UPDATED: Powerful Political Leadership

As the war between Israel and Gaza rages on, it is almost too painful to watch the devastation that the former is inflicting on the latter. I have always been steadfast in my view that criticism of Israel, which is clearly warranted in its ongoing retaliation for the horrible Hamas attack, is not a manifestation of anti-Semitism, but rather the valid criticism of a nation-state, something we do regularly when other countries overstep their bounds.

Sadly, however, politics being what it is, most 'leaders' are loathe to engage in anything more than pro-forma declarations of Israel's right to defend itself, while inserting parenthetic sympathy for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Political courage and leadership are most often singularly lacking in the discussion.

Nonetheless, most right-thinking people are undoubtedly appalled by the rising number of anti-Semitic outrages being committed these days under the pretext of reaction to Israel's actions in Gaza. People are being attacked, children are afraid to venture out to school, places of worship are being desecrated. None of this can be justified. 

Germany, which knows well the cost of anti-Semitism, offers an especially lucid and heartfelt analysis of the ugliness that is spreading; given its history, what it says matters. German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck released the following nine-minute video, which merits careful viewing and careful reflection. It makes a clear distinction between legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and anti-Semitic actions. Even if you don't have the time to watch the entire piece, try to watch some of it, as the concern, compassion, balance and historical context contained therein are well-worth your consideration.

UPDATE: Thanks to Toby for providing this link to a full transcript of Habeck's speech.

Two Seasonal Reminders

I guess we never really outgrow Halloween, especially when the auguries spell something scary for Doug Ford.

And editorial cartoonists are certainly trying to put the fear of God into the premier:

H/t Theo Moudakis

A Sunday Thought

With the NDP imploding under the weight of idealists and ideologues, and with some calling for the resignation of Marit Stiles, the following editorial cartoon seems to hit its target:

The only possible victor emerging from this debacle, in my view, will be the Ontario Liberals, especially if they choose Bonnie Crombie (who Doug Ford fears) as their next leader. While one female leader sinks, another will likely rise.

Not A Team Player

 

I have never been much of a joiner. I never really participated in team sports, committees (unless I had no choice), or group endeavours. There is something about the passionate intensity of such pursuits that has always left me cold. And, of course, history teaches us a great deal about happens when we lose ourselves in collective mania.

I therefore feel a measure of sympathy for Hamilton Centre MPP Sara Jama, the erstwhile NDP member ousted from caucus over her refusal to recognize and submit to the party hierarchy. It is not always easy to play nice with others. But my sympathy is limited.

There are many posts on social media decrying NDP leader Marit Stiles' decision to remove Jama. Some profess admiration for Jama's unwavering defence of Palestinians and vow never again to vote for the party. Indeed, someone went so far as to vandalize the window of Stiles' constituency office.

All, of course, are entitled to their opinion, but what they fail to understand in their idealistic fervour is that politics is a team sport. It is something one presumably knows before running for office. And it is a truth that Ms. Jama chose to ignore repeatedly.

Marit Stiles had this to say about her removal from caucus:

NDP Leader Marit Stiles announced Monday that Sarah Jama was removed from caucus because she has “broken the trust of her colleagues,” less than an hour before government MPPs passed a motion that will prevent Ms. Jama from speaking in the legislature.

 Ms. Jama, who was elected last March to the riding of Hamilton Centre, has been the source of controversy for the NDP after she posted a statement two weeks ago about the conflict in the Middle East. The post focused on the plight of Palestinians and human-rights violations in Gaza but did not speak about Israeli lives lost or condemn Hamas for its atrocities against Jewish people.

Ms. Stiles initially demanded that Ms. Jama remove the post, but the rookie MPP did not do so. Instead, Ms. Jama issued an apology to Jewish and Israeli people, condemned Hamas, and called for a release of all hostages and an end to the siege in Gaza. Ms. Jama’s original post, which she has since moved to the top of her social media, remains online. 

It would seem that Stiles worked earnestly to avoid removing her from caucus.

“Ms. Jama and I had reached an agreement to keep her in the NDP caucus, which included working together in good faith with no surprises. Our caucus and staff have made significant efforts to support her during an undoubtedly difficult time,” Ms. Stiles said in a statement.

“Since then, she has undertaken a number of unilateral actions that have undermined our collective work and broken the trust of her colleagues.”

Drilling right done to the essential truth, it is clear that Jama, in her own purist approach to politics, was undermining Stiles' very leadership of the Ontario NDP, as well as offering the gift to the Ford government of diversion from the Greenbelt scandal. These are two facts that the idealists among us fail to acknowledge.

Politics has been called "the art of the possible," a pragmatic perspective that, in my view, speaks another essential truth. By ignoring that truth, Jama has consigned herself to political oblivion and betrayed her obligations to her entire constituency.

 

Unpalatable Truth

 

The Israeli-Gaza war is heart-breaking, so much so that I find I cannot look at imagery of the dead on both sides. The Hamas attack on Israel was horrific, but so is the Israeli retaliation, clearly breaking international law by targeting civilians in Gaza. What is little known and virtually unreported in North America, however, is how the Jewish nation has in fact cultivated Hamas for many years.

From the 1970s onwards, Israel aided the development first of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, and subsequently Hamas, created by the Brotherhood during the 1987 intifada. The aim was to undermine the authority of the secular PLO. “Bolstered by this policy”, the Times of Israel observed last week, “Hamas grew stronger”. Those who want to maintain the land of Israel solely for Jews and those who want to eliminate Jews from that land are as much in a mutual embrace as in a death struggle.

And this was reported by UPI in 2002: 

...according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

The Times of Israel reports that,

[b]olstered by this policy, Hamas grew stronger and stronger until Saturday, Israel’s “Pearl Harbor,” the bloodiest day in its history — when terrorists crossed the border, slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and kidnapped an unknown number under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at towns throughout the country’s south and center.

Where all of this will end is anyone's guess; the odds of the conflict spreading are significant. The only thing I know with any certainty is that reflexively supporting Israel, no matter what it does, will only ensure that the suffering on both sides is prolonged, and the press does no one any good by self-censorship in this matter.

Consequently, the anger, resentment and hatred felt by Palestinians today will find new generations to carry on this conflict, either overtly or through repeated, smaller attacks, long into the future.

 

In All Humility

This is all we can really say:

Real Thinking Requires Hard Work

I have thus far refrained from writing anything about the atrocities taking place in The Middle East. I have nothing constructive to add to the debate. However, I can't help but make an observation and reproduce the thoughts of another writer, who I will get to in a moment.

First, a walk down memory lane: the immediate aftermath of 9/11 saw this famous declaration from then-president George Bush:

Such a proclamation, that you are either "with us ...  or you are with the enemy" is clearly the product of an untutored mind, a mind that sees the world in bifurcated, absolutist terms. It is the favoured stance of both the simple-minded and the extreme radical, on both the left and right of the political spectrum. They allow for no nuance, no willingness or capacity to hold two conflicting views at the same time. God forbid that reason should enter into the calculus.

And so it is in the current war between Israel and Hamas/Gaza, the refusal to allow for the fact that the terrible attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum, and the suffering inflicted on both sides is horrendous and worthy of condemnation. 

I came upon a very thoughtful and thought-provoking article today by The Star's Shree Paradkar, one that doubtlessly will bring about a severe reaction from some. Because many readers do not subscribe to newspapers, I am taking the liberty of reproducing the entire piece, something I don't think I have ever done before in this blog.

See what you think:

I’ve been sick for a few days. Now I’m sick at heart. Sick in body and spirit. Like many in Canada, I’ve spent a sleepless night that’s reverberating with the sound of a clock a world away. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

More than a million people given 24 hours to get out, or else.

How are they planning it? What will the elderly and disabled do? Are there roads?

Will they send the minors first? Half a million of them?

Bombardments on the way.

No water.

No food.

No electricity.

The babies on incubators in hospitals? The people in the ICU?

No beeps there.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

What about the Israeli young ones who died?

That, too, is a tragedy. Of course, it is horrendous.

Hamas is bad. The Israeli government is bad. Innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being targeted and killed.

See, it’s not difficult to believe more than one thing is true at the same time.

But since the Hamas surprise attack last weekend in Israel that included mass killings and hostage taking, and Israel’s vicious retaliation including tightening its 16-year-long illegal blockade on Gaza, we have been fixated on a fake litmus test that decides whether we care for humanity or whether we support terrorism. The test question: “Do you condemn Hamas”?

Of course I condemn them — but why must I be made to say it?

Have we lost our reason? Or have we simply pulled off the mask of reasonableness?

When Hamilton NDP member Sarah Jama released a statement in solidarity with Palestinian people, the response in corners that usually see chest thumping about free speech became chilling very quickly. First there was her own party leader Marit Stiles publicly throwing her under the bus, asking for a retraction. There was Premier Doug Ford demanding she step down, falsely claiming Jama was “publicly supporting the rape and murder of innocent Jewish people ” Of course, she had done no such thing, but the howls became louder.

A Black, Muslim disabled woman was being hounded. Then the racists smelled blood and came rushing up to say, “Go back to where you came from,” and much worse.

Eventually Jama apologized.

Her sin? She hadn’t condemned the attack.

But not condemning it does not mean support of it, or of Hamas. It’s not so hard to understand the reluctance to condemn the Hamas attack on demand, horrible though it is. The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, who lost family to Israeli attacks, puts it this way: “It’s the Palestinians that are always expected to condemn themselves,” he told the BBC in a now viral video. “How many times has Israel committed war crimes live on your own camera. Do you start by asking them to condemn themselves?”

He’s right.

Palestinians are so rarely defended. More than a million people in north Gaza, half of them children under 18 who have never voted, and certainly not for Hamas? Abandoned by the world, how can they be saved? Tick-tock, tick-tock.

So now, in a cruel twist, it has fallen upon Jews — the very people whose trauma was triggered by the Hamas attack — to put aside their own grieving, their own coping and become the voice of restraint.

That’s why Jewish groups such as Independent Jewish Voices Canada are calling for a ceasefire. Or why we see Daniel Levy, president of the U.S.-Middle East project, getting so blunt on TV. When a BBC reporter said: “The Israelis would say we’re targeting Hamas,” he said, “Do you really keep a straight face when you say that? Do you think terrorist organizations embedded in populations who are denied their most basic rights are ended once and for all in a military campaign? Does that happen in history?”

Tick-tock.

A day after the Hamas attacks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “Canada unequivocally condemns” them and that Canada reaffirms its support for Israel’s right to defend itself in accordance with international law.”

Other Western leaders condemned the attack, with U.S. President Joe Biden calling it “an act of sheer evil.” But all pretended that this was happening in a vacuum. Nobody is asking them to justify it, but there wasn’t even an attempt to acknowledge how we got here.

The international law is now being openly broken. Forced deportation or forced transfers are defined as both a war crime and a crime against humanity.

Could the international community now condemn Israel?

No. The U.S. sent weapons.

Could other people protest on behalf of Palestinians?

No. Germany, France and many European nations banned them (some rightfully when they descended into antisemitism).

Could the politicians at least acknowledge that Palestinians have been denied basic human rights?

No.

Could the politicians say: Palestinians have a right to live?

Apparently even that is too much.

While Gaza starts to get closer to extinction, all Trudeau managed were a few waffling words about unilateral military actions “not contributing to the kind of future we all want to see.”

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken asked Israel to show restraint.

Tick-tock.

History needs to know we saw this happening, we understood what it was and we did nothing to prevent it.

We need to know that to be on the right side of history requires that we grow a backbone in the present.

Real thinking requires hard work. It would appear that many of us are not up to the task.