Canada as a Fair and Enlightened Society
Canada enjoys a reputation as a special place - a place where human rights and dignity are guaranteed, where the rules of liberal democracy are respected, where diversity among peoples is celebrated. But this reputation represents, at best, a half-truth.
A careful reading of history shows that Canada was founded on a series of bargains with Aboriginal peoples - bargains this country has never fully honoured. Treaties between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal governments were agreements to share the land. They were replaced by policies intended to
...remove Aboriginal people from their homelands.
...suppress Aboriginal nations and their governments.
...undermine Aboriginal cultures.
...stifle Aboriginal identity.
http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/inac-ainc/highlights_report_royal-e/lk_e.html
I’ve excerpted from the URL provided as an introduction to help in understanding how different and yet in some instances how similar Canadian government “Treaties” with the aboriginal peoples of Canada is to U.N. resolution 181.
“On 29 November 1947 the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, a plan to resolve Arab-Israeli conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine, was approved by the United Nations General Assembly, at the UN World Headquarters in New York. The plan partitioned the territory of Western Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with the Greater Jerusalem area. Encompassing Bethlehem, coming under international control. The failure of the British government and the United Nations to implement this plan and its rejection by first the Palestinian Arabs then Israel resulted in various wars, starting with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.”
When I asked the question regarding how Canadians would feel if the United Nations waltzed in and declared some part of Canada a homeland for someone else, the response from Colpy was that we did that with the natives in Canada, or as he referred to them a “special interest group”.
How one can equate the parceling of land by the British government under the BNA and a written (although never completely honored) agreement to protect the interests of the aboriginal people of this country…thereby “granting” land to native inhabitants who lived here long before Europeans arrived….with carving up Palestine to appease the Israeli people takes a very special kind of rose colored glasses.
Similarities are of course that the Canadian government has a history of ignoring breaking and denying these treaties with native Canadians and Israel ignored the geographical limits imposed by the British expanding Israeli holdings well beyond what had been declared and completely disenfranchising the Palestinian people who remained in the area.
Colpy says “Well shure we’d have no problem if the UN came in here and took half of Canada, and gave it to Jamacia or Nigeria or anyone else cause after all we done gived them Indians some of our land (those special interest groups)…”
This is what passes for considered opinion and balanced assessment in the mind of at least one contributor and I’d hazard to say a great many more.
“On November 29, the UN General Assembly voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions in favor of the Partition Plan, while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.”
“The Arab leadership (in and out of Palestine) opposed the plan, arguing that it violated the rights of the majority of the people in Palestine, which at the time was 67% non-Jewish (1,237,000) and 33% Jewish (608,000). Arab leaders also argued a large number of Arabs would be trapped in the Jewish State as a minority. While some Arab leaders opposed the right of the Jews for self-determination in the region, others criticised the amount and quality of land given to Israel.”
In essence, regardless of the fact recognized by both Jewish and Arab leaders that this partitioning could only lead to conflict, Britain pursued its course of action and the world has had to live with the results since the inception of the state of Israel.
That there have been decades of conflict as the result of this action by the UN and the behaviour of an Israel with the United States in its back pocket so to speak, should surprise no one.
It also isn’t much of a surprise if you’d care to look up which nations opposed resolution 181 and use that as an overlay on the current geopolitical maelstrom.
Canadians are blaming the victims for standing up for themselves and choosing to embrace the same red-neck right-wing “might-is-right” position as the neocons of the current American administration.
There is of course no reasoning with these folk; they are generally dyed-in-the-wool “believers” who have elected to ignore the injustices and illegalities that have on various occasions threatened to bring much wider violence to the world.
Their language begins with … “Oh yer one of them lefties who think….” And any opinion whether substantiated with fact or not, that challenges their view is robustly denigrated and dismissed.
One can’t really expect to have a discussion with people who are entrenched in protecting a “status quo” that is both ill informed and prejudiced from the onset.
I’m through attempting to speak to these folk and would simply like to thank them for pointing out why so many people of this planet suffer while those who could do something to change that situation choose not to.
