In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, has praise for an Economist editorial in support of Israel, and takes Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin to task for a breach of logic.
Yet another surprise from the Economist magazine. In its editorial, "Pakistan, India and the anti-nuclear rules" (June 26), the publication took a strong stand against the Egyptian-led effort to single out Israel at last month's Nuclear Non-Proliferation (NPT) Review Conference. The conference's final declaration, orchestrated by Egypt on behalf of the Arab League and as chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, explicitly called on Israel – but not Pakistan or India – to sign the NPT, and it omitted any mention of Iran, an NPT member, that is in serious violation of binding IAEA safeguards.
As the Economist noted: "Picking on Israel makes the silence – and hypocrisy – that surrounds nuclear-armed India and Pakistan all the stranger. Like Israel, neither joined the NPT so their bomb-building did not break its rules. Yet their rivalry is fuelling the fastest, most dangerous build-up of bomb-usable plutonium and uranium anywhere. And a proposed sale by China of two civilian nuclear reactors to proliferation-prone, unstable Pakistan points to a further distinction. Although much of the world has co-operated over North Korea and Iran, everyone is competing over India and Pakistan to make things worse."
Despite all the anti-Israel propaganda, everyone knows – including Arab states – that Israel's (undeclared) nuclear arsenal is purely defensive and that Israel has always behaved responsibly. The real threat of aggressive, indeed potentially catastrophic, behaviour comes not only from North Korea and Iran but also from Pakistan which has an intense, bitter rivalry with India. The danger of nuclear conflagration there is a serious, but largely unexamined, possibility, especially if Pakistan's weapons fall into the hands of the Taliban.
Now with China's renewed involvement in Pakistan's nuclear program (following U.S. help to India's program under former U.S. president George W. Bush), prospects for instability in Southeast Asia are only increasing. And the Economist reminds us that the history of China's proliferation record in Pakistan is nothing short of reckless: "[China] helped Pakistan make uranium and plutonium. It handed over the design of one of its own nuclear warheads, which Pakistan later passed on to Libya and possibly Iran."
China needs to be held to account, indeed needs to be "embarrassed," the Economist concludes.
But it probably won't be. After all, there's always Israel to conveniently distract the world's attention.
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While Rick Salutin's June 25 Globe and Mail column didn't deal with the Middle East but with the "walling" off of large parts of Toronto for the G20 summit, his concern that this represented an assault on democracy here has wider implications. Ironically, Salutin might not care to face the logic of his argument given his support for the "Free Gaza" movement in his June 4 column.
Here's the relevant excerpt from his June 25 Globe and Mail column: "Democracy isn't about elections. There have been lots of undemocratic societies with elections. It's about a state of mind and a relationship between governors and governed. This is exactly what looks preposterous in Toronto now. What is the sign of the breakdown in the relationship? Police everywhere, to protect the governors from the people. That's how it looks. I'm not saying that's what it is, yet. But it's amazing that they don't even react to the optics of the situation: i.e. a temporary police state."
Salutin is correct about what makes a governing authority a true democracy – not the mere mechanics of elections but the far more meaningful nature of the governing authority itself. Today we read repeatedly that Hamas is the "democratically elected" government of the Palestinians in Gaza, who voted the group into power in the 2006 elections. Put aside for a moment the fact that Hamas only a year later staged a violent coup against Fatah's participation in the government. By Salutin's own definition, there's no sense in which Hamas has anything to do with democracy, when it runs a repressive police state in which women's rights, gay rights, religious freedom, open dissent, etc., are non-existent.
As many analysts have noted, if the "Free Gaza" movement had any concern about freedom for the Palestinians and about democracy they'd put their efforts into criticizing Hamas' extremist agenda and repressive rule, instead of working so assiduously to demonize democratic Israel – their real aim.
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