National Affairs
An outrageously fanciful notion
Claire Hoy

The ill-fated former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain remains history's poster boy illustrating

the dangers of dancing with the devil. It was Chamberlain, of course, arriving back in London after a cordial visit in Germany with a chap named Adolf Hitler, who waved around a document the two men had signed and declared "peace in our time."

Sure, people had said some pretty nasty things about Hitler but Chamberlain found that he was a real gentlemen. Why he even held his coat for him and helped him put it on.

The rest, as they say, is history. Which brings us, alas, to the current wearer of Chamberlain's shameful mantel, Toronto Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, who, during a tour of war-ravaged southern Lebanon along with NDP MP Peggy Nash and Bloc Quebecois MP Maria Mourani not only accused Israel of "state terrorism" and "criminal" actions for defending itself against Hezbollah terrorists, but went on to say that the Canadian government should sit down with Hezbollah to help negotiate a lasting peace. Where to begin?

For one thing, Canada is hardly in a position to sit down with anybody in that conflict and bring about a lasting peace. It might be ego-building to believe that our country is in a position to resolve such conflicts, but it' s just so outrageously fanciful one wonders what world Wrzesnewskyj actually lives in.

Then there's the larger issue, the idea of believing that hate-inspired, mad-dog terrorist killers could possibly be trusted to cut a deal with anybody, let alone the representatives of a low-level power like Canada. According to Wrzesnewskyj, however, despite the fact that Hezbollah is on Canada's terrorist list where it was put there by the former Liberal government, and he says it must remain "we can't shackle ourselves by saying, 'We're not going to talk.' We must talk."

It gets worse. Not only "must" we talk with Hezbollah, he says, but we "must" talk with all the groups on our terrorist list. Talk about what, pray tell?

These are not the sorts of groups one can sit down with and expect an honest give-and-take, any more than Hitler was, regardless of how civilized Chamberlain thought he was at the time.

These are groups who hate Jews and hate the West, which includes Canada and are simply not interested in anything short of the complete destruction of our way of life.

Mind you all three opposition MPs were essentially in the same camp when it came to assessing the blame for the latest conflict: it's Israel's fault, don't you know?

And, according to Nash, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's support for Israel which apparently is supposed to sit idly by while Hezbollah continues to lob missiles at its' citizens is "just so far out of whack with reality." Which reality is that, one wonders: the reality that our government, given the choice of supporting the only democratic country in the region or of supporting terrorists armed by Iran and Syria, had the gall to come down on the side of Israel?

As for Mourani, who is of Lebanese descent, shed called Canada's response to the conflict "shameful..." The only shameful thing is for political leaders such as her siding with terrorists over a democracy.

Certainly many innocent Lebanese citizens suffered horribly in this war as did many (although not as many) Israeli citizens. But it was Lebanon, after all, which harbors these terrorists, which even named some of their elected representatives into their federal cabinet, and which in many respects has reaped what it helped sow.

As for Harper's response, well, even the Toronto Star hardly a friend of the Conservatives praised him for having struck "a sensibly balanced stance" by boosting Ottawa's aid to Lebanon to $30 million and delivering most of it immediately, "while declining to commit warships and troops to police a ceasefire that others are better-placed to enforce."

Exactly. On pure humanitarian grounds, strictly on the basis of urgent need, it is completely fitting to dispatch immediate aid to that war-torn country. And, as the Star points out, Harper's recognition of this "should galvanize other donors at a pledging conference next week in Stockholm." As for helping out militarily in the planned United Nations peacekeeping force, well, we're already rather busy in Afghanistan.

Finally, this mythical notion that Canada is seen by terrorist groups around the world as an "honest broker," able to negotiate disagreements between themselves and western countries is completely nuts.

Ask yourselves this: if the terrorists see us as neutral, why was Canada one of five countries listed as targets by al-Queda? Peace in our time, indeed.