A one-on-one with Ignatieff

RHONDA SPIVAK

Liberal party leader Michael Ignatieff said that the Iranian government must understand that the international community's support for Israel's existence is "backed up by credible deterrents." Ignatieff gave a one-on-one interview when he was in Winnipeg Friday, March 20.

In the taped interview, this reporter referred Ignatieff to the recent statement made by Israel's incoming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the March 9 edition of Newsweek. Netanyahu was asked whether he thought that, short of military action, it's possible to halt Iran's nuclear program. Netanyahu answered, "I think this regime is vulnerable to pressure that ought to be intensified. But none of these sanctions and other measures that are contemplated would have much of an effect if the Iranians believe that a military option is off the table."

Ignatieff was asked if he agreed with Netanyahu's view. He responded, "What I would say is that Iran has to understand that the international community is united on the proposition that you can't deny the Holocaust and you can't threaten any of your neighbors, and certainly not the Jewish state. And that means that the Iranian government has to be aware that those feelings, those views, are backed up with appropriate military force ... so it's backed up by credible deterrents.

"But I think it's legitimate ... to say no thoughtful Israeli and no thoughtful Iranian in my view wants this to come to conflict, and it would be a catastrophe for both sides. And Canada has always stood for peace. So ... Canada has to stand essentially for [four] things: 1) unequivocal condemnation of Holocaust-denying rhetoric [and] anti-Israeli rhetoric by the Iranian regime, 2) commitment to credible military deterrence, 3) commitment to demanding that Iran comply with the International Atomic Energy Association in respect of its domestic nuclear program and 4) Canada has always said there are no military solutions in this region.

"At the end of the day, Iran is a great power," he continued. "Israel is a legitimate democratic state. There are no ultimate military solutions to these problems. There has to be some kind of opening of the doors in which Israel and Iran eventually sit down and live in peace with each other. The alternatives are generally too horrible to contemplate. That doesn't mean backing down from being totally clear to the Iranians, but I don't want to encourage any sabre-rattling rhetoric, especially not at a moment when the president of the United States is beginning to open the door to discussion. And those discussions, I've made clear, have to include as the central item of business with the Iranians: you can't talk to Israel this way. It's got to stop. And if they stop, then things become possible. If not, we'll be back in the deep freeze for a long time to come."

When asked whether he would be in favor of trying to organize an explicit statement and commitment from a number of countries regarding the safety of Israel, which might be used to try to dissuade Iran from ever deploying nuclear weapons against the Jewish state, Ignatieff said, "[Israel's] allies have made it perfectly clear that nuclear threats towards Israel are unacceptable and will be met with ... credible deterrence, let's put it that way. I don't think the Iranian regime ... is in any doubt about the determination of Israel's allies to defend her."

On April 19, 2002, Ignatieff was quoted in the Guardian as saying, "Two years ago, an American friend took me on a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights over the Palestinian West Bank. He wanted to show me how vulnerable Israel was, how the Arabs only had to cross 11 kilometres of land to reach the sea and throw the Israelis into it. I got this message but I also came away with another one. When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control."

When asked to clarify this statement, Ignatieff said, "You know, I think all my adult life, [I've] made it clear that ... it's ... illegitimate to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa and let's be very clear why: because all citizens of Israel have equal rights.

"In apartheid South Africa, people were excluded from full citizenship on the basis of race. And that was denounced as a crime against humanity. So I've never ever in my life equated Israel and apartheid South Africa. I think what I meant in using the terminology that I used in that article in 2002 is something that I think is as evident to Israelis as it is to anybody else, which is that the only way out of the horror and the tragedy in the Middle East is a two-state solution in which Israel has absolutely solid guarantees of its security and international legitimacy, and the Palestinian state is viable enough to survive.

"I think my choice of words was not of the best," he admitted, "but the point was not to equate Israel to apartheid South Africa but to say for Israel's own security, the Palestinian state that will eventually emerge in the West Bank and Gaza must be viable. It's not for me to say what viability amounts to. It's not for me to define what the boundaries and frontiers should be. That's between the two parties. But it ought to be viable."

Regrading the rise of anti-Semitism in the European mainstream, Ignatieff responded: "Well, it's not just in Europe. I'm very concerned about the statements by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. I'm very concerned about Durban II, the flagrant misuse of international UN bodies to promote this entirely false equation between Zionism as a kind of racism. We've been here with this for 30 years. So some of the phenomena of anti-Semitism is not new in Canada, and I'm aware there are Jewish communities in Canada that feel a degree of insecurity in Canada that they've never felt before.

"My predecessor [Stephane Dion] committed to work with ... not just the Jewish community but any community that feels its security is in danger, to make sure they have the means to protect and defend their schools ... [and] all their establishments, because the bottom line for me as a Canadian politician is that every Canadian citizen must have a right to be who they are, say who they are, affirm their identity proudly and go about their business in security. And the general atmosphere out in the world is of increasing hostility to the Jewish people and Canada has to make a very clear statement that that's unacceptable, that all citizens in Canada are entitled to go about their business in peace and security."

Rhonda Spivak is a Winnipeg freelance writer and the editor of the Jewish Post and News.

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