Israel gets thrown to the lions in latest UN resolution on Palestine
By Barbara Amiel - Monday, December 10, 2012 - 0 Comments
Barbara Amiel on John Baird’s ‘extraordinary’ speech to the UN
Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
It is a source of great historical anguish, in the United Nations, that the dreaded and odious Israel was formed as a result of a UN resolution. Accordingly it’s necessary to establish that the UN was then under the domination of the U.S., the U.S. under the domination of Harry Truman, and Harry Truman under the domination of American Jews. I wish I had assembled those thoughts but they were William F. Buckley’s in his 1974 book United Nations Journal: A Delegate’s Odyssey, after his year as a U.S. delegate. I would not call Buckley a natural Judeo-phile but he had a strong moral sensibility and saw through cant and hypocrisy.
He would have recognized the farce at the UN last week and approved of the principled position Canada’s government took. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is not really, whatever one’s taste, a classic pin-up. But stay my beating heart. His speech to the UN on the proposal to advance Palestinian status (substituting negotiation with Israel for a love-in with the UN’s non-aligned bloc) began: “Canada opposes this resolution in the strongest terms . . . ”
I expected thunder and a shaft of light from the heavens. No one in the UN ever opposes anything in “the strongest terms” apart from numbing condemnations of Israel’s brutal, racist ethnic cleansing and occupation, beside which the brutal, racist ethnic cleansing of Africa and murderous wars of the Arab world fall mild as soft summer rains. Continue…
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Baird not his usual blunt self on Israel’s settlement plan
By John Geddes - Monday, December 3, 2012 at 1:24 PM - 0 Comments
Nailing down the government of Canada’s stance on Israel’s controversial move to expand settlements in a contested zone east of Jerusalem is being made difficult by the foreign affair’s minister’s cagey communications strategy.
John Baird was his usual bluntly outspoken self last week when it came to denouncing Palestinian efforts to secure enhanced status at the United Nations. But Baird’s aides ask us to read between the lines and decode diplomatic language to discern his actual position on the related settlement issue.
Last Friday, White House officials decried Israel’s move to build 3,000 new housing units in the disputed area, which is claimed by the Palestinians as part of the West Bank, as “counterproductive.” Soon after, I asked Baird’s office if the Canadian government shares the U.S. concern and, if so, has that point been conveyed to the Israeli government.
