Bye Bye Rob Ford, Hello Karen Stintz

There is the sound of champagne corks being popped and cheers in the streets. Everyone smiles at each other and winks, knowing that soon it will all be over. The hated burgermeister is falling and no one, except perhaps his family, will be sad to see him go. And he has been felled by none other than that champion of democracy, Toronto Police Chief William Blair.

Oh, wait a second. Bill Blair? The same Bill Blair who led the cops in their assault on G20 protesters a couple of years ago? The same Bill Blair who wheeled out props – a la the “Miami model” of protest disruption - and used “kettling” to corral not only peaceful demonstrators but unlucky passersby for hours without food or water? The same Bill Blair whose cops shot a man nine times on a streetcar before tasering him?

Something is rotten in Denmark.

I have watched the left go absolutely bananas with delight in the past week as the official right wing in Canada has imploded. Well, imploded is too strong a word, the game is hardly over for Harper as of this morning. And I’ve also been happy to see the vultures turn on each other. I mean, these guys are scumbags, lets face it. But it has been with growing trepidation.

At the federal level, Stephen Harper’s troubles have nothing to do with his murder of thousands of Afghans in support of NATO’s attempt to subdue that country. It has nothing to do with his shutdown of the national daycare plan that Paul Martin put in place to try and save his own skin, or his scuppering of the deal he made with first nations people. Nor does it have anything to do with his policy record of the past decade – his cuts to cultural funding, his government’s attacks on funding for international women’s organizations that support choice on abortion or domestic religious groups like KAIROS that support Palestinian rights. It has nothing to do with his unbridled support for big oil and their enthusiastic destruction of the environment of Alberta and, indeed, the whole world with the tar sands. Nothing to do with his support for fracking to recover natural gas. The list goes on as to the odious reasons why Harper should be unceremoniously turfed from office.

Not one of those reasons has come up. And the same can be said for Rob Ford. Ford privatized west end garbage collection, leading to a degradation in working conditions for sanitation workers, and worse service. He tried to close libraries and de-fund childcare subsidies for single parents and poor families. He has attacked cyclists and environmentalists. He shut down the much needed transit plan for the city to wage an ideological fight for subways vs LRTs.

No, the reason why Harper is in trouble is a stupid, piddling, little scandal – a couple of his senators took extra expenses – a time honoured tradition in Canada’s undemocratic chamber of “sober second thought” (oh, the delicious irony of that title as I watched Duffy roast Harper last week). His office then tried to head off the scandal by covering the expenses of Mike Duffy. Aboriginal people are living in conditions worse than the developing world on many reserves and working class people can’t afford daycare – and I care that Duffy took an extra $100K?

Sure, it is Harper’s famous arrogance and micromanagement that is bringing him down. And if he goes the way of Brian Mulroney 20 years ago I won’t shed a tear. But we all ought to remember how that celebration ended. The Tory party was destroyed, not by the left, but because it was so thoroughly rotten and hated by both left and right (the right because Mulroney supported concessions to Quebec viz Meech Lake Constitutional Accord). It gave the Liberals 4 terms in office under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. And it gave Canada the harshest austerity regime in the western world under Paul Martin. The fact that it was not a shift to the left was also expressed in the fact that out of the ashes of the Tories arose an even more right wing party, Reform – whose ultimate victory was that they got to remove the words “progressive” from the “Progressive Conservative Party of Canada” (confirming that they are, in fact, against any progress). In Ontario the NDP was decimated for a generation (by their own right wing policies, it should be said) and replaced by the rabidly right wing Tories under Mike Harris.

Not that the present round of defenestrations will necessarily end the same way. But people need to sober up and take a look at who is putting in the knife and why. That will tell us a bit about why it is happening and why now.

In Toronto the city elite have always hated Rob Ford. Their horse was George Smitherman – a smooth, connected lawyer with right wing politics and a progressive gloss because he’s openly gay. He would have had an easier chance of maintaining consensus while implementing austerity. Ford is a bumbling, personally troubled, brash populist with few political skills beyond brawling and personal insults. His agenda is no different than Smitherman, except in the details (in particular his weird opposition to a transit plan that was supported by the Chamber of Commerce, because gridlock is a big, costly headache for Ontario capitalists). At first, after the election, the city elite reached out to Rob Ford and tried to work with him. Some media supported him, just as they had supported Mike Harris years earlier because sometimes a right wing populist can break the logjam of “business as usual” to put things on the “right track” by harnessing popular anger in a pro-capitalist direction.

But Ford was too erratic, too self-serving, too unable to build a coherent team with a coherent agenda to get through what is needed from the point of view of Toronto’s corporate elite. And they hate him because he’s a trashy, nouveau riche, petty bourgeois piss-tank who won’t play ball the way they want him to. He gets drunk in public and is rude to people. He hangs out with trash and thugs. He behaves in ways that remind them too much of the dirty unwashed masses. That’s why the focus of attacks on Rob Ford has almost always revolved around his personal behavior. Does anybody think that it’s an accident that the police released a photo of Rob Ford taking a piss in a public park? Jesus, I’ve taken a piss behind buildings more than once – because there’s no freaking public washrooms anywhere in the city. Or, horror of horror, Ford has to sneak around to buy drugs? Um, I don’t know if any of you have ever smoked pot but you don’t buy it at the corner store either (and for all we know it could have been pot that Lisi was dropping in Ford’s car – not that I particularly care). Is Rob Ford a hypocrite on these things? Would he attack drug users and homeless people who are forced to piss behind buildings? Of course he would but just because he’s an asshole doesn’t mean I have to be. Build more public washrooms for crying out loud. Decriminalize drug use.

It’s so blindingly obvious I can’t believe the left doesn’t see this. When I talk to working class people who aren’t leftists it’s obvious to them. They know that Rob Ford is being attacked because he looks and sounds like them – he has family problems and swears and drives an SUV and he drinks too much and has trouble keeping it together. Surprise, surprise, so do most working class people (not exactly that constellation of challenges but similar ones). That the left hops on board this attack uncritically and says, frankly, the snobbiest, most elitist crap in attacking Rob Ford does the left no favours. The right wing will win on this terrain. I saw people laughing at Rob Ford yelling at reporters who were at his house and wouldn’t get off his property yesterday. I hate Rob Ford but I was sympathetic to him to be honest. The media are vultures and I’d have lost my shit if I were him too. I don’t find public dismemberment of anyone a pleasure to watch and while the left might think it’s fun because he’s so odious you ought to remember: this isn’t about you, it’s about the confidence of ordinary people to take control of their lives. Public humiliation of Rob Ford in this way isn’t going to raise their confidence in themselves. It’s going to further cement the idea that only rich, slick and connected operators – like Smitherman – are fit to run the city and the country. Notice the different coverage of Smitherman's family challenges about a month ago - his husband disappeared on some kind of binge, part of a long term problem apparently, and the police were called in - to Ford's troubles. Nobody laughed at Smitherman (nor should they, not for that). That’s why this idea that “Ford Nation” are stupid or brainwashed because they continue to support their man is so odious to me. On this one thing they are right – this is a concerted attempt to oust their man by city elites (though they are wrong that it has anything to do with the left).

Or Karen Stintz. Does anybody think that it’s an accident that Ford’s legal dossier was leaked now? Does anybody think that it’s odd that the police – on the basis of a newspaper report with no physical evidence – put their top investigators on the case to nail Ford? Since when have the police followed a politician to reveal his personal foibles or cared about political corruption? I mean, they released a report that doesn’t demonstrate any proof of illegal activity on the part of Ford. If they had any proof they would have arrested him. This is about destroying Rob Ford while there is still enough lead-time before the next municipal elections to rebuild the right wing on city council. This is about giving Karen Stints – who, coincidentally, announced her candidacy last week – a clear shot for the mayoralty. Stintz is also a Tory but one who knows how to work with city capitalists and who saved the transit plan from Rob Ford. And she doesn’t get drunk in public.

I would argue that a similar process is under way at the federal level. Not that there is a conspiracy (I do think that there’s a conspiracy to destroy Rob Ford, by the way) but rather a sense of malaise amongst the elite at the effectiveness of Stephen Harper. Let’s face it, Harper never really represented more than a fraction of Canadian capitalists. But he was the best alternative on offer after the meltdown of the Liberals because of corruption and infighting. But now the Liberals have recovered and Justin Trudeau is a rising star – while Harper’s star is on the wane. Everybody prefers consensus. This is true of workers as much as it is of capitalists. That’s always been the power of the Liberals – to implement the ruling class agenda through consensus, whenever possible, rather than conflict. That’s why they are Canada’s “natural governing party.” The Tories are the fallback position for Canada’s capitalists (and workers, traditionally). With a recovered Liberal Party and people getting tired of Harper’s open Machiavellianism and not-so-hidden right wing extremism, it looks like there might just be an opportunity to restore the historic coalition that the Liberals represented. Harper is now discovering just how shallow his support was in most of the country.

Will any of this benefit the left? Let's be frank, the union movement has done zero to resist austerity (outside of a few pockets of heroic, sectional struggles). Ford privatized garbage collection and there was not even an information picket. There were a few demonstrations against Ford on an anti-austerity platform and the strike by library workers – that was quickly settled, wisely, by Ford’s people before it could become a focal point. But that’s it. The Occupy movement was great - but it was small (compared to the tasks) and short-lived. It never generalized into a sustained movement.

Since the decline of the anti-war movement there has been almost zero public opposition to Harper’s agenda. And, of course, the ever-craven federal NDP under the leadership of ex-Liberal Tom Mulcair, is rushing to prove that they are the new Liberal Party of Canada. We’ll see how that goes for them. Even in Quebec, the PQ, which benefited from the brilliant student movement has managed to turn the debate away from austerity and towards attacking Muslims.

These are, in short, challenging times. And the over-the-top celebrations by the left at the predicaments of Ford and Harper is a sign of desperation. We’ll take any crumbs of hope that fall from the table. Sure, it’s true that splits in the ruling class can be to our benefit but it would be silly to think that the ruling class is split in Toronto. They are united in wanting Ford out – Blair is simply fronting for them. I expect that Ford will be getting some phone calls to offer him a cushy parachute if he jumps now along with a reprieve from criminal charges. The particular madness that is Alberta politics is, of course, always a problem for Canadian capitalists but when the Toronto Sun comes out for Harper’s neck don’t kid yourself that there isn’t a growing consensus at the national level.

So, the left shouldn’t pretend that this defenestration has anything to do with us or with workers or social programs or any of that good stuff. This is a night of the long knives, a ruling class drama that is entertaining, perhaps, but will do little to strengthen the ability of our side to take back that which was taken from us. And, in the case of Ford, the snobbery can actually damage our side’s confidence.

The Fall Of The House Of Ford

Taking a moment to pray for peace

You gotta admit that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Rob Ford is a bully and a hypocrite - quick to condemn the perceived weakness of others, to pounce on the supposed privileges of unionized workers or the effete absurdity of riding a bicycle instead of driving an SUV in our congested city. And yet he is clearly a man with many personal flaws whose (unearned) privilege as the son of a successful businessman has not only shielded him but has allowed to rise above his ability to function. Were he not the same guy who wanted to cut daycare subsidies for single mothers and wanted to close libraries, I might have had some sympathy for him. But I don't.

Nonetheless, I have to say that I honestly don't care if Ford smokes crack or performs Satanic rituals in his basement. The more I hear people - especially media commentators - talk about his personal failings the more uneasy it makes me. Most of it, frankly, just smells like nothing so much as simply snobbery and elitism. Ditto the comments about the fact that Ford's support base hasn't wavered in the face of the scandal. The Fordites are stupid and dogmatic, a cult, etc etc etc. Funny thing, I had a conversation last week with a Ford voter in a local haunt. He also smelled the snobbery of the whole thing: "the media hate him because he's a regular guy and not a slick politician." I mean, that piece in the Globe & Mail about Doug Ford selling hash in high school? Really? It might dismay the city's elite, who will drink martinis and snort cocaine but who would never stoop to something so pedestrian as hash or, god forbid selling it (it's one thing to buy the stuff, but dealers are so... so... gauche). But for most of us we probably knew people in high school who sold grass or hash or LSD, etc. It was like a higher paying, higher risk part-time job, more fun than working for McDonald's but with higher potential consequences. Very few high school dealers went on to become Scarface. If you don't like teenagers furtively selling dime bags and doobies in the school smoking area, it's pretty simple really - decriminalize it. They some big corporation can sell it and hire the former teenagers for half the pay and put them in stupid uniforms.

But I digress.

Personal attacks & mockery make Ford's base support him more

Normally, I'd say that the decimation of a (minor) right wing dynasty would be something to relish, particularly if the possibility existed to discredit the right wing more broadly. But this stuff is so apolitical that it will do nothing to advance an anti-austerity agenda, or more progressive politics in the areas of equal rights for LGBT, women, minorities, etc. The clamouring for Ford's noggin is not about creating a greener, more equal Toronto. It is a clamouring for a more effective, slicker, right wing dirtbag. As Rosie DiManno put it recently in The Star, "this is not about left or right." And that's exactly the problem. I say that if we have to have a right wing, pro-austerity, anti-equality mayor, I want an incompetent one.

The one bright light in this whole fiasco - I mean besides the sort of sports fan, voyeuristic pleasure one gets from watching a mock-Shakespearean tragicomedy unfold - is the way that it has expanded with the police drug raids to implicate Ford in a broader criminal conspiracy. Again, Rosie DiManno put it succinctly when she wrote:

"Yet this is no longer about the contents of a video that’s been seen only by three journalists. Toronto’s mayor, however peripherally, remains a character in a criminal tableau that now encompasses a sophisticated network of alleged drug trafficking, gun-running, robberies, a Dixon-turf street gang and attempted murders, and the mysterious plunge from a Fort McMurray apartment where police made an arrest three weeks ago linked to the alleged Ford crack video."

I have no doubt that the elite are only too happy to use drugs - likely something "higher class" than crack - while condemning dealers and low end users. If this at least exposes some of that hypocrisy - and the rumour is that the late Anthony Smith, of the infamous photograph, was a "dealer to the stars", then it will have been worth something. However, one of the many unfortunate sides of all this - the moral panic from the chattering classes about drug use, the snobbery, etc - is that Ford's political demise should have and could have been precipitated on a political, left wing basis if any of the leaderships of the official left or the trade union movement had ever really stood up to Ford and mobilized in a serious way to defeat him. Ford was always a shell and it was only the left's fear of his supposed invincibility that made him so. Instead of celebrating the defeat of an austerity warrior all we get is a soap opera spectacle.

Mayor Ford Is Mad. Mean Mad. And, Oh Yeah, A Racist.

I'm mad, really mad!

Mayor Ford wants to clarify his comments from the other day, following the tragic shooting in Scarborough. Here's what he said at the time:

Asked how he planned to force gangsters out of Toronto, Mr. Ford said: “I don’t know and that’s what I’m going to sit down with the prime minister and find out: how our immigration laws work. Obviously I have an idea. But whatever I can do to get them out of the city I’m going to, regardless of whether they have family or friends, I don’t want these people, if they’re convicted of a gun crime, to have anything to do with the City of Toronto.”

But, we got it all wrong see. He's not anti-immigrant. He's just mad. Darn mad. Mean mad. Muley mean mad, in fact. And he's not gonna take it any more. In fact, he's so made that when he tried to explain what he really meant, he didn't make a damn bit of sense.

Maybe I’m not an expert on, you know, the ministries, but I’m saying that if it’s foreign affairs or immigration and citizenship, I want to talk to the PMO to find out if we can – and maybe we can’t. But I’m just trying to clarify that if you’re caught with a gun and convicted of a gun crime, I do not want you living in this city any more. To find out that information you have to go through the PMO, and that’s what I’m doing. So, I’m not an expert in this but I’m trying to resolve the issue that’s at hand.

I'm open to all translations of this backpeddling, mealy-mouthed gobbledygook. However, what it sounds like to me is the following: "What I really think is that immigrants are responsible for gun crime but I can't say it so I'm going to try and say it without saying so that my supporters know that I agree with them that it's the immigrants but people who aren't my supporters - like those jerks at the Toronto Star - can't say that I'm saying what I'm really saying, which is that it's the immigrants."

What he ought to mention is that he voted against multiple gang prevention initiatives. He'd rather stir up racism and fill up the jails with alienated, poverty-stricken youth than deal with the real source of the problem. As city councillor Adam Vaughn notes, that just won't do:

“If all we’re going to talk about is more jails, and building more jails, and not better housing, and building better housing,” Vaughan said. “The cutting has got to stop, because the cutting is contributing to the problem.”

Ford can spin his racism any way he likes and he can try the "I'm just too stupid to really understand the meaning of what I'm saying" escape route. But he stands exposed - again - for what he is: a small-minded bigot.



Toronto Mayor Ford clarifies his comments on gun criminals and immigration - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Star Calls For G20 Inquiry While City Council Congrats Cops

The call for an independent inquiry into the G20 debacle continues to gather momentum with the Toronto Star editorial board coming out today with a statement reiterating the call and stating that while the about-face by the Toronto Police Services Board is welcome it simply isn't enough.

"However, the proposed review of Toronto police actions is still insufficient in scope to get to the bottom of what happened in our city on the G20 weekend. The decision-makers included not just the Toronto police but also their counterparts from the OPP and RCMP and politicians in all three levels of government.
"Collectively, they turned our city into an armed camp with empty streets, secretly invoked special police powers, allowed a few hooligans to run amok burning police cruisers and smashing store windows, and then arrested and incarcerated more than a thousand people, the vast majority of them guilty of no crime. Businesses in the downtown area suffered a big drop in sales. Instead of showcasing the city, the event produced damaging images, broadcast around the world. What is needed is a full public inquiry, called by either the province or Ottawa."

The Federal NDP has also called for the Orwellian-sounding Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to be convened to implement an immediate inquiry. As a result of the request the Committee must be convened within five days.

“The Conservatives spent close to a billion dollars on security but are refusing to be held publicly accountable for all that went wrong,” said [NDP Public Safety Critic Don] Davies. “They said the massive security force would prevent violence – it did not. They said that civil liberties would be protected – they were not.”

This is a welcome change from the sycophantic cop-worship by Toronto's city council, including the so-called left, who voted unanimously to commend the outstanding work by the cops. What a bunch of knobs - and not just ultra-right wingnut Rob Ford, who thought that the police were "too nice."

A Nematode

This is the same guy who got thrown out of a Leaf's game for picking a fight with another fan. He's lucky it wasn't during the G20 or the cops would have locked him up for 17 hours and strip-searched him. His other odious, bigoted and racist behaviour and utterances demonstrate that he is really too stupid to take seriously - if only he weren't a mayoral candidate. I tell you if that nematode is elected mayor I will strongly consider signing up to join the Black Bloc.

Mammoliti Loses His Shit
Ford's usual pro-cop drool-a-thon was only matched by the frothful meanderings of his arch-rival in stupidity and politics, Georgio Mammoliti, who had to be calmed down by the Council Speaker, Sandra Bussin. Mammoliti responded, Strangelove-like, by shouting at her "you should be on trial for your behaviour right now."

Israeli Apartheid, Gay Pride & Craven Journalism

There's no doubt that Palestinians have gotten the shaft the entire world over. Their suffering at the hands of Israeli colonialism and its knock-on effects has been ignored, denied, facilitated and funded to the tune of billions of dollars.

In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba ("the Disaster"), as the founding of Israel is called by Palestinians, nobody was interested in how the Palestinians were made to suffer. To utter this truth in 1948, with the Holocaust so close at hand, was politically impossible in the West. The West, after all, had to take collective responsibility for the suffering and horror faced by Jews in Nazi Germany. They closed their doors to them. They closed their eyes to it. They refused to take action to stop the systematic slaughter. There was no moral authority amongst European and North American governments to say anything because it would expose their own hypocrisy.

But more than that. As far back as Lord Balfour in Britain it was recognized that a European Jewish colony in the Middle East could play an important Spartan role as a client state. As Balfour described it, a Zionist state would be a loyal "Jewish Ulster" in reference to the similar role played historically by Protestants in Northern Ireland.

So the Palestinians were sacrificed in the interests of a multi-layered realpolitik in which they were merely obstacles to larger strategic and political goals.

Not much has changed really - except for the rather important sea change in popular consciousness. The Holocaust, horror that it was, is now mostly a historic memory and is less and less a lived one. The daily misery that is the plight of Palestinians is here and now. The reference to a directly remembered event as justification for every crime and atrocity committed no longer functions in the same way that it once did for Israel's leaders. Even at the level of the elites ruling class commentators like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of Israel. To be clear, they aren't so much concerned about the plight of the Palestinians as they are at the perception that with the rise of modern Arab regimes, the Israeli watchdog is becoming a liability to American interests in the region.

However, it is also clear that this is a contradictory and fraught process. More and more people may be skeptical of Israel's right to commit genocide and nearly countless war crimes in the name of past oppression. But the media and most of the establishment are still largely and fulsomely supportive of whatever the Israeli state does. And they condemn as beyond the pale, anti-Semitic, etc. anyone who questions this. And, of course, backing them up are the large institutions that politically dominate the Jewish community, collectively known as the Jewish Lobby. Their power to determine policy has been over-state for certain - Israel is supported because Israel is useful to western interests full-stop - but it would be wrong to think that they don't have sway.

All this was a rather long way of saying that our side - the side of Palestinian liberation - is gaining ground in a difficult but inexorable way. Every time Israel commits another war crime it is exposed. Every time Israel grants a concession it is also exposed for the repressive and genocidal apparatus that it still maintains. That's why the massacre on the Mavi Marmara of Turkish nationals participating in a humanitarian mission exploded in Israel's face the way that it did. The groundwork had already been laid by years of dedicated campaigning. And it's also why the petty concessions that Israel is offering up viz the siege of Gaza - without actually lifting a siege widely recognized as illegal - is also generating condemnation. Like the South African Apartheid regime, Israel is in a losing game against the forces of historical progress. The ethno-religious fundamentalism that underpins its raison d'etre are an anachronism that lacks any moral foundation.

The question then, to my mind, is not whether Israeli Apartheid is finished - I believe that we are seeing the beginning of the beginning of the end. It is a question of what methods will be used to sustain the unsustainable. They are, of course, different in different places but here in Toronto we have recently seen a battle fought and won by the pro-Palestinian side.

Recently the Pride Committee of Toronto, dominated by conservative, gay, white men (including the loathsome Kyle Rae), came under pressure from the even more loathsome Harper Tories and then Toronto City Council to exclude from the Pride Parade the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. The Committee also voted to exclude the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" on the march.

Fortunately, the gay and lesbian activists and supporters behind QuAIA were persistent and mobilized a multiplatform campaign that ultimately forced Toronto Pride to rescind its ban (including its attempt to force all placards to be pre-vetted by an "ethics committee" - ugh). This happened on June 28 and QuAIA marched on Pride weekend. Yay for QuAIA!

Enter the craven and disposable Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn with his piece on this victory in today's Toronto Star, "Not All Apartheid Is Created Equal". He uses the usual Israeli hasbara method of the red herring. Why are QuAIA talking about Palestinian oppression under Israel and not about Palestinian oppression under Lebanese rule? he asks, suggesting that this is typical hypocrisy. After all, Arabs are given full rights in Israel but other Arab countries don't give Palestinians - their Arab brothers and sisters, no less - the same equal treatment. What's more, gays and lesbians are free in Israel whereas they are oppressed under Muslim/Arab regimes. Then he goes on to suggest that it would be only reasonable for QuAIA to march in the Santa Clause parade, St. Patrick's Day, etc.

Now, this is all utterly, utterly dishonest or the product of a profoundly stupid man. I'm sure Mr. Cohn would rather be dishonest than an imbecile, so we shall grant him intelligence. In which case he would know that the reason there are 600,000 Palestinians in Lebanon is because they were expelled from Israel either in 1948 or in 1967. And nobody has justified the treatment of Palestinians at the hands of Lebanon - or Egypt or Jordan for that matter. But as regards Lebanon, let's show some further honesty. There was a civil war in Lebanon back in the late 1970s in which Palestinians and the Lebanese left were on the brink of victory - which would have dismantled "Lebanese Apartheid" as he calls it.

What happened to that victory? Israel illegally invaded Lebanon, bombed civilian areas, slaughtered Palestinians - remember Sabra and Shatilla? - and occupied the country for 20 years to ensure that such a situation never re-emerged. How did Israel during that occupation bring equality to the Palestinians of Lebanon? The answer: they didn't. In fact, so horrible was the Israeli occupation, so racist against the Lebanese, that the Shi'ites of southern Lebanon who had originally supported Israel against the Sunni Palestinians (and largely Sunni Lebanese left) formed Hizbullah, which drove the Israelis out of their country. And Hizbullah is a vocal ally of the Palestinian struggle and an inspiration to the Muslim world, including Sunnis.

As for Israeli "liberalism" towards gays and lesbians, it has to be said that this is much overblown given the significant and growing power of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. This year's Pride Parade in Jerusalem was denied a permit for their planned route because it passed by a Yeshiva - a religious school. It was to end at parliament to commemorate and protest the anniversary of the shooting death of two youth at an LGBT event. What's more, the relatively liberal attitudes amongst a majority of the Israeli public are negated by the fact that close to a majority of the population under Israeli rule - which, after 43 years, must be said to include the Occupied Territories - are denied basic civil rights not to mention equal rights more generally. As QuAIA notes:

"Queer struggles against homophobia in Palestine will never flourish as long as Palestinians live under the intolerable conditions of occupation, violence, and Israeli state terror that disrupt and regulate their daily existence. Supporting queer rights in Palestine means fighting the apartheid system that denies self-determination to all Palestinians."

All this is to say that Martin Regg Cohn is exactly what he accuses others to be: a hypocrite. As the Chief of the Toronto Star's Middle East and Asia bureaus he certainly knows this history and the reality of the situation on the ground. He would know that the present Israeli Foreign Minister is an avid and outspoken supporter of ethnically cleansing Arabs from Israel and banning Arab political parties unless they support Israel's right to be an ethnically exclusive state (duh, that's what it means to call Israel "the Jewish State"). And he would know that such ethnic cleansing policies are being carried out both openly and by stealth in parts of the West Bank and, in particular, in Jerusalem as part of a program to "Judaize" the "eternal capital." The fact that he knows all this and can still find the stomach to write such a cringing, schoolyard article thumbing his nose at QuAIA's victory demonstrates two things: 1. Mr. Cohn is pathetic and 2. we are winning. As Ghandi once said: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."