Recognizing Truth and Moral Justice

"We need to rediscover Burkean conservatism [valuing 'social order', custom and religious traditions] because the emerging debates on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds. Current challenges in dealing with terrorism and its sponsors, as well as the emerging debate on the goals of the U.S. as the sole superpower, will be well served by conservative insights on preserving historic values and moral insights on right and wrong."
"[The] modern left [adopted a position of] moral neutrality -- [while the Conservatives understand] the notion that moral rules form a chain of right and duty, and that politics is a moral affair."
"We understand that the great geopolitical battles against modern tyrants and threats are battles over values."
"Conservatives must take the moral stand, with our allies, in favour of the fundamental values of our society, including democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom."
Stephen Harper, 2003, leader of the Canadian Alliance party

"History teaches us that anti-Semitism is a tenacious and particularly dangerous form of hatred. And recent events are demonstrating that this hatred is now in resurgence throughout the world."
"I knew I was standing in a place [Babi Yar, Ukraine; Nazi slaughter of Jews] where evil -- evil at its most cruel, obscene, and grotesque -- had been unleashed."
"Yet in contemporary debates that influence the fate of the Jewish homeland, unfortunately, there are those who reject the language of good and evil. They say that the situation is not black and white, that we mustn't choose sides."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, November 2010

After a mass execution of Jews in the ravine, a German policeman shoots a Jewish women who remains alive and is trying to stand up .

"Those who often begin by hating the Jews, history shows us, end up hating anyone who is not them."
"Those forces, which have threatened the state of Israel every single day of its existence and which, as 9/11 graphically showed us today, threaten all of us."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, addressing the Knesset, Israel, 2014, speaking of the "mutation of the old disease of anti-Semitism"

This is a man of uncommon steadfastness and moral courage. It is not easy for a statesman, a head of government, to embark on a path that differentiates him from that path taken by his immediate predecessors, one that distinguishes him in his frank assessment of the morality and principles of a just world order, from the expressions chosen by his international colleagues.

From the very first time Mr.Harper's attention was thrust on the world scene as Canada's prime minister, he made it abundantly clear that he was more than capable of reading history, observing the currents of the day and reaching his own conclusions. His foreign policy stance was firmly in support of Israel, a fellow democracy delicately entrenched in a region hostile to its presence as an alien interloper, not a people returning to their roots to find haven.

The Prime Minister's firm support of Israel, even now, as its military entered Gaza to respond to its terrorist administration's constant attacks on its towns and villages, leading to the deaths of close to two thousand Palestinians is a stand-alone act. Where faint encouragement is permitted Israel on the international scene to respond to attacks, but firm denunciations accrue when it does.

The United Nations Works and Relief Agency has accused Israel of the commission of a "serious violation" of international law when civilians met death resulting from Israeli shelling of a UN designated building used to shelter Palestinians. All very well for the UN to shelter helpless civilians declaring the building interiors safe, but overlooking the need to persuade Hamas not to launch missiles at Israel from the immediate exterior of those buildings.

The Israel Defence Forces while in the Gaza Strip unearthed a Hamas manual on "Urban Warfare" belonging to the Shuja'iya Brigade of Hamas's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, which explains how the civilian population of Gaza is to be used against IDF forces, with the additional revelation that Hamas is aware of the Israeli military's commitment to minimizing harm to Palestinian civilians.

Where is the UN outrage over this? Instead, when rockets are discovered to have been stored in UN schools, the UN 'returns' them to the 'authorities' in Gaza. Israel keeps informing the world at large, let alone the United Nations, that it is responding to rocket fire from Gaza which Hamas launches from crowded civilian sites, from parking lots, from roofs, within and among mosques, schools, hospitals, apartments, hotels.

A reporter from NDTV, Indian television, shot a video from Gaza on August 4, demonstrating Hamas operatives setting up a rocket to be launched, from within a crowded city venue, working under a tent for privacy. That video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_cAFbHZNcU&feature=youtu.be; it is titled Exclusive Report From Gaza, and it is extremely revelatory.

Mr. Harper knows whom to hold responsible for the deaths of a large number of Palestinian civilians and it is not the state of Israel nor the IDF, but rather, Hamas. In attempting to explain Mr. Harper's stand with Israel critics claim domestic politics is at the heart of the matter; hoping to raise money from Jews in Canada for the Conservative Party, and making certain they will vote for him.

If that had motivated him he would instead have cultivated the biases of the ten-times larger Muslim-Canadian demographic.

His reading of history, past and current, his visits to places where history documents the worst atrocities committed against any ethnic group in the world, all have served to advise Mr. Harper. But it was also his parents' values, his personal faith and his indomitable need to recognize the vast chasm between good and evil; to ally with the former and shun the latter that has resulted in his current position with respect to Israel and Ukraine.