The Dominion - summer war

Canada's "Israel Allies Caucus"

dru — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:13:13 +0000

Jerusalem Post: "The Canadian government is establishing an 'Israel Allies Caucus' this week meant to mobilize support for the State of Israel and promote Judeo-Christian values amid a groundswell of Christian support for Israel around the world."

Judeo-Christian values? Somehow, I don't think that "love thy neighbour as thyself" is what they have in mind.

Mark Mackinnon's Counter-Excerpt

dru — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:29:52 +0000

Mark Mackinnon sent in the highlighted article excerpt in response to the ongoing discussion about Mark MacKinnon's coverage in Lebanon.

For his remarks, read the discussion.

* * *

From "Hezbollah protestors rally against government," by Mark MacKinnon.

Published in The Globe and Mail on Dec. 2, 2006.

(snip)
The demonstrators accused the government, which has supported international calls for Hezbollah to surrender its weapons, of being run by the U.S. embassy. "Down with Feltman's government!" was a popular chant, referring to Jeffery Feltman, the U.S. ambassador.

Mark Mackinnon Quotes Hezbollah

dru — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:14:23 +0000

The following is a list of all the quotes (or near-quotes) I could find in nineteen articles written by Mark MacKinnon about the situation in Lebanon over a three week period. This serves as an appendix of sorts to our response to MacKinnon's response to the recent analysis of MacKinnon's reporting. But it also provides a degree of insight into how systematically MacKinnon avoids any discussion of the motivation factors behind the massive demonstrations that are still occupying downtown Beirut.

Bombed Building, Beirut

dru — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 07:09:59 +0000

Israel's destruction of entire neighbourhoods during the summer war, and Hezbollah's status as the only source of serious resistance during the summer war, are the defining issues in Lebanese politics. The Globe and Mail has framed the protests as between "pro-Syrian" and "pro-Western" forces.

Inaction on Lebanon deaths: El Akhras

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:14:06 +0000

Almost four months have passed since Montrealer Hassan El Akhras lost 11 family members to an Israeli air strike in the south Lebanese village of Aitaroun. Currently, legal representatives of the family are pressing the Conservative government for action on the case.

Despite existing legal efforts, Hassan El Akhras holds little faith in the current government. "The government has done nothing," says El Akhras. "Our family wants the Canadian government to launch an international investigation on the war crime committed against my family, but we have gotten no phone call, nothing."

The El Akhras family was well respected in Montreal and ran a successful pharmacy in Côte-des-Neiges. Their death shocked many Montrealers this past summer, stirring debate about the war that many felt was unjustified in its scale and choice of targets.

"Montreal's Lebanese community feels increasingly alienated from Canadian politics," says Bassam Hussein of the Lebanese community centre El-Hidaya. "Reaction on the part of the Conservative government concerning the El Akhras family enforces that alienation."

"Sometimes I feel that the Conservative government views Arab life as less valuable than others," says El Akhras.

Stefan Christoff

[This article originally appeared in the Montreal Mirror.]

Lebanon Solidarité

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:18:05 +0000

The Québec-Lebanon solidarity movement is strong and growing

Québecers reacted quickly and strongly to Israel's bombing of Lebanon. photo: Rob Maguire

Merely two days after the initial Israeli attack on Lebanon on July 24, protests were staged in front of the Israeli Consulate in Montreal. The Montreal-based solidarity group Tadamon! was one of the first to call for demonstrations after the conflict began, joined by other groups such as Palestinians and Jews United (PAJU).

Stephen Harper's oft-cited suggestion that Israel's response to the kidnapping of two soldiers by the Lebanese group Hezbollah was "measured"--the response included the complete destruction of civilian neighbourhoods and bombing of infrastructure such as bridges and power plants--elicited widespread and immediate condemnation; polls suggested that fully two-thirds of Quebecers disagreed with the Conservative position. One protest sign at a Quebec City rally read, "Killing children is not 'measured.'"

The gatherings grew significantly as the war raged on, with upwards of 60,000 taking to the streets of Montreal on August 6. The turnout was more modest in Quebec City, with 500-600 protesters taking part on both the August 6 weekend and the last weekend in July, but as Micha'l Lessard of the Quebec City-based coalition Quebec-Liban points out, "the numbers that turned out in Quebec, in July, for a political cause of international solidarity, were good."

According to Lessard, the strong public response prompted the government to make 'nuanced' changes in their rhetoric and position. Ahmad Rustom, an activist of South-Lebanese origin, notes that while "Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay still say the same things, at least they know there were people out there who don't agree with them."

The most important thing, Lessard and Rustom agree, was the awareness that was raised at a public level. In the capital, the solidarity network ("more of a Quebec-Middle East coalition," Lessard says, noting that it is the same group that runs Quebec-Palestine and Quebec-Iraq coalitions) was able to set up tables at many street festivals, which are commonplace during the summer months. There, they were able to meet many members of the public who were looking for information that was not readily available in the mainstream media, such as the fact that protests were being organized.

Protests during the recent conflict did not touch the record numbers set during the build up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, where according to the police over 200,000 marched in Montreal, and 18,000 hit the streets in Quebec City. The difference, according to Lessard, was that there was a lot more discussion about invading Iraq. There was quite a strong reaction from the public concerning the US-led 2003 invasion, he notes, and the media allowed for a fairly open debate on the issues. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon didn't have the same lengthy build-up in public view.

Even if somewhat smaller, "at the public level [the protests] had a very, very big effect," says Rustom. "Lots of groups, unions, political parties such as the Bloc Quebecois, the Parti Quebecois, and [newly founded left-wing provincial party] Quebec Solidarite were involved in the mobilisations," demonstrating a widespread commitment to the issues. And this remains of great importance for the future, he suggests, because "the source of the problem"--the occupation of Palestine--"is still there."

After the cease-fire, the situation is still very dangerous in Lebanon, with economic and social injustices rampant in the region, and the fact that thousands of Palestinian refugees--many born and raised in Lebanon--still lack legal status. The country's infrastructure remains largely unviable, with estimates suggesting it may be twenty years before Lebanon can be built back up to its former state. As many as a million unexploded cluster 'bomblets' litter the countryside, acting as de facto landmines. The bomblets have killed 14 civilians since the ceasefire, adding to the approximately 1,300 killed during the open hostilities, and are preventing many refugees from returning home.

In the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the situation can only be said to be getting drastically worse. Reporter Patrick Cockburn recently wrote that, "Gaza is dying... A whole society is being destroyed," as hundreds are killed by the Israeli occupying forces, houses are destroyed, and connections to the outside world are all but denied for the 1.5 million Gazans, including access to food and electricity. Many, Cockburn reports, are being forced to scavenge garbage dumps for something to eat.

As Rustom notes of the solidarity network's work to raise awareness amongst the public and to work with the media to present the issues in an accurate light, "it will continue to be very important."

Dave Johnson investigates the strong --and growing-- Quebéc-Lebanon solidarity movement.

Israel, Lebanon and your own backyard

Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:21:43 +0000

Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism

Canadians concerned with injustice abroad should also consider the land under their own two feet. photo: Lone Primate

When Israel has reduced its Arab population to three per cent of the national total and that Arab three per cent has stopped resisting and been "pacified," to use counter-insurgency jargon, then Israel will have reached the place where Canada is now. Canada and Israel are the same type of state: a nation state founded on colonialism.

In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky--one of the founders of Zionism--wrote 'The Iron Wall,' an essay that laid out a direct comparison between expropriation of the Arabs with the genocide of the indigenous people of North America.

"There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future," wrote Jabotinsky. All well-meaning people long ago understood the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred

Israel's actions in the Middle East receive public support from the heads of state of Canada and the US because both are involved in the same type of behaviour.

Canadians rightfully decry the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians under Israeli military attacks, but there is no public outcry over the 2,374 on-reserve accidental deaths in Alberta between 1983 and 2002 recorded by Health Canada. Half of these deaths were suicides, while almost all involved addictions. This is just in Alberta; multiply these numbers by the entire landmass known as Canada and you have a staggering ongoing death toll.

In the pacified stage of colonial oppression, the resistance turns inwards and becomes self-directed. Better to die, or to live under the influence of drugs and alcohol, than to struggle hopelessly in a trapped and tortured situation. Incarceration rates are high, unemployment is high, disabling addiction levels are high, educational outcomes are low, health is poor; and all this happens in an environment micro-managed by Canada's Indian and Northern Affairs Department. Canadians lament the Israeli pass system for Palestinians, the bantustans, and the military control of the Arab population, but these were all aspects of Canada's Indian policy—written right into the Indian Act—between 1876 and 1960.

Things being what they are, the most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet. Canada's elected government can actually do something about this situation, unlike its capacity to right wrongs in the Middle East.

Five contested sites of power -- namely race, gender, class, authority and ecology -- come together in the indigenous struggle for survival in Canada. From north to south, the indigenous peoples of the Americas are leading the resistance to the global colonial madness. If Canada can be pulled out of alignment with the US/UK/EU sphere of influence, and into the Turtle Island-wide indigenous sphere of influence, it will have more impact on the Israeli/US Middle Eastern project than any amount of hand-wringing or fist-waving about a colonial project half a world away.

Why alter the colonial arrangement? Canadians will not act out of pure altruism; you need to see the money. Canada's GDP is over the trillion-dollar mark; $1.3 trillion in 2004 and $1.4 trillion in 2005. What if, instead of the current colonial arrangements -- where a legal fiction called 'The Crown' holds root title to all lands, and the state exercises totalitarian control over Indigenous Peoples through the Indian Act -- we go into a straight business relationship?

'Fee simple' (the term for the current property rights regime where people 'own' property while the Crown retains the underlining title) could be left intact, except with root title transferred from the Crown to Indigenous Peoples, and with the introduction of an annual royalty or rent to be paid to Indigenous Peoples, based directly on Canada's GDP. A two per cent royalty on Canada's GDP would be about $28 billion, which could be paid through the foreign debt repayment section of the federal budget. No new money has to be raised from taxpayers. Scrap the Indian Act, terminate the Department of Indian Affairs, and save about $12 billion that is currently pouring into that black hole built to hide corruption. Indigenous Peoples can establish an international trust fund that we will manage ourselves.

It's a business arrangement. Theft and murder is the business that organized crime is in; it doesn't have to be the business that the nation of Canada is in.

The most effective place for well-meaning Canadians to protest Israeli actions is right at home, under their own feet.

Stewart Steinhauer is an internationally-known stone sculptor who lives on the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta, where he was born and raised. He is the author of Voice from the Coffin, a book about life on the Rez.

Looking to address global injustice? Stewart Steinhauer suggests looking under your own two feet.

Setting up a Stand for Justice

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 23:29:34 +0000

A battle for a few feet of sidewalk

photo: Dru Oja Jay

Montreal, August 15 -- Around 1 a.m., I stop by the 24 hour café that has free wireless internet and, I later discover, Lebanese owners. I'm there to meet a friend, who tells me there is a "Tunisian hippy" who has been camped out in front of the café every day for what at that point had been 13 days, to protest the bombing of Lebanon, pass out information and gather signatures in support of a ceasefire. The man in question is not sporting dreadlocks or punctuating his sentences with "man." It's a kind of joke, because the others sitting and drinking coffee don't have the patience to sit through what they see as the same discussions with people who are making the same arguments as the ones that came before. Fethy the Tunisian hippy, it is surmised, possesses a kind of naiveté or idealism that allows him to return day after day.

I crane my neck to see the middle-aged man in front of the café engaged in a heated argument. Nearby is a large display he has set up: two easels festooned with Lebanese, Quebecois and Canadian flags, display petitions for passersby to sign, along with newspaper clippings about bombing of Lebanon and the demonstration earlier this week. Organizers estimated that 50,000 people attended.

Fethy's interlocutors tell him they're on their way to report for duty in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) the next day in Tel Aviv. The IDF has been shelling southern Lebanon, the Israeli Navy has been blockading the country's ports, and the Israeli Air Force has dropped more than 8,000 bombs. Bridges, airports, roads, apartment buildings and entire neighbourhoods have been destroyed, a thousand civilians have been killed, and a million people have been displaced. Some drive their cars out of Beirut, some are forced to walk out of the city. Officially a response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Harper has at this point maintained for weeks that the assault is "measured." Hezbollah has responded by firing rockets at targets in northern Israel.

Fethy passes out flyers, asking passers-by to sign the ceasefire petition, and making sure they know about the demonstration planned for Colin Powell's planned visit to Montréal.

When I stop by the next day, he's wearing a kaffiyeh on his head. He laughs, flashes a peace sign, and says it reminds "them" of Arafat. By them, he means the portion of folks strolling on Montréal's "le main" who support Israel's bombing campaign and blockade--its "right to defend itself," as some put it. And who, for whatever reason, oppose his call for an immediate ceasefire.

Within a few minutes of my arrival, a police car pulls up. Someone has complained, again, that he is harassing pedestrians. He chats with them for a few minutes, and they drive away.

Once, when he stepped inside the coffeeshop for a minute, somone knocked down his display. Another time, someone poured water on him and his display. One man argued with him for 45 minutes and became enraged when Fethy would no longer respond. A lot of people, he says, try to provoke him. But he doesn't get mad. "When I gets mad," says Fethy, "I get extremely mad." So he saves his anger.

Various supporters stop by to say hello or drop off flyers or, in one instance, to accompany him to the police station. He needed a witness to testify that one antagonist had verbally threatened his life. One woman, who says her family is Iranian, stops by to cut up sheets of flyers. Making sure that I know that she doesn't support Hezbollah or Iran's theocratic regime, she says she is afraid that the conflict is the first step toward an attack on Iran. She read Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article about the Bush administration considering the use of nuclear weapons.

The head of a local business association has an office across the street. Fethy says that he and others come up with excuses to force him to move from his high-traffic location. The man from the business association "passes by here," he says, pointing, "but he doesn't look at me anymore." At one point, someone claimed that the stakes he was using to plant flags were hurting the roots of the flora inhabiting the large concrete planter near his display. He laughs at repeated attempts to establish that he is blocking the flow of pedestrian traffic. "People are not gazelles," he says, pointing to lampposts blocking the way on either side of his display.

Fethy, whose name I later find out means "victorious one," sees himself as a small part of a larger effort. "When I'm done here," he says, "there are people who work at night." They compile the reams of names and email addresses, organize demonstrations, and petition politicians.

Later on, he takes a break and tells me stories of the political battles of decades past. Arafat's 1974 address to the UN General Assembly. Or how, when he was a young man in Tunisia, he recalls the US opened its doors to Cubans, promising money and jobs. The idea was to foment a revolt inside Cuba. But, he recalls with a laugh, Castro was smart. "He said 'you want Cubans? Ok. Get the boats, open the jails.' And so now Miami is full of Cuban criminals." But soon, he's back to flyering and asking window shoppers, errand runners and tourists to sign the petition for a ceasefire.

They keep trying, buy they won't stop me, he says. "I'll keep coming back, I'll keep fighting."

And by fighting, he means showing up every day to calmly speak to anyone who stops by about what's going on.

Lebanon, Israel, and one man's battle for a few feet of sidewalk in Montréal. Dru Oja Jay meets the "Tunisian hippy."

Making War in Canada

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 01:56:53 +0000

Canada produces military equipment used in attacks on Lebanon, Palestine

F-16s under construction. Many federally-subsidized Canadian firms make components for the F-16, the F-15 and the Apache helicopter, all in use by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories.

Canadian companies and taxpayers played an important role in the production of much of the military equipment that is currently being used to bomb villages, neighbourhoods and key infrastructure in Lebanon and carry out military operations in Gaza. That is the conclusion of research compiled by the Ottawa-based Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT).

CTV.ca recently reported on the tens of billions of dollars in military aid supplied to Israel by the US government. COAT, however, says that aside from diplomatic support for Israeli bombing, Canadian taxpayers are also doing their part in military support, albeit indirectly.

According to research conducted by COAT's Richard Sanders, F-16 "fighting falcon" and F-15 "eagle" fighter/bombers, as well as Apache helicopters, partly owe their existence to Canadian contractors, government subsidies, and investments from the Canada Pension Plan.

Companies like Canadair, CMC Electronics, and Magellan Aerospace, for example, are responsible for making parts for infrared guidance systems, radar equipment, and training simulators for F-15s. Many of the same companies receive subsidies from the Canadian government under programs like Industry Canada's "Technology Partnerships Canada".

According to COAT, Canadian war industries have received about $5 billion in grants and unpaid loans over the last 30 years. Additionally, the Canada Pension Plan has invested at least $282 million in arms manufacturers like Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon.

Designed by Seattle-based Boeing, the F-15 has been widely used in bomb and rocket attacks in civilian areas in Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon.

Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed over 1000 people, injured an estimated 3000, and displaced nearly one million people--a quarter of Lebanon's population. Bombing of key infrastructure such as airports and bridges has caused an estimated $2 billion in damage, and oil slicks cover Lebanon's coastine. Reports typically do not identify the aircraft used, though many mention F-15s and F-16s.

South of Lebanon, however, locals have learned to differentiate between Israeli aircraft.

"From a young age every Palestinian child learns to distinguish the Apache's sound and associate it with assassinations, destruction and blood in the street," Shawan Jabarin, general director of the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq, told the Guardian.

"For Palestinians, it's a symbol of indiscriminate military violence."

Israeli officials do not deny using aircraft like the "Apache" and the "Eagle" for political assassinations (over 150 leaders have been assassinated in the last five years), though officials claim that operations are carried out for anti-terrorism purposes. Last October, Israeli Captain Yael Hartmann told The New Standard journalist Jon Elmer that a Gazan school was targeted because "it was bringing up the next generation of Hamas members."

Over a dozen Canadian companies make components used in the Apache, and the Canada Pension Plan has invested $71 million in Boeing, the primary contractor involved in its production.

Lockheed Martin's F-16 "fighting falcon" is also familiar to Gaza residents. After Israeli settlers withdrew from Gaza, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) began subjecting populated areas to sonic booms by flying F-16s at low altitudes over the Gaza strip. With its massive number of refugees, the Gaza strip is among the most densely populated areas in the world.

The flights continued day and night for months, often timed to coincide with a dawn call to prayer. "Although it is not lethal, it can lead to death indirectly, of unborn children. It can lead to highly traumatizing effects on children particularly, and adults too," a Palestinian psychiatrist told Al-Jazeera.

"Yes, these sonic booms target the Palestinian people," Israeli spokesperson Avichav Adrai was quoted as saying by Al-Jazeera. "The purpose is so they can pressure those who fire the rockets to stop them." Adrai said that Israel does not see the sonic booms as collective punishment.

The Canada Pension Plan has invested $27 million in Lockheed Martin, and over a dozen Canadian firms are involved in the construction and maintenance of the F-16 "fighting falcon".

AlliedSignal Aerospace of Mississauga, for example, received a contract for fuel control systems on the F-16 from Lockheed Martin. Between 1993 and 2002, AlliedSignal contributed $60,152 to the Liberal Party of Canada. Between 1996 and 2003, AlliedSignal received $83.3 million in subsidies from Industry Canada.

Héroux-Devtek, which makes landing gear components for the F-16, received $2.8 million in subsidies during the same period. The CEO of the Longueil, Québec based firm recently told the Canadian Press that billions in new spending announced by the Conservative govnernment is "an opportunity" that only comes along "once every 30 years."

Other companies involved in the production of the F-16 include Derlan Aerospace, which received $9.5 million in government subsidies, Haley Industries, and the Canadian Marconi Company.

In 2001, Israel placed an order for 102 new F-16s, giving it the second largest fleet of the airplanes, after the US. The deal, worth $4.5 billion, was paid for through US military aid, which totals to approximately $3 billion per year.

Canadian firms help make for F-16s, F-15s and Apache helicopters used to bomb Lebanon and assassinate Palestinians, reports Dru Oja Jay.

Bombed oil tanks cover Lebanon's shoreline in black slick

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:38:31 +0000

Fifteen thousand tons of oil are washing ashore in Lebanon, creating an environmental and humanitarian disaster that the country's Environment Minister, Yacoub Sarraf, called "a catastrophe I wouldn't wish on any country in the world," reports the LA Times. Israel's bombing of six storage tanks 30 km south of Beirut has resulted in a massive slick all the way up the coast.

Joseph Chaloub, a 55-year-old fisherman, told the Inter Press Service, "the problem is there is no cleanup, and then there is the Israeli blockade. It's a catastrophe. People have lost their livelihood." The Israeli naval blockade of Lebanon is stopping boats leaving the coast or coming in to Lebanon.

The Daily Star reports that the spill will also affect tourism because many private and public beaches have been polluted and the cleanup is expected to take a very long time.

Sarraf has appealed to the UN Mediterranean Action Plan environmental program in Athens for help with the cleanup. But the program's co-ordinator, Paul Mifsud, said nothing could be done until the fighting had ended.

"Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 22:45:52 +0000

Dispatches from the war-torn Lebanese capital

A car carrying a family and children is hit in Southern Lebanon. photo: Kodak Agfa

"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter, who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we talk.

The sounds of bombs echoed off the buildings of the capital city of Lebanon yesterday afternoon. Out the window, I watched several people run into the entrance of a business center, as if that would provide them any safety.

The member of Hezbollah I was interviewing—let's call him Ahmed—has been shot three times during previous battles against Israeli forces on the southern Lebanese border. His brother was killed in one of these battles. It's been several years since his father was killed by an air strike in a refugee camp.

"My home now in Dahaya is pulverized, so Hezbollah gave me a place to stay while this war is happening," he said, "When this war ends, where am I to go? What am I to do? Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."

That explains why earlier in the day, when driving me around, he'd stopped at an apartment to change into black clothing—a black t-shirt and black combat pants, along with black combat boots.

A tall, stocky man, Ahmed seemed always exhausted and angry.

"I didn't have a future," he continued while the concussions of bombs continued, "But now, Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of this country and her people. My family has lived in Lebanon for 1,500 years, and now we are all with him. He has given us belief and hope that we can push the Zionists out of Lebanon, and keep them out forever. He has given me purpose."

"Do you think this is why so many people now, probably over two million here in Lebanon alone, follow Nasrallah?" I asked.

"Hezbollah gives you dignity, it returns your dignity to you," he replied, "Israel has put all of the Arab so-called leaders under her foot, but Nasrallah says 'No more.'"

He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The summer heat in Beirut drips with humidity. During the afternoon, my primary impulse is to find a fan and curl up for a nap under its gracious movement of the thick air here.

Earlier he'd driven me to one of the larger hospitals in Beirut where I photographed civilian casualties. All of them were tragic cases… but one really grabbed me-that of a little 8 year-old girl, lying in a large bed. She was on her side, with a huge gash down the right side of her face and her right arm wrapped in gauze. She was hiding in the basement of her home with 12 family members when they were bombed by an Israeli fighter jet.

Her father was in a room downstairs with both of his legs blown off. Her other family members were all seriously wounded. She lay there whimpering, with tears streaming down her face.

I think I won Ahmed's trust after that. I walked out the car, got in and sat down. He asked me where I wanted to go now.

Ahmed put his hand on my shoulder and said, "This is what I've been seeing for my entire life. Nothing but pain and suffering."

A photographer from Holland who was working with me was able to respond to Ahmed that maybe we could go have a look at Dahaya.

Ahmed had told me that it was currently extremely dangerous for a journalist to try to go into Dahaya. Before, Hezbollah had run tours for people to come see the wreckage generated by Israeli air strikes. All you had to do was meet under a particular bridge at 11 a.m., and you had a guided tour from "party guys" (members of Hezbollah) into what has become a post-apocalyptic ghost town.

A couple of days ago I went there, without the "party guy" tour. A friend and I were driven in by a man we hired for the day to take us around. I was shocked at the level of destruction—in some places entire city blocks lay in rubble. At one point we came upon the touring journalists, all scurrying to their vehicles. Everyone was in a panic.

"What's going on?," I asked our driver. "A party guy who is a spotter said he saw Israeli jets coming," he responded, while spinning the van around and punching the gas as we sped past the journalists lugging their cameras while running back to their drivers.

While driving we were passed by several Hezbollah fighters riding scooters. Each had his M-16 assault rifle slung across his back and wore green ammunition pouches across his chest.

Ahmed told me he'd captured two Israeli spies himself. "One of them is a Lebanese Jewish woman, and she had a ring she could talk into," he explained as new sweat beads began to form on his forehead, "Others are posing as journalists and using this type of paint to mark buildings to be bombed."

I doubt the ring part, and also wonder about the feasibility of paint used for targeting, but there are no doubt spies crawling all over Beirut. In Iraq, mercenaries often pose as journalists, making it even more dangerous than it already was for us to work there.

Nevertheless, war always fosters paranoia. Whom can you trust? What if they are a spy? What are their motives? Why do they want to ask me this question at this time? These types of questions become constant I my mind, and so many others in this situation where normal life is now a thing of the past. I think they are some sort of twisted survival mechanism.

We drove back near my hotel and parked again. People strolled by on the sidewalks. Ahmed said, "I will never be a slave to the United States or Israel."

Dahr Jamail's daily dispatches from Beirut are being posted on the Mother Jones website.

Dahr Jamail tours the war-torn Lebanese capital of Beirut with a member of Hezbollah.

'Measured' Misery?

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:41:10 +0000

Canada and the war between Israel and Hezbollah

A mother tries to comfort her child in Bourj Hammoud High School in Beirut. photo: UNHCR/C.Lau

As missiles from Israeli F-16s rained down upon Lebanon, Fredericton resident Yousseff Nakhale was trying desperately to make contact with his wife and daughter who are living in the country.

"I tried to call them yesterday (July 18th) and today (July 19th) and the phone didn't ring, there was no line. I tried on a cellular and a regular phone," said Mr. Nakhale, who was born in Lebanon and has worked in New Brunswick's restaurant business since 1998.

His wife has Canadian citizenship, and may have been shuttled out of the country by the time of publication. Mr. Nakhale's daughter and her three children do not have foreign passports. "My daughter is in more danger. She took her kids and her mother and went to the mountains."

Fighting between the Israeli army and Hizbollah guerrillas based in southern Lebanon began on July 12, when Hizbollah - a Shi'ite political organization who elect legislators, run hospitals and launch attacks - captured two Israeli soldiers from an outpost, and demanded they release Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails.

As of July 23, Israeli air attacks had killed 362 Lebanese, while Hizbollah rockets fired into Haifa and other Israeli cities have left 34 dead. The majority of casualties on both sides have been civilians.

"There is a deepening humanitarian crisis that needs immediate international attention," said Nathan Derejko, Atlantic coordinator of humanitarian issues for the Canadian Red Cross, which is supporting an international call to raise $9.07 million to help fund the materially strapped Lebanese Red Cross.

Although Lebanon's infrastructure is being destroyed, it is not Lebanon's government or military that is fighting with Israel.

After Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war ended with a treaty, the government was divided upon ethnic lines: Christians, Druze, Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims each control a percentage of the legislative seats.

Hizbollah, which translates into 'Party of God,' is a multifaceted social, economic, religious and political force. It was set up in 1982 to resist Israeli occupation of Lebanon during the brutal civil war. The group declared a political existence in 1985 and now controls 18 per cent of seats in Lebanon's parliament.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmaert called Hizbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers and killing of up to eight on July 12 an "act of war" by Lebanon. But with 50 000 soldiers, the Lebanese government doesn't have the force to shut down Hizbollah. Moreover, any attempt to do so would plunge the country back into civil war and shatter its fragile democracy.

Israel's disproportionate destruction of civilian infrastructure including bridges, water treatment facilities and roads, amounts to collective punishment against people who are guilty of one thing: being Lebanese.

Before descending into vicious sectarian civil war beginning in 1975, much like the one currently tearing apart Iraq, Lebanon was considered the 'Paris of the East.' Its capital Beirut was a glamorous modern city with a well-educated, religiously diverse population. Prior to Israel's latest bombardment, things were on the up and up for Lebanon: the economy was growing and the country's tenuous democracy was starting to work.

In Ottawa, Stephen Harper called Israel's attacks "measured," putting Canada at odds with almost the entire international community and - consequently- in perfect harmony with the Bush regime.

Israel has one of the world's most advanced armies and receives $3 billion dollars in US aide every year, more than any other country on the planet.

At his home in Fredericton Yousseff Nakhale isn't interested in talking about politics or religion. "I don't have any idea what happened with Isreal or Hizbollah or the government. Nobody likes this war. It's no good for anybody. Everybody is scared."

Prime Minister Harper called Israel's attack on Lebanon 'measured.' Chris Arsenault talks to a father who hopes his family is still safe.

The Balance of Coverage

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:35:44 +0000

The Canadian Media, the Middle East, and Racism

A protest in Montreal demonstrates that not everyone shares the views of Harper and much of the mainstream Canadian media. photo: CMAQ

According to the Canadian media, Israel is provoked, and then responds. For the military attacks on the Gaza Strip in late June and early July, we are told that the provocation was the June 25 operation by Palestinian resistance fighters against a military outpost near Gaza, and specifically the capture of an Israeli tank gunner.

The Palestinian operation, according to most Canadian media, was unprovoked – it could not have been provoked by the Israeli attacks leading up to the operation, though in June alone these had already killed 49 Palestinians. Nor could it have been provoked by the imprisonment of 359 Palestinian children, 105 Palestinian female adults and another 9000+ Arab males (mostly Palestinians) in Israeli jails, or by the mass starvation of Gaza. As a June 30 editorial in the Globe and Mail put it, "the onus for resolving the confrontation lies with Hamas" and while Palestinians must quietly endure tank shelling, air strikes and starvation, "Israel is within its right to respond to terrorism and violence."

Without pause, Israel has since gone on to invade Lebanon, killing hundreds of Lebanese, while Gaza continues to starve. In the Canadian media, Israel was provoked to do so, in this case by the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah.

Hizbollah has not been provoked in the same way the Palestinians have been. So what prompted their action? An obvious possibility is that they were moved to action by the Israeli assault on Gaza. By the time Hizbollah carried out its July 12 attack, the Israeli escalation following June 25 had already claimed another 67 Palestinian lives. More direct grievances with Israel include the continued Israeli imprisonment of many Lebanese, particularly Hizbollah supporters, and the Israeli live ammunition training on the Lebanese border that recently killed several Lebanese villagers. But one could barely begin to consider this on the basis of information provided by Canadian media. No attacks on Israel can have been provoked. All of Israel's attacks must be provoked and defensive.

On July 13, Prime Minister Stephen Harper revealed the extent to which this logic has come to dominate Canadian diplomacy. With the Israeli military intensifying its assault on the Lebanese population and on critical civilian infrastructure, Harper described the massive attack as a "measured" exercise of Israel's "right to defend itself." Mainstream media joined in the chorus: "Faced with such aggression, Israel had no choice but to strike back," a July 15 Globe and Mail editorial declared. The next day, several Canadians were added to the skyrocketing death count from Israeli massacres.

Israel's massacres in Gaza and southern Lebanon coincide with a shift in Canadian foreign policy. Under the last two regimes (Martin's Liberals and now Harper's Conservatives), Canada has rapidly shed any pretense of having an independent foreign policy and has aligned itself completely with the United States, Israel's chief financial backer and arms dealer. Where past Canadian regimes would have settled for silent complicity in war crimes, Harper actively cheers and participates in them. This drastic realignment of Canadian policy happens at a time when the U.S. and Israel are embarking on aggressive, criminal wars involving major human rights violations.

For Canadians to accept this, they will have to consume an equally drastic dose of racism, dehumanization, and distorted understanding. Getting them to do so may be something of a challenge. The Canadian media have taken up the task with gusto.

Aggression and defence

"No nation would stand by while its enemies bombarded its towns and cities."
–-Globeand Mail editorial, July 15

Of course, the Globe's editors were not talking about the Palestinian nation. The Palestinians are expected to stand by while Israel bombards its towns and cities, as it has been doing continuously for the past six years, with a sharp escalation in June – well before June 25, by which time 49 Palestinians had already been killed. But when Palestinians resist through armed struggle, we read on the Globe and Mail's editorial pages that Israel's "right to respond to the latest Palestinian provocations is beyond question." We cannot expect "superhuman effort" from Israel, the editors explain, and this is what would be required "to resist retaliating."

Through most of June, the situation was quite different – but then it was only Palestinians who were being killed, only Palestinians who were starving. This was, in the words of the Toronto Star's Mitch Potter, a period of "relative calm." For disturbing this calm, Palestinians bear a double responsibility: for aggression against Israel and for forcing Israel to attack Palestinians in response. As Potter insists on repeating, the ongoing Israeli assault was itself "sparked initially by the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants."

In fact, if the notion of self-defence was applied with any consistency, the operation of June 25 would be beyond reproach. Following an economic siege and recurring air strikes on their communities, Palestinian fighters based in the Gaza Strip initiated an attack against the Israeli military. This is no small feat, since Gaza's airspace and borders are under tight Israeli control, and it is difficult for a lightly armed popular resistance to bring down F-16s. Nonetheless, the fighters managed to tunnel their way underground for hundreds of metres, deep beneath Israeli fortifications, to reach a military outpost for their raid. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the fighting, as were two Palestinians, creating a very rare symmetry in the death count. Palestinian fighters also destroyed an Israeli tank, likely one of those that regularly shell Palestinian communities from such outposts. They captured the tank gunner and brought him back to Gaza as a prisoner of war.

The Palestinian resistance thus had one Israeli detainee, as against some 10,000 prisoners on the Israeli side. The resistance group offered a limited exchange. They would release the tank gunner if Israel freed Palestinian child prisoners, female prisoners, and approximately 1,000 "administrative detainees" currently in Israeli prisons without charge. A negotiated settlement reached through conditions of reciprocity and dignity could well have seen the soldier released. But Israel had a different plan.

As former Israeli intelligence director Shlomo Gazit explained, the situation served as a "pretext" for escalating military operations in Gaza. Israeli forces began a series of forceful incursions, destroying critical civilian infrastructure though air strikes, shelling Palestinian communities, and instituting a comprehensive siege on the territory. These escalations quickly revealed the Israeli goal as regime change. The Israeli military rounded up and detained 64 political leaders from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including elected legislators and a third of the Palestinian Cabinet. It began aerial bombardment of central civilian structures housing the Palestinian Authority.

The Israeli regime responsible for these attacks enjoys thorough support from the Canadian government. Its prime minister, Ehud Olmert, visited Canada little more than a year ago. During the visit, he received a pledge from the federal government that it would maintain preferential trade policies towards Israel. Olmert also visited Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty at Queen's Park, where he helped to set up a parallel provincial trade arrangement. Joking with reporters as he presented McGuinty with a gift, Olmert asked: "Do you want us to hug?" Olmert and Canadian officials did everything but.

The Harper government strengthened links with Israel further, making Canada still more complicit in ongoing Israeli crimes. As Israeli attacks ravaged Gaza, journalists with concern for 'balance' ought to have paid attention to who was doing the killing and who the victims were.

Instead, Canadian media continued shifting focus to Palestinian culpability and encouraging the government's pro-Israel partisanship. The spin in news coverage was spelled out explicitly on editorial pages. The Toronto Star's editors called attention to "the folly of what [Palestinians] wrought by electing a Hamas government," while staking limited optimism on "the hope of a chastened Palestinian Authority" (June 29). The editors of the National Post and the Globe and Mail held Palestinians directly responsible for Israeli attacks. "That there is a humanitarian tragedy afflicting the Palestinian people there can be no doubt," a July 29 National Post editorial conceded, "but in the current context it is a tragedy entirely of their own making." On June 30, the Globe's editors hammered away at the same theme: "The main responsibility for the death and destruction that has followed [June 25] lies with Palestinian militants and leaders."

The capture of a tank gunner as a prisoner of war was translated into an act of aggression, a "kidnapping." Within a couple of weeks, the three leading Anglo-Canadian dailies – the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and the National Post – had published the name of the captured ("kidnapped") soldier more than 100 times, often alongside his age and other personal information. The Globe's Shira Herzog, reflecting a broad journalistic consensus, explained that strong Israeli retaliation was necessary: Israel "is a country that takes collective pride in the sanctity of every life, an ethos that comforts Israeli soldiers in combat who know that no human effort will be spared to rescue even a single one of them from enemy territory, dead or alive."

As for the apparent contradiction given Israel's approach to the lives of Palestinian prisoners, the issue could not be ignored entirely. On the thorny issue of child prisoners, the Globe referred readers to a front-page article on the topic it had published on June 19, titled "Getting locked up to get away from it all." The piece argued that Palestinian children view imprisonment in Israeli jails as "a dream vacation" and are getting themselves imprisoned wilfully as part of a Palestinian cultural trend. Regarding female prisoners, the paper published a June 27 report titled, "Palestinian female prisoners have 'blood on their hands.'" The title was based on a quote from the Israeli prison authority, and the article assured readers that those Palestinian women convicted in Israeli military courts were quite guilty and very bad. The Post, for its part, ran an editorial referring without distinction to all the Palestinians whom the resistance was demanding be released – children, women and "administrative detainees" alike – as "fanatics now justifiably languishing in Israeli prisons."

Canadian media thus followed the Israeli lead, prizing the sanctity of every Israeli life while holding Palestinian lives in utter contempt.

Dehumanizing Palestinians

"It is our duty to prevent any danger of losing a Jewish majority or creating an inseparable bi-national reality in the Land of Israel."
--Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, June 20, 2006 (Speech to the 35th Zionist Congress in Jerusalem)

As disturbing as it is, contempt for Palestinian life on the part of Israel and its supporters is unsurprising. It is, in fact, a necessary cornerstone of the ideology of political Zionism, which guides the Israeli political establishment and determines the core of Israeli policy.

This policy is based on the determination to establish and maintain a state with a Jewish majority on lands that have long been home to a predominantly non-Jewish native population. Pursuit of this goal has involved expelling Palestinians from these lands, prohibiting their right to return to their homes, and encouraging large-scale Zionist settlement from abroad. This is a recipe for perpetual crisis and violence. Israeli forces effectively control all of historic (mandatory) Palestine, the territory stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And despite Israel's forced exile of millions of Palestinians from these lands, the present inhabitants of this territory are in the majority not Jewish.

For Canadians to support Israel, they must adopt the Israeli perspective regarding the native population of this land, the view that the Palestinian population is an ethnic imbalance to be corrected, a problem to be dealt with, a "demographic threat" to a state which must be made "Jewish" at all costs. This thoroughly racist position frames mainstream Canadian debate.

It is hardly worth quoting the National Post on this, given that the paper is operated by CanWest Global, a media conglomerate founded by two of Canada's leading Israel lobbyists (Israel Asper and Gerry Schwartz). But the position holds firm on the liberal wing of the Canadian mainstream.

Consider, for example, the work of Mitch Potter, the Toronto Star's leading Israel-Palestine pundit in recent weeks. Potter is aware that Gaza is not the planet's most densely-populated area by accident, but largely as a result of the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the 78% of historic Palestine occupied by Zionist forces in 1948 (when Zionists took their first real stab at achieving a Jewish majority). Some 700,000 Palestinians were then expelled from the territory claimed as the State of Israel, forced into either neighbouring countries or the 22 per cent of Palestine still outside of Zionist control (the West Bank and Gaza Strip). With respect to the southern Israeli settlement of Ashkelon, for example, Potter offers the following background: "The modern city was formed by Jewish immigrants to Israel in the site of the Arab town of Al-Majdal, whose 11,000 residents were mostly driven into Gaza after the 1948 war."

Potter does not even feel it necessary to explain why those driven out cannot return to their homes in accord with the basic, inalienable rights of refugees displaced during wartime. Instead, Potter automatically assumes the Israeli perspective. He correctly explains that the Israeli "disengagement" from Gaza was simply an outgrowth of Israel's agenda of ethnic and national discrimination. For obvious reasons, Israel has been finding it difficult to deny the indigenous presence on the land it has conquered. This difficulty, Potter explained, was addressed through an effort to permanently exclude the Palestinian refugees of Gaza from dominant settler society: "Analysts spoke of an emerging Israeli consensus that understood a bitter pill had to be swallowed once and for all in order for Israel to cure itself of the demographic realities of the burgeoning Palestinian birth rate."

This is unabashed racism: the native majority population is described as a disease to be treated by state policy, though even conceding a stretch of land for Palestinians to starve on is a "bitter pill." None of the leading Canadian newspapers published a serious challenge to this racism.

Instead, they repeatedly published the flimsy argument that such a challenge would itself be racist. In a rhetorical sleight of hand that has become quite familiar, commentators repeatedly suggested that basic principles of human and national rights must be sacrificed on the altar of political Zionism, and that defending the rights of Palestinians (particularly those in exile) amounts to anti-Jewish racism. The point was put clearly in a July 3 column in the Globe and Mail: "it's anti-Semitic to call, as CUPE did, for an unconditional right of return of all Palestinian refugees, since such a massive demographic change would mean the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state."

The Globe thus tells us that Palestine's indigenous population is not only inferior and troublesome, but also oppressively racist by its very presence.

From this perspective, contempt for Palestinian life comes all too naturally. On June 29, the National Post, ever a mouthpiece for Israeli diplomacy, addressed the issue through an interview with Israeli foreign and deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Livni. For Livni, as reporter Douglas Davis uncritically relayed to readers, international contempt for Palestinian life is still insufficient: "She is particularly irritated by the equivalence given to the deaths of Palestinian and Israeli children … 'Only when the world sends the right message to the terrorists will they understand that it's not the same.'" Canada's leading journalists have already gotten the message.

Consider, again, the work of Mitch Potter, who in his recent position as the Toronto Star's leading Israel-Palestine pundit is a canary in the mineshaft of liberal Canadian racism. On June 30, just one day after the publication of Livni's anti-"equivalency" plea, Potter made the following assertion: "Despite five days of international headlines there has been but a single death – that of kidnapped 18-year-old Israeli hitchhiker Eliyahu Asheri."

Apparently, it was not worth counting the two Palestinian children, aged 2 and 17, who were killed on June 28 by an unexploded Israeli shell in the Gaza community of Khan Yunis (though this had even been reported in the New York Times). Nor was it worth retracting or correcting Potter's statement in light of the Israeli military's killing of a Palestinian in nearby Rafah at 2 a.m. on the morning of the 30th, or of another in the West Bank city of Nablus a little more than three hours later (already, by 6:13 a.m., Agence France Press had reported the Nablus killing). There were reports of other deaths during this period, which Potter or his editors could easily have investigated if they took Palestinian life seriously.

Evidently, they do not. As the Palestinian death toll mounted in the following week, denying the fatalities outright became untenable. Instead, Potter reduced Palestinian resistance to stubborn stupidity and described the fallen fighters as animals: "Another batch of Palestinian militants drawn out lemming-like and falling by the dozen to higher-calibre Israeli fire, just like their predecessors." [For Potter to call Palestinians lemmings is certainly ironic].

Falling, he might have added, to U.S. weapons, with the support of Canadian foreign policy and its loyal pundits.

Whitewashing collective punishment

"Hezbollah and Hamas … triggered the current crisis by staging guerrilla raids into Israel"
–-Toronto Star, July 19 (reporter Less Whittington)

On July 12, Hizbollah, for decades the main southern Lebanese group in resistance to Israel, captured two Israeli soldiers and killed two more on the Israel-Lebanon border. That day, Israel not only killed 23 Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but also began to bomb Beirut. Israeli military action against Lebanon swiftly escalated. On July 15, for example, Reuters reported that Israel used loudspeakers to order Lebanese civilians to leave the village of Marwaheen. Twenty people, including 15 children, got in a van to leave. Israel then bombed the van, killing them all.

Of all of Israel's international allies, including the United States, the Harper government was widely regarded as the most outspoken diplomatic supporter of escalating Israeli attacks. For Canadian media, fully accustomed to whitewashing Israeli atrocities, this was only appropriate. Massacres and the war crime of collective punishment were sanitized and reduced to offhand euphemisms: "As in the Palestinian territories," the Globe's Orly Halpern reported, "Israel is ratcheting up the pressure on the civilian population in an effort to push the Lebanese to reject Hezbollah tactics."(July 14)

And as in Palestinian territory, the attacks were a matter of defence. On July 15, the Globe editorialized: "The kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, in a small country that holds the life of every soldier dear, was a grievous provocation. Coming just weeks after the seizing of another soldier by militants at the other end of the country, it looks like a coordinated campaign of intimidation."

The imputed "coordinated campaign of intimidation," which Globe editors disapprove of, is not to be confused with Israel's "ratcheting up the pressure on the civilian population," with which the Globe raises only strategic objections.

As Israel continued to kill and starve Palestinians, and as the Lebanese death toll from Israeli massacres mounted into the hundreds (with several Canadians killed in the indiscriminate bombardment), Mitch Potter explained that Palestinians now shared blame for the violence – with Hizbollah: "The words Hamas and Hezbollah may sound equally foreboding to most Western ears. And the militant merger of the two has brought the Middle East to the brink of regional war." (July 16)

Even for the killing of Canadians, Israeli culpability was sidelined: "Lebanon terror hits home," read a Toronto Star headline on the topic for July 17; "Canadians were killed in crossfire of fight with Hezbollah," read another headline, this one from the July 18 issue of the Globe and Mail. In much of the coverage, it was as though Canadians were fleeing a natural disaster, not a campaign of collective punishment fully condoned by the Harper government.

The reliance on Israeli sources became almost comical. By July 19, the Lebanese death count from Israeli massacres had reached 312, with more than 100,000 civilians displaced. As Canadians scrambled to leave Lebanon amidst the Israeli assault, the public relations line of the chief Israeli diplomat to Canada received the widest possible circulation through a story printed by the Canadian Press. Drawing entirely from unsubstantiated claims, the piece ran with the headline "Canadians fleeing Lebanon could be Hezbollah targets: Israeli ambassador."

Israel has since pledged to continue its invasion of Lebanon for weeks to come and both the Canadian government and Canadian media are lining up in support. The Toronto Star's Mitch Potter continues to get front-page attention for his articles, led by prominent cover references to Lebanese "terror" (July 18) and the suggestion that Hizbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah could be the "next Osama bin Laden" (July 19). Potter's journalism is shallow public relations, most recently for Israeli assassination efforts against Nasrallah. Potter has described the leader as an eloquent, strategic figure with a mass base for regional resistance to Israel. From his vantage point in "the corridors of power" in Israel, Potter notes that, "the strategies for Israeli victory are converging on Nasrallah's head."

Israel, while pledging a prolonged attack on Lebanon, has continued its atrocities in Gaza and escalated attacks on the West Bank, with incursions into the Palestinian towns of Nablus (where the Israeli military took over the municipality building, smashed cars and shot indiscriminately at residents' houses), Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Jenin.

The Harper government's nearly unconditional support for this Israeli aggression is scandalous, matched only by the media's support for Harper. On July 20, the Globe and Mail's editors reaffirmed this. The title of the editorial in 'Canada's national newspaper,' which praised Harper for his "refreshing" pro-Israel diplomacy, conveys the general tone of coverage: "Harper is right on the Mideast."

Mounting a challenge

There are indications that the Canadian population may be lagging behind the political establishment in its contempt for Palestinians. At the end of 2004, the Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) released polls that offer some hope in this regard. They found that prior to the recent intensification of support for Israel, official Canadian pro-Israel partisanship was opposed by majority public opinion. The polls found that the more Canadians learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the more they sympathize with the Palestinian cause.

In recent months, this sympathy has found increasingly organized expression. The past week's massive demonstrations in Montreal come on the heels of various important displays of regional solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Prominent among these is the decision by the Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE-Ontario), Canada's largest union of public sector workers, to identify Israel's regime of systematic ethnic and national discrimination as apartheid, and to join the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until apartheid is dismantled. This movement is continuing to spread and is picking up momentum within the United Church and elsewhere.

As the Canadian government opts instead for open rejection of the rights of Palestinians (and Lebanese), "Israel advocacy" groups like the Canada-Israel Committee take comfort in support from the mainstream press. When the Harper government became the first of Israel's allies to support renewed suffocation of the Palestinian economy (in March 2006), CIC communications director Paul Michaels commented happily that the "decision was greeted positively on the editorial pages of most Canadian newspapers." Again in late June, Canadian media indifference to attacks on Palestinians occasioned the expression of satisfaction on the part of the CIC: "While events on the ground included several Israeli air strikes in which civilians were injured or killed, this week's media coverage was fairly light."

With support from the government and the corporate press, Israel's allies pretend to near universal Canadian representation. They are in turn able to depict Palestine solidarity as a rejection of the popular consensus: "This week," a Globe article on July 8 declared, "public opinion was inflamed again when, contrary to the outrage [against CUPE for its Palestine work], the Toronto Conference of the United Church of Canada commended CUPE Ontario for its stand, and echoed the union's call for a boycott of Israeli goods."

There is no denying the real strength of Canada's institutional base of support for Israel. However, there is good reason to believe that this does not flow from "popular opinion." Rather, it results from the eagerness of the Canadian government to harmonize its foreign policy with the U.S., the support of corporate Canada for this agenda, and the strength of Canadian "Israel advocacy" groups which draw support from corporate organization, the United States and Israel itself. Mainstream media are reflecting and shaping the pro-Israel consensus determined by these powerful interests. But they have yet to bring a real public consensus behind them.

In this context, opportunities for a successful challenge to Canadian support for Israel remain very real. But it is only outside of the political establishment that this challenge can be built, and only through alternative information systems that it can be sustained. In any event, it is clear that while genuine awareness of the Israel-Palestine conflict may translate into Palestine solidarity, the mainstream press, far from the solution, is quite near to the core of the problem.

Dan Freeman-Maloy examines the Canadian media's coverage of violence in the Middle East, and finds it unbalanced, and racist.