By Beryl Wajsman
Tuesday, June 6, 2006"Everyone is entitled to their opinions. No one is entitled to their facts." ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Welcome Canada to the 21st century. Islamic terror has officially arrived on our shores. But the foiled plot of 17 conspirators husbanding three times the amount of ammonium nitrate that was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building that snuffed out 168 lives was merely the injury. The insult to this country's collective consciousness came from too many "talking heads", including Toronto mayor David Miller, who whined all weekend long about the need to get at the "root causes" that drove these home-bred fanatics to plan mayhem and murder. In the long run this mindset of politically correct moral relativism may do more harm to this nation as we continue to seep into the quagmire of tolerating the intolerable.
Canadians have become a people who no longer stand for anything. and when you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Prime Minister Harper is trying to change that. He had it right. There are no root causes save one. This attack was not planned to combat anything we do wrong. It was planned precisely because of what we attempt to do right. Live free. Canadians, who have abdicated so much of their individual sovereignty to statocratic dictate over the past thirteen years, better get the memo quickly. When al-Qaeda and Bin-Laden and the Wahhabis of Saudi arabia and Hamas make pronouncements about seeking total Islamic hegemony over a liberal pluralist west, we should take them at their word. They cannot compete on the battleground of liberty. Their compulsion therefore is to annihilate freedom.
as former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Daniel Patrick Moynihan so eloquently stated at the time of the 1975 Zionism/Racism debate, "Everyone is entitled to their opinions. No one is entitled to their facts." In Canada we have for too long acquiesced in the corruption of historical facts to meet the aims of political equivalency by our so-called "progressives". This passive acceptance of lies creates the fertile ground for denunciation of our own system that quite logically - in the minds of fanatics - justifies the destruction of that very system. In our knee-jerk anti-americanism; in our slavish condemnation of any and all american allies; we have become a people manifesting a self-doubt that is little more than a transparent jealousy of others self-belief.
There can be few better examples of this national submission than the "unanimous" acceptance of the bodyguard of lies presented to CUPE Ontario's convention that adopted an anti-Israel boycott resolution last week by the proto-Pavlovian vote of 896-0. Uncle Joe Stalin once said that, "The broad mass of the people will always accept the big lie, constantly repeated, than any small one." How proud he would have been of CUPE.
BIG LIE NO.1: according to the resolution, Israel does not " recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination." The truth is that Israel was the only country to recognize the future arab state of Palestine after partition in 1947. Within one week of the 1967 war when Israel defended itself from invasion by five arab states, she still offered total withdrawal and recognition in return for peace and was greeted with the arab states' Khartoum resolution of "No negotiation; no recognition; no peace". Israel re-iterated its recognition of Palestinian self-determination yet again at Oslo, at Madrid and at Camp David and was refused each time by Palestinian leadership. as Henry Kissinger has said, "The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."
What makes this part of the resolution so egregious in nature — such an affront to truth and transparency — is that it comes at a time when the Palestinian authority's own President has challenged the Hamas government to renounce violence and recognize Israel or face a referendum. President abbas' own actions put the lie to the pretense that this CUPE (Ont.) initiative was done in the tradition of labour's fight for universal social justice. The Palestinians don't question Israel's acceptance of their right to self-determination. They question only their own capacity to manifest it.
BIG LIE No.2: CUPE's resolution then went on to state that Israel is not giving the Palestinians the tools to create a state. The implication is that such a legal obligation exists. In fact it does not. Despite that, Israel has contributed more than all of its arab neighbours combined to that effort. For CUPE Ontario's President Sid Ryan not to know this he must want not to know it. Israel gave 150,000 guns to the Palestinian police and militia. She has contributed five times the total amount of money of all arab countries combined to build Palestinian infrastructure, schools, and hospitals. Under Israeli administration the Palestinians have the lowest infant mortality rate among frontline arab states; the highest literacy rate and the largest per capita percentage of university students. Finally, nearly 700,000 Palestinians work in Israel daily. What did the Palestinians' arab cousins do for them during their twenty-year occupation from 1948-1967? absolutely nothing but create conditions of grinding poverty that sowed the seeds of frustration and discontent with which arab tyrants reaped racist, genocidal propaganda to divert, deflect and direct the hatred of their own imprisoned populations for their rulers' barbarism toward bloodlust against the demonized Jews.
Israel has the same rights in international law as France, Russia and the United States, to hold territory acquired after self-defense in the face of aggressive attack until peace has been achieved. Mr. Ryan and his fellow travellers who choose to hold Israel to a different standard do so out of the basest of motives.
BIG LIE No.3: Katherine Nastovski, chair of the CUPE Ontario international solidarity committee, had the temerity to equate Israeli policies with South african apartheid saying that "Boycott, divestment and sanction worked to end apartheid in South africa." Israel has arab judges, diplomats, and Members of the Knesset. arabic is an official language of the state and 20% of the student body of Hebrew University is arab. Full and equal status. Jews however still cannot get a visa to most arab Muslim countries because of their religion. and in those arab lands with remaining Jewish populations, Jews live under a secondary legal status called "dhimmitude". So exactly who is practicing apartheid Ms. Nastovski? and where is your moral voice on arab racism?
One need not agree with the occupation or the settlement policies of Israel. However, to premeditatedly distort the truth, as CUPE has done, is to be motivated by impulses far removed from any visions of social justice. Sid Ryan used the old canard that, "This is not an attack on the Jewish people. It's [an objection to] the state of Israel's policies on Palestinians." In other words he is not an anti-Semitic; he only seeks to compromise the legitimacy of Israel's right to self-determination.
Several years ago, the Institute sponsored the first ever conference between leaders of Quebec civil society and Israeli diplomats. FTQ President Henri Massé said that while not fully supporting the settlement policy, he saw nothing to condemn in Israel's humanitarian policies and vehemently denounced Palestinian violence and hate. For the sake of the credibility of Canada's true progressives, it is time to hear this message candidly proclaimed and clearly defended.
If this is not done soon, Canada's dream of universal social justice will be hijacked by nests of nightcrawlers purveying nothing more than parochial prejudice. and worse. Violent and murderous attacks by Islamist jihadists. On this there can be no debate. We must marshal our vigilance and resolve and attack these "big lies". For they are the echoes of darker evils from the mists of history.
Winston Churchill once wrote that, "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil." Well today's Hitlers have willing accomplices and useful tools in creating hell in the west. Canadian, and indeed western, naiveté is one of their most powerful weapons. and if we don't rouse from our slumber soon, even the devil won't be interested in such timid souls as we.
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