Allegations of pervasive corruption and cronyism have proven enough to topple Paul Martin’s minority government and force the electorate back to the polls for the second time in 18 months. To what degree Martin and his ministers can be held accountable for misconduct committed under Jean Chrétien’s leadership is not clear, but the political and popular fallout has been devastating.

In June, voters will have to choose between the lesser of two scandals. re-electing Martin’s Liberals or electing Stephen Harper’s “Conservatives.” (The name of Harper’s party is wholly misleading. It is the third incarnation the Reform party, a populist protest party from Alberta and British Columbia that was formed in 1987. It has no connection to any Canadian conservative tradition. A more accurate name would be the Christian Reactionary and American Zionist Yahoo (CRAZY) Party

Sad though it may be, voters have only one choice--re-elect the Liberals. If this sounds counterintuitive and ethically suspect, consider the shame that would befall us if Harper and his Bible-thumping “baby Bushes” got their hands on government. Here are four words that should make every self-respecting Canadian reach for an airsick bag: “Foreign Minister Stockwell Day.” In this nightmare scenario, the government would effectively farm out all Middle East policy directly to Israel, and not even make a pretense of defending Canadian interests.

Admittedly, Irwin Cotler and the Little Knesset seem to have done a good job of that already, but there is one significant difference. They have to pressure the government to serve Israel. When Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew recently criticized Israel for further colonial creep he gave evidence that the Liberals had not entirely lost their moral compass, that international law still has some relevance. Under Day, zionists would no longer have to pressure the government. They would own it outright.

Day admitted as much last month when the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research presented him with the Golden Magen David Award for a lifetime of consistent support for Israel. As the Canadian Jewish News reported, Day praised the CIJR for its “helpful” daily electronic briefings on Israel and them lamented: “So much does not get into the mainstream media.” He’s right, but not for the reason he thinks.

Much of Israel’s brutality does not get reported in the mainstream media because zionist filters block it. All one has to do is read Ha’aretz (www.haaretz.com) to read first-hand Israeli reports of the systematic persecution of Palestinians: Israeli soldiers arresting Rabbi Arik Ascherman for blocking a house demolition; Israeli bulldozers destroying 2,000 Palestinian olive trees; “settlers” staging regular pogroms against Palestinian villages; daily humiliations at checkpoints.

To all of this, Day is disgracefully and wilfully ignorant. He is incapable of rational thought on any subject that challenges his biblical prejudices. As such he is unfit to make foreign or any other policy, much less sit in the House of Commons.

At the CIJR love-in, Day bleated that the media has marginalized him for his support of Israel, as if to imply that the media had no right to do so. Rather than address the criticisms, he did what any true-believer would do: he wrapped himself in the cloak of martyrdom, and in a most distasteful manner, as the CIJR reported:

“Evoking Natan Sharansky’s refusal to recant his activism for Jewish emigration when a Soviet judge offered him freedom in exchange, day said: “I will continue to fight for Israel and everything it stands for, which is everything that is important to us.”

Let’s look at this sentence closely. Contrary to what Day believes, Israel stands for theft, torture, murder and terrorism. It is to Arabs what the Nazis were to Jews. Of course, Day does not know of Plan Gimmel or Plan Dalet, or that former terrorist and Israeli leader Yitzhak Shamir endorsed terrorism as a necessary instrument of zionism. He does not know that the Occupation has brought Palestinian child mortality in the Gaza Strip to levels that rival sub-Saharan Africa. He does not know that Israel is deliberately destroying the Palestinian economy.

Then again, why should he know anything? His Jesus censor insulates him from disquieting facts and he gets his “information” spoon-fed from zionist propaganda agencies like the CIJR. Canada professes to follow a balanced Middle East policy, yet it does not dawn on Day to think that Arabs or other Muslims could have any legitimate grievances against Israeli state terrorism, or that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians fits the Rome Statute’s definition of genocide.

If anyone should have the temerity to question him on these points, Day denies the validity of the question and denounces the questioner as “hostile.” He told the CIJR audience how a hostile reporter called him to demand clarification on his party’s support for “Israel’s great crime.” Fact is, the reporter wasn’t hostile; the question was. I know, because I was that reporter. I merely asked him to explain why he circulated David Frum’s scurrilous libel that Yasser Arafat was dying of AIDS. After a non-answer, we got on to other questions of Israeli criminality.

Day was clueless. “I was mystified,” he told the audience before rattling off a bunch of aggressive statements by Muslims that he said I should have cared about more. Note: Israeli acts of violence are to be ignored, but violent words by Muslims are to be condemned. This is the sort of bigotry that Day would bring to government.

Finally, we come to the last part of the sentence: “...which is everything that is important to us.” To whom? Canadians? Not bloody likely. The CRAZY Party? Possibly, but Harper has more to concern him than kowtowing to Israel.

The only answer that makes sense is this: Day is referring to himself and the audience. He is among his own kind, people who share his warped mentality. By these words he is telling the audience: “I am one of you. What matters to you matters to me and nothing else. In the House, I am your voice. I am the voice of Israel.”

Day is so committed that he openly puts Israel’s needs ahead of Canada’s: “Day blasted the media for focusing on suspicions that a Mossad secret service agent used a Canadian passport and ignoring far more egregious activity by Israel’s enemies,” said the CJN.

When the election propaganda about Liberal misconduct reaches intolerable levels, Canadians must put aside their moral indignation to think about their self-respect, the integrity of our law and our international reputation.

They must re-elect the Liberals if for no other reason that to prevent an untutored, treasonous moron from doing to Canada what George Bush did to the U.S.