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