When I first heard that Stephen Harper was going to visit Israel, his spiritual homeland, at first I was amused. I figured it was just another excuse to escape the Senate scandal. And I couldn't wait to see him driving his getaway burro through the streets of Jerusalem. Trying to look like a Canadian Messiah. Instead of just a corrupt leader on the lam. But then when I saw how many people were going with him I was shocked.
Well at least now we know who is the architect of Canada's Middle East policy, the Israeli right-wing blowhard Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu.
At the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper thwarted an announcement Friday by the G-8 countries that would have supported U.S. President Barack Obama's statement that talks between the Palestinians and Israel should be based on the 1967 borders with exchanges of territory.
Great eh? Obama launches a new initiative to try to get the peace talks going again. Then Netanyahu comes to the U.S., publicly humiliates Obama, gets 39 standing ovations from the tea bagger Congress, and then calls his little stooge Harper to put the final spoke in the wheel.
The senior government official said Netanyahu told Harper that mentioning the issue of the 1967 borders in the statement, without mentioning the other issues, such as Israel as a Jewish state or opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, will be detrimental to Israeli interests and a reward to the Palestinians.
And why is Harper doing this? Not because he gives a damn about the Israeli people. But because his rabid Christianist base believes you can't touch the borders of the Jewish state before the Battle of Gog and Magog...
Or their Messiah won't return to scoop them up.
Even though the hairy desert dweller who wrote that deranged gibberish would be confined to a mental hospital today. And restricted to posting comments to Free Dominion.
Even though as Jeffrey Goldberg points out, the more time passes without an agreement, the more the Jewish state is truly endangered, and could one day be forced to make a truly existential choice.
Either the Jews of Israel would grant the Palestinians the vote, at which point their country would lose its Jewish majority and its identity as a refuge for the Jewish people, or it would deny them the vote, and become an apartheid state. The latter option is untenable, of course: Many Jewish Israelis would be repulsed by this thought; other nations that already consider Israel a pariah would now have just cause; and Israel would lose its last remaining friend, the U.S., because no American -- including and especially young American Jews -- would identify with a country reminiscent of pre-Mandela South Africa.
Oh boy. To think we were once considered an honest broker in the Middle East. Now we're the pariah nation of the developed world.
If you thought the Cons could only destroy Canada you were wrong. Now they're after the planet. Because now they can do anything they want.
And it's all our fault. We released those monsters on an unsuspecting world.
Yup. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow hosers, and other idiots.
Please join Stephen Harper, the Con Stooge Orchestra, and the Tea Bagger Banjo Band.
And dance to the beat of our new Israeli overlord....
Once we were a proud people who marched to the sound of their own drum.
Now we dance to the crazed drum beat of warmongers and religious fanatics.
I don't know how those ghastly Cons could embarrass us any further in the eyes of the world.
I'm glad to see that after sowing yet another bloody wind, Israel's right-wing government is reaping a raging whirlwind. Because they so deserve it. What were they thinking? Did they think the world would cheer a commando assault on a humanitarian convoy?
The refugees had no legal authority to enter Palestine, and the British were determined to block the ship
On July 18, as the ship neared the coast of Palestine, the British Navy intercepted it. Captain Ahronovitch tried to break through, but two British destroyers rammed the ship.
Several hours of fighting followed, with the ship’s passengers spraying fuel oil and throwing smoke bombs, life rafts and whatever else came to hand, down on the British sailors trying to board, The Times reported at the time. Soon the British opened fire.
Two immigrants and a crewman on the Exodus were killed; scores more were wounded, many seriously.
Don't they realize that by trying to strangle that little ghetto called Gaza they are corrupting their own soul?
Oh boy. As Gideon Levy wrote before the assault on the flotilla, what a ship of fools.
The propaganda operation has tried to sell us and the world the idea that the occupation of Gaza is over, but in any case, Israel has legal authority to bar humanitarian aid. All one pack of lies.
And facing them on the seas has been the Israeli ship of fools, floating but not knowing where or why. Why detain people? That's how it is. Why a siege? That's how it is.
Again we will be portrayed not only as the ones that have blocked assistance, but also as fools who do everything to even further undermine our own standing.
This crazy bloody game has gone on for too long. And everybody is losing.
Only by freeing the Palestinians will Israel will free itself from its own bloody delusions, that are making it a rogue nation in the eyes of the world.
