Justin Podur

Two Leaps, Two Ironies, and a Joke: Annotations to Michael Ignatieff’s Apartheid Week Memo

Michael Ignatieff, sometimes described as Canada’s “Prime Minister in Waiting”, is sometimes falsely accused of justifying torture. He is actually much more sophisticated. He is willing to consider torture, and thinks that people, like him, who are against torture should be honest with themselves that this might be a costly decision. He wrote in Prospect in April 2006.

“We must at least entertain the possibility that the operatives working on Sheikh Mohammed in our name are engaging not in gratuitous sadism but in the genuine belief that this form of torture—and it does qualify as such—makes all the difference…. If they are right, then those who support an absolute ban on torture had better be honest enough to admit that moral prohibition comes at a price. It is possible, at least in theory, that subjecting interrogators to rules that outlaw torture and coercive interrogation, backed up by punishment if they go too far, will create an interrogation regime that allows some interrogation subjects to resist divulging information and prevents our intelligence services from timely access to information that may save lives.”

In his book “The Lesser Evil”, he also sets out the conditions for assassination if it is:

“… applied to the smallest number of people, used as a last resort, and kept under the adversarial scrutiny of an open democratic system” (As quoted in Eyal Weizman’s Hollow Land, Chapter 9 footnote 56).

Not long after explaining the nuances of his anti-torture position, during Israel’s bombing and invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 Ignatieff slipped and called an Israeli war crime a war crime. While he singled out one war crime among many (aggression, cluster munitions, many aerial massacres), there was a short moment of accuracy. He apologized, however, and evidently learned his lesson: war crimes are okay, talking about them is not ok.

This is fast becoming a general principle in Canadian politics. Crimes are to be encouraged, speaking about crimes is to be condemned. The blood has not dried in Israel’s latest massacre in Gaza. 1300 people were killed, 430 of them children. Tens of thousands were left homeless. Vital infrastructure was destroyed, making Israel’s policy of deliberate starvation of the population even more intense. A fundamentally genocidal policy is still in place. But Canadian politicians can’t condemn it. They can, however, condemn students trying to hold lectures about it on campuses and unions committed to educating about it.

Below is my annotated version of the memo (notes in bold) by Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week. I would have annotated the statement by Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, but like so much of what the Conservatives and Liberals say and do, the statements are so similar that if you’ve annotated one, you’ve annotated them all. Both politicians have arrogated to themselves the right to decide on what the limits of free expression should be. To try to make this sound anything other than some kind of bizarre satire, Ignatieff ends up having to torture the arguments quite a bit. But he did say that the prohibition against torture comes at a price… so perhaps this is one of those lesser evils, in his view (Aside: Ignatieff will be relying heavily on lesser evil arguments if Canada sees an election any time soon. But Canadians might have to look a lot closer than they’d care to to figure out whether he is one).

MEMO BEGINS

Throughout our history, Canadians have strived to understand each other across the solitudes that have broken other countries to pieces. Our common national purpose has been built on our diversity.

These are, of course, platitudes, but it is hard to fault a politician for starting a statement with platitudes.

We respect differences — of opinion, nationality, race and creed. We abandon that respect at our peril.

The basis of Ignatieff’s argument, then, is respect for difference of opinion, nationality, race and creed. If Ignatieff had such respect, however, he could not support a system that denies refugees the right to return based on race, nationality, and creed. Jews from anywhere in the world can immigrate to Palestine, Palestinian refugees are not allowed to return to their homes. This is discrimination based on race and religion. A lack of respect.

As for differences of opinion, since Ignatieff’s memo is an expression of disrespect of the opinions of IAW’s organizers and CUPE-Ontario’s members, one could have hoped Ignatieff would hang his argument on some other value. Perhaps he could have started from the assumption that only Western peoples are fully human. From this assumption, many of his conclusions follow. But without this assumption, the memo is… well… a bit… tortured.

“Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW), now underway on university campuses across Canada, betrays the values of mutual respect that Canada has always promoted.

This is, so far, a claim, offered without evidence, by someone who has already established contempt for the notion of respect for differences of nationality, race and creed.

International law defines “apartheid” as a crime against humanity.

True.

Labelling Israel as an “apartheid” state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.

Whether Israel is an apartheid state or not is a factual matter. It is either true or false. If it is true, then the state – to the degree that it is an apartheid state – is illegitimate. If it is false, then the state is legitimate (at least not illegitimate for apartheid reasons – it could still be an aggressor, an occupier, a committer of war crimes, siege, and settlement, and a routine violator of international law, for example).

Criticism of Israel is legitimate.

Let us all thank Ignatieff for his generosity in declaring that we are allowed to legitimately criticize Israel.

Attempting to describe its very existence as a crime against humanity is not.

This is either a breathtaking leap of logic or a deeply anti-Israel statement. The only way to read this statement, the only way it makes sense, is that Ignatieff is saying that Israel’s very existence depends on it being an apartheid state.

Otherwise, if apartheid is just a set of policies – discriminatory laws and practices – then these policies could be changed and the Israeli state survive (as, to propose one crazy example, a democracy with full equality). But it seems that in Ignatieff’s world, saying that Israel should change its apartheid policies, which constitute crimes against humanity, is the same as saying Israel should not exist.

This is an amazing statement, perhaps the most anti-Israel statement anyone could make. IAW demands that Israel allow refugees the right to return, stop discriminating against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and end the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

For most people, this doesn’t say anything about Israel’s very existence. But for Ignatieff, these proposals do go to Israel’s very existence.

IAW is part of a global campaign of proclamations, boycotts and calls for divestment, which originated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. Like “Durban I,” IAW singles out one state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion, and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who they are — Israeli and Jewish.

A look at the archives from WCAR: http://www.un.org/WCAR/ show that it did not “single out” any one state. You will have to do some clicking around to find references to Israel or the Palestinian question. WCAR was intended to discuss seriously all forms of racism around the world. Israel’s was one. That the only charge Ignatieff can come up with about this is that it was “singling out one state” is a testament to the bankruptcy of the attack on WCAR.

Here we come to Ignatieff’s next great leap. A “state, its citizens and its supporters”. I thought we were talking about the policies of the state? Above, Ignatieff seems to have argued that Israel’s “very existence” depends on apartheid. Now, he argues that to criticize apartheid is to single out Israel’s “citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion”, and not just that, but “because of what and who they are – Israeli and Jewish.”

But IAW has a problem with apartheid policies, not with Israelis, not with citizens, and certainly not with Jews. Like Ignatieff’s anti-Israel statement, it is hard to read this as anything but anti-Jewish. Is Ignatieff arguing that Israelis and Jews, because of “what and who they are”, are automatic supporters of Israeli apartheid? This is demeaning to Israelis and Jews, whose opinions, like those of everyone else, do not automatically spring from their religious, national, or ethnic background. Would Ignatieff deny them the right to make up their own minds, as many of them have, simply because they are Jewish or Israeli? If not, why would IAW – which seeks an end to war, massacre, occupation, and discriminatory laws, have any argument with any group of people, except those who support war, massacre, occupation, and discriminatory laws?

IAW goes beyond reasonable criticism into demonization.

This is an absolute lie. Here Ignatieff chooses a word, “demonization”, in order to better do it to his opponents. IAW is based on three demands that are in line with human rights and international law. There simply no demonization at all, in the sense of portrayal of some group of people as if they were demons, in order to set them outside of the realm of legitimate debate and discussion to prepare the way to harm them. The word “demonization” does, however, apply very well to what Ignatieff is doing with his statement. Indeed, for the rest of the memo, Ignatieff’s intent is best read by what he accuses IAW of doing.

It leaves Jewish and Israeli students wary of expressing their opinions, for fear of intimidation.

Is Ignatieff referring to Jewish students like the many who are active organizers of the IAW events? Or those pro-Israel activists who came in groups to disrupt them, accusing IAW organizers of being “terrorists”, physically intimidating and pushing them? Or those pro-Israel activists who came into the events to ask questions and often to make accusations against the speakers?

Ignatieff offers no evidence for this incredibly serious charge that IAW makes Jewish and Israeli students afraid.

It bears repeating how serious this charge is. IAW is explicitly anti-racist, and Ignatieff here is strongly implying that it is racist. Its activists are being intimidated, partly by statements like his, and he accuses it of intimidating others.

No Canadian should ever have to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe. All Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.

These two sentences are true, but ironic. Ironic because Ignatieff’s entire statement is precisely a form of intimidation. Consider: The leader of Canada’s major party has publicly stated that a lecture series on University campuses falls out of the realm of legitimate debate and is basically racist. This in a context where there are active organizations attempting to physically disrupt the events and threaten their organizers.

The result is that from the very top of Canadian society there is a message that will help to create a permissive environment for reprisals of various kinds against the student activists of IAW, many of whom are women, many of whom are also of Palestinian heritage, have been made “to fear for their safety in a public space because of who they are or what they believe”, and have been intimidated “in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity.”

Are Palestinian students more or less afraid after Ignatieff’s statement? Does he care about the effect such a statement will have in this environment?

If “all Canadians should condemn any attempt to intimidate anyone in the legitimate affirmation of their beliefs and identity”, the first step would be to condemn Ignatieff’s memo.

The Ontario wing of the Canadian Union of Public Employees has joined the chorus of denunciations of Israel on our campuses.

Not much to comment on here except to point out the cliche: “chorus of denunciations of Israel”, which is as false as it is cheap, and a substitute for dealing with the substance of the resolution.

The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott Israeli academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom.

This sentence is false and a showcase of arrogance. False, because CUPE Ontario’s resolution is about education towards a boycott of academic institutions, not individuals. Arrogant, because again the Liberal Party leader is deciding what is “acceptable” and what is not, first to discuss on campuses, and now to pass as union resolutions.

Canada enjoys strong academic, economic and cultural ties with Israel and Israeli institutions, and these relationships benefit both our countries. Collaborative research between Canadian and Israeli academics is mutually rewarding, and should be encouraged.

All true, up to the “should be encouraged”.

The CUPE resolution is an attack on the free exchange that is at the heart of our university system.

The argument for the boycott of academic institutions is primarily strategic. It claims first that Israeli academic institutions are part of the system of occupation and apartheid, and that if they were not, the system of occupation and apartheid would be much weakened (for lack of weapons and high tech research, among other things). Second, these institutions depend on support and exchange with other academic institutions. So, cutting institutional ties between Israeli and Canadian academies will weaken the system of occupation and apartheid. This is the argument, and Ignatieff could have answered it on its merits. Instead, however, he chose to mischaracterize it, “demonize” it, and then condemn it for things it does not do.

The Liberal Party of Canada condemns the CUPE resolution in the strongest possible terms.

Let us just remind ourselves that these, the “strongest possible terms” of condemnation, are reserved for a resolution by a union on educating for breaking links between academic institutions involved in apartheid and occupation.

On the murder of 1300 people, including 430 children, in Gaza, on the continuing siege of the entire population, the deprivation of freedom of movement for all Palestinians, the use of white phosphorus munitions, the deliberate destruction of vital infrastructure, the denial of medical care, the deliberate starvation – for these crimes, the Liberal Party of Canada has no condemnation on any terms, much less the “strongest possible”.

I salute the others who have spoken out against the resolution, including my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House of Commons, and CUPE’s national president, Paul Moist, who has refused to support the resolution. I encourage all CUPE members, and all Canadians, to follow their example.

Over the course of this memo, the Liberal Party leader has given himself the right to define what is acceptable and unacceptable to debate on campuses, what is acceptable and unacceptable to pass as union resolutions, and now, what union members should do.

Israel Apartheid Week and CUPE Ontario’s anti-Israel posturing exploit academic freedom, and they should be condemned by all who value civil and respectful debate about the tragic conflict in the Middle East.

Ignatieff’s use of the word “posturing” here is consistent with the rest of the memo. Like “demonization” above about IAW, it has nothing to do with what CUPE Ontario has done. CUPE Ontario isn’t posturing, it is beginning an educational campaign, involving “civil and respectful debate”, which Ignatieff is trying to demonize and posture out of existence.

Political leaders should also take care not to deepen the distrust between Canadian communities over the Middle East. Politicians who use the ongoing conflict in the Middle East as a wedge to divide Canadians for their own political gain can succeed only in accentuating acrimony and deepening tensions.

Ignatieff may be clever and playing a joke on us: perhaps he wrote this memo as an example of using the conflict as a wedge, accentuating acrimony and deepening tensions, maximizing posturing, demonization, and intimidation, so we could see how bad these things are before he condemned them?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict evokes passionate disagreement. It should not damage academic freedom and it should not divide Canadian communities. We can move forward if we work together to promote the common objective of Canadian policy ever since 1948 — a secure Israel living side-by-side in peace with an independent Palestine.

Luckily, the conflict does not evoke any disagreement between the Liberals and Conservatives, since much of Ignatieff’s memo is cut-pasted from that of Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

MEMO ENDS

A final note: Some argue that even debating torture is a debasement of a society, and that even though Ignatieff ultimately came out against it, by opening the debate he debased us all. It is yet another irony that the person who, as an academic, opened a debate that demeans us all as human beings is trying, as a politician, to shut down a debate that could lead to an end to a horrific occupation and an ongoing crime.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. Some of his friends were “demonized” by Michael Ignatieff’s “posturing”.

The gift that keeps on giving: Colombia’s magic laptops and the war against social movements

One of Colombia’s major magazines, Cambio, published a story quoting from the magic laptops that survived bombing in the Ecuadorian jungle and were retrieved after the Colombian government assassinated Raul Reyes just about a year ago (March 3/08). This particular story concerns my friends Hollman Morris and Manuel Rozental.

Continue reading “The gift that keeps on giving: Colombia’s magic laptops and the war against social movements”

Security Certificates and the case of Adil Charkaoui

On February 20, the Federal Court of Canada dropped most of the conditions it had placed on one of the prisoners of its “security certificate” regime, Adil Charkaoui. While much of his life is still lived in the rights-free zone widened under the “war on terror”, his struggles over the years have won him back some parts of his life. (For the decision see here)

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The march of the Colombian war

Indigenous people in Colombia are fighting their perpetual struggle against the militarization of their communities. In a horrific incident earlier in February, Colombia’s guerrillas (the FARC) massacred dozens of Awa indigenous people in Narino. FARC claimed the massacre was a reprisal for Awa’s cooperation with the military, who came earlier and coerced some people to cooperate with them. This is how the war in Colombia plays out. Not in battles, nor even in concerted campaigns. Just one faction showing up and terrorizing, another showing up and murdering. That the killers are usually the government and the paramilitaries, and that the FARC has been crushed militarily in recent years, could never excuse one such murder nor could it excuse the prior violation of indigenous autonomy in the first place.

In the indigenous-governed town of Jambalo, in Northern Cauca, the people have been encircled by the Colombian army. In a communique this morning, they say that “armed actors of the left and right” have set up camps and laboratories in their territory, and that they are declaring a state of emergency and preparing a peaceful action to remove these armed men from their lands. They point out that they have the right to do so under their own laws and, for that matter, under the Colombian Constitution of 1991.

The indigenous strategy faces a Colombian government that feels that its military options are far greater than they were. A recent article by Garry Leech, an excellent journalist, shows how the Colombian government is driving the guerrillas out of their base areas by massively increasing the footprint of the state, especially the military, through the territory. This wasn’t an option in the past: the state didn’t have the capacity or resources, and the guerrillas filled the vacuum. Today the state is omnipresent in places where it was absent. As might be expected for these times, the state isn’t electrifying or building state infrastructure for development. It is there, and it is armed, but in Garry’s words “it is difficult to locate a single person in La Cooperativa who thinks that life is better now than it was under the guerrillas.”

The Colombian government is stronger militarily than ever, and it continues to use the guerrillas as a pretext to attack social movements. One of thousands of such cases is documented by Andrew Willis Garces in the Upside Down World.

The government is also corrupt to the core, as yet another scandal comes to the fore. A report from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, citing one of Colombia’s leading magazines, shows Colombia’s intelligence agency spying on politicians and selling the information to criminals:

This visit comes at a time when Colombia’s human rights record is coming increasingly under fire. The news magazine Semana, which has been running bold and brilliant articles on the subject, reported on February 22 that the Colombian intelligence agency DAS had been wiretapping opposition politicians, Supreme Court judges, prosecutors and journalists, and passing on the information gathered to criminal groups; as Semana put it, intelligence is allegedly being sold “to the highest bidder.” President Uribe, who has all along insisted that he is not a crook, has since attempted to calm the storm raging around the scandal by alleging that members of his administration were also victims, blaming drug smugglers, and pledging to take moves to reform, or “purge” DAS, including removing its authorization to conduct wiretaps. In Washington, Santos went further, declaring that DAS should be wound up altogether and given “a Christian burial.”

The exposure of such scandals has surprisingly little effect. The regime is left with a free hand to try to isolate its targets among social movements and indigenous peoples, who are the legitimate authorities in their territories. It is instead the regime that should be isolated.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. He visited Jambalo in 2004.

Two days at the Mondragon Bookstore Cafe

Like any sensible person seeking to escape the Toronto winter, I decided to spend a few days in Winnipeg! Last time I was in Winnipeg was 2002, and the fall, and I told my hosts in the marvelous activist community out there that I wanted to return in the winter and experience the legendary -20 to -30 C or colder. For better or worse, this trip, thanks to global warming or natural variability, it was a positively balmy -5 C, not much colder than Toronto.

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Not a ceasefire

http://www.zcommunications.org/not-a-ceasefire-by-justin-podur

Israel used the word “disengagement” in 2005 to mean continued occupation, control of movement, periodic massacre, and blockade. Now Israel is using the word “ceasefire” to mean continued ground occupation and supervised societal collapse. The word used is irrelevant. Calling it a “ceasefire” is a simple lie. This will be a ceasefire that features continued fire. Other dangerous illusions abound.

Continue reading “Not a ceasefire”

Let’s not have a false sense of security

Numerous analysts have said that “Israel will not allow a full-blown humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. First of all, I am not sure how they would define a “full-blown” crisis. Can the current crisis reach “half-blown” status at least? The place is rubble. Sanitation, electricity, and drinking water facilities are destroyed. Hospitals are destroyed. The systems were brought to the breaking point by blockade and then pushed over the cliff by systematic destruction. If people are starving, how would anyone know? They shoot journalists and bomb UNRWA, after all, including reserve food stocks and supply convoys. And the world’s journalists and the UN mostly apologize for getting in the way of the bombs (while condemning the Palestinians for doing the same).

Here’s another one I wouldn’t assume: “Israel must withdraw eventually”. Why is that? They occupied Gaza for years in the past. They want to see to it that Gaza cannot govern itself and that society there collapses completely. What better way than to continue to do what they are doing? Is it out of their reach financially, militarily, politically, or diplomatically? On the contrary. This operation was an experiment in what it was possible to get away with, and they have gotten away with it all. The next phase is the closely supervised destruction of the innovations Gaza used to survive for so long: the remaining infrastructure (schools, hospitals, roads, plumbing, electricity) the tunnels, the police, United Nations aid, the ability to share whatever was brought in through Hamas’s social networks and organization (the social networks will be dismantled through arrest and assassination of leaders and terror attacks on civilians). The Israelis destroyed it. Now they must look after their investment and see that it stays destroyed.

All they need to achieve this is what they have already got: the compliance of the Western and Arab regimes. If these regimes allowed (when they didn’t cheer) a month of high-tech high-intensity massacre, why would they shrink from months of occupation and starvation? And even if they did shrink, how would they accomplish anything effective to stop it? With a totally destroyed infrastructure, continued sanctions, and Israel’s one-sided war against the UN in effect, we are well into “full blown humanitarian crisis”, unless some unforeseen change in the balance of forces occurs.

It bears repeating that it would be easy enough for the US to deal with this. They could say no more weapons for Israel unless Israel leaves Gaza, ends the blockade, and allows complete freedom of movement for people and goods; no Israeli authority over Gaza’s airspace, sea lanes, passage of its people to the West Bank or any other country, or its border with Egypt. This is so minimalist that it is painful to argue for it, but it is all the same completely inconceivable that even this supposedly hope-and-change-oriented administration would do it.

Grassroots efforts to change the balance of forces and impose some cost to the indecency of Western political leaders on this issue are racing against time. The Palestinians are without protection.

The Sup on Palestine

Whatever the value of this path that I’m on, wherever it leads, Subcomandante Marcos’s words were a major part of putting me on it. The Chiapas of the Zapatistas is one of the first places I visited and reported from and worked in and it was not that long a two years from Chiapas to Palestine (my first trip to Colombia in between). And so it’s fitting that it’s from Marcos and the Zapatistas that I find the words that I will go back to over and over for, in his words, that little ray of light in the darkness.

“Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we’re lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there’s a professional army murdering a defenseless population.”

When this all started on December 27 I wrote a Palestinian friend thinking exactly of Marcos’s words which I had taken on so completely I only realized I was paraphrasing him after I sent her my note. Gabriel Garcia Marquez asked him what his image of poverty is, and he says a child who died in his arms, and how he felt:

“Impotence, rage. The whole world falls in on you, that everything you believed and everything you did before is useless if I can’t prevent this death, this unjust, absurd, irrational, stupid… “

That was just what I felt, when this all began again. In this week’s piece Marcos asked:

“Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?”

“We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don’t stop a bomb and our word won’t turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters “IMI” or “Israeli Military Industry” etched into the base of the cartridge won’t hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it’s heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.”

“We don’t know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.”

“I don’t know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it’s as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.”

Turn off the Canadian Media, Please

If national media help make a nation, then we all need to stop reading and listening to conventional Canadian media if we want to make a decent Canada. Benedict Anderson, perhaps the leading scholar of nationalism, wrote that the daily newspaper (along with other innovations like novels, maps, censuses, museums) played a key role in creating national consciousness. People in a country like Canada use their own media – public (CBC) and private (CanWest, TorStar, CTVglobemedia) – to know what is happening in their own country. Media are also an important part of forging a national identity. They are supposed to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian opinion. When they present information on the rest of the world, they do so from a Canadian perspective and have the Canadian audience in mind.

And today, if you want to have the first idea what is happening in Israel/Palestine (or most of the rest of the world), the best thing to do would be to turn them off completely.

In the face of a major ongoing crime like that of Israel’s siege and assault on Gaza, Canadians turn to the Canadian media in good faith to try to learn and understand what is happening, who is to blame, and what they might be able to do to help the victims. On each of these counts, the Canadian media fails. But the days when Canadians would be stuck listening to local radio, picking up the local print newspaper, or watching local television packaged by Canadian media corporations for their consumption are over. There is, for the time being, media choice. And given the choice, on Israel/Palestine, it would be foolish to turn to the Canadian media.

These days I actually don’t have the stomach to do an exhaustive survey of Canadian coverage of these massacres. I have done such surveys in the past (see my letter to the Toronto Star’s Mitch Potter from a few years back), and I spent a lot of time and energy thinking about how to democratize the mainstream Canadian media and pressure it to be more open. These days, though, I mainly follow my own advice. A friend of mine, Brooks Kind, spent some time going through the least biased of the Canadian media, CBC radio, over the past two weeks. He found that the CBC suppressed crucial facts, presented an unrepresentative spectrum of opinion, and falsified the historical record. The suppressions and omissions are in the service of the perspective of the US and Israeli governments (and Canadian politicians), but they are no less false for that. With the reminder that I am picking on the CBC not because it is the worst, but because it is by far the best, here are just a few examples.

First, remember that the pretext for Israel’s attack is that Hamas refused to renew the June 19/08 ceasefire and started rocket attacks in December/08. But Israel violated the ceasefire in two ways. First, by continuing to starve Gaza (as Israeli officials openly admit and have done for years), and second, by attacking Gaza on November 4/08 and killing six Hamas people. Why is this important? There is a pattern here: Israel has repeatedly broken truces, ceasefires, and peace talks with spectacular assassinations that involve killing large numbers of people. This has been a pattern for many years, and has included the assassinations of many of Hamas’s leaders (Abd-el-Aziz Rantisi, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, and many, many others). It is an explicit part of Israel’s strategy to provoke its opponents and get pretexts for further attacks. But this timeline, and the November 4/08 attack by Israel, is not part of the ‘boilerplate’ provided when the attack on Gaza is reported in the Canadian media.

Second, Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has been making very strong statements about Gaza in recent months. Falk is an acclaimed scholar and a highly credible source. He works for the United Nations, which Canadians supposedly have special respect for. When Falk traveled to Israel, he was detained, strip searched, and deported. Israel’s contempt for the United Nations could hardly have been more starkly revealed. Except, perhaps, when the Israelis killed a Canadian UN observer (Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener) in Lebanon in 2006, along with 3 others (Du Zhaoyu of China, Jarno Makinen of Finland, and Hans-Peter Lang of Austria). Or, perhaps, when the Israelis bombed the UNRWA school in Jabaliya on Jan 3/09, killing 43 Palestinians and wounding 100. Unlike much of the UN, whose main response to these killings might as well be to apologize for getting in the way of the bombs, Falk has provided urgent warnings to the world about the seriousness of the situation. But Falk’s story is not given any prominence in any Canadian media. An entire story on the UN aspects of the situation quotes Israel’s envoy to the UN and Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and others, but not the important and strong voice of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories.

And then, of course, there are the cliches, the horrible cliches of this conflict. Like this story about how
"World leaders call for Mideast ceasefire as more civilians die." They just "die", these civilians. The lead reads "World leaders called for a ceasefire in the fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas as civilian casualties climbed in the Gaza Strip." The "casualties climbed", the "civilians died", of their own accord, with no help from the Israelis. Israeli officials are allowed the grace of their titles ("Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak") but Mahmoud Zahar from the elected Hamas government is called "Gaza’s Hamas strongman" (there are no Western strongmen).

Just before the current massacres, on December 8/08, Radio Canada’s ombudsman found that the CBC had erred in running a very factual documentary called "Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land" (3PL). The ombudsman Radio Canada erred in broadcasting because "militant pro-Palestinian groups were involved in researching" it. Who were these groups? FAIR (www.fair.org), or Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, whose principal activity is to act more or less as Radio Canada’s ombudsman should, pointing out inaccuracies and unfairness in US media coverage of critical topics. "Factual errors" pointed out by the ombudsman include that the film "speaks of the occupation as being illegal, but Miville-Dechene points out that this has never been clarified by the courts". This merely suggests that the ombudsman lacks the most cursory understanding of international law. And possibly, an understanding of what constitutes a factual error. In any case, the Quebec Israel Committee (QIC) said that, by changing its policies to prevent documentaries like these from being seen by Canadians, "Radio-Canada has strengthened its credibility and has become a better news organization." The more "credible" a media outlet is to an outfit like the QIC, the better off Canadians would be in turning it off altogether. What is good about this situation is that all Radio-Canada can really do is prevent Canadians from seeing 3PL on Radio-Canada. They can’t prevent Canadians from seeing it altogether (in fact, you can watch it at the Media Education Foundation site or on Google Video. The natural response is the right one: turn off Radio-Canada.

A last example. The rally against the Gaza massacres that happened in Toronto (as well as many cities in the world) on January 3, 2009. I was at the rally. I have been to a lot of rallies over the years. Many of these, I must admit, have been very small. Activists learn how to assess (and yes, unfortunately, sometimes to inflate) numbers at demonstrations. But to say that the January 3, 2009 rally had "more than 1000 people", as CBC did, is simply preposterous. They may as well have said "more than one". There were easily 10,000 people there – unless someone can show me how you can fill Yonge Street between Bloor Street and College Street in Toronto with a thousand people. And no, at no point was the march single file.

In the past, when I, and others like me, have made points like these to Canadian journalists, they reply that we are leftists and biased and merely want them to be biased the way we are. But the above are mostly matters of fact and of professionalism, not of analysis or opinion.

I am willing to declare my biases. I write for ZNet (www.zcommunications.org/znet) and work as an editor for it. I wouldn’t do either if I didn’t think people should read it, and I wouldn’t criticize the mainstream media if I thought it did a good job. ZNet is a site for analysis. It features analysts who write on other sites, like the Electronic Intifada‘s (www.electronicintifada.net) Ali Abunimah, Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies (http://www.ips-dc.org/staff/phyllis), Jonathan Cook, Ha’aretz’s own Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, other Israelis like Neve Gorden and Jeff Halper, as well as folks who write mainly for ZNet. If you’re distrustful of the "alternative media" and fear that folks from the region will be biased, try the mainstream (liberal) UK papers, whose openness to diverse analysis puts the Canadian press to shame. Guardian’s Comment is Free (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree) section has had Leila el-Haddad, Nir Rosen, Seamus Milne, and plenty of others that don’t see the light of day in the Canadian press. Reading these analysts reveals the incredible mediocrity of the Canadian punditry when it addresses international affairs.

But analysis is not news, and people do need news. Not only do they need news, but they need a variety of perspectives, and the Israeli perspective is a very important one. There is, however, a difference between what the public relations line of a state at war and the actual perspective and debates in that state. In other words, if you want the Israeli perspective, you can get it directly, in the Israeli press: read Haaretz (www.haaretz.com) and the Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com). They are available in English, and they are much more frank about Israel’s aims and practices than the Canadian media are. Why read what the Israeli military wants Canadians to read, when you can read what they want Israelis to read?

If you want news about how Israeli destruction looks to its victims, there is nothing better than the IMEMC (www.imemc.org), which is a genuine news outlet run by Palestinians, in the Occupied Territories, with as high professional standards as you could want. These are journalistic heroes, and the first place I go.

If you want news that is actually balanced, with "supporters of Israel" and "pro-Palestinian" voices represented, as well as actual reporting from the ground, use al-Jazeera (www.aljazeera.net/en).

[Aside: I can’t use the phrase "supporters of Israel" without reminding readers of Chomsky’s note in Fateful Triangle, where he said "supporters of Israel" should more aptly be called "supporters of the moral degradation and eventual destruction of Israel". "Pro-Palestinian" is another strange term, since it seems that thinking that a group of human beings are, in fact, human beings, makes you "pro-Palestinian", rather like how agreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change makes you an "environmentalist".]

If you want to make your own decision about how many people were at a demonstration or what its message was, you might as well go directly to the people involved: they all have their own websites. The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (www.caiaweb.org) has one, the Canadian Arab Federation (www.caf.ca) has one, and so on.

Let me rephrase my point here. Modern Western armies, like those of Israel, the US, and Canada, think of information as part of warfare. They expend tremendous time and resources mobilizing support for their violence. They do this by controlling information, disallowing independent journalists (as Israel is doing), using embedded journalists, and running a massive public relations machinery designed specifically to deliver arguments and propaganda for the foreign press and for foreign consumption. There is a special machinery just for Canadians, and a special strategy to sell war in Canada. There was one for the Iraq war, there is one for the Afghanistan war, and one for Israel’s wars as well. What is so unusual about the media environment today is that all this expense, all this media machinery, can be circumvented by anyone in its target audience by the simple click of a mouse. So click away.

The Canadian media are a biased little niche of pro-Israeli spin, and should be seen that way. There are times when the Canadian media are useful for news about Canada, if read critically. Even for Canada, there are reasonably good alternatives for analysis, commentary, and features (dominionpaper.ca, rabble.ca, briarpatchmagazine.com), and plenty of direct information from politicians (the political parties have their own sites, as do many individual polticians, activist groups, and so on). Still, read critically, the Canadian media can be a good source on goings on in the country.

But on Israel/Palestine, please, find more serious sources.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer. His blog is www.killingtrain.com.