Taking Pride on an Anti-Israel Journey of Rejection

"The focus today is to show our love, to show our solidarity and our support to a community that needs it. The message here is that everybody is welcome, everybody is included and there's so much that we can learn from each other."

"For the youth to see so many groups, so may organizations and so many people being here to support this community, it gives that sense of validation that is so important -- to make people feel they are welcome and validated."

"This community is all about love, solidarity and support."

Mr. Capital Pride 2024

 

"All of the organizations and institutions that have pulled out have done so without consultation with their workers."

"This was top bosses and employers or boards of directors making decisions without consulting the people who work there or the people they actually serve." 

Emily Quaile, Community Solidarity Ottawa

Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. (Chris Tanouye/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Inclusion, love, solidarity and support? Not quite. As it happens Capital Pride organizers conferred among themselves -- without taking a poll among their members, in fact -- to reach a consensus of opinion that inclusion would mean the Palestinian community of the Ottawa region, not merely those who qualify as 2SLGBTQIA+, but they and their sympathizers in general. The very groups that have celebrated the October 7 Palestinian terrorism butchery in Israel where 1,200 mostly civilians were left dead, girls and women raped and tortured, entire families put to the torch, children, women and the elderly taken hostage into Gaza.

 

Gaza, the stronghold of the Hamas terrorist organization; considered by the government of Canada to be terrorists just as they are in most Western countries, for their unabashed and straightforward dedication to the destruction of the world's only Jewish state, in an ancestral geography, an Israel reborn for the singular purpose of offering safe haven to Jews in a hostile world that continually reverts to a state of viral antisemitism, just as we now see in Europe, North America and elsewhere, boosted by the slanderous propaganda of the Palestinian agenda to discredit and demonize Israel and Jews everywhere. 

Palestinian organizations and sympathetic groups have organized raucous, threatening rallies in cities across Europe and North America from October 8 onward, funded by foreign organizations and Islamist countries like Qatar and Iran who have also supplied organizers for these pro-Hamas protests as well as the encampments on university grounds demanding that university administrators and corporations and business leaders as well as Western governments condemn Israel for its response to the mass rape, mutilations and bloodletting by Hamas when the Israeli military embarked on a campaign to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, the PLFP and Hezbollah.

The declaration of 'principles' and alliances expressed by Capital Pride prior to embarkation on its annual Capital Pride parade effectively raised the level of antisemitism in and among the LGBTQ community in favour of supporting a death cult that aims its poisoned arrows at Jews everywhere, extending its campaign in less visible but rising campaign against Western 'imperialism' inimical to Palestinian aspirations and extended Islamist jihadist goals.

"Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence. Indeed, to withhold our solidarity from Palestinians in the name of upholding 2SLGBTQIA+ rights betrays the promise of liberation that guides our work. We join our voice to the calls for greater protection of civilians and reject any attempts to use a devastating conflict as a pretext to advance hate."

"To breathe life into our sincere hope for an end to this war and justice for all its victims, we commit to the following actions:

• Integrating resources such as the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s boycott list in our existing review process of current and future sponsorship agreements;
• Hosting Zaffa: A Queer Arab Showcase, a Signature Event as part of the 2024 Capital Pride Festival that features discussions about ongoing issues facing LGBTQIA+ Arabs locally and abroad;
• Recognizing the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in opening remarks at 2024 Capital Pride Festival Signature Events; and
• Working with all our partners, both public and private, to push for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, increased access to humanitarian aid, and more accessible pathways for refugees."

Capital Pride Statement in Solidarity with Palestine, August 8, 2024, Ottawa, Ontario

Replete with the slanderous calculated falsehoods of the Palestinian propaganda, the Capital Pride Statement is a document of ignorance and antisemitism combined in a lethal cauldron of pure hate. Israel is a defender of alternate gender human rights which are legally protected in Israel; its Pride Parades are open and respectful. Whereas on the other hand, in the Palestinian Territories gays risk their very lives if their sexual orientation becomes public knowledge. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as in Iran, death stalks members of the Palestinian  LGBTQ community.

There is no 'genocide' against Palestinians at the hands of Israel; there IS a military campaign to expunge the presence of lethal Islamist Palestinian attackers of Jews/Israelis from the territories. The founding charters of Fatah, Hamas and other such internationally recognized terrorist groups identify their purpose as the elimination of Israel from its ancestral soil. Deadly attacks against Jews have been the Palestinian formula since 1948 with the declaration of the State of Israel. Existential threats against Israel and world Jewry emanate from the Palestinians whom LGBTQ groups lionize.

In Ottawa, reaction to the Capital Pride position statement was clear and it was a denunciation of all that it alleges in demonizing Israel while supporting Palestinian terrorism against Israel. The city's mayor began the response of rejecting the Pride position when the City of Ottawa's Mayor Mark Sutcliffe let it be known with regret, that he would not be attending the parade. Followed by the Liberal Party of Canada, the Ontario Liberal Party the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, The Ottawa Hospital, the Montfort Hospital, Ottawa Tourism, the Bank of Canada, Giant Tiger, Loblaw, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the University of Ottawa, the U.S. Embassy, the Public Service Pride Network, Conseil des ecoles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario, Conseil des ecoles catholiques du centre-Est, and the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board.

They did so in sympathy and agreement with the Ottawa Jewish community which felt excluded and isolated as a result of the Capital Pride statement and position taken on the Israel-Gaza conflict, repeating the slanderous accusation of Israel committing 'genocide' against the Palestinians. Ottawa's situation is not a unique one, as it happens, since Pride parades in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver have been disrupted by pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Hate-mongering against Jews resulted in over 100 synagogues, hospitals and Jewish community centres receiving bomb threats.

As for the Pride commitment to integrate the BDS boycott list into its review of sponsorship agreements, that remains to be seen. The TD Bank is Pride's major 'presenting' sponsor and right behind it as a sponsor is Loblaws, and the LCBO followed by the province of Ontario, all of which are listed on the BDS Coalition's "Boycott List of Shame". Shame, in very point of fact, has settled itself squarely on the Pride community for its unabashed antisemitism cloaked unbecomingly under the banner of anti-Zionism, anti-Israel provocations.

Members of the OCDSB carry a giant pride flag during the Capital Pride Parade in Ottawa, on Sunday, August 25, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Tanouye

Expelling Violent Aggressor-Nations from the United Nations

"The choice of an aggressor country for the leadership of the UN Security Council has been met with reflections on whether the UN can fulfill its fundamental principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter."

"It forces us to face the bitter truth. The rules born from post-World War II trauma have less and less meaning."

Paulina Piasecka, national security expert,Warsaw

 

"We urge you to initiate a process to replace Russia on the UN Security Council as the fifth permanent member."

"Russia is not a responsible international actor and is unbecoming of a seat on the UN Security Council."

"Moreover, it has no right to this seat. Rather, it was provided to Russia in a deal after the dissolution of the Soviet Union."

" Ukraine could and should be recognized to fill the USSR seat rather than Russia."

Reps. Steve Cohen and Joe Wilson, a co-chair and the ranking member on the Helsinki Commission

UN Photo/Manuel Elías

UN General Assembly votes to suspend the rights of the membership of the Russian Federation in the Human Rights Council during an Emergency Special Session on Ukraine.

The globe's most infamous aggressor-state has a well-worn veto as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Imagine this, that a nation committed to territorial expansion -- that has over the last decade, attempted to reimpose on its neighbours the control that Russia exerted on its near-abroad in the interests of USSR solidarity and Russian power politics, ramping up its military excursions in Georgia then turning its sights on Ukraine with a full invasion -- is able to control sanctions against human-rights-abusing nations through its veto, including Russia's own.

Both Russia and China, and often in tandem, have deadlocked the UN's Security Council's resolutions and sanctions and neither, opposed to Western regimes and democracy, is likely to sway from their antagonistic positions. The very absurdity of a warring nation marching into a neighbour's sovereign territory, destroying its infrastructure, its civilian enclaves, murdering thousands both combatants and civilians, sitting in the world body as an arbiter of human rights and global peace gives absurdity a bad name.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been charged with war crimes at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The General Assembly of the United Nations condemned its invasion of Ukraine, calling for Russia to "immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw". An order snubbed by Moscow of course, and though there are international obligations on the part of those nations which signed on to the ICC, it seems highly unlikely that should Mr. Putin appear in a foreign country he would be arrested and turned over to the ICC.

There are those calling the situation absurd beyond a vestige of reason, and although the general body of the UN is far from clamouring for Russia's expulsion in reflection of its threat to world peace and its obvious territorial aggression in Eastern Europe, it isn't as simple as it might appear. Expulsion from the world body would require the general consensus of the Security Council to enable the General Assembly to act.

The result of which is that the Security Council, tasked with identifying threats to peace or to respond to acts of aggression is unable to do either. Russia's veto has put a stopper in the Council's capacity to ask conflict parties to settle differences peaceably. Terms of settlement can b recommended, or the UN can send in its "blue berets" peacekeepers. However, because of Russia's veto, everything is at a standstill.

It's difficult to fathom that when the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia were authorized by the world body as permanent Security Council members, no one in authority had the sagacity to foresee such an event, where the very cause of a violent conflict is able to readily sidestep absorbing criticism and evade ordered withdrawal by dint of its veto action. 

Among the 15 members of the Security Council (the permanent members plus other nations voted to a multi-year term on the non-permanent membership of the Security Council) there is a revolving presidency on a monthly basis. In February of 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it held the presidency of the Security Council, a mouth-agape hypocrisy of classic dimensions, if not a belligerent thumb in the eye of the Council. 

A overhead view shows a United Nations Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 30. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

The Equality Sanctimony of Canada's Liberal Government

"If the government has moved an employee from an organization that was deemed to be discriminatory to now an even bigger organization to address anti-racism, it's not only hypocritical, but it's a farce. There's zero credibility in this type of leadership."

"We have this vicious cycle within the federal public service where there's no accountability -- wrong-doers are often either transferred when it comes to discrimination or promoted."

"This appointment is completely counter to the government's promise and commitment to create a diverse and inclusive workspace that is free from discrimination and harassment."

Nicholas Marcus Thompson, executive director,  Black Class Action Secretariat (BCAS)

 

"Employees report being harassed and facing retaliation from Ms. [Melanie] Mohammed after speaking up."

"Therefore, it is completely unacceptable for the Government of Canada to appoint this individual as director general of anti-racism for the entire government."

Black Class Action Secretariat statement

 

"We remain committed to improving the experiences of Black public servants, but while progress is being made, we know there is still more to do to make our workplaces inclusive and equitable for all equity-seeking employees."

"[The Department is taking BCAS' statement] very seriously [and is looking into the organization's concerns]."

Dominique Collin, spokesperson, Canadian Heritage 

Bernadeth Betchi, who was a policy advisor at the Canadian Human Rights Commission, describes it as a toxic and poisonous workplace. (David Thurton/CBC)

 

The Black Class Action Secretariat was formed for the purpose of working toward the elimination of systemic discrimination inside Canada's public service. It is at the present time consumed with concern that the Department of Canadian Heritage has brought on board a former leadership member at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. That the woman, Melanie Mohammed was appointed to this sensitive human rights role is beyond disturbing to the BCAS.

The Canadian Human Rights commission was recently found to have discriminated against its own employees who are Black and racialized workers. Treasury Board had ruled that the Canadian Human Rights Commission whose mandate is to deal with discrimination complaints, had breached the "no discrimination" clause of a collective agreement between Treasury Board and the Association of Justice counsel, the bargaining agent for 2,600 lawyers the government employs.

The appointment of Ms. Mohammed who had been the CHRC's chief of staff is seen to be "disturbing" and "reckless", in the words of BCAS executive director Nicholas Marcus Thompson. A message is being sent to Canadians of no accountability or consequences for discrimination, he points out. And well he might, while overlooking the role model for all of Canada, a prime minister who infamously labels Canada a 'racist' country, yet shrugging impartially when he was himself found to have indulged in Black mimicry through infamously repeatedly wearing Blackface.

The director general of multiculturalism and anti-racism's role is fairly obvious; not only to provide funding to organizations led by Black and racialized people, but as well to address the issues of racism and hate through federal multiculturalism and anti-racism strategies. Which would include Canada's Anti-Raacsm Strategy and the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat.

Representing the views of the Black Class Action Secretariat, its executive director spoke to the Senate with respect to anti-Black racism, sexism and systemic distribution in the Canadian Human Rights Council and above all his concerns relating to the lack of accountability within the government. The BCAS called on the government to rescind Ms. Mohammed's appointment and to issue an apology. This government has an uncanny penchant for appointing the wrong people to the most sensitive positions, from governor general to human rights appointments.

Julie Payette, a workplace-abusive elitist who spurned most of the activities common to the position of British royalty's representative in Canada as a Commonwealth country, to contracting with a rabid racist and antisemite to give lessons on human rights and racism to government groups. Situations that were allowed to fester, and which were only addressed when they became so egregiously dysfunctional they slopped over into the public sphere through newspaper exposes.

 

The Treasury Board Secretariat's March 6 ruling said the Canadian Human Rights Commission had breached the “no discrimination” clause of a collective agreement between Treasury Board and the Association of Justice Counsel. Photo by Vladstudioraw /GETTY IMAGES / ISTOCK PHOTO

For this reason, the Secretariat is calling on the Government of Canada to:

1. Rescind the appointment immediately of the new Director General, Melanie Mohammed, to lead the Anti-Racism and Multiculturalism Program at Canadian Heritage, and issue an apology.

2. Appoint a person with no connection to the leadership of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and who has demonstrated an understanding of systemic anti-Black racism.

3. Rescind the appointment of Melanie Mohammed from the Federal Executive Leadership Development Program as she has failed to uphold the public service’s values and ethics standards.

4. Mandate senior executives of the Department of Heritage, including Associate Deputy Minister Mala Khanna who appointed Ms. Mohammed, to undergo anti-Black racism training and to meet with Black employees and address their concerns on anti-Black racism within the department.

"The member states of the European Union support policy initiatives at European level that aim to combat incitement to antisemitic hatred and acts of violence, as well as the dissemination of antisemitic conspiracy myths online."

"The increase in threats to Jewish persons in Europe including the resurgence of conspiracy myths, public expressions of anti-Semitism, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and an increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hate crime is a cause of great concern."

Council of the European Union  

 

"The UN’s display of hypocrisy continues this afternoon, as the General Assembly continues to debate the so-called 'question of Palestine' resolutions which are all one-sided, all blame Israel and are all detached from reality." 

"Countries that supported Israel today have understood that this package of resolutions does nothing to forward peace but serves instead to entrench the Palestinian’s rejectionist position and deepen the conflict."

"No other country in the world faces such discrimination in the UN ... and it is time for more UN members to join our struggle to challenge the organization's anti-Israel agenda."

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s envoy to the UN

 

"Shame: Canada's Justin Trudeau government just joined the jackals at the UN by voting for a one-sided resolution singling out Israel, co-sponsored by Syria, Venezuela and North Korea."

Hillel Neuer, UN Watch

The United Nations building stands in Manhattan on the first official day of the 75th United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22, 2020, in New York City.  Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Yet again, as predictable as snow in winter, the United Nations General Assembly adopted five anti-Israel Resolutions on December 2nd. Five out of a package of 20 pro-Palestinian texts that are approved by rote on an annual basis every December, passing with an easy majority of the United Nations member states. One of the resolutions' texts is a condemnation of Israeli 'occupation' in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, condemnatory of annexation plans, while a second text addresses Israeli 'occupation' of the Golan Heights. The remaining three relate to UN committee work on the issue of Palestine and its refugees.

What continues to surprise sympathetic onlookers to these annual rites of condemning a democratic nation which has absorbed and given citizenship to millions of Palestinian Arabs, Bedouin, Druze, Christians and B'hai, rescuing black Ethiopians who traditionally identify as Jews from persecution to bring them to safety in Israel, is the cowering hypocrisy of nations that assure Jews and Israel that they support the Jewish state's sovereign presence in their ancestral home and are committed to fighting anti-Semitism and to honour the memory of the Holocaust, yet in the august halls of the United Nations they uniformly vote against Israel's interests.

It is as though a mental block obscures reality, commitment and morality for these nations who see no contradiction in publicly voting against Israel, condemning the state for its existence in essence, while in another breath they claim to be fully supportive of its right to exist. In the one-way street of voting against Israel there is no balance, no recognition that Israel has attempted time and again to satisfy the demands of the Palestinians, only to be turned down time an again. 

 

Similarly there is no recognition of the incitement by the Palestinian Authority for violence against Israel, for refusal of normalization of relations, while it continues to dole out financial awards and honours to Palestinians and their families who have committed violent acts against Jews. Much less the constant refusals to bargain in good faith to achieve a sovereign state of their own, for the covert plan aspiring to Palestinize the geography from the river to the sea. ("From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.") 

 

The sanctimony of government leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who appoints a well-known Canadian human rights activist to the role of envoy to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance by a prime minister who was unable to muster the word "Jew" when unveiling the then-newly-opened Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa while bemoaning the death of six million people, and whose administration overlooked the word "Jewish" on the commemorative plaque is painful to observe.

Under the government preceding his own led by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the long-running Canadian tradition of voting in support of Israel on UN resolutions was assured, but it has executed an abrupt and to some, puzzling turnabout under Trudeau, the ultra-progressive, post-nationalist, feminist prime minister anxious to display himself on the world stage as a leading progressive. 

 

 

Canada, like other countries, has seen fit to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Yet though the IHRA definition has been adopted by countries and groups that agree with the definition per se and want that recognition to signal that they are morally opposed to anything resembling, leading to or aggravating anti-Semitism, they appear to suffer amnesia when a vote in the General Assembly comes up which has familiar content that aids and abets and formalizes and promotes anti-Semitism. Canada's stance a case in point. Anti-Semitism is exemplified by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and by affirming the right of the Palestinians to self-determination without taking Israel's into consideration is ipso facto, anti-Semitism, clear and simple.

The United Nations has entertained 96 resolutions since 2015 condemning Israel, while seven have been allocated for Syria, five for North Korea, four for Iran and three for Myanmar. Canada has company in its hypocrisy given the European Union speaks passionately about fighting anti-Semitism and the promotion of Holocaust remembrance, but again, once at the United Nations all that is forgotten in the obligatory bashing of Israel at the behest of countries notoriously acknowledged for their human rights abuses.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, this week published a piece signed by 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals denouncing the definition of anti-Semitism claiming "profound disagreement" with the notion that "Israel in its current reality embodies the self-determination of all Jews", an astounding impudence by self-righteous, anti-Israel belligerents claiming that they know better than Jews themselves what Israel should represent as a Jewish state; the assurance that Jews will never again face the horror of genocide.

The Rush to Join a Dysfunctional, Corrupt World Organization

"We will phone member states to ensure they got out to vote, a lot like a usual election. We'll want to make sure that the voters that we've identified as supporting Canada go out and express their vote."

"Haiti had a peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2020 and it was focused on security and on human rights, but very little focus on development."

"In Sub-Saharan Africa, you have 70 percent of the population that is below 30 years old. Half of that population is without an occupation even before the pandemic. This is a big security issue."

"If that multilateral world doesn't exist, then you're in a situation where only the strongest will prevail. And we know where it leads, because we're only a middle power."

"When you're around that table, you are more influential, if you're more influential, you've more relevant and if you're more relevant, that will represent opportunities for Canada."

Marc-Andre Blanchard, Canada's permanent representative at the United Nations

The United Nations Security Council meets to discuss the situation in Venezuela in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., in January 2019. Canada is vying with Ireland and Norway for two open seats at the council, which will be allocated in a vote on June 17. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Next Wednesday UN ambassadors will begin voting at the General Assembly in groups, to avoid crowding, in respect of the need for social distancing in the time of COVID-19. They will be voting to bring into the two-year temporary revolving Security Council one candidate from the competing countries in this vote; Ireland, Norway or Canada to sit on the 15-member council that complements the permanent Security Council, comprised of the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain and China.

"We know that engaging around the world is important both for Canadians' health and well-being, but also for the good of our economy."

"Even as some of our allies, including the United States, seem to withdraw from the world, Canada is engaging."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Them [sic] looking at the UN Security Council seat without looking at Canada's foreign policy, and understanding where we are in the world, and what our relationship with our allies and our adversaries alike should be, means that they didn't know what they were going after."

"Justin Trudeau has made some really damaging actions to our relationship and eroded our reputation on the world stage. We don't know what they're willing to trade away to get the seat."

Leona Alleslev, Opposition Conservative Member of Parliament

This would be Justin Trudeau's crowning achievement, his legacy project, his on begging, borrowing or buying votes to bring Canada to a seat on the UN Security Council. This is not a project supported by most Canadians, to whom the very project itself is simply a yawn, acknowledging yet another vanity project by a politician who revels in attention-getting and absurd declarations such as Canada, under his guardianship has 'returned'. What it has returned to is the usual Liberal brand of hoodwinking the electorate, with a special Trudeau touch of cynical sanctimony.

But this project to attain a two-year seat is dear to this man's idea of elevating himself in the esteem of the movers and shakers in the world body, to attain a level of influence and the aura of power that Justin Trudeau feels should be accorded him. He has himself personally taken the time and trouble to speak with as many world leaders in the past weeks as he could possibly tuck into a schedule that includes having his government tackle critical issues such as the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic's effect on Canada, both in medical terms and economic.

There are ongoing protests headed by Black Lives Matter resulting from the murder of George Floyd in the United States, and the allied issues of the desecration of national monuments, history's heroes now revealed by Indigenous and Black groups to be racists. The icons of Canadian history, according to the protest groups, preyed on native populations, were bigots and racists and their statuary must come down, public institutions such as schools, libraries, municipal buildings, street names, must be dismantled, their memories erased.

Canada's ongoing problems with the United States in trade issues, with Saudi Arabia, in arousing the Kingdom's ire over perceived interference in its human rights record, its problems with China whose human rights record is rarely raised, but when an issue such as a request through an American court of justice for the extradition under an agreement between Canada and the U.S. saw China's tech giant Huawei's CFO arrested on a U.S.warrant, spurring China to kidnap two Canadians doing business in China.

None of these issues, apparently, occupy too much time and energy for the prime minister, that he is unable to muster gaps of opportunistic time to engage in cajoling, jollying, and pleading and bribing sometimes unsavoury governments to cast a vote for Canada's bid in the U.S. Both Ireland and Norway, the other two candidates for the vacant seat, have somewhat greater sway in the corridors of the UN. Both give a higher percentage of their GDP to global equity support, and are more involved in UN peacekeeping.

The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, placed Trudeau's eagerness not to be too morally or ethically particular about where his votes come from in context, when Nikki Haley in outrage over an executive order from Justin Trudeau to Canada's UN representative to have it on record that Canada supported an anti-Israel motion at the United Nations last year, that he prepared himself to dance with the devil to achieve his end.

Israel, after all, swings one vote, whereas the Organization of Islamic Cooperation can be counted on for at the very least the votes of 53 countries, not to discount the influence the OIC has with the Non-Aligned group of countries within the UN which curries favour with the Arab League and the OIC. But no cost to Canada's moral dignity is too dear to pay for Junior Trudeau's vanity project to sit with the Big Boys of Global authority. For he believes that the world needs more Trudeau, which he deliberately conflates with Canada.

Ms. Alleslev points out the embarrassment on the world stage that Canada suffered with Trudeau's visits to India, or how petty and childish his behaviour was seen during the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks as he stalled negotiations and insisted on his version of worker equality, female entitlements and LGBTQ-2 and union issues be considered. According to Canada's Blanchard, Canada's focus is on economic security issues, to rectify the UN's focus on short-term security needs, ignoring long-term economic needs that play into violence and chaos.

Haiti, he points out, still sees ten percent of its population malnourished, with 40 percent dependent on humanitarian assistance. Canada, on the other hand, the sterling representation of a wealthy nation where equality of opportunity is paramount, guaranteeing everyone the chance to live a full and happy and healthy life, has hundreds of food banks to give aid and assistance to the homeless, to the unemployed, to welfare recipients and people living under the poverty line.

This is the first prime minister who has managed to suspend democracy in Canada. He has effectively dismissed the House of Commons. Parliament no longer sits for the purpose for which it was designed, allowing this government and this prime minister to simply proceed with initiatives they feel will benefit them, over the needs of Canadians. He has stilled his critics from the House of Commons by disallowing them the opportunity to question his government's decision-making while he ransacks the nation's economy.

This is tyranny, not democracy. And he would, in fact, fit right in with many of the other members of the Security Council, both temporary and permanent. 

Senegal's President Macky Sall, left, walks alongside Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after arriving at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020. Trudeau received Senegal's support for a seat on the UN Security Council. (Cheikh A.T/The Associated Press)

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

Break Out the Champagne!

"As far as he [SDF commander, Mazloum Kobani] is concerned the ceasefire is only where there’s active fighting and he totally rejects the idea of any kind of withdrawal, any removal of heavy weapons." 
"So everyone seems to be talking a different language, which can only spell more trouble."
Charles Lister, Syria expert, Middle East Institute

"They’ve [Turkey] had terrorists, they had a lot of people in there that they couldn’t have. They suffered a lot of loss of lives and they had to have it cleaned out."
"This outcome is something they’ve been trying to get for 10 years."
"[The Kurdistan Workers Party -- PKK -- a militant group launching attacks inside Turkey for Kurdish independence] is probably worse at terror and more of a terrorist threat in many ways [than the Islamic State]." 
"So it's a very semi-complicated -- not too complicated if you're smart. But it's a semi-complicated problem, and I think it's a problem that we have very nicely under control."
U.S. President Donald J. Trump

"I worry we will not have allies in the future against radical Islam, ISIS will re-emerge and Iran's rise in Syria will become a nightmare for Israel."
"I fear this is a complete and utter national security disaster in the making and I hope President Trump will adjust his thinking."
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham

Turkey-backed Syrian rebel fighters in the border town of Tal Abyad. The US-Turkey agreement calls for a 120-hour ceasefire in a “safe zone”. Photograph: Khalil Ashawi/Reuters

This very smart man incapable of fully comprehending the complexity of the Middle East, its ancient sectarian rivalries, its ethnic divisions, its tribal animosities and its general penchant toward blistering rhetoric followed by threats and armed invasions mindlessly slaughtering perceived opponents, speaks of the simplicity of solving not very 'complicated' issues by following his simple-minded advice. His intention to extract American military personnel from critical roles in defence of allies and supporting the military-capable among the Middle Eastern players to defeat the forces of psychopathic Islamism is his solution to settling an entirely new threat targeting faithful regional allies is a new low, even for this troglodyte.

Speaking from the Oval Office this man who is president of the great United States of America claims to have had no impact whatever on the new theatre of war playing out in northern Syria with Turkey's Erdogan deciding he will no longer wait for a more opportune moment to send in his troops to decimate the hated Kurds whom his territorial greed has deprived of an agreement to cede to this ancient people their own ancestral land to form the basis of a new independent country to finally establish a homeland for the largest minority group of 40 million people, without a recognized country of their own.

Trump harrumphed that the issue over territory between Turkey and the Kurds was "over land that has nothing to do with us", in defending his decision to abandon a faithful ally in the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which had successfully recruited support world wide for their jihadist-centrist caliphate whose missionaries were dispatched to capture, torture and murder victims in the most gruesome manner their diseased minds could invent and re-invent. The 'land that had nothing to do with the U.S.' was territory the U.S. had plundered for its oil for almost a hundred years.

The Kurds, asserted this astute philosopher and judge of human merit, were "no angels". This, of a people whose values and comportment set them aside and well above the norms for the Middle East, in their humane treatment and equality views of other ethnic and religious groups, in their recognition of equality between the sexes, in their well-ingrained recognition of human rights and their practise of good governance and concern for peoples' lives, extending protection to those persecuted like themselves by the region's tyrants.

The long-suffering Kurds who know intimately what ethnic cleansing and virulent hatred of themselves by their neighbours was capable of doing to the human spirit, acted in defiance of tribal and religious exclusion of others, extending the courtesy of consideration to those outside their group. "There's a lot of sand they [the protaganists, Turkey and the Kurds] can play with", Trump said dismissively. "It's possibly never going to be very stable."

"History will look upon you favourably if you get this done the right and humane way. It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool! I will call you later", he wrote companionably to his good friend and trading partner Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Who, it was later reported, deposited this very instructive, well-intentioned advice directly into the nearest trash disposal, and carried on with his intended decimation of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units.

Trump is complacent in his studied belief that American "didn't need to worry about terrorists 7,000 miles away". His short attention-span and memory deficit was unable to dredge up the thought of the 9/11 conspirator-terrorists who came from that distance for the very particular purpose of informing the United States that there is no distance sufficient to leave that country with the illusion that it will remain an island of security from Medieval Islamist jihad. Trump, in any event, views himself as having engineered the downfall of Islamic State and he gives himself full credit.

His delusional belief in himself persuades him that the sacrifice of the only reliable fighting partner the U.S. had in Syria and Iraq battling the Islamic State terrorists with the assistance of American air cover were merely expendable mercenaries. What he has accomplished in dismissing America's allies so peremptorily with casual disregard for their safety and security, is to have advised his other allies in the Middle East -- Israel and Saudi Arabia come to mind -- that their reliance on U.S. honour under this administration, more egregiously failing than the previous one -- is sadly misplaced.

"[The agreement that pauses Turkey’s military operation will be focused on] those areas where the Turks had penetrated into northeast Syria."
"We use the word ceasefire, the Turks do not because it's not in the agreement. What we mean is, and we define this very carefully, a ceasefire is no forward movement of troops on the ground and no military action other than self-defense."
James Jeffrey, the US Special Envoy for Syria

The great man pronounced his interpretation of the 'spat' between Turkey and America's erstwhile allies in the battle against ISIL: "Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while… right? Sometimes you have to let them fight. It's like two kids in a lot, you got to let them fought [sic] and then you pull them apart." And when you do, lo and behold, an agreement that secures for Turkey its military objectives, ceding a swath of territory within Syrian borders, formerly a majority Kurdish autonomous enclave, "validating what Turkey did and allowing them to annex a portion of Syria and displace the Kurdish population", in the word of an anonymous senior U.S. official.

 

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path. People have been trying to make this “Deal” for many years. Millions of lives will be saved. Congratulations to ALL!

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2:13 PM - Oct 17, 2019