Oh great. Syria seems to be headed for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. Could the UN be more in your face? Click here to read the rest.
You know what makes me proud to be Canadian? The Harper government standing alone in the UN Human Rights Council. That body's latest one-sided anti-Semitic resolution passed 33 to one, with 13 abstentions. We were the one, alone, and you couldn't ask for better company.
Of course the usual suspects started squawking about our having "abandoned a more even-handed approach." But what sort of idiot would take an even-handed approach to Hamas? Unless you count pounding it with both fists.
In a column three years ago, I quoted Article 7 of the Hamas Charter: "The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: 'The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.'"
I think I'll plant me some Gharkad trees. Because the question now is not what sort of compromise one might reach with people who talk like that but why you'd want to. It is a point of pride with radical Islamists that they are in love with death. Hamas certainly is: Other people's if possible, ideally Jews, lots of Jews, but if not, then the deaths of one's neighbours and family and if all else fails one's own. Only on the last point do I sympathize.
Hamas is flat-out loathsome. During the Cold War, I was frustrated by those who drew a spurious moral equivalence between the West and the Soviet Union. Now I miss them. Communism was evil, stupid and dangerous, to be sure. But it didn't say God would one day finish the work Hitler started.
Periodically I encounter people arguing that Israel, though not perfect, should be preferred because it is democratic, has free speech, has a sizable peace movement, and extends to its Muslim citizens an extensive array of rights denied not only to Jews but to Muslims in Israel's neighbours.
Such people note that other democratic governments urging "restraint" on Israel cannot even say what this restraint would be, except it involves Jews submitting to a rain of terrorist rockets these same governments would not tolerate hitting them. They also point out that Israel actively seeks peace with neighbours who run newspaper stories based on the blood libel and TV series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Sometimes they discuss the political usefulness of xenophobia, specifically anti-Semitism, for regimes unable to satisfy their citizens' desire for freedom, prosperity or anything else worth having.
I pay these arguments little heed. Not because they are wrong but because they are so obviously right that they manage to be beside the point. No one of good will and sound mind is unaware that Hamas dreams of exterminating Jews and dancing in the gore. People's position on the Middle East nowadays is based on how they feel about that fact, not whether they know about it.
On that basis I welcomed Michael Ignatieff's lucid statement last Thursday that "Hamas is a terrorist organization and Canada can't touch Hamas with a 10-foot pole. Hamas is to blame for organizing this, for these rocket attacks and then for sheltering among the civilian population. And Israel is justified in continuing military operations." And while I'm giving credit where it's due, in her confirmation hearings as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bluntly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "We cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements." Curiously, the emphasis on past agreements is a nice touch; although Hamas's perfidy is hardly its most atrocious characteristic, this condition makes even a tactical deception harder to perpetrate on the U.S. which, of course, would also have voted no if it were on the UNHRC.
If the situation in Gaza were reversed, with Hamas overrunning Israel, civilian casualties would not number in the hundreds but the hundreds of thousands and the UN would do nothing. If Israel's defences were to crack, its neighbours would conduct the "war of extermination" and "momentous massacre" promised by the Secretary-General of the Arab League in 1948, and the world would not lift a finger even if it could. Or rather, some governments would cheer. Others, like the sanctimonious Scandinavians, would wring their hands and urge mutual restraint.
To be alone in one's position on Israel in the UNHRC is no embarrassment. It is the only place of pride.
[First published in the Ottawa Citizen]
The BBC's story on Gaza today again invites readers to submit tales of suffering but, credit where credit is due, doesn't only ask residents of Gaza as it did on Dec. 27. Instead this time says:
Are you or your friends or family in the region affected by the violence? Tell us your experiences by using the form below.
It doesn't amount to "balanced" coverage of the whole issue let alone reasonable coverage (the latter, for starters, can tell an attack from a counterattack and knows who wants a truce so they can regroup and attack again and who wants one as a prelude to peace). But it's still an improvement.
So now the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee wants to boycott Israel... again. According to CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan, "In response to an appeal from the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general." And do they also want to boycott Palestinians unless they explicitly condemn terror attacks? No see when you fire rockets at Jewish kindergartens it um uh that is to say...
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who previously blamed Hamas for provoking the Israeli attack on Gaza, has now changed his tune, expressing solidarity with Hamas, calling the Israeli actions "barbaric and criminal" and threatening to break off peace talks that have so far yielded a second intifada, suicide bombings, rockets and threats of death to Jews. Oooooooooo.
Rumours swirl that Israel was considering a 48-hour humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza strip though in the end the government seems to have rejected it at least for the time being. But does anyone think if the situation were reversed Hamas would consider such a thing? Which does not settle the question whether Israel should, although those who proposed it ought to realize more clearly than they seem to that Hamas would not use a lull in fighting (or anything else) for humanitarian purposes. But Israel's willingness to entertain the notion does underline the stark moral difference between the two sides.
As another Middle Eastern "crisis" unfolds not only participants but commentators seem to be repeating themselves. Which is not really a criticism of the latter because the same old points generally retain their validity when one side (Israel) has limited new options and the other side (the Palestinian leadership and an unknown proportion of the populace) is wedded to a strategy of belligerent rejection that has now failed wretchedly for eight decades and counting. I note however Barry Rubin's point about the Hamas strategy of giving Israel "the choice between rockets and media" because I think most reasonable media, even if they stress the suffering of Palestinian civilians, also reflect an understanding that Israel doesn't really have a lot of options and it is the fault of Hamas that they don't so the suffering, which is deplorable, is also Hamas's fault. OK, so the New York Times sent out a Dec. 29 e-mail teaser (I don't know if it's possible to link to it but if you have the nytdirect@nytimes.com service you will have received it) saying:
"Israeli Troops Mass Along Border; Arab Anger Rises By TAGHREED EL-KHODARY and ISABEL KERSHNER With the death toll in Gaza rising to nearly 300, a furious reaction spread across the Arab world, raising fears of greater instability in the region.”
And on December 27 the BBC invited residents of Gaza, but not Israel, to submit tales and photos of suffering (that story is still online but the submit stories section and links seem to have disappeared). But for the most part my view is that the Western-media component of Hamas's strategy is as miserable in every sense as every other part of Hamas's strategy. Even in the Middle East some things do change.