Ayoon wa Azan (Canada facing charges)

The Canadian government is Israel’s ally, and hence Canada is the enemy of the Arabs and Muslims since it supports a fascist and racist country that is occupying the Palestinian lands and killing and displacing the people there. Canada is the largest country of the world with a surface area of ten million square kilometers and a population of 35 million. This makes Canada larger than the USA and China put together, while the population count equals the population of Cairo and its suburbs. Canada also borders the North Pole. I have been following up on its Zionist politics and I am quite angry at Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Foreign Minister, John Baird. I am also surprised that the Canadian people are doing nothing, and all I can do is laugh about this and tell myself that the cold is preventing the Canadian citizens from thinking, thus allowing their government to have its own way; or that Britain was too hasty in granting Canada its independence before it attained political maturity. One typical Canadian for me is former PM Pierre Trudeau who was a famous womanizer; and Conrad Black, a Canadian man who came to London and acquired the historic Telegraph group. He was accused of fraud and ended up in a US prison, and is trying today to rebuild his reputation. These embarrassing specimens are all I know from the people of Canada. I do realize that these two examples cannot represent an entire population, especially one that is known for being peaceful and peace-loving unlike the neighboring US, which keeps on staging one war after the other and which ended up, during the term of George W. Bush, losing its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and sustaining a massive financial crisis that resulted in an international crisis. This is what I know about Canada, keeping in mind that I never set foot there. I never even visited the Niagara Falls although I lived in Washington DC. But then, my faith in human nature was restored when I heard that, despite the Likud tendencies of some neo-conservative Canadian governmental officials, the United Church of Canada has boycotted and imposed economic sanctions on three Israeli companies operating in the Jewish settlements at the West Bank. The United Church of Canada is the largest church in the country and has around 2 million followers. The stand of this protestant church is similar to the stands of a number of churches in the US that asked their followers to boycott Israel and to launch a campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions as a way to object to the occupation of the Palestinian lands. Two months ago, I presented Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyeb, the Al-Azhar sheikh, with examples of American churches that boycotted Israel and I suggested that Al-Azhar cooperate with and encourage these churches. I will now add the United Church of Canada to the list. This is my personal opinion about Canada, its politics, and its government. At some point, I thought I was on my own in opposing the Canadian neo-conservatives. However, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia dismantled the joint Saudi-Canadian committee when the Canadian Foreign Minister, John Baird, visited East Jerusalem and met with the Israeli Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni. I call on all the Arab and Islamic countries to follow the example of Saudi Arabia and to boycott Canada gradually in order to give the Canadian government two options: either to stop supporting the Occupation and its crimes; or to lose all kinds of commercial transactions with the Arab market. I know that Canada can live without dealing with us and that we can just drop Canada from our thoughts without losing anything. However, boycotting Canada would prompt Canadian citizens to wrap themselves in a warm blanket and think that the government is antagonizing 1.5 billion Muslims around the world in order to have a relationship with an occupying entity with 6 million inhabitants. Nothing in the entire land of Palestine connects these people to this land; Religious myths do not create history or geography. If it wasn’t for the United Church of Canada, I would have suggested a new campaign under the headline, “Boycott Canada.” The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.