Justin Trudeau’s belated and shameful volte face on Gaza

Andrew Mitrovica

Some of Israel’s most prominent enablers now claim to abhor the scope of Israel’s wanton killing of Palestinians with a barrage of bullets, bombs, and rampaging bulldozers.

Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak joined France and Germany in calling for a “sustainable ceasefire” to stop the killing.

Like his European allies, Sunak said that “too many civilian lives have been lost”.

Sunak’s belated admonition invites several questions: When did he realise that “too many [Palestinian] lives have been lost”? What was the number of dead Palestinians that tipped into “too many”? Why didn’t 5,000, 10,000 or 15,000 dead Palestinians constitute “too many”?

It is touching, isn’t it, to watch Sunak and craven company find, surprisingly, a moral compass when, all along, we warned them that this is what was going to happen.

We told them that their fulsome embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was bound to mean the litany of horrors the world has witnessed in the shattered remains of Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

But Sunak and craven company did not listen. They ignored us. So, they backed, once again, Netanyahu’s permanent licence to kill as many Palestinians as he wants to, for as long as he wants to.

Netanyahu has obliged them. Happily. Eagerly. Indiscriminately. Almost 20,000 Palestinians have been killed – mostly children and women. Thousands of others are buried beneath the rubble. Thousands more have been maimed in body, mind, and perhaps their souls.

Netanyahu, true to his foul nature, has dismissed every one of those dead and damaged human beings, including boys and girls, as “collateral damage”.

Apparently, Netanyahu killed too many Palestinians, too quickly for London’s, Berlin’s, and Paris’s liking. Hence, the qualified volte-face.

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has finally had a “humanitarian” epiphany too.

Not too long ago, Trudeau also told Netanyahu that he could, in effect, do whatever he wanted to do in Gaza and the West Bank since Israel had the right to defend itself.

The silly, verging-on-juvenile hubris. As if Netanyahu needed Trudeau’s blessing to do what he has done in Gaza and the West Bank.

Anyway, several weeks later, like Sunak et al, Trudeau appears to be having second thoughts. Today, he agrees that Israel may have gone too far, too quickly, in Gaza and the West Bank.

Trudeau had Canada’s UN ambassador, Bob Rae, announce the sudden change of strategic heart. Rae told the General Assembly last week that Canada supported a ceasefire.