Juno News - Israel and Hamas are not moral equivalents

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lottie Show.

00:00:10.300 Not everything is morally neutral.

00:00:12.980 In fact, a lot of things aren't.

00:00:14.860 And I would say that we could all look to the Jewish people

00:00:17.660 and the Palestinian people and say,

00:00:19.200 yes, it's not fair that they end up as individual people

00:00:22.220 in the front lines or in the crosshairs of these conflicts.

00:00:26.200 But if you are stacking up Israel and Hamas, 0.93

00:00:30.000 100% full stop, Israel's the good guy, Hamas is the bad guy. 0.99

00:00:34.280 There is zero justification for any other position.

00:00:39.220 And it doesn't have to be a 100% full-throated defense

00:00:42.320 of every single domestic decision made by the Israeli government,

00:00:45.700 but it's talking about rule of law versus law of the jungle,

00:00:49.520 respect for life versus destruction of life.

00:00:52.780 And this is something that, again, Canadian politicians

00:00:55.760 would be well-suited to realize

00:00:58.220 that not everything has to become this morally neutral pablum,

00:01:02.900 which is what Marc Garneau's statement about this,

00:01:05.520 which came out yesterday, was.

00:01:07.280 He said Canada was gravely concerned by the situation,

00:01:10.380 urges all parties to take immediate steps to end the violence.

00:01:13.660 He says, yes, the indiscriminate barrage of rocket attacks

00:01:16.340 fired by Hamas is unacceptable and must cease.

00:01:20.140 But then he goes on and says,

00:01:21.300 ah, but Canada is gravely concerned

00:01:22.840 by the continued expansion of settlements

00:01:24.980 and by the demolitions and evictions,

00:01:27.340 including the ongoing cases in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan.

00:01:30.860 He says these actions impact families and livelihoods

00:01:34.080 and do not serve peace or international law,

00:01:37.200 even though it's a case going before the Supreme Court

00:01:40.320 that is just a real estate dispute.

00:01:42.040 But Marc Garneau didn't get into that.

00:01:44.360 And then he said Canada wants a two-state solution

00:01:46.800 with Palestinians living side-by-side

00:01:49.080 with an Israel state.

00:01:51.140 And Canada reiterates its call for immediate de-escalation.

00:01:55.080 Now, Candace Malcolm, my colleague,

00:01:57.120 made a brilliant point on this.

00:01:58.520 She said,

00:01:58.900 the statement is equivocal nonsense.

00:02:01.060 It's like they took a conservative news release

00:02:03.140 condemning Hamas terrorism,

00:02:04.680 then found an NDP news release demonizing Israel

00:02:07.520 and stapled them together.

00:02:09.300 And I still chuckle when I see that

00:02:11.080 because I think she captures it well,

00:02:13.060 whereas they didn't want to actually take a position.

00:02:14.800 So they figured, all right,

00:02:15.800 let's criticize both sides

00:02:17.860 and maybe everyone will love us.

00:02:20.700 And if you look at the response to Marc Garneau's tweet,

00:02:23.000 all of the Israel lovers are saying,

00:02:25.840 well, you know, this is terrible.

00:02:26.860 And all the Palestinian lovers are saying, 0.98

00:02:29.100 well, this is all terrible.

00:02:30.260 So they did that whole thing of trying to walk the line

00:02:32.540 and keep both sides happy

00:02:33.660 and ending up alienating both,

00:02:35.900 which is why you need to stand up for truth.

00:02:38.780 Canada should never shy away

00:02:40.780 from being an ally of Israel.

00:02:42.600 And I lament that we have lost

00:02:44.880 that strong bond that we had under Stephen Harper,

00:02:48.160 who put out a fantastic statement on this.

00:02:51.100 Clear and concise,

00:02:52.280 horrific scenes out of Israel over the last 24 hours,

00:02:55.120 a civilian shelter from a barrage of terrorist escalation,

00:02:58.940 attacks on the state of Israel are attacks on us all

00:03:01.800 and must be immediately condemned by international leaders.

00:03:05.260 I pray for the safety of everyone in the region.

00:03:08.380 There's respect for life,

00:03:09.620 but a clear and unequivocal stand

00:03:11.420 that Israel is the one being attacked.

00:03:14.560 Israel is not the aggressor.

00:03:17.680 And when people point to the sophistication

00:03:19.800 of Israeli weaponry,

00:03:21.320 Israel is better at this, 1.00

00:03:23.000 but that does not make them the bad guys.

00:03:25.380 And Mike Fagelman pointed this out quite clearly.

00:03:28.000 Israel goes through painstaking efforts

00:03:29.880 to minimize Palestinian casualties.

00:03:33.220 Yet Hamas goes to every effort possible

00:03:36.140 to maximize casualties on both sides of the Gaza wall,

00:03:40.840 their own people and those of Israel.

00:03:43.640 So when you get people like NDP leader Jagmeet Singh

00:03:46.160 calling for a halt on Canadian arms sales to Israel

00:03:49.000 as violence escalates,

00:03:50.940 what the NDP is saying is that Israel

00:03:52.620 does not have the right to defend itself.

00:03:55.280 He says,

00:03:56.020 By arming one side of the conflict,

00:03:58.120 it is undermining the peace process

00:03:59.580 and it is supporting illegal occupation.

00:04:02.880 Illegal occupation of whom?

00:04:04.660 Gaza is not occupied.

00:04:07.160 There are no settlements in Gaza.

00:04:09.440 Israel unilaterally left Gaza

00:04:11.720 and said,

00:04:12.460 Fine, we will take the first step.

00:04:14.460 And what has Gaza done?

00:04:15.820 It has replaced a government that it had

00:04:17.740 that was not particularly great

00:04:19.040 with one that's even worse,

00:04:20.440 which continues to seek

00:04:21.900 the complete destruction of the Jewish state,

00:04:24.760 the complete elimination of the Jewish people.

00:04:28.840 And they're the ones who are somehow painted

00:04:31.200 in Canadian media

00:04:32.540 and by the leader of the NDP

00:04:34.400 as being the victims.

00:04:37.500 And interestingly enough,

00:04:38.620 I mentioned to Mike a few moments ago

00:04:40.660 how fraught a lot of discourse about Israel is.

00:04:43.280 Things that you're not allowed to say,

00:04:44.980 things that are very loaded terms

00:04:46.660 and ways in which you could accidentally do it.

00:04:49.100 One of them, which is very deliberate,

00:04:51.000 is where you recognize Israel's capital as being.

00:04:55.320 Now, the reality is functionally,

00:04:57.580 Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

00:05:00.060 Israel has had control of West Jerusalem

00:05:02.500 since Israel existed for the first time

00:05:04.760 and Israel has had control of East Jerusalem

00:05:07.420 since the end of the Six-Day War.

00:05:10.000 But functionally speaking,

00:05:11.720 Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

00:05:14.280 Historically speaking,

00:05:15.680 Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

00:05:18.320 Yet countries around the world

00:05:19.800 are terrified of realizing that.

00:05:21.920 Just three countries of, I believe,

00:05:23.500 the 90 countries that have embassies in Israel

00:05:25.840 have them in Jerusalem.

00:05:27.800 The most notable of those is the United States,

00:05:30.500 which moved its there in 2018

00:05:32.520 at the behest of Donald Trump.

00:05:35.120 Aaron O'Toole has said

00:05:36.420 that Canada's conservatives,

00:05:38.180 if they form government,

00:05:39.120 will move Canada's embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

00:05:42.240 But interestingly enough,

00:05:43.440 I stumbled on a pretty significant story

00:05:45.760 that Global Affairs Canada staff

00:05:48.140 actually prepared for a move

00:05:50.800 of Canada's embassy to Jerusalem.

00:05:52.800 A tremendously important step,

00:05:54.800 although it never actually happened.

00:05:56.780 The reason being,

00:05:57.840 there was no buy-in from Justin Trudeau's liberals.

00:06:01.280 But how I found this is

00:06:02.820 I reached out to Global Affairs

00:06:04.580 with what's called an access to information request.

00:06:06.760 So trying to get a hold

00:06:07.580 of internal government documents.

00:06:09.940 I did it in 2019

00:06:11.400 and I've only just gotten a non-response now.

00:06:14.340 But I actually did it

00:06:15.560 after former conservative leader Andrew Scheer

00:06:18.120 had pledged if he was elected

00:06:20.080 that he would move the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:06:22.600 And I said,

00:06:23.220 well, I wonder what Global Affairs staff

00:06:24.780 are saying about this.

00:06:25.880 So I put in the request for May 2019

00:06:28.260 when Scheer made the pledge

00:06:29.680 to December when I put in

00:06:31.540 the access to information request.

00:06:33.500 So pretty much a seven-month period or so

00:06:36.420 or six-and-a-half-month period.

00:06:38.020 I just last week got a response

00:06:40.160 that said the following.

00:06:41.880 I have looked through the documents

00:06:43.400 received from our respective program area.

00:06:46.040 And although the department did in fact

00:06:48.000 prepare for a possible move

00:06:49.740 of the Canadian embassy to Jerusalem,

00:06:52.040 the move did not happen.

00:06:53.880 Since the relocation of the embassy did not happen,

00:06:56.620 many of the documents contain information

00:06:58.620 for the preparation of the move

00:07:00.420 and therefore all contain references to cabinet.

00:07:04.180 Cabinet documents are confidential.

00:07:06.180 They are not subject to access to information laws,

00:07:08.720 which means that any document

00:07:10.340 that was destined for cabinet,

00:07:12.100 the government doesn't have to disclose.

00:07:14.300 But the non-response of these documents,

00:07:17.000 the non-production of them,

00:07:18.180 tells me that there was a very serious,

00:07:20.380 although it's not clear how serious,

00:07:22.500 push towards moving the embassy

00:07:24.800 or at the very least something

00:07:26.040 that would have been given

00:07:27.360 to a cabinet member for sign-off,

00:07:30.080 but it did not happen.

00:07:31.560 Now on background,

00:07:32.800 a Global Affairs Canada source

00:07:34.240 told me there was no formal memorandum to cabinet,

00:07:37.160 which would have been a document

00:07:38.260 that the foreign minister at the time

00:07:39.800 would have brought to his colleagues.

00:07:41.460 That didn't happen.

00:07:42.820 So we know that Justin Trudeau's position on this

00:07:45.240 has not changed,

00:07:46.200 which is absolutely not.

00:07:47.860 As Global Affairs told me,

00:07:49.720 Canada will not be moving its embassy

00:07:51.600 from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,

00:07:53.180 and the long-standing position

00:07:54.520 is that the status of Jerusalem

00:07:55.960 can only be resolved

00:07:57.120 as part of a general settlement

00:07:59.020 of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

00:08:01.940 So again, not taking a clear position,

00:08:04.160 but it's not like the equivocation

00:08:05.880 is dismantling any of the conflict.

00:08:08.740 It's not like the equivocation

00:08:09.900 is contributing towards de-escalation.

00:08:12.380 It just means that there's no moral grounding

00:08:15.020 in Canada's position on this at this time.

00:08:18.120 If you liked watching this clip

00:08:19.540 of the Andrew Lawton Show,

00:08:20.800 True North has lots more for you

00:08:22.600 all over at www.tnc.news.

00:08:26.400 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - May 15, 2021

Israel and Hamas are not moral equivalents

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