Why would he want to go take a tour Israel? [moderator edited]

Is he trying to get into the good books of the National Post (well known as Asper family owned and controlled who are very strong supporters of Israel - to improve media coverage?)

Why does he take a few hundred people over to Israel for a free trip with tax payer money?

Is this a campaign ploy to win some seats in Toronto?

Why would a Canadian government so strongly ally with another government for no reason at all, especially the one that breaks all the UN international laws?

It is so confusing to me, any polisci majors can explain?

Dude this isn't Reddit or YouTube, you bring too serious topics in here and they can ban you.

but then again you can always make a new account.... ahem....

Is he a Zionist? I don't know, I thought Zion was destroyed.

hahah i wont get banned for this.

i know we cant have debates like on youtube, but there are still probably a lot of people who are extremely well read and know extensive amounts of history and political theories around these parts..

Originally Posted by andrew22

but there are still probably a lot of people who are extremely well read and know extensive amounts of history and political theories around these parts..

If you self admittedly don't know much about the history and political situation of Israel and the middle east then why do you without hesitation say:

"Why would he want to go take a tour of all the land Israel has stolen and not mourn but celebrate it?"

Canada in the past has been fairly pro-Israel. It was essentially created by the United Nations, It has the highest standard of living in the area, it has a democratic government, and its heavily supported by the United States (our biggest ally). It would be pretty dumb politically to openly declare anything negative against Israel.

Israel is also a two sided story. Israel, to my knowledge, has not started any major wars or battles but they have decisively finished them with more force than they probably needed.

Edit: Oops forgot about the Gaza War in which they were aggressors. Not a great moment for them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_a...ila_mas sacre

Originally Posted by yoni

If you self admittedly don't know much about the history and political situation of Israel and the middle east then why do you without hesitation say:

"Why would he want to go take a tour of all the land Israel has stolen and not mourn but celebrate it?"

well I mean I know about the violence and theft of the land and what the UN says about illegal settlements and about Oxfam boycotts and the various wars and the UK with their balfour declaration and etc and all that stuff that is pretty accepted in any mainstream.

I just really don't get what Canada has to do with it? Like why bother? Why go to that country? It isn't exactly common for our PMs to make speeches in their parliament. Isn't it a waste of time? There's no politicians just going and making speeches in the Indian parliament orthe Thai parliament, right?

Because for some reason a modern politician can't just be for fiscal conservatism if he wants to get elected, he has to couple it with zany support for foreign entanglements.
Everyone in politics is corrupt, a man who doesn't make any backroom deals has no chance to outspend someone with half a dozen lobbies funding his campaign, and hence you will never even hear his name.

"Harper is the United States' puppet", essentially. Conservatives support Israel and 'zionism' in a convoluted way that goes back to Christian values related to ensuring the book of revelations comes to pass or something. Don't care much for the middle east conflict, to be honest, both sides have childish black and white notions about the conflict and what should be done.

harpers a family man

there you go Yoni. I'm literally not allowed to say what you didn't like me saying.

Wow andrew22, you obviously don't know sh*t about the history of the region or have any understanding of legal principles. First, please name for me the specific international laws that Israel is violating and I'll tell you why you're wrong for each one. It's so interesting to me that some leftist people, as well as anti-zionists (many of whom are anti-semites) will vehemently state "INTERNATIONAL LAWS CLEARLY SAYS THAT ISRAEL.....blah blah blah" when in fact international law is essentially not clear on anything and is literally a manifestation of liberal academics, but the more important point is that international "law" are rarely binding laws: the majority of the documents produced by the General Assembly and the International Criminal Court are recommendation, nothing more. The actual law that you should be talking about is the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine--just google and look up the maps!) where what we refer today as Israel and the West Bank was under the control of the British and was created as a Jewish state, and then when the British left and the surrounding Arab countries invaded, the Jews pushed the Jordanian and Iraqi armies back far enough to the armistice line (which today is the "border" b/w Israel and the west bank....which is not really a border because according to the only clear INTERNATIONAL LAW, the border of Israel extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the border with Jordan). Also, people need to realize that Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel first and then Israel had no choice but to defend its citizens (of course, if the U.S. had even one rocket fired into the mainland, there would be immediate and devastating retaliation), and then Hamas puts their civilians on the roofs of houses/schools/mosques (which is where they store weapons) so that civilians are killed so that the world has an excuse to claim that Israel should not defend itself-this is in response to the misguided statement made by qwerty91.
Note to the moderators of this forum: based on previous posts on this thread, if you want me to redact certain portions of this post please let me know and I will do so, or only delete certain parts (not the whole thing) because I know this is a contentious issue,but it is one that is relevant to our student body considering that Israel apartheid week happened last week.

Man, fuck this political crap. Threads like this do nothing but get some folks really pissed and have them going back and forth at each other. I don't even know why people are allowed to post these kind of threads...unless it's all about free speech and all of that jazz.

This shit doesn't belong on MI or on the site of any public institution, LET ALONE a university that is extremely diverse.

Phoneup, if you say that this topic of discussion doesn't belong on the site of any public institution, I am curious as to whether you think any group on campus (regardless of any purported political positions the club itself may or may not hold) should have the freedom to hold events like Israel apartheid week, which are generally speaking much more anti-Israel than they are pro-Palestine? Events and groups like these operate under the guise of academic freedom, when in fact they typically engender a tone of hatred towards Israel. Let me tell you though, the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life is the group "Gays for Palestine" and they condemn Israel when the reality is that if they engaged in homosexual behaviour in the West Bank or many Arab countries they would be stoned to death, and conversely, in Israel, they would be free to engage in homosexual behaviour-Tel Aviv (a major metropolis in Israel) has one of the largest gay pride parades in the world.....hmmm...I can't seem to remember the last time a gay pride parade happened in any Arab countries or a majority Palestinian city in the West Bank), can you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_EP0rhfPfs This is Israel apartheid week at york U. At 2:00, they start shouting Intifada, which is a call for force and resistance against Israel in order to allow Palestinians to take back all of Israel which they claim is their land and not the land of the Jews (of course we'd have to go through a sh*tload of history beyond what I mentioned previously to properly analyze this). The last two intifadas resulted in many Palestinians blowing themselves up with the goal of becoming martyrs and killing as many Israeli's as possible in the process, and clearly the example in the video is more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian or pro-peace for that matter. Of course, we can have more academic type of discussions about this issue which I love doing, but in many cases unfortunately, groups of people resort to narrow mindedness which ultimately turns out to be unproductive.