Juno News - May 15, 2021


Israel and Hamas are not moral equivalents


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

160.07309

Word count

1,431

Sentence count

82

Harmful content

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Not everything is morally neutral. In fact, a lot of things aren t. Not everything has to be. And that's why Canada should never shy away from being an ally of Israel, especially when it's under fire from both sides.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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