionate, sincere and unequivocal as I’ve ever seen him. He said it because he meant it. And, by and large, he was right.
Which part of the speech, bluntly worded as it was, would his critics like him to take back? That “Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law”? That “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable”? That “many of the hostile forces Israel faces are faced by all Western nations”? That “a Palestinian state will come … when the regimes that bankroll terrorism realize that the path to peace is accommodation, not violence”?
And yet the canard is still repeated: that Harper is “too close” to Israel, that he has forsaken Canada’s “traditional balanced approach” to the Middle East in favour of a one-sided, Israel-right-or-wrong position, that indeed he has made Israel’s foreign policy our own — or if that were not nasty enough, Likud’s.
The evidentiary basis for this charge has always seemed thin, unless it is supposed that “support” for Israel necessarily implies unquestioning, uncritical support. But that is no more true than the reverse: that it is possible to equivocate when Israel is under attack — not just the one-sided, Israel-wrong-or-wronger rhetorical sallies of countless UN resolutions, but attacks of the armed, missile-based, children-blown-up-in-pizzerias kind — and still “support” it.
(Excerpt) Read more at fullcomment.nationalpost.com ...
Canada Ping!
stupid rude arabs
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