The Imperialists' Security Dilemma
Values Which Permit Crimes Against Humanity Do Not Provide Canada's Democracy with Legitimacy
This weekend, on November 17-19 , the despicable 15th Annual Halifax War Conference -- called an international security forum -- took place. The anti-war forces organized in No Harbour for War and the Atlantic Canada Palestine Association militantly denounced the event with 500 people gathering in Halifax Peace and Freedom Park across from the conference. This is a gathering that regularly brings to Halifax those responsible for the most heinous war crimes, promoters of U.S./NATO-led regime change, colour revolutions, reaction and neo-Nazism in Ukraine and elsewhere. This year, such figures include Ehud Barak, a former Israeli general and prime minister. The conference also features so-called experts of all kinds from departments of defence, military colleges, think tanks, monopoly media and representatives of governments. The conference proceedings represent the vantage point that the U.S. is the indispensable nation, and that of other imperialist and former colonial powers such as Britain, France and Germany, as well as Japan, and their appeasers such as Canada and countries under their tutelage. Its aim is to provide solutions to the imperialists' security dilemma which is basically how to dominate the world and keep the peoples of the world without a say over the crucial matters of war and peace, crime and punishment, the environment, and so on. One of the characteristic features of those who participate in this forum is to justify the crimes which are being committed against humanity today in the name of their own superior values.
The
imperialists and their officials and experts in government and the
fields of defence, security and intelligence are filled with
imperialist arrogance and angst stemming from a morbid preoccupation
with defeat. The Security Forum is incapable of even formulating how
problems pose themselves, let alone providing any of the problems in
which their system is mired with solutions. This was
clear in the remarks of Canada's Defence Minister, the former
Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair, at the opening of the Security
Forum on November 17. He said that the war in Ukraine and "the Israel-Hamas
conflict in the Middle East" are the result of "a breakdown in
international law in an increasingly dangerous and violent world."
Of course, analyzing the cause of this breakdown is beyond the purview of the experts who are stuck in the mire of old formulations and thinking designed to keep the peoples of the world under the sway of major powers. These old formulations and thinking no longer describe what is taking place in the world, let alone help the U.S. and its NATO allies to cope with their security dilemma.
On
this occasion, progressive forces once again denounced this so-called
security forum. No matter what discussions the participants of the forum
hold, no matter what plans they put in place, they will never succeed
in convincing anyone that the values of the U.S. imperialists, Britain,
Canada and the former colonial powers of Europe are the values of the
peoples of the world who are striving for peace, freedom and
democracy. The crisis of legitimacy of their system in which there
system is mired is deeper than ever. With the current crimes being
committed against
Palestine, it is getting deeper by the day and is clearly beyond repair.
In this regard, one of the urgent matters this international security forum is not dealing with is how to hold Israel to account for the crimes it is committing with U.S. backing against the Palestinian people -- not only since October 7 but for the past 75 years. There is no denying that the conditions the World Health Organization (WHO) has witnessed in Al-Shifa Hospital following the Israeli bombing and invasion and killings in that facility are of the same calibre as those that soldiers who liberated survivors of the concentration camps found when they arrived there on the last days of World War II. Horrific crimes, unspeakable inhumanity, a consciousness deprived of everything human beings have given rise to in their historic march to humanize the social and natural environment which today is so much needed, so much wanting.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are carrying out heinous crimes against the people of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem while their backers, with their stranglehold on the United Nations Security Council, let this happen, citing Israel's alleged right to self-defence. They legitimize Israel by claiming Hamas is terrorist and that their aim is to eliminate the headquarters of the terrorists. As usual there is no evidence of terrorism, except that of Israel itself.
Heinous crimes committed in the name of civilized values and high ideals allege the U.S.-style democracy is superior and must be followed by all. It is all they've got to maintain their hegemony but these values and this democracy are in utter shambles. Despite their attempts to portray Hamas as a terrorist organization, evidence brought forward by Israeli newspapers Ha'aretz and Yedioth Ahronoth now shows that mass deaths of Israeli civilians and destruction on October 7, when Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood to hit military targets, were carried out by what is called "friendly fire" -- the IDF forces purposely shooting without any regard for friend or foe. In its military operation on October 7 Hamas did not decapitate babies, or rape women or commit the other crimes which the Israeli propaganda machine has accused it of carrying out. These are the lies repeated by those who know they are lies. They are following the example of the "War on Terror" of the U.S. imperialists and George W. Bush after 9/11 which the peoples of the world rejected.
So too they reject current attempts to confound the right of the
Palestinian people to resist their occupation, which is recognized
under international law, with terrorism, which it is not.
Putting the Palestinians on trial to divert attention from
Israeli actions is the trick perpetrated by the imperialist powers
and their media, also typical in Canada, as if this can justify
cold-blooded massacres and indiscriminate bombings, use of white
phosphorous and the like.
So too the CNN video purporting to show a Hamas headquarters under the Al-Shifa Hospital has been shown not to be credible. Furthermore, the statements of Israeli leaders clearly show intent which makes their actions, and those of their accomplices, clearly judiciable.
The crimes against Palestine are all based on a huge historical fraud. The state of Israel has never once applied the terms of its foundation by United Nations Resolution 181, passed on November 29, 1947. According to this resolution, the British Mandate for Palestine was partitioned into Arab and Jewish states, and international status for the City of Jerusalem as the joint capital of both states.
As stated by UN Secretary-General António Guterres at the opening session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in 2022, "There is no plan B." Yet Israel has continued, since its founding, to displace and dispossess the Palestinian people, in its ongoing program of genocide.
Israel's grave violations of international law have been exacerbated with Zionist settlers and extremists taking over the government, including the office of the prime minister. They are committing ever more heinous crimes against the Palestinians, such as brutal armed seizures of ancestral homes during the night or at the crack of dawn. Elders, men, women and children are thrown into the streets, while anyone who resists is arrested or killed in cold blood.
Canadians are demanding that officials and media which promote Israel's so-called right to self-defence must explain themselves for never discussing the duties of Israel as an occupying force. They should explain why they cower before threats that they will be accused of hate crimes if they criticize Israel and why instead they try to provide justifications for what cannot be justified. All of this is done in the name of defending Canadian values. However, despite the use of state force and judicial abuse to criminalize those who act according to their conscience when they denounce the crimes Israel is committing, values which condone crimes against humanity will not provide the Canadian democracy with the legitimacy it craves.
Meanwhile, the peoples of the world face the crucial question which requires solution -- how to end the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and restore the legitimate borders of the state of Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem in line with UN resolutions and international law. As international relations are held hostage to U.S. hegemony, crimes and veto, time after time the UN General Assembly passes resolutions demanding justice for Palestine and nothing happens.
Canadians reject their government's silence on Israel's crimes in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7. This silence follows the federal government's adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism in 2019. This definition is actively used to falsely claim that anyone criticizing Israel's crimes against Palestine is anti-Semitic and a hate-monger. Since then, the Trudeau government has been intent on implementing plans to strengthen the Canada Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to more effectively combat what it calls online anti-Semitism and hate and legitimize its use of police powers to criminalize conscience and speech.
Canadians decry the silence, complicity and appeasement of the U.S. war agenda and Israeli crimes. This includes its hosting of the 15th Annual Halifax War Conference where all kinds of criminals and promoters of imperialist war make and share calculations about how to maintain the legitimacy of their system and silence all those who do not conform to their criminal values.
Across the the
country, Canadians reiterate their support and admiration for the
Palestinian people's acts of heroism which express the necessity to find
a way forward to end these crimes once and for all. Today and going
forward, we are all Palestinians! The peoples' voice, our voice, is
decisive.
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 24 - November 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53241.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca