(Original Link)

Canada’s Pro-Israel Stance Over Lebanon May Cost Harper Votes
www.bloomberg.com, Aug 3 ’06

“He took a stand to back a country that is bombarding civilians because two soldiers were taken,” said Boustani…

A Strategic Counsel poll of 1,000 people published Aug. 1 in the Globe and Mail newspaper found that just a third of Canadians agree with Harper’s stand on Israel…

Only a third, but it’s still high. There always seems to be a fascist third of violent and bloody-minded people.

Harper, 47, told reporters at the Group of Eight meeting in Russia last month that Israel was a “victim of the initial attack,” calling the Israeli military response “measured.”…

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay defends the government’s position, saying Hezbollah has been launching rockets into Israel for several years.

“For me, it’s not a difficult choice between siding with a democracy that’s being attacked by terrorists, and a group of cold-blooded killers,” MacKay told a Parliamentary committee…

…Elie Coriaty, 51, a Lebanese-born engineer from Montreal who was vacationing in Lebanon …”I don’t agree with Mr. Harper. The Israeli retaliation was disproportionate.”

The Strategic Counsel poll found 77 percent of Canadians think the country should be neutral on the conflict.

Oh my oh my. “Neutral”. Yeah, there’s a dirty word for war-mongers. To them, it’s the most vile crime in the world. Bombing cities is “good” by them! The concept of neutrality is very libertarian. But even better than neutral would be to advocate a cease-fire and peace.

But Maj. Gen. Lewis MacKenzie thinks it’s a war between Israel and “terrorists”. So all the human beings Israel attacks are “terrorists”? Some people feel they have to believe that. So what defines terrorism if not the number of innocents you kill?

Hizbollah kills 12 in deadliest day for Israel (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-08-03T210309Z_01_L30823603_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST1.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage4)
today.reuters.com, Aug 3 ’06

Hizbollah guerrillas killed eight people in a rocket barrage on Israel and four Israeli soldiers in clashes in Lebanon on Thursday, the deadliest day of the war for Israel in 23 days of fighting

From the point of view of basic morality – libertarian morality is basic – let’s try to review. Regardless of recent or not-so-recent historical examples of mass-bombing set by Western nations, neither Hizbollah nor the Israeli government are justified in killing any person – especially non-combatants – who did not attack them. This is called aggression.

If it is not a proportional response, it it is not a matter of basic justice, if innocent non-aggressors have been killed and their property destroyed, then each act of aggression is essentially a criminal act. Nothing justifies the deaths of innocents or the destruction of the Lebanese or Israeli infrastructure.

The idea that dropping a bomb is “accidentally” killing people is just a bogus justification for these entities to flex their muscles.

Numerically, it is easy to see which side has committed the most crimes. It’s a government. The Canadian government may think that the Israeli government has more legitimacy – simply because it is a government – but it’s easy to see that the government in this case has committed more crimes – more wrongdoing – so it actually appears to have less legitimacy in this conflict.

Also, it is very simple to see that the Canadian government has abandoned its positive role as a peace advocate in the world and has decided to justify the actions of a fellow government – like the U.S. or Israel – so that it can get fully involved in as many wars as possible. Don’t mention that the governments of Muslim countries were never allowed to be democracies. But remember that to war-mongers, it’s OKAY for democracies to kill as many people as they like. That’s the pro-war democratic doctrine we have to swallow every day from war apologists.

Bloody-minded authority-worshipping is a dead end. Obsessing over your race and religion is a dead end. And trying to pretend that conservatives represent what is right – and taking their side in every cause – is a dead end. Give up on Bush and other enemies of true liberty like him. Give up on the false left-right paradigm. To those who care, ethics and morality refers to right and wrong. And moral rules have to be universally applicable in order to be valid. If killing another human being – not in self-defence but aggressively – is *wrong* for one person, then it is wrong for every person -including governments.

Hizbollah rockets kill 8 in Israel (http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-08-03T155240Z_01_L30823603_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST-1.xml&src=080306_1204_TOPSTORY_hizbollah_kills_8)
today.reuters.com, Aug 3 ’06

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said the war had killed 900 people in Lebanon and wounded 3,000, with a third of the casualties children under 12. He said a million Lebanese, a quarter of the population, had been displaced and infrastructure devastated. The Reuters tally of Lebanon deaths is at least 683….

Sixty-six Israelis have been killed in the conflict, including 39 soldiers, two of whom died in fighting on Thursday. A Lebanese security source said 80 Hizbollah fighters had been killed so far — well below the Israeli estimate of 300-400…

Notice how all these nations are so eager to send in an “international force” to follow in after the Israeli government has finished doing as much damage as it can get away with.

(Original Post)