I am a Gentile who believes strongly that the state of Israel has a right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish homeland and refuge. The attacks by Hamas terrorists on October 7 horrified me, even more so as the gruesome details of savagery and inhumanity came out. And I have strongly supported the right of Israel to respond militarily, but as the war enters its seventh month, I think it’s time to rethink Israel’s strategy.

The stated aim of the Israeli government is to completely eradicate Hamas, and yet, after seven months of intense fighting and bombardment, Hamas remains a formidable foe. Why is that? Aside from the obvious difficulties of fighting an entrenched and well armed foe that has had years to prepare for this conflict, there is also the question of whether Hamas and the Palestinians are separable. Most Western leaders and commentators have claimed that Hamas is not the Palestinians over these past seven months, and yet there is compelling evidence that is wrong. Of course, if Hamas and the Palestinians are inseparable, any solution to the thus far intractable challenges of co-existence between the Palestinians and the Israelis becomes much, much more difficult to achieve. It also removes the fig leaf Western politicians have hidden behind responding to the war where they criticize Hamas but oppose Israel’s response because it is hurting the “innocent” Palestinians.

It’s undeniable that Hamas fighters are Palestinians and poll and after poll of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank show considerable majority support for Hamas even after seven months of bombardment and fighting laid waste to much of Gaza. At the same time, world public opinion has turned, or is turning, against Israel, moving it towards the status of a pariah state. In fact, I suspect this is all playing out almost exactly as Hamas planned with its ultimate goal to completely destroy the State of Israel and murder its people.

Israel’s government, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has made things much worse with its enabling financial support for Hamas, its support of the settler movement on the West Bank, its complete lack of preparedness for the attacks on October 7, its implacable opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state and its divisive domestic policies. In fact, there’s growing suspicion the war is being prolonged to help the government politically, and certainly its recent decision to bomb the Iranian consulate in Damascus has only increased the vulnerability of Israel with the real possibility of a second war, this one on its northern frontier. The likelihood of that increased considerably yesterday as Iran fired three hundred missiles and drones at Israel.

Whether the continuation and escalation of the war is part of a cynical political maneuver, or whether it simply shows a lack of strategic wisdom and imagination, the facts on the ground now dictate a complete re-think of Israel’s strategy and approach.

It is difficult to accurately assess Israel’s success in the war but recent announcements it is having to re-fight battles in areas thought to have been successfully pacified suggest it is becoming mired in the kind of quagmire that defeated the United States in Vietnam and, effectively, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether or not the number of Palestinian casualties is correct, and they are most likely deliberate over estimations by Hamas authorities, the daily images of women and children being killed can only strengthen the position of Israel’s enemies and move toward the point where the stakes are genuinely existential for Israel.

I do not know what a new strategy should look like, but the first step must be a ceasefire with the release of any surviving hostages. It should be followed by a process involving the key players in the international and regional communities with the goal of making the ceasefire permanent along with a real path to Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no other realistic alternative and right wing Israelis who believe they can prevail and somehow push the Palestinians out of all of historic Palestine or, worse, kill them all must be marginalized if only for the sake the survival of Israel.

There are several reasons to stop the war now including, of course, ending the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza and freeing the hostages, but perhaps the most compelling is that it’s in Israel’s strategic interest to do so. 

The kidnappers and murderers from October 7 should still be hunted down just as the terrorists at the Munich Olympics were, but stopping the daily bombardments of Palestinian civilians will allow Israel to move forward to create and strengthen its alliances with neighbouring Arab nations. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that at least one of those nations, Jordan, helped Israel repel the Iranian drone and rocket attacks last weekend.

I can’t fully appreciate the anger and fear Israelis must feel after the October 7 attack but perhaps that’s where friends come in, outsiders who are more dispassionate and better able to view the strategic landscape free from those emotions. I consider myself a friend of Israel, and my advice is offered in that spirit and, most of all, motivated by what I believe to be in its long-term interest.

Just sayin

GH

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The New York Times recently ran an article, “Screams Without Words”, detailing the sexual atrocities committed by Hamas and other Palestinian men when they crossed into Israel on October 7 and slaughtered approximately twelve hundred, mostly Israelis. The article is the result of weeks of research, considering videos, live testimony, and the evidence left behind. Although the Times is withholding some of the more gruesome details, what is provided is beyond horrifying: women gang raped while at the same time being butchered; breasts cut off and tossed around like footballs; nails and bullets driven into genitals; and so much more. 

And any suggestion this was an isolated incident is contradicted by the multiple reports from multiple locations, signalling an horrific fusion of hatred of Jews and hatred of women. This isn’t all that surprising if you understand Hamas’ view of the role of women in society. They are valued only because they produce men. Nor is it surprising when you consider the behaviour of other, similar Muslim fundamentalist groups, like ISIS, that, given power, stripped away centuries of progress advancing the rights of women, while also forcing Yazidi women into sexual slavery.

If there was any doubt before October 7 what the fate of Jews and other non Muslims in Israel would be if Hamas were to succeed, it is gone now. Take Hamas at its word. Read its Charter. It’s all there, every hateful, violent, anti semitic, homophobic belief from the Dark Ages to the present day.

And in the face of this misogynist savagery, how does the world react and, more significantly, how do the defenders of women’s rights on the left react? By and large, with silence or, at best, equivocation. Where is the outrage when it is so justly warranted? Where are the international bodies whose duty it is to protect human rights and, specifically, women’s rights? After the initial silence, the rote, pro forma statements emerged, most qualified by a “but”, clearly seeking to not offend Israel’s critics or contradict the victimhood narrative so popular in so-called progressive circles.

I rarely watch the CBC but, on Christmas Day, because the other channels had replaced their news coverage with seasonal programming, I briefly tuned in to CBC News-world. The reporting on the conflict between Israel and Hamas consisted entirely of an interview with a professor from some university in London, England. It was clear from his name and accent that he was either an Arab or an Iranian. It was bad enough he spent not a second acknowledging the role Hamas played in starting the war or in fomenting so much violence leading up to it, or the repeated failures of Palestinian leadership to grasp opportunities for peace and Palestinian statehood, but the interviewer did nothing but lob softball questions at him providing further license for his diatribe against Israel and Jewish people. This from Canada’s public broadcaster!

Others have commented on the lack of balance in the news coverage and in the phenomenon of younger people, often of a progressive bent, to strongly side with Hamas in this conflict. Although I say “side with Hamas”, I have no doubt they would insist they were siding with the Palestinians, hiding behind the fiction the two are separable. If you were paying attention when you started this blog, you will have seen my description of “Hamas and other Palestinian men” as the perpetrators of the monstrous crimes on October 7, because once the barriers were breached, Palestinian men not officially part of Hamas, joined in the carnage.

All of this leads me to the question: how can people who say they are committed to the rights and dignity of women, and of gay and lesbian people, indeed of human rights generally, so easily and even gleefully align themselves with Hamas? I agree with those who feel that antisemitism has a lot to do with it and yet, when it comes to younger western people, it doesn’t feel sufficient or, perhaps even correct, to lay all the blame at conscious or unconscious antisemitism. Actually, I think something larger is at play here and it affects many more people than Jews. 

Over the past few decades the so called “anti colonialism/occupier” narrative has gained traction in western societies. It’s a reaction against several centuries of colonial exploitation by mostly western European nations, exploitation that included slavery, but its focus on European colonialism excludes similar behaviours by many societies and countries in the long history of mankind. Of course, with some exceptions, European colonialism is more recent than other examples of conquest, mass murder, slavery and exploitation visited by one group of humans upon another, and that makes it easier to identify it as the object for vilification, particularly because most of the wealthiest and most successful countries in the world today are the former colonial powers or their creations. One outcome of this is a mantra that denigrates Western societies and, particularly, so-called “white people” in those societies. Any conflict between people of colour and white people doesn’t require careful analysis and thought, just a visceral genuflection of support for the underdogs, always people of colour.

A terrible irony of history is that Jews, despite millennia of persecution and discrimination, are lumped into the “white people” group. And that means they are stigmatized as “settler/occupiers” where any conflict with others makes them the villain. Of course this isn’t confined to Jewish people and Israel. Many of today’s critics of Israel also refer to my own country, Canada, as the “so called country of Canada” and even lapse into the cultural appropriation of the term “Turtle Island” to describe all of North America (at least north of Mexico).

Aside from the immediate hate crimes we see being perpetrated in the name of this naive ideology, why does all this matter? It matters because, implicit in it, is a devaluing of the many good things Western Civilization has bequeathed to mankind, not the least of which is respect for human rights and, particularly, the rights of women and gay and lesbian people. In the long history of mankind, the West has behaved no worse than all the other rampant ideologies, beliefs and religions and, in some key respects, has behaved much better.

I think what offends me most about the defenders of Hamas in the West is their hypocrisy, their willful blindness to the appalling behaviour of Hamas and similar organizations and nations. That, and their intellectual laziness, their inability or unwillingness to delve into the detail and facts which, if pursued rigorously, would force them to confront the extraordinary contradictions in their world view. But that would require effort, something in seeming short supply in certain circles these days.

Just sayin,

GH

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As a baby boomer whose parents met because of the Second World War, I grew up in its shadow, knowing it was a cataclysm that engulfed much of the world and cost millions of lives, with untold suffering for millions more. It was a memory of unspeakable human cruelty and depravity on a scale never before witnessed. The only light in all that darkness was the belief that a lesson had finally been learned by humanity, one so appalling it would never be forgotten. 

As I grew older and came to understand the history of the twentieth century better, I still found it impossible to understand how the country that was perhaps the most advanced and civilized in the world at the time, Germany, could have fallen into such a dark pit. This only increased after multiple trips to that country where I met some of the friendliest, most sophisticated, and civilized people I have ever encountered. But their collective efforts to atone for the crimes of their parents and grandparents, while remarkable and uplifting, reinforced the memory and the puzzle: how could it have happened? And for my generation at least, the certainty it would never happen again was always bracketed by a tiny doubt because, despite all the efforts to explain and rationalize how it came to be, none quite accounted for what looked like a complete descent into madness.

For the past eighty years labelling someone a Nazi or comparing them to Hitler was almost always a step too far, ending the argument because the charge was just too ridiculous. In the rare cases it was appropriate it almost always applied to someone or some group on the very outer fringes of society, someone easily dismissed as a crank and not worthy of further thought or concern. But, as we prepare to enter 2024, the awful fact is there is a real and growing threat to western liberal democracies by extreme right wing groups whose thoughts and ambitions align frighteningly with the fascists of the early and mid twentieth century. Those fascists gave us both Nazism and Hitler. 

Nowhere is this a greater threat than in the strongest, most prosperous democracy in the world, the United States, where the seemingly unstoppable ascent of Donald Trump to the Republican Presidential nomination should be ringing alarm bells from one end of the country to the other. But it is not. 

I’ve already conceded that comparing Trump to Hitler, or the ambitions of his MAGA followers to Nazis, may undermine whatever other arguments I make, but failing to heed the clear warning signs is sleep walking to disaster. 

Donald Trump is using language in his speeches that isn’t just a distant echo of Hitler and the Nazi message, it’s a direct crib. His description of immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood of America” is the same language used by Hitler in “Mein Kampf” and in his subsequent speeches. And lest there be any doubt who he is referring to in his “vermin” comments, he goes on to stipulate they are coming from South and Central America, Africa and Asia or, in other words, anywhere other than white European societies. 

When confronted with his use of Hitler’s language, Trump responded he had never read Mein Kampf, which I believe because I doubt he’s ever read any book, but he’s certainly familiar with the language and its source. A recent news report, relying on evidence from his first divorce, revealed he kept copies of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. 

Why would anyone who is not a descendant of white Europeans think these comments would not also apply to them; that American citizens, no matter what generation, whose families are from Asia, Africa or Central/South America won’t be swept into the category of vermin poisoning the blood of America? It’s only a matter of time before that happens. And then what?

And, while we’re on the subject of “purifying” a population, why stop at people who have non European origins? Why not go after everyone who is different, who doesn’t fit into a pure, white, heterosexual, Christian population, unfettered from the obnoxious demands of minorities and people who don’t look like MAGA supporters, or even just don’t agree with them?

Donald Trump is promising to build massive detention camps to imprison illegal aliens, presumably before deporting them, although I can’t help wonder what the next step will be if deportation proves too expensive, too time consuming, too difficult or impossible. 

When the Nazis first came to power in Germany, they built concentration camps. At first, those camps weren’t used to murder millions of people. They were filled with enemies of the government, whether opposition politicians, labour leaders, clergy, intellectuals, and others. It was only later that the inevitable logic of their existence turned them into mass death camps where millions were murdered.

“Can’t happen in America” you say. Really? Why? 

“Because the ‘guard rails’ of the American political and judicial system will constrain a future President Trump” you say. 

One thing we’ve learned from the first Trump Presidency and its aftermath was how close those vaunted guard rails came to failing and how vulnerable they really are when extremists with no shared sense of civic responsibility or democratic/constitutional norms decide to breach them, particularly when those who should and could stand up for them, display the utter spinelessness of political opportunism.

“Because even if Trump wins the Presidency, the majority of Americans will almost certainly have voted against him so he couldn’t possibly cause the radical changes you fear” you say. 

In 1933 Adolph Hitler won the German election with 43.9% of the vote. That was the last election until after Germany’s defeat in the Second World War.

There is a cancer growing in America and it threatens not only the lives of immigrants and non European Americans, but also those who oppose it or are otherwise different from the MAGA view of true Americans. It also threatens to do incalculable damage to the international order and to the very idea of democracy itself. It must be stopped, but that can only happen if enough Americans recognize the threat and are prepared to stand up and fight for their democracy.

That didn’t happen in Germany in 1933.

Just sayin

GH

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• William Butler Yeats (from “The Second Coming”)

Henry Kissinger died this week, reigniting the debate over whether he was a great statesman or a war criminal. There are arguments supporting both claims and, in the end, he was probably both, although that doesn’t satisfy the need for absolutes those titles demand. Those arguing his greatness say he saw the world as it is and used the power of the United States to protect it and its interests, something that is the paramount obligation of an American Secretary of State. Others argue his decisions and behaviours gave the lie to American claims of moral superiority; of respect for human rights and the rule of law and, most of all, the assertion that “all men are created equal”. There is no doubt his actions caused the suffering and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in many parts of the world but, and I know this will seem an outrageous question to some, were those deaths justified, not by their ultimate results but by the world view that caused them?

Fifty years ago I would have had no difficulty calling Kissinger a War Criminal, armed as I was with the certainty of youth and the unyielding belief that the values I held should be shared by all and would eventually triumph. That certainty and optimism is appealing absent much experience. However, as history has taught us, the tyranny of the left can be just as awful as the tyranny of the right when left unchecked and un-moored from a shared understanding of rules and values.

So, what happened to that brash young man, the one who proudly marched across the Granville Street Bridge in the first anti Vietnam war protest in Vancouver, and who stormed out of a dinner party when the British Consul General decided to lecture him on the virtues of America’s intervention in Vietnam? Life. Experience. Disappointment

It seems such a short time since human history appeared to be turning towards a bright, optimistic future, whether with the Good Friday Accords, the Camp David Agreement, the Oslo Accords, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the democratic stirrings in China, and advances in medicine and science that turned HIV from a death sentence into a chronic condition. All these and more seemed to validate my trust that humanity was basically good and that bringing western liberal values and science to the fore would result in a bright, free and progressive future.

It’s not clear when all this began to unravel. Perhaps it was the attacks on 911 and the decades of war and destruction that followed, although that was only the most spectacular of the events underlining the hubris of the West believing its values would be embraced by peoples the world over. We looked at others and saw juvenile pictures of ourselves, pictures that wilfully ignored the vast differences in cultures, experiences and beliefs across humanity. We believed that, once other peoples saw the merits of our systems and beliefs, they would embrace them and turn into newly minted Westerners. This was just an extension of the colonial overreach of European powers of the last several centuries but, even if it had been fundamentally different, that colonial experience would have fatally tainted it anyway. As it was, it was wrong on so many levels.

Wherever we look now, the dreamed of utopia is in tatters. America, the vital foundation of Western democracies, is teetering on the brink of dictatorship and/or division and collapse. The ancient blood hatreds of Europe are emerging from nearly a century of banishment as the terrible memories of the Second World War fade. Russia, historically the greatest menace from the east, is on the march, trying to regain its empire as it wages a brutal, merciless war on democratic Ukraine. Any flickering possibilities of democratic reform in China and Hong Kong have been extinguished by their communist/authoritarian leaders as they also threaten to invade democratic Taiwan. In the Middle East, the existential battle between Israelis and Palestinians takes on new forms of barbarity and horror. And these are only the most obvious as every corner of the globe seems consumed by ancient, nationalistic hatreds costing millions of lives.

Even on the scientific/medical front, the COVID pandemic showed many people’s deep distrust of science when it interfered with their claims to unfettered freedom, preferring instead to rely on rumours, conspiracy theories and quackery while effectively giving the finger to any sense of social responsibility. This distrust spills over into the greatest threat to humanity today, man made climate change, where otherwise adults behave like children refusing to believe inconvenient truths.

And that brings me back to Henry Kissinger’s world view. When I look out at the world today I see a hobbesian dystopia where human beings behave in brutal and shocking ways, seeking to dominate other human beings and to advance their interests no matter the effect on others. Even where their own survival is at stake, as with climate change, hubris and denial blocks any effective action or acknowledgement of responsibility.

Coming to terms with the realities of the modern world requires a fundamental rethink of some of the most important beliefs of the last century and it results in profound shock, even disbelief, when confronting the horror show out there. And just at the moment the west needs inspired leadership and a bright and optimistic pathway forward, there is none.

I don’t know what comes next. In fact, no one does, there are so many variables at play but I do know we need to cling to whatever is left of our belief in the possibility of progress and a better future. We also need to strengthen our democracies at home and oppose those amongst us who would import the hatreds and divisions of the rest of the world. This is a particular challenge in a country like Canada that welcomes so many immigrants from places with values so at odds with what we think of as typically Canadian beliefs.

So, was Henry Kissinger right? Well, I think the current state of the world lends credence to his world view, but I don’t think it necessarily leads to complete cynicism or despair. History has shown that the ebb and flow of freedom and human rights is a constant which, of course, means there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, just more struggle which will continue long after we are gone.

Of course, if Americans choose to jump back down the Trump rabbit hole next year, all bets are off.

Just sayin

GH

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I have spent most of the five weeks since Hamas terrorists slaughtered innocent Israelis, in America where I followed the developing story on its networks, including CNN, CBS and NBC all of which provided balanced and accurate reporting. I returned to Canada last week and on Thursday watched the national newscast from one of Canada’s major national networks. It wasn’t the CBC which, in my mind, disqualified itself from objective reporting of this story with its initial refusal to call the Hamas murderers “terrorists”, directing instead that they be referred to as “militants” or something similar.

What struck me watching the newscast was the not so subtle shifting of the narrative towards criticism of Israel and away from the horrific acts that precipitated the war and the evil behaviour of Hamas in both its tactics and behaviour. Against the backdrop of terrible scenes of bombed out buildings, including hospitals, of bloodied women and children, of corpses being carried through the streets, the newscaster repeatedly relied on the “Gaza authorities” to source its information on the total number of casualties and the party responsible for this or that attack or outrage. What was missing was a clear and consistent message that “Gaza authorities” meant Hamas, the party responsible not just for initiating this bloody conflict but also the terrorist organization that was deliberately using Palestinians as human shields, including embedding its command centres, weapons depots and weapons manufacturing sites in the very places that would ensure maximum casualties and suffering if the Israelis attacked those sites. In fact, in the newscast, this appalling cynicism wasn’t even acknowledged.

On the other hand, when the Israeli Defence Forces issued a statement or information it was completely bracketed by qualifications like “unconfirmed” or “according to” or “can’t be relied upon”. Why is that?

Mine is the last generation with any direct connection to the Second World War, being born to those who lived through and fought in it, and in the shadow of its horrific legacy. Certainly in my family the Holocaust was the darkest of dark, the event that displayed humanity at its most bestial, at its most depraved. And the words “never again” were always part of that conversation even as the incomprehensibility of the evil acts still stunned us. One glimmer of good that seemed to have emerged from this appalling darkness was the creation of the State of Israel, a place where Jews could always find refuge. And we watched as this tiny David of a state repeatedly fought its much larger and more powerful Goliath neighbours and won, always emerging standing and defiant.

What’s more, not only did Israel survive but it built a mostly liberal democracy in the Middle East, a sharp contrast to its hostile, theocratic and authoritarian neighbours. It became a place where women enjoyed equality and where gays and lesbians could live their lives without fear of repression or worse. Of course it wasn’t perfect. It, like most other places on earth, had its extremists. Particularly in later years, it endured under incompetent, extreme and corrupt governments. And of course, the plight of the Palestinians always bedevilled it, although the Palestinians themselves were so often the authors of their own misfortune as time and again they managed to let peaceful and equitable settlements slip through their fingers.

The Palestinians are mostly the descendants of the approximately 700,000 Palestinians who fled, or were forcibly ejected from, the land that was awarded to Israel by the United Nations when the state of Israel was created. What is conveniently overlooked by critics of Israel is that at the same time approximately 900,000 Jews were expelled from Muslim countries as part of the same process and most of them re-settled in the new state of Israel. Some of these Jewish communities in the Maghreb and the Middle East had existed for millennia.

So, how did the tiny state of Israel, that shining example of liberal democracy in a sea of backward looking theocracies and dictatorships, become the “bad guy” for so many in the west and elsewhere as it fights to protect its people? I think there are several reasons.

For starters I discount the the loud shouts of university students. I was one once too and, looking back, wince at some of my more extreme positions then, although I must say none of them equalled the calls for the genocide that would result if the “from the river to the sea” chants of today’s protesters ever came to pass.

I also think Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and their supporters and enablers have done a masterful job of creating a narrative of victim-hood for the Palestinians and somehow have managed to elide their more extreme agendas. To many, they have successfully equated the Israelis with “settler/occupiers” and tied them into the anti colonial struggle and resistance despite the actual facts which few seem interested in learning. Of course some Israelis have made this task easier for them by seeming to dismiss the idea that the Palestinians should have any rights or land.

One particularly contentious matter that bears on how countries like Canada or, for that matter, many European countries respond is the fact that the demographics of those countries are being changed through immigration from countries whose values are very different from the host country. As a Canadian who has lived in one of the most racially diverse neighbourhoods in the world for over fifty years I have always celebrated Canada’s openness to newcomers no matter how different they seem from me and those I grew up with. That said, as a gay man, there has always been a tiny warning voice raising the alarm that people are coming to Canada who don’t think I and people like me should have rights or, for that matter, should be allowed to live. The same can be said for some immigrants attitudes towards Jews.

When I look at some of the more egregious statements made by pro-Palestinian protesters in Canada I can’t help but notice many of them have names that suggest their origins in Muslim countries even though they are Canadian citizens and, while not surprising, it does explain their simplistic pro-Palestinian and Hamas stands and their apparent unwillingness to concede even for a second Israel is the victim in this war.

And then there is the terrible poison of antisemitism that has infected the blood stream of so many countries since at least the birth of Christianity. Despite our constant disavowals of it, it is still there, lurking and waiting for the moment to raise its head and spew out its venom. And this is such a moment although, in some ways, just the culmination of several years of rising antisemitism peeking from behind the rocks of right wing populism both in North America and in Europe.

Like many others, I just don’t understand it. I don’t know where it comes from or why it persists although I can find some of its roots in the Christian doctrines taught to children: the murderers of Christ; the money changers in the Temple etc. but, as our societies become more secular, how can those blood libels still hold sway?

In this moment the “why” or “how” really don’t matter. What matters is that the poison of antisemitism lurks behind so much of the current response to the war in Gaza and no amount of excusing, qualifying or clarifying will change that. The first step is to see it clearly and to call it out and, of course, to stand by Israel and to support and guide it as it fights for its very survival.

GH

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It’s been nearly two weeks since Palestinian terrorists stormed across the border from Gaza and committed the mass murder of Israelis. Since then we’ve learned the awful details of the massacres. Women, children, babies, men, the elderly, Holocaust survivors, all slaughtered, some literally in their beds. Not to mention the rape, torture and kidnapping that accompanied the murders.

And even as the story broke, and before there was any clear picture of Israel’s response, pro Palestinian activists and supporters around the world were claiming the massacre was Israel’s fault, that the Israelis were “settler/occupiers” and because of that, were responsible for their own demise. Some of those comments came from Canada and the United States, both countries that, using their own terminology, would also be described as”settler/occupier” countries.

As the shape of Israel’s response becomes clearer the opposition voices are growing louder, demanding the Israelis “pause”, stop or just turn away from the awful murders that were inflicted upon them. And I can’t help but feel there is something unique about these calls, unique in the sense it involves Israel and not some other country confronted with similar atrocities. How would Canada or the U.S. (or for that matter, Australia or New Zealand also, presumably, falling into the category of “settler/occupiers”) react confronted with similar assaults and would the world rush to condemn them even before any action was taken?

Israel is facing threats on all sides: from Hamas in Gaza, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, from Shia militants in Yemen, from Iran and from the permanently unsettled Syria. How it responds to the Hamas attack will inevitably affect the behaviour of its other enemies. If, as the pro Palestinian protesters want, Israel simply turns the other cheek, perhaps accepts some kind of return of hostages in exchange for standing down, a lesson will have been learned. That lesson: you can attack Israel and its citizens with relative impunity, and it will only be a matter of time before all this happens again.

And to be clear, the Hamas attack is only the latest in a long history of it attacking Israel, whether with rockets, incendiary drones and terror squads. The first obligation of any government is to protect its citizens and that’s what Israel must do now, not just making it less likely future attacks will succeed, but ensuring there are no future attacks and that means eliminating the threat Hamas poses from Gaza.

I get the hand wringing over the fate of the citizens of Gaza who are caught between Hamas and the Israelis. But as a people, they share some of the blame and, in fact, polls show that a majority of Palestinian Gazans support Hamas. That many will likely die is awful but, for Israel, what is the alternative? And why, amongst so many progressives, is the fault Israel’s and not at least shared with Hamas?

How hard is it to condemn barbaric acts committed against innocent civilians? And yet, at best, so many of the condemnations are bracketed by equivocations, by the need to contextualize, to look for reasons that quickly lead to victim shaming. This reflects a profound failing by so called progressives and their movements, one that won’t be soon forgotten.

Just sayin

GH

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In the week since Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel from Gaza we have learned more and more sickening detail of the slaughter of innocents they committed. Infants, the elderly, the infirm and young families, none were spared the horrific murder, torture, rape and pillage committed by these young Palestinian men. And that doesn’t even include the likely awful fate of the one hundred and fifty or more hostages taken back to Gaza. The details seem to scream out from an ancient hellish past, one we thought was behind us except, of course, if you’re Jewish. Then the memories of the Holocaust and the pogroms that were its predecessors are not much more than a generation old.

It would have been bad enough if the terrorists had simply shot and killed their victims as quickly and efficiently as they could. But what we are learning now is so much worse. Babies butchered, whole families burned alive, women raped, all with a sadistic glee that defies our normal understanding.

We have confronted this before when faced with seemingly unimaginable human cruelty towards other human beings. To the contemporary mind the Holocaust is the best, or worst if you like, example of humans displaying incomprehensible cruelty towards others on a scale that was, and still is, unimaginable. Look around you at other people and ask the question: “are they capable of this monstrous behaviour?” History says they are although that offends every sense of decency, of belief in the essential goodness of mankind, we try to nurture.

As Israel begins its offensive, we hear more and more about the innocent Palestinians trapped in Gaza. A useful fiction has emerged that there is a clear and important distinction between Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas, that somehow a force estimated to be no greater than thirty thousand people is holding over two million Palestinians hostage, using them as human shields or as camouflage to hide their weapons and their fighters. This fiction begins at the top with President Biden and other world leaders and goes all the way down to liberal commentators across the globe and online.

And it will only grow louder in a rising tide of criticism of Israel as it responds to this unprecedented assault on its citizens and its sovereignty. A response, by the way, that would be expected of any nation similarly invaded.

Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip since 2006 when it defeated Fatah in elections. There have been no further elections and Hamas has established a strict theocratic state in Gaza, one that harshly curtails the rights of women and has no tolerance for what it considers signs of western decadence, including the very right to life for lesbians and gay men. It doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and has waged a relentless guerrilla campaign against it, including rocket attacks, incendiary devices, terrorist bombings, kidnappings and murders. These people are terrorists by any normal definition of the term, a fact that is acknowledged by Hamas’s designation as a terrorist organization by most western democracies, including Canada and the United States.

And where does Hamas come from? Is it some outside force, an ISIS type invasive species overwhelming the Palestinians? Not at all. Although technically an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Gaza is a homegrown Palestinian organization. Its fighters are young Palestinian men and its leaders are older Palestinian men (I don’t know to what extent women play an active role in the organization although, given Hamas’ treatment of women generally, I expect very little). In other words, the men who slaughtered Israelis last Saturday are the sons of Palestinian families in Gaza.

We have had to confront these issues before. To what extent is a general population guilty of the crimes committed in their name by leaders and soldiers? The most challenging example of this is post Second World War Germany and Japan, where confronted with the enormity of the evil committed by their wartime leaders and armies, the rest of the world created a kind of fiction that separated the leadership from the population. There seemed to be little alternative if the world was to move on but it never completely expunged the sense of massive complicity in the crimes of the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan.

I have known several Palestinians during my life, all of them either in America or Europe and, in that context, they seemed completely assimilated into the western value system but with one significant exception: their hatred of Israel and, by extension, Jews. The very existence of the state of Israel was an abomination that would only be expunged when that state ceased to exist, when, in the words of the slogan, “from the river to the sea” was free and a Palestinian state ruled over the entire area.

Now we see the so-called progressive left taking up that slogan although, when pressed, they never quite confront what should happen to the nine million Jews who live in the state of Israel. But now we know their answer even if they don’t state it clearly. The abominations that were committed last Saturday are simply prelude and are somehow justified by ideologies of liberation and re-occupation.

I accept that there are some Palestinians in Gaza who are “innocent”, starting with the children, but responsibility for the inevitable carnage in the coming days and weeks rests squarely with Hamas and its enablers in the Palestinian population of Gaza. They have sown the wind and they will now reap the whirlwind.

Just sayin

G

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Those of you who follow me on Facebook know I posted an article on Canada’s Residential Schools a few weeks ago. It was by an English academic and offered some controversial views on Canada’s Residential School system and its legacy. It provoked a fair bit of comment, generally split between negative and positive. One of those responses introduced me to a new word: “denialism”. While I had never encountered the word before and doubted it was even acceptable English, I had no difficulty getting its intended meaning given the context.

In fact, upon further inquiry, I found “denialism” to be a real word in the field of psychology. Quoting from Wikipedia (okay, I know it’s not the OED): “Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality”.

For some time in Canada groups and individuals have been pressing the federal government to bring in legislation that would criminalize denialism with respect to the country’s past residential school system. The proposal would also seek to open the door for civil litigation against anyone who, in the opinion of individuals or groups, was guilty of denialism on this topic. This is something that should concern civil libertarians and anyone else who cares about free speech as one of the cornerstones of Canadian democracy.

For those of you who are not familiar with the history of Residential Schools in Canada, here is a brief history. European settlement of North and South America led to the displacement and worse of the indigenous populations. In much of South and Central America this displacement was accompanied by ruthless campaigns to exterminate the native populations. This was also true to some degree in the United States. While there were undeniable instances of similar behaviour in Canada, on the whole, successive Canadian governments, beginning in the mid nineteenth century and continuing to the 1970’s, pursued a policy of trying to transform the native populations into integrated citizens of a Eurocentric country. The main instrument of this policy was the Residential School system where native children were separated from their families and placed in institutions usually run by religious orders. This much is not contested. Also not generally contested is that the policy and program was a failure and that successive generations of native Canadians remain scarred by the experience of separation from their families and societies, not to mention abuse that was inflicted on some of the children.

For even moderately informed people this much would fall into the category of “empirically verified reality” that is cited in the definition of denialism. However, things become much more contested when it comes to the motivations of the people behind the Residential School Program, the actual treatment of the children in the schools and, most controversial, whether any good came to any of the children because of the program. And, it seems, this is where those pushing for the criminalizing denialism wish to take us.

It is impossible to fully understand the motivations of the mid nineteenth century political leaders in Canada who supported the Residential Schools Program although, when compared to all our neighbours to the south, it seems reasonable to infer that, on the whole, they were not seeking to physically eliminate native people from Canada because, if they were, why wouldn’t they have followed the examples to the south? In fact, from their perspective, and probably motivated by their sense of Christian responsibility, they likely thought they were doing good for the native population. Of course that collides with our twenty first century sensibilities but projecting those backwards a hundred and fifty years (or even fifty) does little to inform the evil or goodness of their intentions, as opposed to the consequences.

In the past several years native bands and their supporters have been implying, if not outright asserting, that there was mass killing of the children in the Residential Schools. To support this claim they have employed ground penetrating radar that locates “anomalies” in the soil around former Residential Schools, anomalies that are then equated with bodies. As a result a narrative has emerged that paints Canada as a genocidal nation whose territory is filled with mass unmarked graves of native children who were killed in the Residential Schools. Not surprisingly, other nations that consider Canada a foe have seized upon this narrative to denigrate Canada and to obfuscate their own past and current malign behaviour.

But, as of this date, not a single body has been found during the very limited excavations around the anomalies and it isn’t lost on many of us that the native bands seem reluctant to allow the types of investigations that would confirm or deny their claims of mass graves. The simple fact is, while there was undeniable abuse of some of the children in some of the schools, there is no evidence whatsoever there was ever a program of mass murder connected with them. Certainly, children died while at the schools but they died from the same diseases that were ravaging their home communities, mostly tuberculosis that was endemic in native communities in Canada at the time.

Perhaps the most controversial topic of all concerns whether or not any students benefited from their time in the Residential Schools. I think it probable that some did, whether from the education and skills they acquired or whether from the medical care they received that would not have been available in their native communities. I also think it extremely unlikely in the current environment that any of those children or their descendants are likely to come forward and make that claim. Even so, if Canada is to have a full reckoning with its past use of Residential Schools, all the truths must be acknowledged, not just those that fit a particular political and cultural agenda.

The responses to my postings on Residential Schools have been mostly respectful but, with very few exceptions, have failed to engage with the actual arguments I make. Generally they describe the school system as a terrible policy that left a terrible legacy, both for the actual students and their communities and cultures, and for the rest of Canadian society. As I hope is clear by now, I agree with them but resist the next step that seeks to escalate the trauma inflicted by the schools to the most horrific examples of modern human behaviour captured by the conventional meaning of genocide. To date at least, there is no “empirically verified” evidence to support that claim and asserting it does great damage to Canada and, perhaps most importantly, to the possibility of reconciliation between native and non native Canadians.

I’m not going to spend much time speculating upon why native peoples and their supporters feel a need to reach beyond the verifiable horror and damage of the schools, to try to make them out to be something they were not. It may be because of trauma and hurt and the need to express it in the most extreme ways possible. It may be because the story has gained such legs many genuinely believe it. It may be because it shifts all responsibility for the plight of native Canadians to non natives, eliminating any factors that may be the responsibility of the native communities themselves. Or it may be something to do with money. Most likely, it is some combination of these.

So, how does this relate to the proposal to criminalize denialism with regard to Residential Schools in Canada? Well, I don’t think it takes much imagination to believe that those pushing for this legislation would like to use it to prevent me from offering the views I have in this blog. If I believed it would somehow be limited to “empirically verified realities” I would be more sanguine. But I do not. In fact, based upon the responses I’ve received thus far, I’m absolutely convinced it would be used to silence anyone who tried to question the genocide narrative. And that should concern all Canadians tremendously. I take some comfort from the protection of freedom of expression in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms but I also know those protections are not absolute.

The proposal to criminalize most discussion of Residential Schools in Canada is an egregious assault on the rights of all Canadians. It must not be allowed to slip through under cover of the outrage over Residential Schools or the false narratives that are fostered about them. This is a five alarm fire and every Canadian who cares about basic freedoms in this country should let their Members of Parliament know it is completely unacceptable.

Just sayin

GH

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