Tuesday, September 28, 2010

What's Going On at the National Post?

Yesterday Jonathan Kay claimed Israel is torpedoing peace efforts by building stuff and that Mahmoud Abbas is--wait for it--"a legitimate peace partner." (If Abbas is a legitimate peace partner, then I, to quote Dorothy Parker, am Marie of Romania.) Today NP 'toonist Gary Clement adds insult to injury by equating Israel with Hamas, the reason being that they're both looking to thwart a genuine "peace" parlay (Israel by building stuff, Hamas by blowing stuff and people up.)

Also--Linda McQuaig? Really?

Update: Contentions' Jennifer Rubin says, "Even [the WaPo's] Richard Cohen has figured out that it is not Bibi’s intransigence but Obama’s incompetence that is at the root of the non-peace-talks impasse."

Richard Cohen has figured it out but Kay and Clement have both jumped down the rabbit hole? The world grows e'er wackier, my friends.

Update: Cohen must have had a sudden epiphany because a few short days ago he was sounding quite Abbasian, writes Melanie Phillips (who has absolutely no patience for the "settlements" blarney):
How can the settlement freeze be the make or break issue when, during the ten months that the freeze was on, Abbas refused to negotiate at all with Israel.
How can the settlements be the make or break issue when the Palestinian response to the forced removal of the settlers from Gaza was not peace but war?
 How can the disputed territories be the issue when Israel has twice now offered to give up more than 90 per cent of these territories to the Palestinians, only for them to refuse it twice point blank (and in 2000 start a campaign of terrorist murder against Israel instead?)

Why is Israel blamed for xenophobic and religious nationalism when Abbas has said repeatedly that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state? Why isn’t he blamed for xenophobia and religious fanaticism?

Why is Israel blamed for ignoring civil rights when the Palestinians -- along with the Observer, Roger Cohen and all who want every last settler out of the territories -- are campaigning for the ethnic cleansing of every single Jew from a future state of Palestine?

How can Salaam Fayad be ‘very serious’ about peace with Israel when he stormed out of a meeting with Israel’s deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon after Ayalon refused to approve a summary of the meeting which said ‘two states’ but did not include the words ‘two states for two peoples’ – a walk-out that tells us that even the supposedly super-moderate Fayad refuses to accept that the goal is the ‘two state solution’?
Oh, Melanie. There you go again deploying reason and cogency in the face of the irrational. By all means keep it up!

6 comments:

rick mcginnis said...

You made the common mistake of assuming that the Post was a "conservative" newspaper. Fair enough - a lot of people think Elizabeth Windsor is a "British" monarch.

David said...

thanks Rick. I was under the same delusion.

Bob Devine said...

As time goes on we will see more and more the gradual infusion of the CBC agenda into Canada`s almost "right" newspaper.

ironbridge said...

It took me an embarrassingly long period of time to figure this out, but I'd say Kay and others are prime indicators of the compromising conservative phenomenon. For decades we've been constantly reaching a compromise which inevitably and ultimately fulfills the liberal left project. It seems that much of the conservative movement in Canada exists merely to provide employment opportunities for pundits and politicians who can't get work with the establish progressive forces and would just like to slow things down a bit anyway. I am now at the point where this is no longer attractive or worth bothering with.
Ir our future is "progressive", then let's just get it over with; hopefully we can rebuild.

Revnant Dream said...

Personally I'm quite happy the freeze is off. I never thought their should be one. From my point of view their can only be a one State solution. Israel period. Do not Divide the Land!
After Israel it will be Spain.
Give nothing up. The so called peace process is a stage set for the elimination of Jews from their own Country of 4000 years.
Islamic imperialism never has & never will honor a treaty. It says so in the Koran.
JMO

Anonymous said...

Paul Godfrey is what happened to the National Post. It's the John Tory philosophy: better to be loser who is liked by all, than to stand for principles and be an effective conservative. Real, effective conservatives are icky.