Canada Sole Vote Against UN Resolution Condemning Israel

I doubt this will get much play in the mainstream media but it certainly is worthy of attention. We all saw the writing on the wall about this government's attitude towards the Israeli government this past summer when Harper described the IDF's actions against Lebanon as a 'measured' response.

On Friday, Canada (via its representative Terry Cormier) voted against a UN resolution of the Human Rights Council that condemned the Israeli governments actions:

Earlier Friday the UN Human Rights Council passed a seventh resolution criticizing Israel on Friday, this time for its failure to act on earlier recommendations that it end military operations in the Palestinian territories and allow a fact-finding mission to the region.

The rights body, which has only condemned the Israeli government in its seven-month existence, noted with regret its July resolution urging the release of all arrested Palestinian ministers has yet to be carried out.

"Violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinians continue unabated," said Pakistani diplomat Tehmina Janjua on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, which proposed the resolution. "The Palestinian ministers, officials and civilians have not been set free."

Janjua demanded that UN human rights expert John Dugard be allowed to conduct an "urgent" fact-finding in the region, which the council ordered at an emergency session only one month after it was called into existence to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission.

This appears in a Ha'aretz news story about the fact that Bishop Desmond Tutu, who was charged with leading an inquiry into the September deaths of 19 civilians in Beit Hanun (a town which Israels' Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said in June should be turned into 'a ghost town'), has still not been given permission to visit despite an earlier decree from the UN Human Rights Council to do so.

Note:

Only Canada voted against Friday's resolution. Cameroon and Japan joined the 10 European members of the council in abstaining. The rest of Africa and Asia, along with all of Latin America, voted in favor.

Here are the the results of the vote: 34 in favour, 1 against, and 12 abstentions

How can our government possibly support an Israeli government that continues its horrendous assault on that community?

November 6, 2006

Gideon Levy

A bloodbath is taking place in Beit Hanun, the Israel Defense Forces runs rampant and kills at least 37 people in four days - and Israeli public opinion yawns with indifference. A brigade commander tells his soldiers, who killed 12 people in one day: "You've won 12:0," and the soldiers grin broadly. This is the moral nadir we have reached, following a long slide down a slippery slope: Human life has become cheap.

Proof of this came at the end of the week from the big mouth of Major General Elazar Stern, the head of the IDF Personnel Directorate, who occasionally says true things. "The IDF's excessive sensitivity to human life led to some of the failures in the Lebanon war - and this should not happen," Stern told Channel 7. Stern should be praised for these forthright words: Those who embark with unbearable lightness on a futile war of choice cannot allow themselves the luxury of showing sensitivity for the lives of their soldiers. In war, soldiers not only kill, but are also killed. This should have been stated in advance.

But the general's remarks are also tainted with hypocrisy: Those who over a few months kill more than 1,000 Lebanese and 300 Palestinians for dubious reasons do not have the right to speak about sensitivity to human life. The fact that the public protest against the war did not take off demonstrates that after having lost all sensitivity for the lives of others, we are also gradually losing sensitivity for the lives of our children who are killed in vain. The contempt for human life starts with the lives of Arabs and ends with the lives of Jews.

more...

This is what the Canadian Conservative government is endorsing while our citizens are not paying attention and that is absolutely unacceptable. How dare this government pander to lobby groups in order to score political points while Palestinians continue to die every day at the hands of an Israeli government that talks peace on one hand and acts out exactly the opposite on a daily basis while our foreign affairs minister and UN representatives cheer them on?