Stephen Harper’s ‘moral clarity’ in defence of Israeli exceptionalism

 

Like most Western leaders, Harper has denigrated historical context and justified Israeli aggression against the Palestinians

A Toronto Sun editorial recently praised Stephen Harper’s “moral clarity” on current events in the Middle East. After quitting politics in 2015 the former Canadian prime minister worked with American Zionist billionaire and Trump backer Sheldon Adelson before serving on the boards of organizations like the Friends of Israel Initiative. In addition to his graduate degree in economics, Harper received an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University, presumably for his faithful commitment to Israeli exceptionalism.

For the moment, let’s table the current Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) slaughter of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and consider Harper’s past attitude to Israel’s military aggression. For example, Harper once described Israel’s brutal 2006 invasion of Lebanon as “measured” and justified while his government simultaneously demeaned Lebanese Canadians desperate to flee Israeli bombs.

Using its illegal Dahiya doctrine of disproportionate force and collective punishment of civilians, the IDF’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon killed 1,100 and wounded 4,400. According to a Human Rights Watch report, 80 percent of those casualties were civilians who had the misfortune of living near Hezbollah units and Palestinian refugee camps.

While IDF losses were light in 2006, Hezbollah surprised the world by damaging or destroying over 50 advanced Israeli tanks, an impressive feat that caused an IDF retreat. Unfortunately for Israel conscripts, today’s IDF seems to have learned nothing from that painful lesson.

Harper would never admit that Hezbollah was created in the early 1980s to protect Lebanon from Israeli efforts to invade that country and destroy Palestinian resistance groups based in border-area refugee camps. Those Palestinians refugees had fled Palestine in 1948 and 1967 to escape the grim fate of their peers at massacre sites like Deir Yassin (1948), Kafr Qasim (1956), and other Israeli outrages ignored by the Western media. In Harper’s view, displaced Palestinians have no right to reclaim their lost homes or seek justice  (more...)

Stephen Harper’s ‘moral clarity’ in defence of Israeli exceptionalism

Sabotage of Ottawa factory producing parts for Israel’s F-35 warplanes

 

Earlier this week a group of people sabotaged Gastops’ factory in Ottawa, the only place in the world where engine sensors are produced for Lockheed’s F-35 combat jets — including the ones dropping 2,000 pound bombs on Gaza. We cut the wiring inside all of the heat pumps on the Gastops roof, locked them out with official Ministry of Health and Safety lock-out tags, shut off the gas, broke the handles for their systems, and cut the lines to their backup communication system on the way out.

The following letter and photos were left on site:

It’s worth noting that we disabled their heat pumps as it begins to get cold here in Ottawa and as displaced people in Gaza and Lebanon plead with us to help them secure shelter, blankets, clothing, as they freeze in displacement camps. Earlier this month an Ottawa neighbour lost her uncle while he returned to his home in Gaza attempting to bring back blankets for the children so they would not freeze to death. He was murdered by air strike while doing so, likely by an F-35 that Gastops supplies parts to.

People growing tired of politicians continuing to support the slaughter of civilians in Palestine and Lebanon will continue to escalate actions seeking peace and an end to these war crimes.  (more...)

Sabotage of Ottawa factory producing parts for Israel’s F-35 warplanes

Activists push for arms embargo against Israel, targeting Moncton firm

 

Apex Industries makes parts for F-35 fighter jets, which Lockheed Martin sells to the Israeli Air Force

Activists renewed their demands for the feds to impose an arms embargo on Israel over the weekend, with protests taking place in Moncton and across the country.

Protests focussed on Canadian companies that are involved in the construction of F-35 fighter jets, which the American weapons and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin sells to a number of countries, including Israel.

Activists state that the Israeli Air Force is using its fleet of F-35s to drop U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Activists say the advanced fighter jets contain millions of dollars worth of technology made by Canadian companies and subsidiaries.

In Moncton, protesters gathered outside of Apex Industries on Millennium Boulevard, which builds parts for the F-35 program. Company CEO Keith Parlee previously told the NB Media Co-op that Apex has “no control” over how its products are used.

Carol Scott, a member of Citizens for Peace-Greater Moncton, said activists from Saint John, Fredericton, P.E.I. and elsewhere in the region were expected at Saturday’s rally in Moncton. Protests also took place in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia at “facilities and companies producing and profiting off of the F-35,” according to Arms Embargo Now.  (more...)

Activists push for arms embargo against Israel, targeting Moncton firm

Surveillance Education

 

Any technology created by the US military industrial complex and adopted by the general public was always bound to come with a caveat. To most, the internet, GPS, touch screen and other ubiquitous technologies are ordinary tools of the modern world. Yet in reality, these technologies serve “dual-uses”; while they convenience typical people, they also enable the mass coercion, surveillance and control of those very same people at the hands of the corporate and military state.

Nolan Higdon and Allison Butler, authors of “Surveillance Education: Navigating the Conspicuous Absence of Privacy in Schools,” join host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. They explore the software and technology systems employed in K-12 schools and higher education institutions that surveil students, erode minors’ privacy rights and, in the process, discriminate against students of color.

'International law is on a knife's edge'

 

In this episode of One on One, journalist and news editor Sondos Asem is sitting down with Francesca Albanese, an outspoken international human rights lawyer and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. She is the 8th person to hold that role, and the first woman.

She is a self-described “reluctant chronicler of Genocide”, as she has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza since 7 October. Within the past year, she has submitted two reports to the UN human rights council, where she outlined her legal opinion on why the attacks on the Palestinian population constitute genocide.

Middle East Eye spoke to her on 13 November, during her visit to London, where she was invited to speak at several university campuses.

Watermelon Index names and shames companies complicit in Israel's war on Gaza

 

Progressive International has launched a tool that allows workers to challenge company support for Israel

A new database of over 400 companies that operate in the UK and are deemed complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza has been launched by a collective of unions and organisations led by Progressive International.

The Watermelon Index, which the international left-wing organisation describes as “a tool for worker-led resistance against the occupation and genocide in Palestine”, will allow employees to connect with each other and with activists to challenge their bosses over connections to Israel.

Among the companies listed are Barclays, shipping firm Maersk, e-commerce giant Amazon, software company Microsoft and holiday rental outfit Airbnb. 

As well as these multinationals, there are a host of other operations with ties to Israel, in industries including finance, insurance, technology, logistics and energy. Progressive International is focusing its efforts within these sectors. 

A company’s complicity with Israel’s war on Gaza is measured through “the different kinds of support, including financial, military, diplomatic, cultural, trade and social” it provides, according to Progressive International.

The Watermelon Index also contains details of worker-led campaigns that are being mounted against the war, and includes tools that enable workers to organise and connect with each other.  (more...)

Watermelon Index names and shames companies complicit in Israel's war on Gaza

Related:

The Watermelon Index

The Permindex Connection

 

In the spring of 1963, a series of planning sessions was held at an exclusive resort club in Montego Bay, Jamaica, called the Tryall Compound, built at the close of World War II by Britain's Chief of Special Operations Executive (SO E) William Stephenson. Present at various times for the planning sessions were: Major Louis Bloomfield, still an officer, then of British SOE; Ferenc Nagy, a wartime cabinet minister in the pro-Hitler Horthy government in Hungary and later its prime minister; Georgio Mantello, a Romanian-born Jew who had served as trade minister under Mussolini; Col. Clay Shaw, a former officer of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services and in 1963 the director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart; Jean de Menil, a White Russian emigre and president of the Houston-based Schlumberger Corporation; and Paul Raigorodsky, another White Russian emigre who had served as Special Representative to Europe for NATO and was a high-ranking official of the Tolstoy Foundation.

Without exception, each of these people was also a member of the board of directors of Permindex (Permanent Industrial Expositions). The subject of their meetings: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963.  (more...)

The Permindex Connection