Eric Walberg
Stephen Harper’s government has become so pro-zionist that even the hardcore zionists are embarrassed. What is behind such craven attitude?
While Canadians petition Neil Young to cancel his proposed concert in Tel Aviv next summer, his political nemesis Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved to upstage him, by singing “Hey Jude” at an official dinner during his state visit to Israel in January. We should give the Canadian prime minister the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps Harper’s life-long love of rock music affected his eardrums. Perhaps he was singing “Hey Jew, take a sad song and make it better.” Perhaps this song was a subtle plea to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to negotiate a peace settlement. Perhaps “Remember to let her into your heart” referred to Palestinians, a plea by Harper for Israel to stop hating, and begin to love Palestinians.
Okay, this is highly unlikely. More to the point was his rendition of “With a little help from your friends.” In fact, Harper makes a point time after time that “Canada is Israel’s best friend.” Even after Operation Cast Lead, the invasion of Gaza in December 2008, when Israel boldly killed over a thousand Palestinian civilians, the “friendship” continued, without missing a heartbeat. “Canada is so friendly that there was no need to convince or explain anything to anyone. We need allies like this in the international arena,” gushed Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in July 2009 (he later resigned in humiliation from the government after being convicted of corruption).
The litany of violations of human decency is long when it comes to the complicity of the Canadian government, Jewish organizations, and support for Israel’s worst elements. Take note of two particularly egregious examples:
The attack on the Mavi Marmara in international waters also led Turkish investigators to charge him with murder, along with 193 other Israelis who were identified from documents and video footage of the assault. For services rendered, Attias was promoted to the world of diplomacy, now seconded to Canada to ensure the public security cooperation “partnership” which the Canadian government signed with Israel in 2008 is adhered to. Welcome to Ottawa, Eden. Surely a “paradise” compared to the devastation you left behind in Palestine. No fear of arrest, as could well be the case in the UK and many other countries, where war criminals are still prosecuted.
The British government ruled that their presence in the UK would “not be conducive to the public good” and refused them entry under pressure from anti-racist groups such as Hope not Hate. “The UK should never become a stage for inflammatory speakers who promote hate,” reads the decision by the British Home Office, a ruling which will remain in effect for three years. Geller shot back, “In a striking blow against freedom, the British government is behaving like a de facto Islamic state.” The news came on the same day that a masjid in Redditch was broken into and had Swastikas and the letters “EDL,” as well as other racist messages, daubed on it.
Though the JDL has been listed since 2001 by the FBI as a “violent extremist Jewish organization,” it operates openly in the US, Canada, Europe and South Africa, with international headquarters in Los Angeles. In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli member of the JDL, opened fire on Muslims praying at the Ibrahimi Masjid (Cave of the Patriarchs masjid) in the West Bank city of al-Khalil (Hebron), killing 29 worshippers and injuring 125 before he ran out of ammunition and was himself killed.
Immediately after the massacre, on its website, the JDL called it a “preventative measure against yet another Arab attack on Jews” and noted that they “do not consider his assault to qualify under the label of terrorism.” The head of the Canadian JDL, Meir Weinstein, said, “Our organization does not condemn the attack. It condemns the Israeli government for not providing adequate protection for settlers.”
JDL Canada, which disappeared under the radar after 9/11 and the FBI condemnation in 2001, came alive again in 2006, with the arrival in Ottawa of Stephen Harper, and is still headed by Weinstein. His campaign to bar British MP George Galloway from entering Canada in 2009 to speak about attempts to lift the siege of Gaza became government policy, exposing Canada to international ridicule. In 2011, JDL Canada organized a “support rally” for the EDL (at the Toronto Zionist Center) featuring a live speech via Skype by EDL leader Tommy Robinson.
This scandalous event was even denounced by the Canadian Jewish Congress whose leader, Bernie Farber, said he was “disappointed that the JDL would support an organization whose record in the UK is one of violence and extremism.” Shortly after, it was revealed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had launched an investigation against at least nine members of JDL Canada accused of plotting to bomb Palestine House in Mississauga.
Apart from Farber and the CJC’s “harsh” words, the JDL’s warmongering and racism are denounced even by ultra-Zionist Abraham Foxman, head of the notorious Anti-Defamation League, who admitted the JDL has a history of violence and extremism,” and said Geller and Spencer “promote a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the pretext of fighting radical Islam.” Yet, neither Farber nor Foxman is upset enough to demand that our governments ban the JDL and prosecute Geller-Spencer for their hate speech. On the contrary, they are now lobbying to scuttle a proposed Muslim seniors’ home in Thornhill, a suburb of Toronto. And, oh yes, a JDLer was part of Harper’s delegation to Israel, applauding warmly our leader’s rendition of “Hey Jude.”
On the contrary, the JDLs on both sides of the border raise millions for God-knows-what acts of “violence and extremism,” and Geller and Spencer promote their bigotry freely, despite the tsk-tsks of Zionist critics. On the contrary, Foxman is also a vocal opponent to the Park51 Islamic community center near Ground Zero, and indulges in much the same bigotry as Geller, though with more delicatesse. Nor are the Foxmans and Farbers worried about the advice Israeli “military attachés” in the US and Canada are whispering in our leaders’ ears.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) is still fighting a legal battle against Harper’s ex-Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney regarding the 2009 decision to cut federal funding to the organization that provides vital settlement programs for new Arab Canadians, teaching immigrants language and job searching skills. CAF President Khalid Mouammar stated that CAF was the victim of a “well-planned Zionist campaign being waged by the Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith supported by some politicians. The campaign of intimidation launched by the Israeli lobby and their supporters is seeking to de-legitimize Arab Canadian institutions, services, access to public funds and to silence all criticism of Israel.”
Note that JDL Canada is discretely absent from this campaign of mainstream bigotry. Is it possible that the CJC (now the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs — CIJA), B’nai Brith and the JDL, is really just a case of the Israeli lobby’s “good cop, bad cop”? That the JDL’s extreme bigotry and incitement to violence — as exemplified by the Geller/Spencer event — is merely a way of making the more mainstream Zionist bigotry of the Israeli lobby — as exemplified by Attias as Canada’s first Israeli “military attache” — more palatable to Canadians?
With every new story, Zionism is confirmed as a racist ideology.
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