It’s Passover for us Jewish folk and just in time Robert Fowler, Canadian diplomat, confirms elements of the age-old Passover story. That we’ll always be the favoured whipping boy.
At the recent Liberal ThinkFest he slandered the Conservatives and the Jews with an ever-convenient description of why there is trouble in the Middle East.
It’s Israel’s fault, and he says that in Canada the Conservatives are to blame for the entire region’s problems by pandering to the Jews here and “scrambling to lock up the Jewish vote.” (Note; Jews are a minority, many fewer than Muslims in Canada.)
So Fowler claims that this is why al-Qaida is taking over North Africa — Canada is not playing fair and has gone on to “sell out . . . on fairness and justice in the Middle East, in particular, for the cause of just settlement for the Palestinian people.”
Shall I call forth some inconvenient facts?
Clearly the Hamas-run “government” of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and the Fatah run ‘government’ of the Palestinian West Bank are not playing very fair with Israel.
Hamas continues to allow katyusha rocket fire into Israel. Hamas attempt infiltrations with evil intent, teach the hatred of Jews and Israelis from primary school up, and use foreign aid money (some of it your taxpayer money!) to smuggle weapons and build bunkers instead of feeding poor Palestinians and building the economy.
This despite the Palestinian’s promise that if Israel pulled out all settlements in Gaza, it would stop rocket attacks.
Israel kept its word and pulled out — the Palestinians did not keep their word and rocket attacks from Gaza continue to this day.
Who’s working in bad faith here?
Most in the Muslim and Arab world would prefer that Canada not stand by Israel. But shouldn’t Canada prefer to stand by a fellow democratic government like Israel over the surrounding dictatorships, theocracies or — as in the case of the Palestinians — the thugocracies that treat their own people much worse than the Israelis ever treated the Palestinians?
Fowler is right that North Africa and the infiltration of al-Qaida and other radical forms of Islam are very problematic. But it is not easy to solve the problem.
In many of those countries there is no rule of law to begin with, the countries are desperately poor; yet, there is no reliable infrastructure — whether local government or groups of NGOs — that can safely distribute aid.
Fowler should know that personally as he was kidnapped by al-Qaida; perhaps they brainwashed him.
Otherwise, it is hard to see how he can come to the conclusion that al-Qaida are succeeding because the world has not solved the Israeli-Palestinian problem . . . a problem that is exacerbated by regional dictators who do not want a Palestinian democracy in their midst at all.
For this would mean their own people might get the same funny idea of wanting rights, the vote and a future.
The dictators would be ousted in no time.
So, of course, the easy explanation is that it is all Israel’s fault and by extension, Canada’s fault for standing by Israel.
In other words, Fowler, the diplomat, believes that a state of seven million people, the size of the distance between Calgary and Edmonton, is the reason for chaotic infiltration of terrorist groups like al-Qaida into northern Africa and destabilization of the Middle East.
Canada’s support of Israel is the problem in his view (yet it is the only democracy in the region other than the Hizbollah infiltrated Lebanon), not the nut-bar Ahmedinijad of Iran who funds the Hizbollah and Hamas who foment the crises between Israel and the Palestinians; nor Iran, where 9/11 terrorists found a sponsor.
Fowler does not note the influence of the aging and unco-operative Mubarak of Egypt, nor the teetering and timid Assad of Syria whose moribund economy is virtually dead, not the embattled King Abdullah of Jordan, whose pretty and intelligent wife Queen Rania (a Palestinian) daily illustrates what a forward thinking Palestinian collective could do if they only acted like her, not oil-rich Saudia Arabia that is best known for exporting virulent, violent Wahhabism and Osama bin Laden himself.
Nope. None of these are factors in the region’s chaos.
According to Fowler, and most mainstream media, it’s only Israel’s fault or Canada’s for their support, and they’ll whip us with more Pharoahic media rhetoric until everyone falls for this illogical conclusion.
Pardon me for saying it, but I feel like Moses.
Let my people go.
Michelle Stirling-Anosh is a Ponoka freelance columnist.