Ignatieff attacks Israel Apartheid Week, CUPE
Criticism of Israel is legitimate. Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not.
IAW is part of a global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — Israeli and Jewish.
IAW goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization. It leaves Jewish and Israeli students wary of expressing their opinions, for fear of intimidation.
No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.
The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined the chorus of denunciations of Israel on our campuses. The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott Israeli academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom.
No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.
That's a quote worth saving!
Well, here's another quote by the Count, which was posted on babble before, from 2002, but should be posted in this thread just for the sake of it.
-------
Two years ago, an American friend took me on a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights over the Palestinian West Bank. He wanted to show me how vulnerable Israel was, how the Arabs only had to cross 11km of land to reach the sea and throw the Israelis into it. I got this message but I also came away with another one. When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control.
Ignatieff, 2002
There is no difference between the Liberals and Tories anymore.
And to think that the NDP actually wanted to jump into bed with Iggy not all that long ago.
The National Post seems to agree with Max's assessment - applauding Iggy's stance on Israel.
The first is how closely -- again -- it aligns Liberal policy with Conservative thinking. As noted here just the other day, it’s becoming difficult to find anything of significance that differentiates Mr. Ignatieff’s positions from those of the Harper government. The Liberals still portray the Prime Minister as cold, callous and calculating, while taking stands similar to his. That may not be a bad thing -- Mr. Ignatieff has vowed to occupy the centre of Canadian politics, now occupied by Mr. Harper -- but it makes it hard to imagine how the Liberals will frame the next election. There's a real chance he'll be playing the blue-sweater Stephen Harper, the warmer version of the Prime Minister we got to meet briefly during the last election.
The second, and more significant, aspect of the statement is that Mr. Ignatieff made it at all, and that the Liberals put some effort into drawing attention to it, firing it off to the National Post (not a Liberal favourite) for publication. A cynic might suggest the Liberal leader is pandering to the Jewish vote the way he cozied up to Alberta last week, or the way he’s been trying to schmooze the rural vote, but so what? He’s making the effort, and that’s more than previous Liberal leaders did.
It’s impossible to imagine Stephane Dion condemning CUPE,or standing up for Israel. The Dion caucus derided the tough pro-Israel stand Mr. Harper established soon after taking office as a betrayal of Canada's "balanced" approach to the Middle East. Paul Martin’s sympathies were with Israel, but the Martin Liberals usually sought to play all sides on any issue, diluting the impact overall. Jean Chretien wouldn't have wasted any effort on an issue that had no direct impact on his personal political fortunes.
There is no difference between the Liberals and Tories anymore.
And to think that the NDP actually wanted to jump into bed with Iggy not all that long ago.
Why - what has the NDP had to say on the CUPE resolution?
Nothing as far as I can tell...
Over on Facebook, a gentleman named Brian Lynchehaun posted this in a conversation with Derrick O'Keefe:
Throughout our history, Canadians have strived to understand each other across the solitudes that have broken other countries to pieces. Our common national purpose has been built on our diversity.
We respect differences — of opinion, nationality, race and creed. We abandon that respect at our peril.
“South Africa Apartheid Week” (SAAW), now underway on university campuses across Canada, betrays the values of mutual respect that Canada has always promoted.
International law defines “apartheid” as a crime against humanity. Labelling South Africa as an “apartheid” state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the White state itself.
Criticism of South Africa is legitimate. Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not. SAAW is part of a global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” SAAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — South African and White.
SAAW goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization. It leaves South African students wary of expressing their opinions, for fear of intimidation.
No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.
The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined the chorus of denunciations of South Africa on our campuses. The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott South Africa academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom.
Canada enjoys strong academic, economic and cultural ties with South Africa and South African institutions, and these relationships benefit both our countries. Collaborative research between Canadian and South African academics is mutually rewarding, and should be encouraged. The CUPE resolution is an attack on the free exchange that is at the heart of our university system.
The Liberal Party of Canada condemns the CUPE resolution in the strongest possible terms. I salute the others who have spoken out against the resolution, including my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House of Commons, and CUPE’s national president, Paul Moist, who has refused to support the resolution. I encourage all CUPE members, and all Canadians, to follow their example.
South Africa Apartheid Week and CUPE Ontario’s anti-South Africa posturing exploit academic freedom, and they should be condemned by all who value civil and respectful debate about the tragic conflict in the Middle East.
Political leaders should also take care not to deepen the distrust between Canadian communities over Africa. Politicians who use the ongoing conflict in Africa as a wedge to divide Canadians for their own political gain can succeed only in accentuating acrimony and deepening tensions.
The South African conflict evokes passionate disagreement. It should not damage academic freedom and it should not divide Canadian communities. We can move forward if we work together to promote the common objective of Canadian policy ever since 1948 — a secure South Africa.
Iggy is a self-interested, opportunistic asshole without a hint of human values or morality. What else is new?
There is nothing pejorative about "apartheid" in the South African context. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word and is what the Nationalist Party itself called its own racial policies.
And which country continues to imprison blacks at a rate six times that of former apartheid South Africa - the same country which Iggy and his party are vicious toadies to? I'll give you three guesses, and the first two dont count.
Yeah, right.
And I suppose there's nothing pejorative about the word "Judenrein", the word that the Nazis themselves used to describe areas where their own racial policies had "cleansed" away the Jews?
Does that mean that you would use the term "Judenrein" to describe places like Morocco, Egypt, Yemen and Iraq - now that the Arab rulers of those countries expelled their entire Jewish populations which in turn caused most to move to Israel - thereby drastically increasing the Jewish population of Israel (what were they thinking??)
You are correct. The word means "apart" as in "whites" living apart from "blacks" and "coloreds". It also aptly describes the basic philosophy of white supremacists who support the notion of "separate (apart) but equal" and it aptly describes the offical and unofficial policy of Israel with regard to its non-Jewish population. And like South Africa, Israeli Apartheid even has layers of discrimination whereby Druze and other gentiles will never enjoy the status of Jews but at least their not Arabs.
Why do you insist on defending a racist state? Just because it is Jewish? Does that excuse the racism?
Why to the supporters of the Israeli Apartheid State tell their opponents of this style of state to include other countries who may practise some form of apartheid? This week was called "Israel Apartheid Week"--not "World Apartheid Week."
Last year, I criticized the actions of the Chinese regime. I suggested that people boycott the sponsors of the Beijing Olympics. Should I have had to mention all the other atrocities that were happening in the world at the same time?
If I wish to be critical about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, must I also criticize Andorra and San Marino just to be fair?
If the supporters of the Israeli Apartheid State want to criticize the treatment of Jews in Morocco or Saudi Arabia, I encourage them to voice their opinions. They do not need to intimidate their opponents to shut up about Israel or to frame arguments according to their own preferences.
Apartheid is a general term, not one that specifically refers to South Africa. Here is the UN definition of Apartheid:
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term "the crime of apartheid", which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa, shall apply to the following inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
(a) Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person:
(i) By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
(ii) By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
(iii) By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
(b) Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
(c) Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d) Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
(e) Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
(f) Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Don't let Apartheid supporters rob you of your language! You can use the term "Apartheid" to refer to Israel. Let the supporters of racism, massacre, and apartheid scream all they like.
In the former Apartheid South Africa, there was censorship of the news. Not only was there censorship, there was censorship of the censorship. For example, newspapers were not allowed to show black-bars over words that had been censored by a state censor who checked the news stories and opinions before they could be published.
When I read a commentary by Michael Ignatieff and gather information from staunch supporters of the current Israeli state, they don't just want to criticize their opponents. They want to frame their opponents opinions so that they can censor their opponents' thoughts and pretend that no censorship exists. Don't criticize Israel. Don't mention Israel and Apartheid in the same sentence. If you must say something about Israel, include a few other countries to lessen the negative impact on Israel.
What ever happened with the following quote? "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it."
"You can use the term "Apartheid" to refer to Israel."
Then Im sure you wont object when I refer to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Gaza etc...as "judenrein".
If I pointed out that they were not, in fact, totally 'jew-free', nor were they made that way as a result of a specific genocidal policy, you'd just haul out all that hoary old crap about 1948 and blah blah, so I'll just point out that Judenrein, while not as well-known a word (being German and not a loanword), carries a context that I don't think is applicable.
Judenrein is a German word and apartheid is an Afrikaans word - what difference does it make?
And Liberal is an Italian word but somehow gets used all over the world. I have a hard time believing anyone is actually as obtuse as Stockholm pretends to be. The crime of apartheid is a term used in international law.
Dunno. The "Land Without a People" program was first implimented under Kaiser Willhelm II in order to evict Poles from Eastern Poland in 1915. The basic theme of this program was again taken up following the collapse of the Wiemar Republic by the next generation of German leaders, but executed with much more enthusiasm. The phrase was apparently picked up by other propogandists for ethnic cleansing in other regions at around the same time.
Any insights?
Apartheid does not apply to Israel.
The Apartheid policies involved the segregation of the black people from the supposedly superior whites.
But the South Africans still wanted the black people there to work. Just seperated from the white population.
The Israelis are dividing up the remaining Palestinian territory and putting up walls, so it looks like apartheid.
But they are doing this to be able to control access in and out of each area and basically turn the Palestinians life into a living hell.
Want to go to the hospital? Maybe tomorrow. Need to deliver fruit? Park your truck and wait a few days, we'll see.
The plan is to make life so tough the people will leave. And in the meantime we'll shoot the occasional child just to make sure you don't forget whose boss.
That's called ethnic cleansing, when you want the people to leave so you can have the land. It's still based on a racism, but different from Apartheid which involved seperating the races, not driving out the original inhabitants.
Stocholm, feel free to divert the conversation away from the original topic.
Then what is a "Jewish only road".
Apartheid.
While South African apartheid separated black people from white people, Israeli apartheid separates Jewish Israelis from Palestinians, who fall into three categories:
1) Palestinians who are citizens of Israel (about 20 per cent of Israeli citizens) have second-class status and are subject to discriminatory property laws, marriage laws, underfunded health and education services.
In the recent election, most parties voted to ban Arabs from running for the Knesset (Israeli parliament), a decision later overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. In southern Israel, 80,000 Bedouin Israelis live in villages "unrecognized" by the Israeli government, deprived of basic services like housing, water and electricity.
2) Palestinians in the West Bank are not Israeli citizens but live under Israeli military rule. They have different-coloured IDs, different-coloured licence plates and can't drive on the Israeli-only roads connecting the Jewish-only settlements.
Gaza is a different type of occupation - it is essentially a giant prison, deprived of basic supplies and under constant threat of Israeli invasion, as we saw in recent months.
The Israeli military has demolished over 23,000 Palestinian homes over the past 40 years, less than 10 per cent of which were even accused of terrorism. A 790-kilometre barrier (called in Hebrew Gader Hafrada or "separation barrier") is being constructed through the West Bank, gradually converting it into a Gaza-style prison.
3) Palestinians who were expelled from or fled from their homes in 1948, whose descendants now compose one-third of the world's refugees, still cannot return to or in most cases visit their former homes.
Daniel Thau-Eleff
No doubt that Ignatieff would benefit greatly from reading Le complexe du « Goy » in which French author Vincent Geisser slams those in France whose support for Israel seems more like anti-Semitism than anything else. For those people, he writes,
Freely translated: "The Jewish State is seen mainly as a 'Special State', generating ultimately more fear than admiration. [...] the pro-Israel stance, expressed by many French political elites, intellectuals and media columnists, has less to do with a strong and conscious support for the policies of the State of Israel than with an ethnicized and stigmatizing reading of the social reality, certain features of which are indistinguishable from anti-Semitism."
I wonder to what extent Iggy's extreme pro-Israel stance is based on his very pro-American (and thus pro-Israel beliefs) and how much it's an electoral calculation (i.e. they concluded that not taking a strong enough pro-Israel stance costs them Jewish support, while at the same time thinking Arab and Muslim voters are not likely to shift their votes elsewhere).
Who knows what Iggy's actual beliefs are. It was only two years ago that he referred to what Israel did in Lebanon as a "war crime" and he has had other writings over the past decade which were a lot less pro-Israel than his recent stands as Liberal leader have been. So, I think it has little to do with his personal philosophy (if he even has one). And, considering that there are only about three ridings in all of Canada where there are enough Jewish voters to make a difference and only one of them (Thornhill) can even be considered a swing riding - I don't think its about a vote calculation either.
I think Ignatieff has come to the conclusion that "elite opinion" in Canada is pro-Israel and his whole life has been a monument of going along with elite opinion. Elite opinion supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 - so he supported it. Elite opinion turned against the invasion of Iraq in 2007 so he started to oppose it.
PS: How do you differential "Extreme" pro-Israel from just "pro-Israel"? To me, I would consider Iggy to be "extreme pro-Israel" if he joined "Canadian Friends of Likud", announced that he opposed there ever being a Palestinian state in any form and he went on a trip to Israel for the express purpose of having a "laying on of hands" with Avigdor Lieberman.
Well, here I go again, reading Stockholm's post and nodding my head... Must be the beautiful sunny day here.
ETA: I posted the above before Stockholm spoiled his post by adding his "PS". Just couldn't leave well enough alone.
Iggy is expressing 100% support for a Likkud government with Lieberman in it. He is attacking critics in Canadian civil society who point out legitimate human rights concerns. I think his and Harper's support for Israel is more extreme than the NDP's. Just because we can imagine them being more extreme doesn't mean they aren't already there. It is true that Israel's policies and political trajectory have become increasingly extreme so that any support for them is in a sense extreme as well but the aggressive, pro-active, and one-sided stance of Harper and Iggy alongside recent history is worth noting and puts them in a special category.
I'm sure Ignatieff's stance has or will alienate Arab Canadians and much of the Muslim vote with his pro-Israel stance, as well as growing numbers of Jews who are appalled by Israel's policies. This could be an opportunity for the NDP, if they take a strong stance that differentiates them from the Liberal/Tory one.
There are actually not very many Arab-Canadians and those that there are are often Lebanese Christians who not that interested in the Palestinians. Most Canadian Muslims and from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh - if you want their votes your better off backing Kashmir seceding from India.
Perhaps the NDP could stand for something and let the voters decide.
Toronto-based writer Justin Podur has written this devastating commentary, going line by line through Ignatieff's attack on IAW:
http://rabble.ca/news/reply-ignatieff-israeli-apartheid-week
Perhaps the NDP could stand for something and let the voters decide.
Perhaps our resident Lebanese Canadian might deign to share his views on Stockybaba's latest foray into gauging Canadian Arab sentiment. I myself have notice how closely the statements from the Canadian Arab Federation track the statements of the Liberal leader.
I meant to express my disgust for Stock's pitiful and condescending nature of what non-Muslim Arabs or non-Arab Muslims would care about. I had typed more but realized it was Stockholm and kept it neat.
Its no more condescending than the implication that Jews only care about Israel.
The proof is in the pudding - there is no evidence that in ridings with large Muslim or Arab populations - candidates are being elected that are anti-Israel.
Are there any anti-Israel candidates?
Who knows what Iggy's actual beliefs are. It was only two years ago that he referred to what Israel did in Lebanon as a "war crime" and he has had other writings over the past decade which were a lot less pro-Israel than his recent stands as Liberal leader have been...
Yet you have substituted mysterious "elites" as fantasy replacement for the very real pro-Israel lobby.
Who and why do these mysterious "elites" support Israel's criminal policies? Is it "the elites" who expected, and got, every viable US presidential candidate to swear allegence to Israel in front of AIPAC?
Was it "the elites" who recently came within a hairs breadth of giving the kiss-of-political-death as "anti-Israeli" to the usually compliant Hilary Clinton for merely suggesting Israel allow humanitarian aid into Gaza:
....
On Thursday, as Secretary of State she had yet another about face in the form of angry messages demanding Israel speed up aid to Gaza. Jewish leaders are furious.
"I am very surprised, frankly, at this statement from the United States government and from the secretary of state," said Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of the New York Daily News and member of the NYC Jewish Community Relations Council.
"I liked her a lot more as a senator from New York," Assemblyman Dov Hikind, D-Brooklyn, said. "Now, I wonder as I used to wonder who the real Hillary Clinton is."...
http://wcbstv.com/national/hillary.clinton.israel.2.945238.html
Obviously, many progressive Jews rightly object to being lumped in with these pro-Israeli individuals and institutions, but to suggest that the pressure to conform is merely from some disembodied "elite" fashion is ridiculous.
So in other words, its a smokescreen to talk about "elite opinion" when we should really be fingering THE JOOZ.
Very slimy, Stockholm.
It is clear from my post it is you, not me, that is making the equation
pro-Israeli policies = jewishness.
There are two groups of racists who insist on making that equation:
Antisemites
and
Pro-Israel shills.
Why don't you give us all a lesson on the so-called "pro-Israel lobby" in Canada (not the US) and tell us exactly who it consists of - and i want NAMES and exactly what makes them so influential - given that in Canada no one can donate more than $1,000/year to parties and Israeli-canadians are not a significant voting bloc.
Ironic racism is prohibited on this site, I thought. Because it could easily be conflated with real racism. Perhaps this could be edited.
Stockholm, if you can't discuss this topic without accusing babblers of anti-semitism, then stay out of threads on this topic.
Does that mean that people are also barred from accusing me of "islamophobia"?
What reason would they have for saying that? Any specifics?
They would have no reason since it is false. But some people will always try to claim that anything less than 100% support for Hamas is Islamophobic and nowadays if you say anything negative about Hamas you get accused of being an anti-Muslim bigot.
FYI, most Canadian Zionists are not Israeli-Canadians.
When did this happen?
I know what you're talking about. Though i guess it depends a bit on how you define "Zionism". To me, it is a belief that somewhere on the planet Earth there should be a territory where Jews are guaranteed a sanctuary if and when the next Holocaust (or attempted Holocaust) inevitably occurs. Some think that to truly be a "Zionist" you have to be planning to move to Israel yourself! If that's the case count me out.
The fact that the original purpose of Zionism has been perverted by the current political leaders in Israel doesn't mean that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Similarly, Marxism has many positive aspects - despite what Pol Pot and Stalin may have done in the name of Marxism.
In the very limited Jewish circles I ever travel in - almost everyone is what I would call "non-Zionist" or "quasi-Zionist". They abhor the rightwing shifts in Israel and are ashamed and embarrassed by a lot of what the government of Israel has done in recent years. BUT, they still have a vestigial feeling that Israel must survive and that we cannot go back to the world the way it was pre-1948 when Jews were hunted down and when shiploads of refugees were turned back from every port and sent back to the Nazis to face certain death.And when the anti-Israel rhetoric turns into the fiesta of "anti-Zionism" with people equating a seemingly benign belief in there being some sort of Jewish sanctuary in the world with every evil under the sun - I'm sorry to say - all it does it cause people to reflexively become defensive of Israel. Pejorative attacks on Zionism are seen as just another way of saying "You Jews go back to being the weak powerless, position you had before Israel existed when there were constant pogroms and persecution and scapegoating and there was no place to go to escape any of it".
The so-called non-Jewish Zionists may have their bizarre reasons for being more pro-Israel than the average Israeli - but most of those people would freak out if their daughter married a Jew. I'm not convinced that those evangelicals in southern Alberta who claim to be "Zionists" are suddenly going to vote Liberal just because Ignatieff has decided to match Harper in being pro-Israel.
A fair amount of those who are critical of Zionism(and I would put myself in that category rather than in the absolutely anti-Zionist grouping) are critical, among other things, because they see that the way that Israel has developed both politically and in its "security" policies has been damaging for the world's Jewish communities, in addition to being a great injustice against the Palestinians.
The creation of that state had the effect of letting a lof of the world's antisemites (those in Europe and North America especially) off the hook, allowing them to deflect challenges to their programs of hatred by saying "the Jews have a state now...why SHOULD we accept them? why should WE change at all?" And those who've said that have pretty much gotten away with saying it.
That state, far from being a place of safety for Jews, became instead a place of great danger for them, forcing those who came from Europe, having just survived one genocidal war, to live out their days in another war zone, as well as helping to cause the expulsion of the Mizrahim(the "North African" Jewish communities) from their countries by provoking it through Israel's expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. The Palestinians and the Mizrahim are twin cases of unjustified collective punishment and the cause of justice for both should probably be twinned.
Finally. a lot of us would like to see a revived global radical movement against all injustice, antisemitism as well as all other forms of bigotry, and are having trouble seeing how the Israeli state, as currently constructed, helps that cause in any way.
Israel is never going to be wiped out(and a transition to a nonsectarian state would not be a tragedy for Israel's current population, but most likely that won't happen anytime soon) but it does need to radically change. The people of that country, however, seem to have blindly accepted their leaders' belief that change must be resisted to the bitter end and the injustice of the Occupation must continue for as long as possible. They appear to continue to hold the twisted delusion that peace through "crushing the foe" is still possible, nevermind that that never worked at anytime in Israel's past history. The truth is that peace can only come in this dispute if no one is seen as "the losers".
The world mustn't go back to where it was before 1948, and every Babbler, let alone any decent human being, agrees with you on that. But the way the Israeli government and its thugs in the IDF are conducting themselves isn't exactly helping to prevent the return of that world.
The way to prevent it is through working for social justice and economic equality, not through unquestioningly cheering on and enabling what has degenerated into a 19th century right-wing nationalist movement that mocks the values of those it claims to be defending.
The answer is an end to oppression.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly
I don't think Ignatieff is doing it to win votes. A more likely scenario is that the Liberals are bankrupt and Ignatieff is trying to raise money from wealthy individuals in the Jewish community.
But when the maximum anyone can donate to a political party in Canada is $1,000/year - it doesn't matter how rich a poetntial donor is - all they can give is $1,000 - that is way, way, way too small an amount to justify any of the "toadying" you are suggesting.This isn't the US where someone like George Soris can right a check to a candidate for $100 million just like that.
The NDP shouldn't be tempered into becoming an anti-Israel party, as some here seem to suggest. That would alienate progressive Jews (and others) who may oppose many Israeli policies but do believe in Israel's right to exist. It would also be a betrayal of its historic support for Israel.
The wheels on the bus go round and round. Stock cans ANY thread that concerns Israel not get Hijacked by you or Ohara (who is surprisingly absent). So glad we can never have any discusion on here as every time it becomes about sockholm and not the thread itself, how about we all just ignore stock on these threads and get back to what is at hand.
Thank you, that is all.
Do you want to have a discussion or do you want to have an echo chamber? You should be grateful that people are willing to challenge each other. How long would a discussion thread last if everyone just chirped in that they agreed 100% with each other?
I'll have to remember to mention that at the next meeting of our local chapter of the Phalange.
So you're actually providing a public service here, is that it?
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
This siege mentality BS in the Middle East really needs to go by the wayside. There was a shot at it and then September 11th and the US's subsequent knee-jerk right-wing response to it buggered all that up.
It may abuse Stocko to know that my sampling of even the ignoramuses among the USA was showing a strong prevailing trend of less and less pro-Israeli support from the 1990s right up to just before Sept 11th.
Know why?
Because the more you act like a bully the more even someone who rarely notices will eventually start paying attention.
And don't try to tell me Israel doesn't bully Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
I agree with M. on that.
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
I agree with M. on that.
Me too. 100%.
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
I agree with M. on that.
Me too. 100%.
And I'd like to echo Cueball on that. On that.
Stocholm:
Why don't you give us all a lesson on the so-called "pro-Israel lobby" in Canada (not the US) and tell us exactly who it consists of - and i want NAMES and exactly what makes them so influential...
Here is the first article I found, good read.
The New Israel Lobby in Action (David Noble)http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2005/11/01/209/
The people involved in CIJA are all Jewish, so I assume Stock will say the article is racist or someother...the author is Jewish....presumably one of those self-hating types...
But as for whether a lobby exists and criticism of Israel is the third-rail of Canadian politics (as in US) of course a lobby exists and certainly criticism of Israel is political suicide. Anybody who has eyes can see what Israel is doing, so for politicians in Canada to ignore it or even condone it must mean they are either idiots (possible), end-timers (Steve!), or else...
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
I agree with M. on that.
Me too. 100%.
And I'd like to echo Cueball on that. On that.
You all have no clue what you're babbling about.
Babblers never agree 100% with each other.
I agree with M. on that.
Me too. 100%.
And I'd like to echo Cueball on that. On that.
You all have no clue what you're babbling about.
There is never any disagreement outside of the middleast thread, just go check the feminist forum.
If one calls Israel an "Apartheid state," then one is against the Jews.
If one calls South Africa of 25 years ago an "Apartheid state," then one is against white people.
Stockholm:
"Why don't you give us all a lesson on the so-called "pro-Israel lobby" in Canada (not the US) and tell us exactly who it consists of - and i want NAMES and exactly what makes them so influential..."
Here is the first article I found, good read.
The New Israel Lobby in Action (David Noble)http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2005/11/01/209/
Thanks for that link. I often check out Canadian Dimension, but I'd missed it. It explained a great deal to me.
Ignatieff attacked IAW again this year, because once a thug, always a thug. I won't reprint his disgusting screed, but I will recommend this by Nick Day, rector of Queen's University at Kingston (not sure if it already appears in some other thread):
A response to Michael Ignatieff on his statement about Israeli Apartheid Week
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