lost political affections

I have, for the past 50+ years had an affection for or at least a soft spot for Israel. I have never been too sure why but perhaps it is because I have always been attracted to the underdog. I can remember at a fairly early age reading about the Holocaust and then about the activities of the Irgun who, in their minds and mine, fought against a super power for a Jewish homeland (today they would be called terrorists) and won. I remember in 1967 meeting two young Israelis who had fought in the 1967 war and how in a strange way how envious I was that they had had the opportunity to fight for their country against overwhelming odds and win. But in the past few years that youthful perhaps overly romantic view of Israel has changed. But even more importantly my disappointment and perhaps even outrage at the Canadian government’s response to the problems in the Middle East has continued to grow.

I don’t know what the solution to the impasse in the Middle East is. I have on a couple of times had the opportunity at a Gathering to talk to both Palestinians and Israelis about their countries and they had no solutions either. I understand that Israel feels (with some just cause) vulnerable to some of its neighbours who have fairly consistently denied its right to exist. I also understand why people who have lost their citizenship, their land and the right to exist as a free and independent people are more than slightly pissed off.  

The creation of Israel was a long and complicated process. However the primary argument that people of the Jewish faith had the right to move to and create a new country solely because people of their faith use to live there (there had always been a small core of Jewish people living in Palestine) was and is absurd. If that argument was the standard for how the international community made decisions then the Indigenous peoples of Canada, United States, Australia and New Zealand amongst others would have long ago been able to reclaim their land. Israel was created at least in part as a response to the collective guilt after WWII when the western world’s culpability in the Holocaust became apparent. In hindsight it may not have been the brightest decision the world has made.

In my mind Israel lost the right to claim to be the underdog when it started acting like a colonist power. It has forced generations of people to live in refuggee camps. It has denied those people the basic rights that all democratic countries offer their citizens. It has continued to absorb land and to build new housing upon that land. Its concept of negotiations with specifically the Palistinians is quite similar to that of successive Canadian Government's attitude to negotiating with First Nation communities such as Grassy Narrows in Northern Ontario. We will take everything that is of value and then we will negotiate what you can have.

Canada in the past week or so was one of only nine countries that denied Palestinians some recognition or official status at the UN. They did so under the guise that unilateral decisions were not conducive to negotiations.  To make it worse there are some signs that Canada is not going to renew its commitment to providing aid to the Palestinian refugee camps in retaliation for them have the audacity to want some status at the UN.  A few days later, Israel announce the building of 3000 new homes on lands traditional perceived to belonging to Palestine. Canada only sighs and suggests that it may not be conducive to negotiations.

To do nothing to condemn a colonist power that deprives a whole nation of its rights is shameful. To deprive those people of humanitarian aid is an embarrassment that should cause us all to hang our heads in shame or to raise our fists in defiance