Well, first of all I don't think that it should be the case that someone does a terrorist attack against someone and the recipient has a blank cheque to do whatever they want to others, in particular to those not even responsible. What would Canada do in Israel's situation? Hypothetically, what if some extremist aboriginals kidnapped some soldiers and started shooting at non-natives at random. Would we start bombing the hell out of their Indian reserve and killing many people totally uninvolved in it all? Would we do like the Isrealis and kill a dozen innocent aboriginals for every non-aboriginal killed and think that justified, saying the aboriginals started it or that aboriginals are just crazy terrorists? Canada would instead bend over backwards to not rile people up and hurt the innocent, and frankly that would be the only sane option to avoid endless cycles of violence, hatred, and revenge.
At some point we should have an in-depth look at Israel's actions over the last decade or so and how the world has responded. From what I've read, it has been pretty much consistently the whole world condemning Israel for its excessive abuse of force and collective punishment of Arab people for the crimes of a few, which in fact is rooted in racism. Property illegally destroyed or confiscated, children maimed or killed for throwing rocks, etc, etc -- it just goes on and on, as do the more publicized suicide attacks that seem to get the only attention. Canada has generally either joined these votes condemning Israel or abstained, and the US has consistently been almost the only country opposed and using its veto to protect Israel from censure. I am very concerned that we would condone unwise and unwarranted aggression -- on principle and because others might start condoning aggression against us. Again, no one is condoning terrorism, or being soft on it. Read the intelligent commentators, and they keep saying that the extremists and terrorists gain power and prestege whenever the US or Israel are not restrained in their use of force. |
