Segacs’s World I Know

Attacks by the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which has rejected a cease-fire with Israel, has forced Israel to conduct a raid on Gaza, during which a terrorist was killed:

Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian militant during a raid in the West Bank and temporarily blocked Gaza’s main road on Thursday, angering Palestinians who accused Israel of undermining U.S. peacemaking.

The killing in the West Bank town of Qalqilya and the almost six-hour road closure, three days after the long-blocked highway was reopened, followed attacks by militants, Israel said.

[ . . . ]

Israeli troops shot dead 30-year-old Mahmoud Shawar of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during an overnight raid in Qalqilya. A second member of the Brigades was wounded and arrested, Palestinian security sources and the Israeli army said.

“We in the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades announce we are not complying with the cease-fire as long as the occupation continues raiding our lands and killing our people,” a local leader of the Brigades said through loudspeakers as Shawar was buried.

So the Palestinians continue to attack Israel on a daily basis after the declaration of the so-called “cease-fire”, and the world ignores it. The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade never agreed to the cease-fire in the first place. And yet it’s Israel that’s accused of “undermining the peace process”.

How utterly predictable.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day: A protest in Monrovia, Liberia against Charles Taylor:

Hundreds of people demonstrated in Liberia’s capital on Thursday in an unprecedented show of opposition to President Charles Taylor, a day after President Bush told him to leave the country.

“Taylor must go” and “No more Taylor, we want Bush,” chanted more than 400 people outside the U.S. embassy as American Marines in flak jackets and helmets kept watch from behind sandbagged posts on the roof.

[ . . . ]

After 14 years of almost non-stop violence, Liberia is a ruined international pariah, overrun by a generation of drugged-up, drunken fighters who have spread chaos in the region.

Many Liberians think only U.S. troops can save them.

There’s no doubt that the people of Liberia, as well as some fifteen thousand refugees from Sierra Leone who are now in danger in Liberia, are fed up with the conflict. But notice anything unusual about this? As in, people actually praising the U.S. for a change?

Update 07/04: Taylor has caved to U.S. pressure and agreed to flee and seek asylum.

Antonia “oops, I didn’t realize I was plugging a Nazi site” Zerbisias is at it again in her Toronto Star column. This time, she’s attacking the Global documentary “Confrontation at Concordia”, which she claims is unfair to the poor rioters:

But any fair-minded observer would expect Himel to back up his allegations with facts or evidence. Yet the film provides little of either.

For example, student leader Samer Elatrash, a Canadian of Palestinian parentage, is described as wanting `’the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state” and seeing `’Israel wiped out.”

Harsh words when what he really espouses is “a secular state that’s built on the simple premise of respect for human rights, respect for cultural rights, respect for religious rights, that don’t trespass on anybody else’s human, cultural and religious rights.”

Okay, let’s be generous and assume she’s such a moron that she doesn’t realize that what Elatrash said means exactly the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. But not one to stop with merely sounding dumb, Zerbisias apparently feels compelled to throw in a few conspiracy theory allegations:

Himel makes no apologies for his documentary, adding that he is “not aware of the complaints” against it. Fair enough. He’s based in Israel where he reports for Global. But there’s no excuse for his not mentioning – or even knowing – that Netanyahu’s tour was co-sponsored by the Winnipeg-based Asper Foundation, established by his ultimate employer, CanWest Global chair Izzy Asper. Even a simple search of the Montreal Gazette, also a CanWest news organ, would have revealed that.

Pretty much the entire article reads like it was dictated by certain pro-Palestinian activists at Concordia – who shall remain nameless for now – but one of whom pointed me to the article in the first place by proudly republishing it on the Link’s site. I wonder if he realizes that quoting Zerbisias is about as credible as . . . well . . . never mind, I think he quotes Chomsky too.

The complaints filed against the documentary, by the CSU, SPHR, and MSA, are, as far as I can tell, based on the fact that “it makes them look bad”. Yeah, whatever. They made themselves look bad.

And besides, last I checked, there’s free speech in this country. Documentaries are allowed to be biased to reflect the views of whoever makes them. If I wanted to make a documentary about how the Earth is flat, or how it rains pineapples every second Thursday, then hey, all in the name of art, right? But the minute anything gets published that actually tries to show the truth as perceived by the students most affected, well, out come the complaints. I’m the first to admit that this film isn’t going to win any film festival prizes. It’s got some choppy editing and questionable narration, and artistically it’s probably not worth all that much. But none of that makes it illegal.

By the way, if you’re interested in viewing the documentary, copies are being sold online at canada.com. Or, if you don’t feel like feeding your money into the big Zionist conspiracy machine of CanWestGlobal, the show is being re-aired on Prime on Sunday at 8pm.

Vancouver 2010! Yep, in seven years, the winter olympics are heading out to Canada’s west coast.

Salzburg, Austria, considered the main competitor to Vancouver, was ousted in the first round of IOC voting. A second ballot held immediately afterwards brought Vancouver to an easy victory over Pyeongchang, South Korea.

The entire Canadian delegation had loonies in their pockets for good luck during their final presentation before the IOC. Hey, if it worked for the hockey players . . .

As a Canadian I’m very proud of this decision. Now let’s just hope that Vancouver doesn’t get its own version of the Big Owe.

It’s official: we can’t refer to Toronto as Sarsville anymore. The WHO has declared Toronto free of SARS:

“When 20 days, or twice the incubation period, have passed without detection of a new case, the chain of human-to-human transmission is considered broken,” it added.

This is certainly good news for Toronto’s lagging economy, which may now begin to pick up again. Let’s just hope that health officials and workers don’t let their guards down too quickly, so that a repeat outbreak doesn’t materialize.

In the midst of all the international attention being paid to the “plight” of the Palestinian refugees, the forgotten refugees are the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were driven out of Arab countries. Various groups and individuals, including Montrealer and Federal MP Irwin Cotler, have been fighting to educate people about them and to achieve recognition. Now, Britain has pledged to take up their cause:

British officials have promised to make “every effort” to highlight the cause of Jewish refugees from Arab countries within the European Union.

[ . . . ]

The JJAC report, entitled “The Middle East’s Forgotten Jewish Refugees,” notes that just 8,000 Jews now live in Arab countries, down from 900,000 in 1947.

It is seeking international recognition of the “de facto population exchange” of Jews and Palestinians, which “refutes the Arab claim for a ‘physical’ right of return.”

The difference between the two refugee groups – which numbered roughly the same – was that the Palestinians were sent to live in refugee camps behind barbed wire and left to rot in squalid conditions by their Arab brethren, so that their hatred and resentment could build and they could be used as political pawns against Israel.

In contrast, Israel accepted all of the Jewish refugees who wished to enter with open arms, housing them, educating them, and integrating them into Israeli society. Today their families are second- and third-generation Israeli citizens. And Israel resettled them with far less land, money, and resources than the Arab countries had available. Israel managed this because compassion for the plight of fellow Jews demanded as much.

So today, while the world moans about the stateless Palestinian refugees, nobody seems to remember that Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, all had an influx of refugees and all denied them citizenship, rights, or anything resembling a life. And now these countries are asking Israel to pay, while at the same time lobbying to deny any kind of compensation or even recognition of the 800,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

The recognition of the issue by the British government is a good start. If more EU states took notice, that would be even better.

Update on the cease-fire: Meryl Yourish has been tracking the violations. So far, pretty much as expected.

Next we’ll see the different terrorist factions falling all over each other to get the prestigious claim of being the group to have destroyed this latest peace effort. They know they can do it. The world refuses to condemn them, and more than half their population supports them.

Happy Canada Day!

The ceasefire has been broken with Palestinian gunmen shooting at an IDF post today.

Frankly, I’m amazed it lasted as long as it did.