PEJ News - C. L. Cook - What is Canada's position on the "conflict" currently unfolding in Lebanon? It's a simple question, one posed repeatedly by CBC's 'The National' host, Peter Mansbridge of Canada's minister of Foreign Affairs, Peter MacKay tonight, with little effect. Who speaks for Canada, according to the minister, is: The G8.
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Canada's "Dunkirk" in Lebanon
C. L. Cook
PEJ News
July 17, 2006
That's just great! A day following the immolation of a Canadian family, visiting relatives in Beirut, beneath an Israeli bomb, all the representatives of this country, those whose visages project the nation's image across the world, can bring themselves to say of this war crime come home is: "Go ask the G8 what we think about this."
Couched by ever insouciant anchor, Mansbridge to perhaps transmit the mildest of rebukes to the masters of the Israeli juggernaut currently taking a neighbouring nation to pieces, cloaking it's naked aggression behind the veil of "provocation" by "terrorists," according to Mackay, the kidnap of the now world famous soldiers by Hezbollah was an entirely "unprovoked" attack laying at the heart of this current "escalation."
But Montreal's El-Ahkras family were not the first clan blasted to pieces by Israeli bombs falling from above. Perhaps The National's host was too genteel to mention the families perished during Israel's on-going terror campaign, fetchingly called, "Summer Rains," but he might have thought to educated the minister, and the Canadian people paying his salary to inform them of the facts, as printed in several "credible" corporate news organs: Those claiming to hold the captured soldiers clearly say their actions were a direct response to Israel's murder and mayhem campaign, its "Killing in the Rain" terror production shooting now in Palestine.
That high ranking Hamas officials, kidnapped from Gaza two days before the initial taking of the young Israeli corporal there might be construed, by one with a mind for detail and memory capacity, as a "provocative" act too has evaporated the short memory span of minister Mackay, and again found not worth a mention by Mansbridge.
It's amazing, comical but for the horrendous realities occuring today in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and elsewheres, to watch the linguistic gymnastics of State representative and State broadcaster, literally squirming to avoid anything resembling a criticism of the single most profligate scofflaw on the world stage, save the towering hypocrisy of its benefactor, Israel.
Quickly cut to...
The aftermath of Hezbollah's rocket attacks against cities within Israel. Here documenting the people effected. It's despicable cowardice to rain bombs on civilians. And deplore attacks against civilians anywhere.
Neglected by the CBC; pictures of the dead of Lebanon. They reduced to statistical oblivion.
Video is available of those most horribly effected by the Guernica on the Levant; pictures of limbless babes, headless mothers, uncles, aunts, fathers, sons and daughters rendered to a pulpy mush, reduced to raw hamburger goo, held in the arms of the survivors, shocked and frantic to salvage something of the life that once dwelt there. Can you watch that?
No? Me and Peter either. It's on to the panel discussion... after the break.
But, before that the round table convenes to roundly agree: Iran and Syria are really to blame for wiping out the El-Ahkras family in Beirut. This astonishing leap of logic proffered by Andrew Coyne, of the vaunted 'National Post.' The Post is the crown jewel of the crapulent, Canwest Global media monolith, the same made infamous by their May 19th front page doggerel, 'Iran Eyes Badges for Jews,' a ham-fisted propaganda effort questioned on-line by the Post itself moments after it hit the streets; a journalistic low your writer recorded at the time.
Back to Dunkirk!
Perhaps it was Peter Mansbridge's last stab at redemption? Or, maybe it's the limit we can expect from those slaving away in the corpo/State media, but Pete slyly inserted a reference verboten in any discussion of things Israel: The Nazi Comparison. Mansbridge opened his remarks, on the new subject to divert from the murderous behaviour of the Israeli's against their nearest neighbours, the topic is shifted to, "What to do about the thousands of Canadian remaining alive under the Israeli barrage against Lebanon?" There, Peter, or his producers, tag the piece, 'Canada's Dunkirk in Lebanon.' Or something likewise.
Finally: A glimmer of truth emanates Canada's "trusted" news source. Of course, this refers to the evacuation of British and Canadian soldiers from France following a disastrous invasion feint against Hitler's Nazis, designed by the dismal military "strategist" Winston Churchill (he too of Gallipoli fame). Peter hits it right on the head: As the Nazis, indomitable at that moment, a small force of battle damaged are pushed into the sea, Israel is all-but-for the swastikas, inheritors of that grotesque philosophy.
In everything they've done these decades past, and continue now at a quickened pace, Israel resembles perfectly the fascist ideologies that paradoxically parented the nascent "State" of Israel. The examples are legion, and are daily made more evident. It is a lawless regime, doing as much damage to its own citizens as it metes out to its perceived enemies. It is a violent, remorseless destroyer of worlds; killing it almost seems, for its own sake; stoking a fire that threatens now to inflame the entire region, and the world.
In Canada, primary supporter of Israel's and America's brutal, Iraqesque sanctions, levied for no other reason than Palestinian's temerity to elect a government unsuitable to Israel during the hyped elections there last January, the continued deprivation of the Hamas government of monies, medicines, food, and any hope of escape their walled concentration camp "country," is not considered "provocation." In fact, it's just another unmentionable aspect of the "conflict" unfolding over there.
Of course, as the government has no idea what to do about the Canadians currently trapped beneath the aerial destruction of Lebanon, Peter's second "Dunkirk" in Lebanon, (and Afghanistan, for that matter) might better have been tagged, 'Canada's Second Dieppe.'
Chris Cook is a contributing editor at PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.
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