Canada: Indigenous Residents and 'Settler Population'

"[This blockade and encampment represents a protest] to protect and save the land for our future generations who will have nowhere to live and prosper if the settler population continues to unlawfully encroach upon our lands."                   "The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council is opposed to this development and as the holder of collective rights for the Haudenosaunee people has not granted any type of consent which would allow this development to proceed."         "The Council holds rights collectively on behalf of the Haudenosaunee." Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council

"We are exposed to acts of domestic terrorism at least twice a year. Does anyone outside our rural county care?"                                                                         "Where else in Ontario do citizens endure almost constant blockades of their roads and the railways, and have tire fires lit across their main thoroughfare as well as the bypass to the town?"                                                                               Resident, Caledonia housing development, Ontario

"[I] encourage all sides and each and every person involved to carefully consider the actions they take and the impacts those actions will have on the situation." Mark Hill, elected chief, Six Nations

OPP closed the road as a group of protesters lit tires on Highway 6 near Argyle Street in Caledonia, Ont. Lisa Polewski / 900 CHML

"The OPP took a measured, professional and safe approach while assisting with enforcement of the court injunction."                                                                      "As a result of demonstrators that then went onto Argyle Street North in Caledonia, OPP have closed Argyle Street North between Highway 6 and Braemar Avenue for public safety and to assist in maintaining traffic flow in the area. The Highway 6 by-pass between Argyle Street North and Greens Road is also closed."                     OPP Constable Rodney LeClair

Caledonia, about 10 km distant from Hamilton, Ontario, is once again in the news. An old standoff that took place earlier when a land dispute between Indigenous people in southwestern Ontario and a land developer, led to blockades, encampments, and violent protests, finally settled when the province bought out the developer and handed the land in question to the tribal authorities. Bad feelings tend not to evaporate when people living in a suburban development are threatened, face violence and intimidation as was the case with the original Caledonia protest.

Caledonia is now on repeat. A new encampment named 1492 Land Back Lane in place since mid-July, established on McKenzie Meadows -- a site where a developer has plans to build 218 homes on 25 acres, where home buyers had expectations of moving into their new homes come the fall, is the focus of the occupation of parcels of land on the acreage, leading to a halt in construction, despite a court-ordered injunction that construction could proceed.

The 2006 standoff between earlier developers and the Six Nations of the Grand River ignited protests, saw tire-burning and residents forced to run a daily blockade to leave and get back to their homes. There were incidents of violence resulting to injuries. Indigenous 'warriors' were adamant they had no intention of leaving, and the 'settlers' had better get used to it. Neither the government of the day nor the Ontario Provincial Police had any wish to apply the law, remove the threats along with the warriors and rescue residents from the dilemma they were facing.

Until the province agreed to abort the subdivision project, leaving the disputed land in the hands of the Indigenous community. A new developer, Foxgate Developments more latterly purchased a new tract of land at McKenzie Meadows through consultations with the Six Nations elected council. The elected leadership of Six Nations had agreed to support the development project according to documents filed in court. The issue now is that elected chiefs are in full agreement of the land being developed for residential purposes, while the hereditary chiefs oppose it leaving the developer to struggle between both.

Foxgate Developments' entirely legal purchase of the land in question from the democratically elected chiefs acting on behalf of the people they represent is now in limbo; a replay of the earlier drama that had degenerated into intimidation, threats and violence, where the province refused to step in and authorize the OPP to protect the lawful activity of a developer and those who had purchased homes and had every expectation of living in them without constant harassment.

Rocks could be heard hitting police vehicles as Ontario Provincial Police officers are slowly pushed back by a large group of indigenous protesters gather in Caledonia over the noon hour on Wednesday August 5, 2020. Earlier in the morning, a large contingent of police removed protesters occupying a nearby residential construction site, prompting supporters from the nearby Six Nations of the Grand River Territory to arrive. (Brian Thompson/Postmedia Network)

Earlier in the month the blockade had been cleared, arrests taking place when Ontario Provincial Police took steps to enforce a court-ordered injunction at the site permitting development of areas of the site to continue and the locked roads to be cleared. The parcels of land that had been illegally occupied were cleared to enable development to proceed. Locals had been frustrated by the lack of action by the OPP, and even at the present time, portions of area highways have been closed.

Over the summer, the cleared camp has been gradually re-occupied; the OPP dismantling overturned. These recurring, dangerous face-offs lead back to various levels of government not having concluded good-faith bargaining with the Indigenous populations, finally settling grievances and land rights after hundreds of years. The site, part of the Haldimand Tract, was given to members of the Haudenosaunee nation in 1784 in acknowledgement of their having fought for the British during the American Revolutionary War.

The courts are still struggling with details of land ownership in that tract, remaining under dispute reflecting 29 separate claims focusing on land loss and assets over the years. Little wonder Indigenous peoples are frustrated and angry, when it's long past time that any questions revolving around land claims should have reached an agreeable compromise between governments and the Indian nations.

About 10 tents dotted the site on August 12, along with the frame of a structure demonstrators have said will be used as a kitchen. (Dan Taekema/CBC)

Israel Surrounded, Boxed in, a Sitting Duck

"A deal that enables Iran to keep and hide all its nuclear weapons know-how is a horrible deal."
"[One that]  has to be either fully fixed or fully nixed. But if you do nothing to this deal, if you keep it as is, you will end up with Iran with a nuclear arsenal in a very short time."
"If you don't violate a dangerous deal, it doesn't make it less dangerous."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
 

"When Hezbollah wins, it means that Iran has won in Lebanon. In the past, Hezbollah had to make military threats. Today, they have the state institutions."
"[There exists a realization among many Lebanese] that nothing is going to change internally because everything depends on regional dynamics."
"[Lebanon’s] military and judicial institutions is where they will now be exerting their power [reflecting Hezbollah’s political strategy based on] eliminating serious resistance [while] co-opting  [non-Shia politicians like Hariri, the Sunni prime minister, and Michel Aoun, Lebanon’s Christian president]."
"They will form a government that looks the same, but Hezbollah will be in control at the core. Today’s Sa’ad Hariri is not the Hariri who became prime minister in 2009."
"Lebanon is now very easy ground for them [the Islamic Republic of Iran] to attack or retaliate against Israel, and they want to, but they are not ready today. Today, the Israeli air strikes are hurting Iran in Lebanon, but as long as those strikes don’t jeopardize their achievements, they will let it go."
"[The] achievements [are the consolidation of Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon and that of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, along with an] uninterrupted land bridge [stretching from Iran’s borders through Syria]."
"When the Iranians have finally consolidated power in Syria, Lebanon and in Iraq, which has parliamentary elections on May 12, when they have a strong presence on the border with Israel, and when they have precision-guided missiles in place — then they will be ready."
Hanin Ghaddar —  prominent Lebanese journalist, visiting fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy 

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah addresses an April 15 election rally in the Bekaa Valley via a video link. Photo: Reuters / Aziz Taher.

The Israeli Prime Minister's argument is succinct and precise, but it fails to take into account the vicissitudes of fortune -- in Israel's instance of security, a turn of events that spell out bad, very bad fortune. Simply put, with Iran succeeding in outflanking an already-neighbourhood-vulnerable nation of a mere eight million people in an area vastly out-populating the Jewish state in which Muslim states would waste no tears of regret should Israel disappear from the Middle East map, and the hostile forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran are ranked and weaponized to destroy it, no nuclear weapons are required.

On the other hand, a quarry cornered is one that fights with an attitude and a strength armed by resistance to defeat by the survival imperative, becoming a formidable force to be reckoned with. It was that existential passion to defend itself and its people that led Israel's armed forces to succeed in overcoming the offensive of combined Arab armies in the past. With its superior morale and weaponry, its intelligence services and the precision response of its armed forces Israel still stands a very good chance of destroying the intentions of its enemies before they have the opportunity to destroy it.

New reported Iranian base in Syria (Photo: Fox News) 

Jabal ash Sharqi is located on the road from Damascus to the Beqaa Valley border, where most Hezbollah strongholds are located, as well as the heavy, long-range missiles and rockets the Lebanese organization has received from Iran and Syria. It’s possible the new base is supposed to serve as a sort of inventory warehouse for missiles that will be transferred to Lebanon in the event of a war with Israel.

In which case, a country like Iran which has at its grasp weapons of mass destruction whose intent is to use nuclear weapons if and when all else fails in its sacred mission to destroy a non-Muslim nation of Jews itself becomes a massive force of deliberate mass destruction on a scale that conventional weaponry does not and can not threaten. Both of these scenarios, a combined attack by vicious enemies armed with religious conviction as well as advanced war weapons, intent on Israel's destruction, and alternately the use of a nuclear weapon when the first scenario failed, are any nation's ultimate nightmare.

The still most-powerful nation on the planet has taken the measure of what the previous administration wrought in agreeing to allow Iran's ayatollahs and its Republican Guard Corps free rein to continue to develop their nuclear ambitions under guise of compliance through a clever yet transparent scheme of appearing to accede to the international community's demands to cease and desist, however temporarily. An agreement hich made no move to put a halt to the further technical development of ICBMs, flippantly etched with the proposal to destroy Israel.

Israel's Western, democratic 'friends' in the international community with the influence and the gravitas to effect measures to stop Iran's ambitions, agitate to 'respect' the agreement of conciliation toward Iran at the cost of threatening Israel's existence. None of Israel's international friends have had the experience of living under constant siege and existential threat. The current American administration may or may not refuse to sanction the horrendously flawed nuclear agreement with Iran, in which case Israel's problems will still not recede in magnitude of threat, giving only the illusion of temporary relief.

A ballistic missile is launched and tested in an undisclosed location, Iran, March 9, 2016. . (photo credit: REUTERS)

The Other Story

"You won't hear even my most radical neighbours say that Duma [Palestinian village where residence was fire-bombed, infant killed, father died of burns] was a good thing, at least out loud."
"We're the most demonized people on Earth. [Members of his community, Yitzhar had nothing to do with the violence]."
"Puncturing tires? That might be another thing [weekly acts of vandalism they are capable of, against Palestinians]."
"I'm not ready to call it [popular theory that Jews organized the Duma firebombing] a conspiracy."
"We [Jewish settlers] are the tip of the spear We are the shield."
"[No fence exists around Yitzhar, for:] A fence means we need one. A fence means we have something to fear."
"I sleep with a pistol under my pillow. I keep a dog, I lock the doors. There's my wife's gun, my gun, and I fear the choice I might have to make if we are attacked. Do I grab the children first or the gun?"
Erzi Tubi, resident spokesman, Yitzhar West Bank [illegal] settlement

Jewish Israeli laborers work at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, south of Nablus, on Aug. 5, 2015. (David Vaaknin/for The Washington Post)

They're unmistakably religious zealots, believing that the Bible speaks of their heritage rights, that the land that the international community calls the West Bank and Gaza, are Jewish possessions, belong to Israel proper, because the ancient Israelites viewed it as their land, a land promised to them by the Almighty. Yitzhar in the West Bank is considered by Israelis to be one of the most extreme in terms of violent confrontations, not only with their Palestinian neighbours, but with the Israeli military.

They deny, however, that they are baby-killers; that simply isn't their agenda, it doesn't reflect their values nor their intentions. They do, on the other hand, indulge in ongoing and varied Palestinian-targeted acts of vandalism meant to dissuade their Palestinian neighbours from their belief that this is their land too by right of habitation and possession. And so they destroy olive trees, they block access to springwater, to farm fields and religious sites.

And in their turn they are opposed by Palestinians throwing stones, reverting sometimes to tossing gasoline bombs, and of course shooting guns at cars carrying settlers. It's hard to say what came first, but it's a safe enough bet that all settlers were first exposed to the violent expressions of hatred emanating toward them by Palestinians who believe they have been illegally displaced from land they rightfully call their own.

As far as the ultranationalist Jewish settlers and their supporters are concerned they have the divine right to biblical lands which God promised them. The hilltop settlement of Yitzhar doesn't intend to go anywhere. They're there, and there they mean to stay, in perpetuity. And to expand their presence. To take possession of more land until there is no more to claim. In the meanwhile, they build their homes with their hands and relish their incomparable view of a landscape known to eyes that lived thousands of years before them.

Erzi Tubi speaks for his settlement when he says they all believe that it was "crazies" who were involved in the firebombing in Duma. And not adults, but hot-headed teens living on nearby settlements who responded to their own fears. And, he said, to Washington Post reporters whom he was showing proudly around the settlement, when Jews are shot, run over, stabbed by Palestinians no one cares.

And so, on a hot August day, as he hosted the reporters, Jewish children played in pools, while their parents stood nearby, guns in holsters, prepared for any eventuality.

Op-Ed: The Mosque That Wasn't Torched

Published: Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Benyamin Korn

Moshe Phillips co-authored this article.

Remember that "arson attack" last month by "Jewish extremists" against a West Bank mosque? Remember how that outrageous assault made headline news around the world? Remember how it showed that "both sides" --not just the Arabs-- are guilty of violence, and "both sides" --not only Israelis-- are suffering?

Well, guess what: it was a lie.

The period from late October through late November was a time of escalating Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. On October 22, a terrorist (or, according to the Palestinian Authority, a "hero") drove his car into a Jerusalem railway station, murdering two innocent civilians--one was three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, an American citizen--and injuring eight others. 

A week later, a terrorist attempted to murder an American-Israeli rabbi in Jerusalem. Then on November 5, another Palestinian "martyr" rammed his car into a Jerusalem train station, killing two and wounding 13. That same day, in Gush Etzion, another car-terrorist drove into and severely wounded a group of Israeli soldiers.

On November 10, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed an Israeli soldier to death in Tel Aviv. Elsewhere that day, another Palestinian stabbed a young Israeli woman to death at a Gush Etzion bus stop and wounded two others.

At the same time, there were almost daily rock-throwing attacks by Arab mobs against Israeli police or soldiers in Jerusalem and various towns in the Judea-Samaria territories.

And it was all incited by a constant wave of radio and television broadcasts by Palestinian Authority officials praising the terrorists in these attacks and urging more "days of rage" against the Jews.

The wave of incitement and violence made clear that the Palestinians were the aggressors, and the Israelis were the victims. No wonder Israel's critics in the international news media seemed almost gleeful when they heard the news of a fire-bombing at a West Bank mosque. Here was the ammunition they needed to construct a new narrative -- a chance to "prove" that the Palestinians weren't the only violent aggressors. 

A major article in the international news section of the New York Times on November 12 announced: "Further charging the atmosphere at a time of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions and religious friction, a mosque in a village in the 'West Bank' was damaged overnight in what was said to be an arson attack, and a firebomb was thrown at an old synagogue in an Arab town in northern Israel, the police said."

"Said to be an arson attack?" Said by whom? Well, actually it was the mayor of Ramallah, Faraj al-Naassaneh, whose sole basis for calling it arson was that "only Jewish settlers would do this." 

The attack on the ancient synagogue in Shfaram, by contrast, was caused by a firebomb--meaning that anyone who thought it was the work of Arabs weren't just speculating that "only Arabs would do this." A firebomb is concrete evidence that somebody intended to burn the synagogue. The fire at the synagogue could not have been caused, for example, by an electrical problem.

Like the electrical problem that it now turns out caused the fire in the mosque.

On December 15, the Israeli police announced that following an investigation aided by the fire department, the Shin Bet security agency, and, yes, Palestinian Authority investigators, the mystery of the fire had been solved: a malfunction in an electric heater.

The mosque was not "torched," as NBC News reported. It was not an "arson attack," as Reuters claimed. No evidence of a flammable liquid was discovered. The claim by United Press International that "anti-Arab graffiti was applied to the mosque" was false. 

Interestingly enough, it also turned out that someone in the mosque moved the faulty heater from its original place just before the investigators arrived. So apparently it was not true that "only Jewish settlers would do this," a sentiment that numerous media outlets reported as if it was an obvious fact. Apparently a faulty heater would do it, and a mosque staff member who wanted to avoid culpability and smear Israel was capable of trying to cover up the evidence.

How did the New York Times report this stunning revelation? One paragraph in its "News Briefs" section. The disproportion between the space and prominence allotted to the original "Jews Burn Mosque" story and that given to the "Jews Didn't Burn Mosque, After All" story is stunning.

But better than nothing. The Washington Post hasn’t reported the follow-up story at all. Will NBC News, Reuters, or United Press International do the right thing? 

Would they dare admit facts that would shatter the false narrative of "both sides foment violence?" Don't count on it. As a wise man (variously attributed to Twain, or to Churchill) once put it: “A lie gets half-way around the world, before the truth has a chance to pull its boots on.” 

[Moshe Phillips is president and  Benyamin Korn is chairman of the Religious Zionists of America, Philadelphia.]