Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘gazette’

The Concordia election results made headlines in the Gazette and president-elect Natalie Pomerleau was interviewed on CJAD yesterday afternoon.

Montreal Gazette columnist Mike Boone adds his voice to the people who claim that the US’s war on Iraq is all about ooooooooooiiiil. His theory is about as bizarre as it gets: he claims that the US needs to attack Iraq because people insist on living in the suburbs and commuting to work:

I’m a big hero because I take the train and the métro to work, right? But yesterday morning was so cold that the Great Environmentalist left his car idling in the driveway for five minutes to warm it up for the drive to the train station.

In 1996, 10.1 per cent of Canada’s workforce used public transit. Five years later, it was 10.5 per cent.

That’s 1.4 million strap-hangers, compared with 10 million drivers (and another one million passengers in private vehicles.)

This is why there’s going to be war in Iraq. We’re petroleum junkies – and the census makes a pretty good case that Whitney Houston’s rehab is going better than ours.

I’ve heard the argument before that anyone who drives a car is public enemy #1. To that I say, give us decent public transit, and we won’t be forced to drive our cars as much. Does anyone really think I like sitting in gridlock twice a day? But I digress.

The theory that there will be war in Iraq because Bush simply woke up one morning and decided he’d like to see lower prices at the pump is incredibly absurd – to say the least. But of course, if Mike Boone believes it so much, he can sell his car. It won’t make the least bit of difference. Saddam Hussein will still be trying to acquire dangerous weapons to unleash on Israel and the West, and to use to massacre his own people. He’ll still be a crazy dictator and a world menace, and a major sponsor of terrorism. But if it makes Boone feel better . . .

The following letter in today’s Gazette questions the neutrality of the UN:

The consensus of opinion around the world is that no action should be taken against Iraq until such time as the UN arms inspectors uncover proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. But can we trust the UN’s “neutrality” in this situation?

The UN has just appointed Iraq to chair its disarmament conference in Geneva next month (Gazette, Feb. 4). It appointed Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission. It allowed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a known terrorist, to address the General Assembly while openly carrying a weapon.

Where is the UN’s credibility as a neutral body supposedly promoting peace on our planet?

Aaron Muscott
Dollard des Ormeaux

Well, unfortunately, the UN has never had any credibility as a “neutral body”. This is old news. From the countless one-sided General Assembly resolutions against Israel, to the twisting of the concept of “human rights” to mean “rights for select humans”, the UN lost its credibility decades ago.

The problem is that most people seem unaware of this. The world is pressuring the United States to get UN approval before attacking Iraq, as though a rubber-stamp from the UN would mean that the attack is legitimate.

The UN needs to clean up its act – fast.

The Gazette published me again today . . . only they don’t even know it.

In a story about an SPHR event held at Concordia, reference was made to a comment by Fiona Becker published in the Link (Oct 8). Becker, a speaker at the SPHR event, is one of many people, some well-intentioned, some not so well-intentioned, to have been sucked in by the Palestinian propaganda machine in recent months. Travelling with a group of so-called “international human rights observers”, which is another way of saying observers who only get the Palestinian side of the story, she travelled to the West Bank and Gaza in September to witness supposed “human rights abuses” being committed by Israel. Her comment included the words “The unspeakable has been normalized”.

As I often do on the Link’s site, I posted a comment in response. The Gazette published this excerpt of it:

And what about the unthinkable act of a person walking into a crowded café, or onto a city bus, or into a shopping mall, or even a private home, and setting himself off as a human bomb with the only goal of killing as many civilians as possible? That, too, is unthinkable and has been sadly normalized.

My comment continued to say:

Did the human rights organization with which you travelled show you the other side of the picture? Did you see the families of the mourning Israeli victims? Did you get to meet the parents of a 10-month-old infant, who was shot dead by a sniper for the simple crime of being born Jewish? Did you witness the carnage at Hebrew University, after a bomb exploded in a crowded cafeteria? Did you ever think about the unthinkable atrocities committed not by the IDF, for whom every civilian casualty is regrettable, but by those who specifically target civilians simply because they are innocent?

You’re right, the unthinkable has been normalized.

In response to my comment, Becker posted the following (under the handle “terrortourist”):

Angry? Why? Because I didn’t witness suicide bombings? Because to talk of about what I witnessed is to somehow deny that which I didn’t? Where’s the logic? What did you want me to do? Sit in a crowded restaurant and wait to be blown up by a mad terrorist? [. . .] I went to “witness that which I knew was largely left unreported by the mainstream media.” I therefore wrote about the situation in the West Bank and Gaza, and not about 1948 Israel. The people who were murdered in Hebrew University got the coverage they deserve. [. . .] Unfortunately, this is not usually the case for Palestinians.

Such is the logic of the “terror tourists” like Fiona Becker, who are fed one side of the story by the Palestinian official propaganda machine, and the ultra-Left Israeli groups (like Gush Shalom) who are only so happy to oblige. To anyone out there who truly considers themselves human rights activists, it is not sufficient to ride around the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a Palestinian Authority representative as a tour guide. The phrase “international activist” has been cheapened to the point where it no longer has any semblance of credibility.

However, some efforts seem to be underway to clarify the picture. I would like to call attention to the following call to ride buses for Israel as an expression of solidarity with Israeli people. As Gerald M. Steinberg writes in the International Herald Tribune:

The images of peace campaigners getting on and off the buses in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other places, and taking the same risks that Israelis take every day, will send a powerful message to the bombers and their supporters. By visibly riding the buses, international peace advocates can also contribute to saving lives.

See, the so-called “activists” are always ready and willing to stand as human shields in front of Palestinian children throwing rocks, like Fiona Becker. But how many of them are ready to visibly stand in solidarity with Israeli civilians, symbolically stating to the Palestinian terror groups that “if you blow up this bus, you’re blowing us up too”? By eating in Israeli cafes, riding Israeli buses, and shopping in Israeli markets, international observers and activists could truly feel the “other” side of the story – the side, despite Becker’s assertions, that gets the least and the most biased press coverage of all.

Not all international observers need be Palestinian Authority puppets. I encourage people to spread the word about the Ride Buses for Israel movement.