The Dispossessed of Gaza--and Canada

 

Mahmoud Darwish

In a poetry group, as a prompt, one member quoted a poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, which ends:

You stole my forefathers' vineyards
    And land I used to till,
    I and all my children,
    And you left us and all my grandchildren
    Nothing but these rocks.
    Will your government be taking them too
    As is being said?
So!
    Put it on record at the top of page one:
    I don't hate people,
    I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry
    I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
    Beware, beware of my hunger
    And of my anger!

To which I responded, before submitting a poem: 

Being dispossessed of one’s livelihood and land is a rather common human experience. It is especially common among those who have populated Canada. We are, in Cohen’s phrase, “Beautiful Losers.” The Acadians were expelled from their lands in Tantramar, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Huron were expelled from their lands by the Iroquois, and found refuge in Quebec. Then the Iroquois were expelled from their lands by the Americans, and sought refuge in Ontario. The UE Loyalists were expelled from their lands and possessions in the 13 colonies, and landed mostly penniless and without shelter in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec. The Irish, my own ancestors, were expelled from their lands: “to Hell or Connaught!” Many did not survive the passage; many died on the docks. The Scots were expelled from their lands in the Highland Clearances, so that today there is more Scots Gaelic spoken in Cape Breton than in Scotland. The many Jews came here from Eastern Europe to escape pogrom; they risked loss of life as well as property. After the Second World War, there was a great influx to Canada of what were then called “displaced persons” from the shifting boundaries and regimes from that war.

Many of us have, at some time in our lives, lost everything. Many of us can thank God there is a new life here in Canada. This was a common vision of our founders: of Louis Riel, of Wilfrid Laurier, of John A. Macdonald, of Guy Carleton. “A home for all the world’s peoples.” A home for the homeless—for, notably, English orphans, the “home children.”

The sine qua non was to be prepared to start again. Gregory Clark suggested there should be a monument erected on Grosse Ile, outside Quebec City, with the legend “Leave all your hates behind. Bring us only your loves.”

This was of course a dig at the Palestinians. Their grievance is the creation of the state of Israel. That happened in 1948: 77 years ago. Longer than a human lifetime, in that part of the world. Few living Palestinians have been dispossessed; yet as a group they have not moved on. Surely by now they bear some responsibility for their state?

This is not to address the Israeli claim that no Arabs were actually dispossessed by the creation of Israel; that it was their choice to leave. Twenty percent of the Israeli population is still Arab.

The guy who posted the original poem did not take this disagreement well. He declared me a racist and an imperialist because, in my list of the dispossessed in Canada, I did not mention the Canadian indigenous people dispossessed by settlers.

Which is ironic. The indigenous people are arguably the only group in Canada who have not been dispossessed of their land or forced to move. That is what “indigenous” means. 

Were their lands stolen? What lands? 89% of Canada is still crown land. By treaty they are free to roam and hunt and scavenge all over it, just as their ancestors always did.

As for the other eleven percent, they sold it and were compensated for it. It was not seized.

But the poet of the Palestinian prompt did not wait around to hear this. He had already quit the group, because in conscience he could not be in the same poetry group with a racist.

Trump's Gaza Idea

 

Trump’s proposal to take over Gaza, remove all the Palestinians, and develop it as a “Middle Eastern Riviera” is astonishing.

Unfortunately, this looks like ethnic cleansing. It seems to me that it is, by common definition, and therefore a “crime against humanity.”

On the other hand, it also looks like the only way to achieve peace in the area. Supposedly 80% of Gazans support Hamas. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and vows eternal war. “From the river to the sea.” So long as there is this hostile population right next to Israeli settlements, like a knife alongside Israel’s throat, war and atrocities and bombings and civilian deaths will continue.

Separating the parties looks like the only way; just as, when you find two dogs fighting in the alley, you pull them apart.

There is too little land in either Gaza or Israel for a buffer zone; especially with both sides possessing rockets.

In any real world, there is no place to move the 9 million people of Israel. Put the Jewish state anywhere else, and you have all the same tensions as here.

On the other hand, the 1.7 million Gazans are culturally identical with a dozen countries nearby. Same language, same religion; historically one country, up until 1917, with continuing dreams of reunification. They are just one small neighbourhood in a vast Arab and Muslim world.

Is moving the Gazan Arabs substantially and ethically different from expropriating for a new shopping centre?

Is moving the Gazan Arabs substantially and ethically different from the Israeli government requiring Jews to move out of Gaza some years ago, in an earlier attempt to separate the two sides?

By itself, Israel had no way to move the Arabs. Israel had little land, Israel is just Israel, with no other place to put them.

But the US may have the wasta to use with some nearby nation. Most obviously, Egypt: Egypt owned the Gaza strip up until 1967, and so up to then accepted the Gazan Arabs as Egyptian citizens. Egypt gets especially large sums in foreign aid from the US. It should be easy for Trump to buy Egyptian compliance. With some investment in desalinization, it should be possible to make some part of the Egyptian desert bloom, as has been done in Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Presto: a nice new home for the Gazans.

At the same time, why does it make sense for the US to take ownership of Gaza?

So that the enterprise can be self-financing. The US pays for relocating the Gazans, and for building a tourism infrastructure; but it is an investment. The place has tourism potential. The US makes the money back in taxes on the revenue. Never mind a Middle Eastern Riviera. It can be a Middle Eastern Monte Carlo. There is a lot of money in the nearby Persian Gulf. Beirut used to profit from such tourism: a place where Muslims could indulge in many pleasures not available at home. Why not Gaza, with its beaches?

Secondly, the US gets an inalienable military base in a strategic and unstable part of the world. Britain has done well with its bases in Cyprus.

Why does it make sense for Israel?

It removes the knife at their throat, which they cannot do for themselves, either as a practical matter or because of international disapproval.

Without owning the property, the Israelis stand to benefit as much as if they did. The people actually living and working and investing in the revamped Gaza strip and making the money from the new developments will inevitably mostly be Israelis.

And a permanent American presence is a further guarantee of Israeli security. Like the American troops permanently stationed in South Korea, Gaza becomes a “trip wire” in case of attempted invasion. If anyone attacks Israel henceforth, the US is almost automatically militarily engaged. It is a peacekeeping force.

And it makes sense for the Gazans, even if this is the hard sell. Reputedly polls even before the present conflict showed at least 44% of young Gazans sought to emigrate. They have been artificially sealed off in this narrow strip by the closing of the Egyptian border, and the refusal of other Arab lands to take them.

It really looks like a win-win-win situation.

This is what happens when you elect an entrepreneur as president. Business is all about spotting such opportunities.

I think we need to change international law.

The Rise of Antisemitism

 Simon Sebag Montefiore:

"To call October 7 a wake-up call is an understatement. People that we trusted—professors, journalists, charity workers—suddenly started celebrating the killing of civilians, the murder of grandmothers, the rape of girls, and the stealing of people as an act of war. And that was a terrible moment. I think we all went through it, and it was astonishing. That day, I remember watching professors who were at Harvard and Yale and Princeton suddenly saying, This is just a wonderful act of resistance. And that was terrifying, wasn’t it?"

We live in a nightmare moment of history. Montefiore believes the period of peace between 1945 and 2023 was a historical anomaly; and we are about to go back to the business of mass murder. 

I fear he may be right.

However, there is a concurrent rise of renewed faith and vigour. It is not that the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. In fact, I see the passion of the worst flagging, and the best gaining confidence, in the various populist movements around the developed world.

Playing 4D Chess

 

Trump really is “playing 4D chess.” He learned how to swing a deal as a real estate developer. Consider the Gaza deal. He framed it all as a threat against Hamas: “if the hostages are not freed by inauguration day, there will be hell to pay.” But behind the scenes, the pressure was really on Netanyahu to accept a partial deal. This way, Netanyahu has made concessions, but can frame it as a victory. It’s a win-win, at least for the short term.

He is doing the same with Greenland. Greenland is a financial liability to Denmark, held only for prestige, and Greenland for its part feels colonized. Trump sees the opportunity. Denmark saves face and looks righteous by giving Greenland independence. Greenland can afford this pretense of self-determination now, with US backing. Then it gets to cut a better deal with the US. The US gets to cut Denmark out of any deal, buying wholesale. It’s a win-win.

I think Trump should and will offer Greenland immediate full statehood, to preserve the sense of self-determination.

Now how about Canada? 

Alberta’s situation is like that of Greenland. Alberta has been subsidizing the rest of Canada with their energy resources. At the same time, with their carbon tax and their environmental regulations, the Canadian central government has been hobbling the Alberta energy industry. 

Perhaps Trump was clever enough to check and realize that energy was a provincial responsibility. Perhaps he was clever enough to see that Canada has recognized the right of provinces to separate. Perhaps he was clever enough to school himself on Western alienation.

With his tariff threats, Trump is shaking that fruit from the tree. He can appeal to Albertan alienation. They have the one card to play against the Trump tariffs.

He can offer Alberta a separate deal. He says he wants to annex Canada; but the value to the US is all in Alberta. Moreover, they are more politically aligned than the rest of Canada with the US; they would probably vote Republican. He can now offer them statehood. Alberta gets to escape their subsidies to the rest of Canada, escape the carbon taxes and the environmental regulations, lower their taxes, and start pumping oil like gangbusters. 

Okay, this one isn’t quite win-win. The rest of Canada is left in the lurch, cut off from Alberta’s subsidies and facing stiff tariffs from the USA. 

Unless they quickly end equalization payments, kill the carbon tax, end supply management, cut environmental regulations, and start severely restricting immigration.

All of which would be more or less what the Canadian public is demanding.

So, again, win-win. Unless we are governed by idiots.

Uh-oh.

Might Makes Wrong?

 

This tweet by Elon Musk caught my attention:

“The axiomatic error undermining much of Western Civilization is ‘weak makes right’. 

If someone accepts, explicitly or implicitly, that the oppressed are always the good guys, then the natural conclusion is that the strong are the bad guys.”

This seems to explain how so many are currently supporting Hamas, and its terrorist tactics, against Israel. 

But given this example, it is not exactly “might makes wrong.” Israel is not that mighty: pitched against Hamas alone, it is more powerful, but the broader reality is that Israel is a small state surrounded by much larger enemies. Hamas sought to provoke a larger conflagration, and simply lost that gamble, so far.

So it is mot quite that Israel is more powerful. The precise formula seems rather “success makes wrong,” and “failure makes right.”

One persecutes the Jews, for example, not because they are powerful. They are still always and everywhere a vulnerable minority. It is because they are, individually, more successful. 

Such a formula is obviously destructive to the common good. If all success is condemned and punished, everything will fail in time.

There is a kernel of righteousness in the “weak makes right” argument. Those who crave power are more likely to achieve power. Those who crave wealth are more likely to achieve wealth. And these are vices. Accordingly, it stands to reason that the rich and powerful are more likely to be immoral, as a group, than the poor. Hence the Beatitudes: “blessed are the poor in spirit…”

However, assuming that someone is immoral because they are rich and powerful, or moral because they are poor and weak, is prejudice. As Musk goes on to say, this is no substitute for making moral judgements.

Cain killed Abel because he was more successful. God did not exempt the poor in Sodom and Gomorrah, or Nineveh, or Canaan. 

Those supporting without question the notion that “weak makes right” are simply possessed by the vice of envy.

Batra on Israel vs. Iran

 

Lilley on Pro-Terrorism Demonstrations in Ottawa

 

World War III

 

World War III seems to be trending. The recent missile attack by Iran on Israel has been billed by many commentators as its beginning.

It is not. As a matter of pure logistics, Iran can’t invade Israel, and Israel can’t invade Iran. Missiles are expensive, and Israel is pretty good at making Iran waste them—little payoff for the payload. Drones may be a continuing problem; but more for Israeli civilians than for the Israeli military. 

A World War tends to require grand alliances of nations. Instead, this may increase Iran’s isolation. Iran, the Shi’ite power, is the primary strategic threat to the Sunni Arab nations of the Persian Gulf and all points West, including the wealthy and militarily powerful Saudi Arabia. Iran has been meddling in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. It has no natural allies. The big Arab states may take the opportunity to make common cause with Israel against their common enemy.

It may also increase opposition to the regime within Iran. A lot of the recent protest has been on the premise that the government has been spending money on foreign adventures while the people at home are starving. The current strike on Israel may be a show of power by a government that feels cornered; to cow their own people more than Israel.

https://x.com/elicalebon/status/1779685190941679979

I have Iranian friends. I have American friends who have visited Iran and spoken to people there. No Iranians seem to support the current regime. They are desperate for help from abroad to overthrow it, and wondering why it is not coming.

There may be an informal alliance of convenience among Iran, Russia, and China, but they are motivated by no common ideology and no common interests. In fact, their interests conflict.

The real danger is that each local war—Ukraine, now Gaza—gives incentive for the next, as the West’s resources get stretched. Now might be the time for Venezuela to invade Guyana and get away with it; now might be the time for China to invade Taiwan and get away with it.

Not Mincing Words

 

Pierre Poilievre makes his position on Gaza clear.

Owens Out

 

There is now a feud going on between Candace Owens and the Daily Wire. They recently “parted ways.” And the matter has split the entire right wing. 

My own take is that Daily Wire is consistently right in this dispute, and Owens is consistently wrong—that is, on her veiled antisemitism and her criticism of Israel in Gaza. Moreover, in the current context of rising antisemitism everywhere, Owens’s comments are dangerous.

I think what is really going on is that Candace Owens loves a fight, and fighting has always been, after all, good for her ratings. It is her established MO. She has waded unprovoked into big public spats with Steven Crowder, Cardi B, Megyn Kelly.

She has been trying to provoke Boring and Shapiro. Tweeting “Christ is King” to a Jew in the middle of an unrelated argument may not be antisemitic, but it is deliberately provocative.

We want people like Owens around. Every now and then, we need a cat belled, or someone to notice the Emperor is naked. 

On the other hand, while courage is the essential virtue, it does not ensure the presence of other virtues. Courage was Hitler’s one great virtue. Because he had this virtue, he was not the worst of men; but because he had this virtue, he did the worst of harm.

Were I the Daily Wire, I believe I too would have “parted ways” with Candace Owens. Not that I want to silence her; and the Daily Wire is certainly not silencing her by doing so. They are probably giving her free publicity. But I would not want to be associated with her; for I cannot see her principles.

The Politics of Envy

 

I see, in a recent Facebook post, the flag of Palestine flying over Grant Hall, at my old Alma Mater, Queen’s University. 

At the same time, the Canadian government is announcing the resumption of support to UNWRA, which as been implicated in the planning and execution of the October 6 attack on Israel. This means there has not even been an interruption of funding from Canada.

Back in more innocent days, it used to be a common classroom question: had you been around in the day, would you have stood up against Hitler’s holocaust? Or would you have done nothing?

Now we know. Had the bulk of those in apparent charge in Canada been around then, they would have supported Hitler.

But we already knew that; we already had the holocaust of abortion, bigger than Hitler’s holocaust. We already had postmodernism, essentially the fascist concept. We already had “Medical Assistance in Dying.” We were already scapegoating “cis white males” and “whites” generally for all conceivable ills, in the same way Hitler scapegoated Jews, and for the same reason. Jews are simply “ultra-white.” It was bound again to come around to them. They work too hard, are too smart, and are too successful. Envy is the game.

We’re the baddies.

On Standing Up to Bullies

 

I am what is referred to these days by many as a “war pig.” That is, I endorse military aid to Ukraine. I endorse Israel’s pacification of Gaza.

I believe those who object, saying it is “none of our business,” and we should not be sending money overseas when there are serious problems at home, are being cowardly and selfish. 

Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan: we find Ukraine or Israel set upon by robbers and left lying in a ditch. It is our responsibility to help.

Remember Edmund Burke’s caution: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Moreover, collective security requires that acts of aggression against anyone not be allowed to succeed. Ensuring that aggression does not succeed is the surest way to ensure peace internationally, just as having a police force is the surest way to ensure peace domestically. We cannot honourably duck our responsibility and hope someone else does it.

I think it likely that the current turmoil in Ukraine has much to do with the disorderly American pullout from Afghanistan, which seemed to signal a lack of resolve.

Suggesting we should not send money abroad when there are needs at home is the fallacy of the false alternative. The one does not necessarily preclude the other.

If those who endorse unilateral pacifism really thought they had an argument, they would not resort to namecalling and would not try to dismiss pro-intervention positions out of hand.

We don’t want war; that’s why we must fight.

The Bigger Beating Up the Lesser

 

The good guy?

Friend Xerxes, in a recent private conversation, made guilelessly clear why the far left is generally in support of Hamas in the current Gaza struggle: because Israel is “the bigger beating up the lesser.”

Obvious enough, but also revelatory. This would seem to be, to the left, the only thing that matters: whoever is judged to be weaker, to have less power, is automatically in the right.

Consider intersectionality. Nobody in a designated “oppressed” group can be accused of being racist or oppressive. “Whites,” however, are racist and oppressive no matter what they think or do or have done, because they are supposedly in power: “privileged.”

It is not necessarily the correct perception in this case that Israel is the stronger, and Hamas the weaker. It is foolish for a weaker party to attack a stronger one; and Hamas attacked Israel. But the Arabs are all one ethnicity, by any traditional measure: the same language, the same religion, the same government until divided recently by European powers. Hamas no doubt hoped that the rest of the Arab world would come to their assistance, should hostilities begin, as they did in 1967 or 1973--not to mention the rest of the Muslim world, which is, in principle, supposed to be one political entity, Dar al Islam. In this wider context, Israel is a little sliver of land and a local population surrounded by powerful enemies.

But then too, those designated by the left as oppressed and weak minorities is also arbitrary: women, although the majority of the population is female; non-whites, although the majority of the world is non-white; and so on.

I think it was always objectively improbable, since the Abraham Accords, that Hamas would have received direct and immediate military support. But they might have hoped to flip the growing consensus for peace for the future.

But, not to get bogged down in this one case, if the left’s overall moral logic is correct, Al Qaeda was also in the right to strike the World Trade Centre: after all, Osama Bin Laden’s resources were less than America’s. But then, the left actually is currently thinking better of Osama and his justifications.

Japan was also, apparently, in the right to bomb Pearl Harbor: the USA was the bigger country. They were, therefore, the bullies.

But the idea that the weaker party is always in the right is moral nonsense. It certainly wouldn’t do, for example, as a parenting principle. The child is always right, then, and the parent always wrong?

Nevertheless, you see it in the left’s call a couple of years ago to defund the police: since the police have more power than the criminals, it is the police who are at fault, not the criminals.

Yet it is simply the doctrine of “might makes right” inverted. And it is self-defeating: if you support the weaker party to win, then, if it wins, you must oppose it as the stronger party. And so the wheel spins eternally, in constant blood and strife.

So why, since it is so destructive and nonsensical, does the left want to apply so assiduously?

Because it is an alibi for the sin of envy. 

If you are not morally developed, you will naturally resent anyone who seems to be doing better than you are, or does things better than you. You want to pull them down.

Like the desire to pull down statues of any recognized heroes.

Envy is the sin of Cain against Abel: if another seems favoured by fortune or by God, you resent them and seek their harm. It helps if you can declare them a “bully,” or “arrogant,” or rapacious, or greedy, simply for revealing their talents.

That would, for example, explain why the left calls Trump a bully. He skewers his opponents too well.

That explains why Bin Laden targeted the World Trade Center. It was too impressive a structure.

That explains antisemitism. The Jews are objectively highly accomplished as an ethnicity. 

That explains anti-white hatred; the same observation applies. They have accomplished too much to be allowed to live in peace.

And that is the way of the world.

Should the West Be Supporting Israel?

 

I hear some complain that we seem to care too much about the death of Israeli civilians in the October 6 assault. Would we have been so supportive if the same thing had happened in, say, Armenia or Azerbaijan? Why do we care so much more about the Jews?

Subtext: surely it is all about rich Jews in America controlling US foreign policy behind the curtain, right?

I believe the opposite: at the best of times, I see antisemitism always just below the surface, if not openly expressed.

There no doubt is a Jewish lobby in the West. But there also is, and always has been, a powerful Arab lobby, with money, votes, oil, and geopolitical importance.

If a similar attack had occurred in Azerbaijan or Armenia, it is true, the public and government reaction in the West would probably not have been as dramatic. But this is for practical reasons: Azerbaijan and Armenia are in the Russian sphere of influence. We would expect Russia to handle the matter, we would have little logistical ability to help, and doing so would probably provoke Russia.

But Israel is an ally. They have a right to expect support.

There is an obvious comparison: 9/11. When a roughly proportionate terrorist attack hit the US, not only did the rest of the West support the US’s invasion of Afghanistan to hunt down the perpetrators, NATO invoked section 5 of their treaty, and everyone sent in troops in support. 

Compare, more recently, Ukraine. Not a NATO member, not a traditional ally, but all of NATO has been sending support.

Compare Kosovo, or Bosnia. Again, the West mobilized to end the perceived genocide.

When Saddam invaded Kuwait, and there were claims of atrocities, the US mobilized a coalition of the West to intervene.

So, in this case, the expected reaction should be for the other nations of the “Free World” to give Israel full diplomatic support, and supply any help Israel needs to eliminate the threat—up to and including sending their own troops.

Western support for Israel falls short of that. 

Trudeau Lectures Israel

 

Justin Trudeau has caused another foreign relations lap by publicly demanding Israel exercise “maximum restraint” in Gaza, implying they are responsible for the deaths of many women and children.

Victor David Hanson makes a good point on this: calling for restraint or measured response in war is incoherent. This is to prolong war indefinitely, and perhaps to court defeat. The moral course, if you have overwhelming force, as Israel does here, is to use everything you have to bring the war to an end as soon as possible, and so end the killing. Trudeau’s advice would lead to many more deaths.

Of course, it is morally necessary to avoid any killing, of either soldiers or civilians, not needed to achieve victory. But if Israel is correct to claim Hamas is using “human shields,” the IDF refusing to fire on them for this reason is like paying ransom to kidnappers: if the tactic works for the terrorists, it guarantees more innocent civilians will die in future.

Apocalypse Maybe Later

I think it may now be winding down, but for weeks, people have been speaking of the conflict in Gaza as if it were the start of World War III.

I think the opposite. Hamas is not a serious military force; this is nothing like as serious as the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, when substantial Arab armies were arrayed against the Jewish state. The very barbarity of the initial attack smells of desperation: like a tantrum. Knowing they have lost the support of Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, all that is left is an attempt to, improbably, horrify Israel into surrender. And we can be sure no major Arab state is going to enter the fray.

There is a feeling of apocalypse in the air, and so every hiccup is taken as a cosmic death rattle. The end may be nigh, but not because of events in Gaza.

Is Hamas Worse than the Nazis?

 

Douglas Murray makes the argument.

And they garner much support in our own streets,

What can we say about the times we are living in?

Gaza

 

“Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why then doth every one of us despise his brother, violating the covenant of our fathers?”

Malachi 1: 10; from today’s Mass reading.

I am wimping out if I do not take a clear stand on the current mess in Gaza. In most conflicts, contrary to the common cowardly and self-interested nostrum, one side is essentially right and the other wrong.

The Palestinians under Hamas began the present conflict, in particularly heinous and unprovoked fashion. Right is on the side of Israel.

One might protest that Israel is a “colonial settler state.” The Palestinian Arabs have a longstanding grievance: that their ancestral lands were taken over by Jews, largely coming from other countries.

I ask myself: How would I feel if I felt myself obliged to move because some other group had made my hometown inhospitable to me?

And I answer, I have had that experience. It causes me grief. I grew up partly in Montreal as an Anglophone. My family had roots there. Over time, Quebec has become inhospitable to Anglophones, and many have felt obliged to leave. It became hard for Anglophones to find a job. It would be difficult to get schooling in English for my children. 

Yet it does not seem to me to justify war or random murder. One picks up stakes and moves on; as have so many immigrants who come to Canada.

I also had to leave Gananoque, my second home town. I did not want to. But I could not complete my education there, and could not get a job.

Most people are used to having to pull up stakes and move on. And that is really all that is being asked of the Arabs. 

The Arabs—a culture actually founded on mobility.

And Palestinian Arabs have many opportunities near to hand; they are not some distinct ethnic group. Lands in which their own language is spoken and their religion established. Moving on to Cairo or the Persian Gulf for opportunities would seem natural in other circumstances. I myself moved to the Persian Gulf for opportunities.

So, other than antisemitism, I do not see the problem.

The War on Main Street

 

Uptown in King’s Square today, the traditional centre of Saint John, there was a demonstration of perhaps thirty people, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.” Ironically, only a half-block away from a sign advertising Saint John’s historic Jewish Museum.

We need to be clear about this.

This is not a call for democratic government. Israel is a democracy. Arabs under the Israeli regime are freer than in any Arab state.

This not a call for peaceful coexistence. “From the river to the sea” rules out any two-state solution.

This has to be read as an intention that seven million Jews be either deported or killed. Rather more than Hitler put to death in the Holocaust.

And to what purpose? Why should this be to anyone’s advantage, since Israel is a democracy? Surely only out of anti-Semitism.

One upside: back when I was an undergrad and a grad student, it was common to argue that antisemitism was caused by Christianity. I think Rosemary Reuther was the author who became famous for this thesis. A fellow grad student, Jewish, insisted to me that all Christian children were taught that the Jews murdered Christ. Having attended Catholic schools and never having heard such a thing, I demurred. But she assured me I must be wrong.

Now this claim is never heard--Muslims have shown themselves to be more anti-Jewish than Christians. In fact, now Christians are scapegoated for being too pro-Jewish; as recently by friend Xerxes.

It should not be illegal to say such things as the pro-Palestinians uptown were chanting. But I am shocked and disturbed there is not more social disapproval. 

Our times look more like 1930s Germany every day.

What the Left Wants in Gaza

 

Friend Xerxes has apparently now expressed the official leftist position on the Gaza War. It is that we in North America are too prone to take the Jewish side, This is due to Jewish money, and the influence of the Bible. If only they had their own Holy Book.

“The root of this unequal support has to be the Bible.”

To begin with, Xerxes and the left fall here into the argumentum ad temperantiam fallacy: the idea that two opposing positions must both be valid. It is far more likely, if matters have come to blows, and, as Xerxes himself laments, no rational discussion is taking place, that no compromise or appeal to reason is possible. And this is almost always precisely because one side is in the right, and the other in the wrong. Those who know they are in the wrong are not going to listen to reason—because then they lose.

Accordingly, in all such cases we must evaluate the two positions, to see who is right. Not insist that both sides be “supported,” and supported equally—a perfect way to ensure the problem is not solved, and injustice and violence go on forever.

Moreover, if one side is right, and the other wrong, we have a moral obligation to intervene on the side of right.

Consider, for example, a man wanting to have sex with a passing woman in an alleyway; and the woman does not want to have sex. So he forces her.

A moral person does not try to support both sides. He does not negotiate a compromise; he does not watch with interest, then walk on.

So too in international affairs. Chamberlain negotiated his “compromise” between Hitler and Czechoslovakia at Munich. How did that work out? 

How about Hitler and the Jews? Were both equally in the right, or in the wrong? Would a compromise have been possible, or acceptable?

If we can conclude that one side in Gaza is in the right, one should hope to see most nations line up and offer assistance. This is the swiftest way to end the violence.

Xerxes blames the Bible, and says it would all be easily solved if the Bible were abandoned, with its claim of Jewish ownership of the land.

This seems to suggest that the “compromise” he and the left prefer is the elimination of Israel, and the deportation or execution of all the Jews.

But as to it being down to the Palestinians not having their own Holy Book, of course they do: those who are not Christian have the Quran. Awkwardly, however, the Quran , like the Bible, also recognizes Moses as a prophet, Jewish residence in Palestine, and at least implicitly a Hebrew claim to the Holy Land in perpetuity.

Not that this, either Quran or Bible, need be the justification for supporting Israel. It has more to do with the right to ethnicity, the right to exist, the right to self-government, and who is the aggressor.