Canadian Journalists speak out in support of the Palestinians.
Here is an excellent article by Michael Harris, a well known Ottawa print and radio journalist. I was a guest on his radio show once. Harris writes, "I admire a group considerably smaller than the Israeli security cabinet or the IDF. It includes French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the EU's Javier Solana, the Globe's Patrick Martin and Israeli writers Amos Oz and David Grossman." I would also add the Sun newspaper chain's columnists Eric Margolis and Bill Kaufman (see below) ; Linda McQuaid of the Toronto Star (see below); the Globe and Mail's Rick Salutin (see below) and Greg Felton also should be included. There are other Canadian journalists who have the integrity and courage to speak out. We must identify them and thank them. They must also know that they are not alone and in fact know that many support human rights for the Palestinians.
Ed Corrigan By Michael Harris
It's time we stopped playing games and faced the truth: Despite the crocodile tears being shed about the bloodbath going on in Gaza, the political leadership of the West has cut the Palestinians loose.
The corollaries to that? There will be no peace process, if by that one means negotiations that will actually lead to the end of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. There will just be the peace-process industry to keep alive the diplomatic fiction that something is happening. Someone will sell lots of guns and bombs.
There will be no international military intervention as there was in Kosovo to prevent a humanitarian tragedy. There will just be Tony Blair, the man who was against a ceasefire when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006 and civilians were dying, trying to pretend he is now a Statesman and Peacemaker.
Tony will get lots of airtime trying to live down what he didn't do when he had the power as prime minister to make a difference.
After 60 years of nothing, we will be left with the status quo, the slow process of breaking the spirit of a near hopeless people or not breaking it. No more, no less.
America yawning
Meanwhile, America is still yawning. Barack Obama hasn't said a word about those five sisters who died in their beds in Gaza. There he is in his Hawaiian shirt, golf club in hand, on vacation -- change you can coat in sunscreen.
When a tsunami wiped out more than 100,000 people in South Asia, George W. Bush was on vacation, too. For three long days he said nothing about a loss of life that rivalled that of Hiroshima. The honoured tradition of U.S. presidents finishing the vacation goes on.
Bush, of course, has already endorsed the Israeli onslaught, something he more or less had to do since he is currently violating the sovereignty of a key ally and killing Pakistanis inside their own country with CIA drones. Three more died this week. Naturally, they were all terrorists. Another fact we should face: Since sovereignty has come to mean absolutely nothing to those with the power to violate it, how can the Palestinians, with no formal state, ever be safe?
The news coverage of this "war" has been Orwellian. Four hundred dead and 1,600 wounded on the Palestinian side; four dead on the Israeli side and the television newscasts are full of reports of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel.
Without air defences and an air force, the Palestinians have been attacked with 60 F-18s. Israeli pilots have dropped over 100 tons of bombs on one of the most densely populated places on earth, sealed borders and all. Naturally, the bombs were dropped only on terrorists -- people it should be noted who were democratically elected by the Gazans as their government in 2006.
Turkey shoot
The first turkey shoot against people with no defences took place on April 26, 1937, when the fascist powers laid waste to Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. "Terror bombing" was then new to the world, which decried it. Today, newspapers like the National Post offer their editorial support for it -- along with, of course, their deepest sympathies to Palestinians.
I admire a group considerably smaller than the Israeli security cabinet or the IDF. It includes French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the EU's Javier Solana, the Globe's Patrick Martin and Israeli writers Amos Oz and David Grossman.
They know atrocities when they see them, despite all the public relations.
God love you Palestine, you're on your own.
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