Segacs’s World I Know

Remember Darfur? The “UN sez we can’t call it genocide cause then we’d have to do something about it” crisis where deaths aren’t in the hundreds (like in Lebanon) but in the hundreds of thousands? The crisis that everyone loves to conveniently forget because it can’t be blamed on Israel or the United States?

Well, things are getting worse there, believe it or not:

Fighting between tribal militia groups in Darfur is on the rise, driven by the prevalence of weapons in the region, the senior United Nations envoy to Sudan warned today.

The situation in Darfur’s north and west, where clashes have become more violent recently because of the greater availability of weaponry, is particularly tense, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative Jan Pronk told reporters during a press conference in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

He added that both fighting between the parties to the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) and other groups, as well as fighting among rebel groups, has heavily affected the civilian population.

That’s UN-speak, so for the uninitiated, here’s a rough translation:

Peacekeeping efforts are woefully inadequate, and there’s still all-out chaos in Darfur. Militia groups and rebel gangs are bringing in weapons and using them to kill displaced people in camps where they’re supposed to be under UN protection. Millions of people who were forced from their homes and raped and tortured and starved and saw their family members killed sometimes right in front of their eyes are still facing the imminent threat of death even after years of “monitoring the situation”.

And the world watches Lebanon and wags its finger at Israel and does nothing to so much as lift a finger in Sudan. As usual.

Anyone who still believes that the United Nations has a role to play in protecting people or brokering crisis situations should just take a long hard look at Darfur.

The wife of the United Nations observer killed in Lebanon is blaming Israel for the death of her husband:

Cynthia Hess-von Kruedener said Tuesday’s attack was not the first on her husband’s outpost.

It’s difficult to blame a grieving woman for choosing to misdirect her anger. But her late husband apparently did not agree with her assessment. In fact, he placed the blame squarely on Hezbollah for the attacks that occurred on the UN post:

Six days before he was killed in an Israel Air Force bombing of a United Nations post in southern Lebanon, Canadian observer Major Paeta Hess-von Kruendener sent an email to his former commander in the Canadian army, in which he said that Hizbullah fighters were “running around” near the UN post struck by the Israel Defense Forces and that they were using the post as a sort of “shield” against Israel’s strikes.

(Emphasis mine.)

So far, the grieving widow blames Israel story is getting all the headlines here in Canada, and the Hezbollah uses human shields story is getting zero notice. Let’s see if anyone bothers to report the truth in the coming days.

Update Jul 30: The Gazette published my letter to the editor on this topic today, albeit a heavily-edited version. The link requires registration, but it doesn’t really matter, as the argument is much better-worded here than there.

The former commander, Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, who served as a UN commander in Bosnia, spoke about the email in a Canadian radio show. He said that Hess-von Kruendener wrote that the IDF strikes near the post had “not been deliberate targeting, but rather due to tactical necessity.”

“That would mean Hizbullah was purposely setting up near the UN post,” he added. “It’s a tactic.”

“My information from him is weeks upon weeks they’ve been firing on there,” she said. “They’re UN soldiers, that should have been the safest place to be — they should not have bombed that site, period.” She accused Israel of not playing by the rules anymore.

“They’re fighting a whole different war, and it’s changing all the time. And now they’re choosing to, bomb, you know, UN sites. That’s unheard of.”

Could it be that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t quite believe the reports of Hezbollah claiming massive victory against Israel? He’s calling for a cease-fire, which one thinks would be counter-productive to his aim of letting Hezbollah wipe the Zionist entity off the map, no?

Someone must’ve told him that Hezbollah is getting its ass whopped.

On this story, I’d comment but I think I’ll refer you instead to Allison, who says what I would say, only better:

The man has got to be on drugs to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting UN observers in Lebanon. What in the world would Israel possibly have to gain by killing and wounding representatives of the United Nations?

The answer is nothing, and it has everything to lose. And probably will.

Syria wants to talk with the United States:

“Syria is ready for dialogue with the United States based on respect and mutual interest,” Mekdad told Reuters in an interview. He said the solution to the crisis lies in an immediate ceasefire brokered by international powers, followed by diplomacy.

The United States hasn’t lifted a finger here, but Syria has to be dismayed at the severe ass-kicking that its proxy, Hezbollah, is receiving at the hands of the Israelis.

Syria will posture and bluster a lot about “international powers” and try to get the U.S. to commit to a deal that will benefit nobody but Syria. Nobody’s expecting much to come of this.

But none of that matters. Syria is blinking first.

Israel was never prepared to launch another war with Syria, and the United States isn’t too keen on getting entangled in another military conflict. But Baby Assad is obviously taking Bush’s rhetoric seriously enough to call for dialogue. If this has been a giant bluff, it’s clearly working – at least as far as Syria is concerned.

Iran? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Number of references to The West Wing on this blog: 18.

Number of references to this blog on The West Wing: 0.

Just in case anyone was wondering.

L. Ian MacDonald thinks that Harper’s position on the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is one born out of conviction, not out of politics:

As Harper said: “There is a crisis because of the actions of Hamas and the actions of Hezbollah.” Exactly. Who kidnapped Israeli soldiers? Who fired rockets into Israeli neighbourhoods?

This is an interesting point of departure – the prime minister dares to speak truth, not to power, but to terror.

You can be certain that Harper’s unambiguous language was not written at Foreign Affairs. They don’t do plain speaking over there. They also like to be on both sides of this issue.

But the prime minister is making foreign policy himself, and he is realigning it significantly in the Middle East, as well as with the United States, to reflect first principles.

He can’t be doing it for the votes. The Jewish community in Canada votes overwhelmingly Liberal. Israel never had a better friend in Canada, until now, than Brian Mulroney, and it never got him anywhere with Jewish voters. There are also twice as many Muslim as Jewish voters in this country, and they’re not happy with Harper choosing sides. This is not even to mention the anguish in Canada’s Lebanese community, largely based in Montreal and Ottawa. As many as 50,000 Canadians, holidayers and dual citizens alike, found themselves stranded in the middle of a war zone last week.

If there’s no political gain in it for Harper, the only reason for him to be taking such a clear stand in favour of Israel is that he’s acting out of conviction.

MacDonald, who, it must be said, is a very intelligent man even on issues on which I disagree with him, is not giving Israel carte blanche. Far from it. He believes that Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s provocation is “disproportionate”. Okay, he’s entitled; a fair number of Israelis believe the exact same thing. But he’s applauding Harper for taking the stance that, proportionate or not, Israel’s reaction is one of defence against a terrorist organization, and that no moral equivalence can be drawn between the two.

Politicians who speak their minds are a bit of an anomaly in this country. Canadians aren’t used to them, and many aren’t quite sure what to make of Harper. I’ve never been a fan of Harper, but I do have to give him credit on this one. Trouble is, his “moral stance” is unleashing such a backlash that it threatens to cancel out the original intent. Would a waffling Liberal government have made itself such an easy target for criticism? Sure, that’s a backwards analysis. But think about it: If hatred of Israel gets stirred up into an even bigger frenzy because Harper is a convenient target as a right-winger who backs Israel, then who benefits in the long run?

In an early episode of The West Wing, Joey Lucas (played brilliantly by Marlee Matlin) bursts into Josh’s office demanding to know why the DNC is choking off funding for her candidate, who is trying to unseat a far-right Republican. The answer? Josh explains that “Every time he comes out with one of his declarations about brown people crossing the border, the DNC slaps it into a direct mail campaign and he’s good for two or three million dollars.” In other words, the Democrats get more mileage out of having a convenient poster boy for the far right to attack than they would get out of winning the seat.

Well, politics often work that way, unfortunately. In Quebec, for instance, support for sovereignty goes up during the years when the Liberals are in power, and down during the years when the PQ is in power. Why? Because it’s easier to attack from the opposition than to govern from the majority.

Is Harper, by signalling his clear intention to stand behind Israel in this conflict, doing more harm than good in a realistic sense, even though he’s theoretically doing the right thing? I wonder.

The headline: Half think Harper too pro-Israel.

The article:

[The poll] said 45 per cent agree Harper’s position is “fair and balanced and completely appropriate,” while 44 per cent say it is “decidedly too pro-Israel and is not appropriate.” Eleven per cent say he has not supported Israel strongly enough.

Hmmm, by my calculation, that means that more than half of people think Harper is either “fair” or not pro-Israel enough, while less than half think he’s “too pro-Israel”.

Leaving aside the issue of leading questions, unbalanced media coverage, or, you know, those pesky actual facts, who taught the editors how to do math?

Update: Oh, it gets better: the story is linked from the Gazette homepage with the headline “Harper too pro-Israel: poll”. When in fact, the opposite is true; 56% of people have said they don’t think he’s too pro-Israel. *Sigh*.

Michael Ryder won’t be going to arbitration after all; he signed a one-year deal today with the Habs.

With all these one-year contracts, Gainey must be planning a lot of trades this season, or else it’s going to be real trouble come next summer.