‘An attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada’
Peter Kent, Toronto
Photo credit Scarborough – Guildwood Conservative Association
By Steven Chase | Globe and Mail | February 16, 2010
Junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent is suggesting Canada stands ready to throw its full military weight behind Israel, telling a Toronto publication that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”
His office says Mr. Kent, the minister of state for Foreign Affairs of the Americas, was merely “paraphrasing” what Stephen Harper has said in the past regarding Israel.
“It’s not too far from what the [Prime Minister] has said,” Norm McIntosh, Mr. Kent’s chief of staff, told The Globe.
But the junior minister’s statement would appear to be evidence that the Harper government is shifting to an ever more solidly pro-Israel stance.
Mr. McIntosh declined to confirm whether this means that Canada would automatically declare war on an aggressor that attacked Israel.
In an interview published in Shalom Life, dated Feb. 12, Mr. Kent said: “Prime Minister Harper has made it quite clear for some time now and has regularly stated that an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”
Mr. McIntosh pointed to Mr. Harper’s statements from May, 2008, marking the 60th anniversary of Israel, where the Prime Minister said: “Our government believes that those who threaten Israel also threaten Canada, because, as the last world war showed, hate-fuelled bigotry against some is ultimately a threat to us all, and must be resisted wherever it may lurk.”
“In this ongoing battle, Canada stands side-by-side with the State of Israel, our friend and ally in the democratic family of nations,” Mr. Harper said. “We have stood with Israel even when it has not been popular to do so, and we will continue to stand with Israel, just as I have always said we would.”
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From the Arhives
The Forcible Transfer of the Palestinian People from the Jordan Valley
By Mercedes Melon | Badil Resource Center | Spring-Summer 2012
Forcible transfer and deportation are terms that commonly evoke images of people being loaded onto trucks or trains or violently driven away.1 Forcible transfer, however, may also take the form of involuntary or induced movement of people resulting from the creation of insecurity, disorder, or other adverse conditions, for the purpose of, or resulting in such migration. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits all forcible transfers. Only the security of the population of the occupied territory or imperative military reasons can exceptionally justify total or partial evacuation of an area under occupation. Those evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.
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This remark, which is the kind of thinking that paves the way for extremists to get the kind of full-scale regional war they seem to want, underscores the urgency of thinking seriously about the national security implications of the current Palestinian-Israeli mess and the possible solutions.
I see five possible solutions, with widely varying and very serious security implications, not just for Israel and Palestine, but also for the whole Mideast and for the course of the Western confrontation with activist Islam. The solutions are one-state democracy, two states, Palestinian Bantustan, Jordan Becomes Palestine, and Catastrophe (see “Palestine & Global Security” at http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5584.shtml).
At the moment Catastrophe appears to be getting more likely every day, as the leaders of Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Hamas, and Syria have all recently warned. Kent’s remark just throws gasoline on the fire.
The time was when we in the U.S. could look to Canada for a bit of friendly words to the wise to temper our tendency toward emotional superficiality. In case the Canadian government has not noticed, Obama could use that kind of help today. Too bad it no longer appears to be available.
If ever there was a brainless statement by a politician at a time when the country he is trying to give solidarity support to is perceived as the most criminal in terms of its policies, both domestic and foreign; the latest being the alleged assassination of the Hamas official in Dubai, it it the above title..
In other words, the Jews have bought a few more cheat ass, treasonous politicians.
PM HARPER & THE CANADIAN GOV’T. ARE A MORAL BEACON!!!!