Prime Minister Stephen Harper was anything but even-handed during the fighting in Lebanon last summer between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah:

Making his strongest statement yet on the Middle East crisis, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday that more innocent people will die unless Israel and its terrorist enemies negotiate an end to the violence.

Once again confronting the conflict that has followed him around the globe in the past week, Mr. Harper made no apologies for stating the government's position "somewhat differently and [more] forcefully" than Canadians are used to hearing from their leaders.

Mr. Harper repeated his defence of Israel's right to live peacefully, condemning the violence of Hezbollah terrorists and speaking out against the suffering of innocent people in Lebanon and Gaza -- responsibility for which he laid squarely at the feet of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas, the terrorist organization that forms the government of the Palestinian Authority.

"Hezbollah's objective is violence. Hezbollah believes that through violence it can create, it can bring about the destruction of Israel. Violence will not bring about the destruction of Israel ... and inevitably the result of the violence will be the deaths primarily of innocent people."

Needless to say, that sort of strong position was horrifying to Canada's socialists, led by Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party:

Mr. Harper brushed off suggestions his tough new language on the Middle East has compromised Canada's ability to be seen as a neutral, honest broker in the search for Middle East peace, a criticism repeated yesterday by NDP leader Jack Layton, who said Canada should be pushing for an immediate ceasefire and the presence of an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

"In our view, Canada should be stepping out and calling for that immediate ceasefire, indicating immediately that we will participate in a peacekeeping force and distancing ourselves from the policies of the Bush administration on this question," Mr. Layton said.

"[UN Secretary-General] Kofi Annan and the UN have proposed exactly that strategy, and it's got to be something that Canada embraces enthusiastically, right off the start, not with this hesitation that we're seeing from George Bush and Mr. Harper," Mr. Layton said.

Eventually there was a ceasefire. Jack Layton and the UN got its peace keeping force.

How's that been going? Not so good. Hezbollah has been cheating, with the support of Iran, and laughing at Jack Layton's precious peacekeepers:

Ever since the the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire ending last summer's war in Lebanon, the terrorist group, which receives close to $200 million a year in subsidies from Iran, has been rebuilding the military arsenal destroyed by the Israeli army. While attention has been focused on Hezbollah's ongoing efforts to topple the Lebanese government headed by Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, a Sunni Muslim, Hezbollah appears to be laying the groundwork for a new war against Israel by smuggling Iranian-made weapons from Syria and daring the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to do anything about it.

"Your clear mission," Sheikh [Hassan] Nasrallah said to the UNIFIL in a September speech, "is not to spy on Hezbollah or disarm the resistance." UNIFIL, he made clear, needed to know its place -- or else. To avoid being dragged into a "collision" with Hezbollah, the sheikh also said that UNIFIL should avoid looking at Hezbollah's weapons. "They should not interfere in Lebanon's internal affairs or be involved in such things," he said. More recently, journalist Olivier Guitta reported that Hezbollah supporters in several towns in Southern Lebanon staged unprovoked attacks on UNIFIL soldiers, including an ugly incident in which a French medical unit that had come to treat indigent Lebanese was chased out of town.

He denounced the Lebanese army for last month's interception of a truck that Hezbollah was using to smuggle explosives, Katyusha rockets and other weaponry: "We are transporting the arms in secret because that is our right," he declared. "We are transporting the arms secretly and in straw trucks so as not to embarrass you [the Lebanese government.]"

Neither Canada nor the United States have contributed forces to UNIFIL. Good thing too. Regardless of what UNIFIL Is supposed to do on paper, it is clear that Hezbollah has every intention to use the cease fire as breating space, a time to get ready for fresh attacks. The UN and its friends like Jack Layton are just human shields, to keep Israel at bay.

There will almost certainly be another war, possibly linked to a larger confrontation with Iran over its nuclear weapons program and the kidnapping of those British sailors. And Jack Layton will almost certainly demand yet again that Canada be absolutely neutral in the face of naked aggression, and so guarantee that next war will not be the last.