Opinion Editorials, May  2008

Stephen Harper: The Canadian Ignorant Prime Minister

By Khalid Amayreh

PIC, May 15, 2008

Canada's Ignorant Prime Minister

Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, recently made outrageously ignorant comments on the plight of the Palestinian people.

He claimed that criticism of and opposition to the Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid against the Palestinian people amounted to “anti-Semitism.”

“Unfortunately, Israel at 60 remains a country under threat - threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist,” Harper said in a Toronto celebration marking the inauspicious anniversary of Israel’s birth.

“And why? Look beyond the thinly veiled rationalizations; because they hate Israel, just as they hate the Jewish people.”

Obviously, Harper was trying to curry favor with Jews by appearing more Israeli and more Zionist than many Israelis themselves are.

But in truth, he is harming Jews, because it is not a sign of true friendship to encourage one’s friends to walk along the path of evil as Israel has manifestly been doing for decades.

In fact, Israel and Jews in general need sincere friends who should tell them that the pornographic oppression being meted out to the Palestinians is wrong and ought to stop immediately.

Today, Israel is intoxicated by its arrogance of power and the predominance of her supporters in North America, especially in the US.  And as is the case with drunken people whose true friends don’t let them drive, lest they kill themselves and cause harm to others, Israel’s friends should likewise advise her to get sober and abandon her criminal discourse.

Harper’s equation of opposition to Israel’s policies its actions with anti-Semitism and “hatred of Jews” would be as outrageous as claiming that opposition to the Third Reich and its crimes and genocidal designs emanated from intrinsic hostility to the German people and the ‘Aryan’ race.

Well, doesn’t Harper realize that there are thousands of honest and conscientious Jews who reject Zionism and its virulent brat, Israel?

Harper is actually more than just ignorant. He seems virulently dishonest as well.

Otherwise, who in his or her right mind would dismiss the ghastly Israeli crimes against the peoples of the Middle East as “thinly veiled rationalizations?”

In 1948, Israel acted and behaved like Nazi Germany when it destroyed more than 460 Palestinian towns and villages and expelled more than 700,000 Palestinian Muslims and Christians to the four winds on no grounds other than the fact that the victims were not Jews. Is that a thinly veiled rationalization?

Israel, this hateful thiefdom, massacred them, destroyed their homes, confiscated their farms and property, stole their valuables before claiming that the refugees left their homes voluntarily.

Moreover, Zionist terrorists, acting on instructions from the Zionist leadership, poisoned water wells in the depopulated villages in order to prevent the refugees from returning.  And those who did try to return, even to retrieve some of their movable property, like my three uncles tried to do, were summarily executed in the fields.

Perhaps Mr. Harper should have spoken with some of the refugees, or their descendants, some of whom live in Canada, before he made his ignorant remarks.

Harper should understand, if he is really willing to listen and is interested in knowing the truth, that the strife in Palestine is not about religion or about anti-Semitism. After all, both the Israelites and the Palestinians are Semitic people.

The conflict in Palestine is about theft, dispossession, colonialism, occupation, racism, ethnic cleansing, oppression and persecution.

It is about killing people because they don’t belong to the right tribe, it is about demolishing homes because the proprietors don’t belong to the “right race,” it is about murder, rape and oppression carried out for the purpose of cleansing the land of the natives, the inferiors, the goyim, the Ǖntermensch, the children of the lesser God….the aboriginals!!

It is about the arrogation of Palestine by racist Zionism through organized mass murder and mass terror, and the displacement and deportation of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants; it is about the attempted physical annihilation of an entire people, the people of Palestine.

Are these acts, Mr. Prime Minister, compatible with the moral ideals that you in Canada claim to uphold?

And you claim that Israel is under threat? Shouldn’t you have calculated your words before uttering them?

How could a state that possesses more than 300 nuclear weapons and has one of the most powerful armies in the world, and in addition to that, tightly controls the politics and policies of the only superpower in the world, be under threat?

Are you fornicating with words, Mr. Harper?

The truth of the matter is that Israel continues to threaten, bully and attack its subjects and neighbors and their citizens.

In the West Bank, Israel has effectively morphed Palestinian population centers into modern-day detention camps, thanks to this gigantic wall of shame built on stolen land, coupled with hundreds of hateful roadblocks manned by Gestapo-like trigger-happy Israeli soldiers who draw satisfaction from tormenting and humiliating their helpless Palestinian victims.

And in Gaza, the country which considers itself a “light upon the nations” is effectively carrying out a slow-motion genocide against 1.5 million thoroughly starved Gazans whose only crime is their refusal to elect as their leaders Israel’s quislings and collaborators.

It is really sad and lamentable that while Israel is indulging in these shameful acts against a people that is as helpless as European Jewry was under Nazism, morally desensitized western leaders, obviously including yourself, Mr. Prime Minister, are cheerleading these crimes against humanity, committed callously by the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the holocaust.

Canada, a country that used to pride itself on its commitment to the rule of international law and regard for human rights and dignity, should stop this blind fanatical and unrestricted support for Israel and instead adopt a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Canada should tell Israel that killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, knowingly and deliberately, is wrong; that starving and tormenting and killing innocent people in order to weaken Hamas is wrong; that withholding critically-needed fuel and electricity supplies, let alone food and other consumer products, amounts to a crime against humanity.

Unfortunately, instead of doing what is morally right, Canada is cheering Israel’s criminality and evil behavior, very much like the Führer of the White House who called Israel’s certified war criminals “men of peace,” ignoring the fact that they have tons of innocent blood on their evil hands.

Well, birds of a feather flock together.

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