Israel als Schurkenstaat 2

Middle East International is a highly respected, British-founded journal, which retains its ties to the UK although now domiciled in Cyprus.

> https://www.meionline.com/index.php?section=mei_magazine&sub_section=32&issue=7
>
> Middle East International
>
> Ian Williams
>
> In January, Canada stopped contributing to the United Nations Relief and
> Works Agency (UNRWA). It is the latest in a series of decisions that have
> seen Ottawa ‘out-Israeling’ Washington. It had previously stopped funding
> KAIROS (Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives), an NGO that had been
> supporting human rights groups in Israel and the Occupied Territories. In
> each case, the government of Stephen Harper seemed to be responding to, or
> rather pandering to, rabidly pro- Israeli Jewish groups in Canada. Israel
> itself has certainly never encouraged an end to the funding of UNRWA, an
> institution that for decades has, in effect, been paying some of the bills
> for the occupation.
>
> Although camouflaged internationally by a similar drift in British and
> Australian policy, Ottawa has moved far from its own earlier positions, and
> possibly farther than either London or Canberra. Indeed, the Obama
> administration’s muted criticisms of Israeli policy sound relatively
> ferocious compared with Canada’s gestures towards the administration of
> Binyamin Netanyahu.
>
> Once upon a time, Canada was a paragon of international virtue: supportive
> of the UN and happily putting distance between itself and its southern
> neighbour on the Middle East. Then came Stephen Harper. Ottawa did not join
> the Iraq war, but that was more a function of strong Canadian public opinion
> and Harper’s parlous electoral position than any considered choice.
>
> Canada led the walk-out at the Durban conference on racism and was the first
> to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority when Hamas won the Palestinian
> parliamentary elections in 2006. It applauded Israel’s right to “defend
> itself” against Hizbullah (a “measured response”, according to Harper), and
> against Hamas in Operation Cast Lead.
>
> The move in the Conservative Party has also pulled the Liberal Party a
> significant distance from the principles of Pierre Trudeau, leaving only the
> New Democrats and the Bloc Québécois to uphold international law. Indeed,
> the first turns in policy came under the previous Liberal government,
> ironically with human rights stalwarts in its ranks like Irwin Cotler and
> Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who, in 2006, suggested correctly that
> Israel’s shelling of the UN post at Qana in southern Lebanon (in which a
> Canadian officer was killed) was a war crime.
>
> Ignatieff was criticised so strongly for his remark that he ended up
> apologising for it, and last May he commented on the Conservative bid for
> Jewish votes: “It is beyond reckless for political leaders to try to score
> points by branding one another as ‘anti-Israel’ — to try to win votes by
> claiming a monopoly on supporting Israel. My party will never claim to be
> the only genuine defenders of Israel in Canadian politics because I don’t
> want my party to be alone in the defence of Israel. I want all parties to be
> genuine defenders of Israel.”
>
> Yet why would anyone want to defend another country so uncritically, let
> alone one that had killed a Canadian soldier? How did these sincere
> defenders of human rights allow themselves an Israeli exception?
>
> It is not just the multilateralism and commitment to the UN that have been a
> cornerstone of Canadian policy since 1945, it is also the particular
> application of that policy to the Middle East. To look at the official
> Canadian Foreign Affairs website, a Likudnik might think it had been drafted
> by the PLO’s legal department. Canada does not recognise the annexation of
> East Jerusalem, considers the territories to be occupied and the settlements
> to be contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It calls the West Bank barrier
> illegal and supports the Arab peace initiative, which is, of course, based
> on the 1967 boundaries.
>
> Which leads to the basic paradox: why is Ottawa so fervent in support of an
> Israeli government that flaunts its denial of all these positions, whose
> prime minister only a week ago was declaring that the settlement in which he
> was planting a tree would always be part of Israel, and whose administration
> is evicting Palestinians from East Jerusalem and building that illegal
> barrier?
>
> If you delve into the official US State Department positions you will find a
> similar, if somewhat less explicit, exposition of and support for the
> accepted international legal position on the issues. But the gap between
> Canada’s legal position and its diplomatic gestures is amazingly wide.
>
> On one level, it is a cynical electoral ploy. Canada’s Jewish vote is small
> but concentrated in areas that include key marginal ridings
> (constituencies). By pandering to Israel, Harper hopes to dislodge enough
> votes to swing the balance. Some Canadian observers also suggest it appeals
> to the evangelical element in the Western prairie states that provides much
> of the Conservative vote.
>
> On the face of it, the strategy could backfire since there are approximately
> three times as many Canadian Muslims as Jews. Indeed, in the absence of
> adequate polling, it is possible that ‘official’ Jewish leaders, like many
> of their colleagues in the US, exaggerate the degree of support for
> Netanyahu’s Israel in their traditionally Liberal and liberal community.
>
> It is also possible that they have gone too far with defunding UNRWA.
> Penalising refugees to pander to groups of fanatics with dubious political
> support seems to have provoked a backlash from many Canadians, who want to
> know who made this decision, when and why.