Lilley on Pro-Terrorism Demonstrations in Ottawa

 

Not Mincing Words

 

Pierre Poilievre makes his position on Gaza clear.

Eid Mubarak

 

Today is Eid al Fitr. As I always do, I posted a greeting on Facebook for my Muslim friends.

But this year, for the first time, I got some pushback. The following comment appeared almost immediately:

“No. Release the innocent Israeli hostages first. You ‘muslims’ have no right to celebrate when such crimes and so many others are committed in the name of that ‘religion’. It’s not a religion but a scheme to destroy the world.”

Muslim authorities worldwide should condemn the actions of Hamas on October 7 and disassociate themselves from them. Individual Muslims should keep away from any pro-Hamas demonstrations.

Otherwise, what are the rest of us to think? Raping, killing children and holding hostages is objectively evil, not permissible even in a declared state of war., let alone in a surprise attack If Islam can defend and even support this, Islam is objectively evil.

It saddens me deeply to say it.

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 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.

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.

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.

Thoughts on Israel and Hamas

 

I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew Klavan in this interview: all Jew hatred is God hatred. Jews are hated because they represent the moral law, the demand to make something better of ourselves. Everything else is alibi.

Michael Knowles is here as the voice of Catholicism, but I strongly agree with Klavan and not him in understanding Christianity as a branch emerging from the Jewish tree, not something that supersedes Judaism. Any more than the covenant with Noah was cancelled by the covenant with Abraham, or the covenant with Abraham by the covenant with Moses. God does not renege on his promises. This point is made repeatedly in the New Testament.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Klavan also points out that Israelis are not colonizers. This is another example of the attempted mind control through the illegitimate use of language I posted about yesterday. A colony by definition lacks self-government, and is controlled by some parent state. Israel has no parent state. 

Should pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests be made illegal in Canada, as in France? Technically, they already are illegal, because they violate the “Hate Laws.” But inevitably, such laws are always used selectively, to suppress groups out of favour. They are of no help in the face of real hate.

I understand why such demonstrations make Jewish Canadians feel unsafe. I still oppose banning them; this is where free speech is put to the test. Were I a Jew, I would feel safer knowing where the threat is coming from. The Devil’s favourite con is convincing us he does not exist: then he gets to act with impunity.

Should the US bomb Iran over this? As things stand, the average Iranian is pro-American. Getting bombed would rally many behind the corrupt and hated government. And taking out Iran’s oil facilities is not a great idea either. We’re already boycotting Russian oil, and refusing to allow fracking and pipelines at home. Why not just bomb Washington and London and get it over with?

Should Israel, as is being suggested in some quarters, just expel everyone from Gaza? Not possible. No Arab country will take them in, because that would be abetting Israel’s ethnic cleansing. No Western democracy should, because that would mean endangering their existing Jewish population. 

The IDF can huff and puff, but there is no military solution here. I think of this passage from Heart of Darkness:

In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.

You cannot subdue a hostile population with weapons, if they are not prepared to accept defeat.