Courting the UN Vote, Revealing Unsubtle Bias -- It's The Liberal Way

"All the plans offered to us in the past included renouncing parts of Israel, withdrawing to the 1967 borders and dividing Jerusalem while allowing refugees to enter Israel."
"This plan offers the opposite. We are not the ones required to give up [territories], the Palestinians are."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Canadian Press

"I've been very direct with the Israeli leaders. We deplore such actions, which are going to delay any prospect of lasting peace in the Middle East."
"So, we should be working while respecting the concept of dialogue. And we are very concerned."

"I have highlighted both publicly and directly to Prime Minister Netanyahu and alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz the importance of staying away from measures that are unilateral and our deep concerns and disagreement with their proposed policy of annexation."
"We think that the path forward is a two-state solution reached to by dialogue between the parties involved and anything that is unilateral action by either side is unhelpful in the cause of peace."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"The comprehensive U.S. Peace Plan is the only viable peace initiative currently on the table trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel has accepted its foundations, despite concessions which will be required on our behalf. However, the Palestinians have rejected it outright, once again closing the door on any option to negotiate a peaceful future."
"While it is dismaying that diplomats would choose to attack Israel rather than try to facilitate dialogue between the two sides — or at the very least urging the Palestinians to return to direct peace negotiations – Israel will nevertheless remain committed to the U.S. peace plan, in hopes that we eventually find a way to resolve our differences."
Ohad Kaynar, chargé d'affaires at the Embassy of Israel in Canada
 
"Annexation of the West Bank is clearly an issue that most UN members disagree with and this is likely to be seen favourably by those states still trying to gauge what kind of Canada they would get on the coveted UNSC [United Nations Security Council]."
Bessma Momani, Middle East expert, University of Waterloo

"Today's comments by the prime minister do not change this long-standing entrenched track record of acting as an asset for Israel."
"Ireland and Norway have not voted against any UN resolutions on support of Palestine during this century."
Karen Rodman, spokeswoman, Just Peace Advocates

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and his wife Sara, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, attend ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018 in Paris. (Francois Mori/The Associated Press)

Peace negotiations? They've stalled, the Palestinian Authority refuses to rejoin Israel at the negotiating table. Time and again. A reasonable proposal was made to carve out areas in Israel with majority Arab-Palestinian populations to transfer them to Palestinian rule, while doing the same with the Israeli 'settlements' in what the world insists on calling the 'occupied' West Bank, an equal measure of territory that would be governed and held by Israel. Made part of a potential plan for peace, that too was rejected by the Palestinians.

Tellingly, the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in those areas of Israel that were proposed as transferable to Palestinian rule, themselves rejected the proposal, preferring to live under Israeli governance as opposed to Palestinian. As Israelis, they have their elected Arab legislators, as Members of the Knesset -- the Israeli parliament -- who advocate on their behalf and who also agitate to the extent that some of their actions can be construed as anti-Israel. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority has made it clear that no Israeli Jews will ever live among the Palestinians.

Countries of the European Union, Canada and others who insist that Israel keep sacrificing itself to satisfy the ever-growing demands of the Palestinian leaders have never had to live under the constant threat of a neighbour inciting its people to violence against them. Constant vigilance to ensure that as many of the violent threats that can be apprehended as possible takes its toll, both on the civilians being targeted and the security forces tasked with their protection.

In insisting that Israel maintain its laser focus on a peace settlement without exerting pressure on the Palestinian Authority to do likewise, Israel's critics are satisfied to hold the Jewish state to account for not living up to its critics' expectations, while forgiving the Palestinians all their blatant, obvious efforts to destabilize Israel by attacking its people with knives, vehicles, rockets and suicide attacks, expecting nothing better of them and signalling that whatever they do is justified.

Someone like Justin Trudeau who has mismanaged the governance of a peaceful, prosperous country like Canada to the extent that east and west have become disengaged from one end of the country to the other has nothing whatever to teach a nation of survivors like Israel. Justin Trudeau, as prime minister of Canada, has constantly exhibited himself as a selfish narcissist, a thin-skinned ideological partisan, a hypocrite and vindictive in character.

His personal assault by proxy on the second in command of the Canadian military, Vice-Admiral Norman, his aggravated harassment of the nation's former Minister of Justice to flout the law in favour of a Liberal stronghold in Quebec, his shocking lack of ethics in matters of personal gifts by influential wealthy government lobbyists, his lack of leadership in failing to support a vital energy sector in extracting fossil fuels in part of the country that has traditionally given financial support to economically weaker provinces, all paint a sordid picture of failure.

He and the party he represents have nothing whatever to teach the executive branch of other nations. Not only is Justin Trudeau preciously sanctimonious, flaunting himself as a theatrical superstar, he is also a shallow ideologue, an intemperate egotist whose presence on the theatrical stage would never have done the harm to the country he now governs that his decision-making has caused to national unity, Canadian pride and civil functioning. He has succeeded in destroying the Democratic process in Parliament under guise of a necessary response to SARS-CoV-2.

His ambition to have Canada under his imprimatur be voted a temporary two-year seat on the revolving UN Security Council where he believes he would have access to the movers and shakers of the world as his just due, directs many of his actions in his preoccupation with prestige for himself on the world stage. And his statement regarding Israel's decision to reclaim its heritage rights against the claims of wrongful ownership of Arab 'settlers' on heirloom Judean land is meant to favour Canada's UNSC bid with the voting blocs that the UN's Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement and the African Group represent.

Amusingly enough, right in Canada he has opposition to his ambition for that UN revolving Security Council seat, with a coalition of 100 organizations and people which collectively support 'justice for the Palestinians', which equates with destruction of the State of Israel, in their demands for 'right of return', to swamp the population of Israel with majoritarian Arabs, over and above the million and a half who now hold Israeli citizenship.

Israeli soldiers taking position as Palestinian demonstrators gather during a protest against the expansion of Israeli settlements, in the West Bank village of Beita, near Nablus, March 2, 2020.  Credit: Majdi Mohammed/AP