RANT: CRITIC SILENCED IN PARLIAMENT

 

JUST A SHORT NOTE to fulfill my CanCon obligations: Last week, during Question Period, Green Party leader Elizabeth May had her mike turned off as she criticized Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu for the widening conflict in the Middle East: “…[a]nd we know who the enemy of peace is—unfortunately—he has a name; his name is Benjamin Netanyahu and he has put his political career and…”

And at that point she was drowned out by catcalls and applause from a majority of parliamentarians. House Speaker Greg Fergus (who’s a bit of a cuck) stood and called for order and began to speak to May when a parliamentary staffer caught his attention and spoke privately with him for a few moments. [I’d be interested to know what was said between Fergus and the staffer in their brief confab. Ed.] The Speaker then allowed May to continue* for the “ten seconds” she had left on the clock. May continued her criticism of Netanyahu for not seeking a ceasefire, and for allowing “his ego and personal political career to come ahead of rescuing Israeli hostages” and she goes on to state that he does not “care about innocent civilians whether in Gaza….” at which point derisive applause and catcalls again drowned her words as her mike was cut off, and her time was up.

It seems that to criticize Israel or its PM, is something most politicians are afraid to do lest they be accused of being anti-Semitic by the Israeli lobbies. Trudeau responded to May’s question with the usual talking points: “The violence in the Middle East needs to stop” (Duh! But who’s committing most of the violence?) He said the hostages need to be released and Hamas must lay down its arms,  adding, “we need a ceasefire” (Then perhaps he should call on Israel  to stop the killing).

 

HE CONCLUDES with the pro forma aspirational: “We need to get back on the path to a two-state solution” and fails to criticize Netanyahu, nor call-out Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank which the International Court of Justice calls a genocide.

May and the Green Party have been critical of Israel in the past, perhaps more so than other parties, but this tepid to-and-fro between her and Trudeau is typical of what most Western politicians engage in, with automatic support for Israel their default positions. AND MY BASIC BUGABOO here is censorship and the muzzling of dissent in parliament and in Canadian society in general. When politicians are silenced and shamed for speaking their minds, we should all be worried. [More on this in future posts. Ed.]  

IF, MONTHS AGO,  Israel had agreed to a ceasefire, taken its troops out of Gaza, exchanged prisoners, and allowed relief aid and reconstruction to begin in the all-but-destroyed Palestinian enclave, then Hezbollah (and the Houthis of Yemen) would have ceased their missile and drone attacks. There would have been peace in the region, at least for now, and room for diplomatic solutions to this shameful, decades-long  injustice. Instead, Israel chose a darker path, and we have yet to see where all this will take us.

 

Cheers. Jake.

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* And as often happens in Question Period, which is when opposition parliamentarians get to question the government, May never gets around to asking her question before he time allotment was used up. Most questions in Question Period are more like political speeches critiquing government policy, with a question mark added in somewhere.