Captain Airhead and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

Last week, Captain Airhead, or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as those who are less acquainted with his true character call him, gave Canadian neoconservatives among others something new over which to be furious. The government he leads voted for a UN General Assembly resolution the description of which varies depending upon how the commentator views it. Those who agree with the resolution would call it a resolution in favour of Palestinian self-determination or a Palestinian state. Those who disagree would call it a resolution that condemns or bashes Israel.

This resolution, whether interpreted as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel, with or without Canada’s support, in no way affects either the security and stability of the state of Israel on the one hand or the future of the Palestinians on the other. In this it is no different than the numerous other resolutions on the Israel-Palestinian conflict that are perennially raised in the UN General Assembly, all of which receive the support of a large majority of the member nations, all of which are voted against by the United States. It is because of the last mentioned fact that none of these resolutions has ever had any real effect on the conflict.

In this can be seen one of the few aspects of the United Nations that I would consider to be worthy of – moderate – praise. Don’t get me wrong. I despise the United Nations with all my heart and see it as being generally a force for evil rather than a force for good. I wish that Canada and the rest of the Commonwealth, including the mother country, would withdraw from it. However, I must begrudgingly say that it was a stroke of genius on the part of those who set up the United Nations, that resolutions by the General Assembly go absolutely nowhere when opposed by the Security Council – or even just one of its veto-holding, permanent members, such as the United States. Therefore the General Assembly, in which all the military dictatorships, Third world kleptocracies, and other failed states on the planet form a majority, serves as a sounding board, allowing the representatives of these worthless governments to vent their inanities in toothless resolution after toothless resolution, while all meaningful international business is conducted by the grown ups in the Security Council.

Although it would be undoubtedly wiser to say nothing about this at all I feel compelled to comment on the fact that no other controversial geopolitical issue has the ability to generate as much irrational thinking, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy on both sides as the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Both sides see the conflict as a zero-sum game, both sides think the media is hopelessly biased against them and in favour of the other side, both sides rely upon a highly selective and revisionist history of the conflict to support their claims. In the Western countries to which both sides appeal for support on the international stage, Israeli supporters and Palestinian supporters alike find it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the two sides in the Middle Eastern struggle for territory and power and the host of domestic issues that, however irrelevant, have become intertwined with these causes through the bonds of race and religion.

When two opposing sides have a “winner take all” approach to their conflict, their claims are mutually exclusive and it is not rational to say that both sides are right. It is perfectly reasonable, by contrast, to argue that both sides are wrong. Liberals prefer to take the “both sides are right” position, despite its irrationality, which is why they are usually wrong about everything, but in this case they have never been inclined to be on both sides at the same time. Seventy-one years ago, when Israel declared her independence, they were mostly on Israel’s side. Today, they are mostly on the side of the Palestinians.

Their arguments in favour of the Palestinians are the same arguments, derived from their abstract doctrine of human rights, that they used fifty to sixty years ago to support every nationalist movement in the Third world against European imperialism, and thirty to fifty years ago to support the Communist-backed terrorist movements against the Rhodesians and the South Africans. To this day they insist that they were right to support these causes, even though in each case the triumph of the cause they supported brought about the collapse of civilization in the country in question. Liberals maintain that the immense problems these countries have faced ever since are the legacy of “imperialism” and “colonialism” even though it is glaringly obvious that it was the removal of these things that caused the collapse of civilization. There is no good reason to believe that these arguments, which have produced such horrendous results in the past, will work out any better in application to the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

Conservative views have also changed. At the time of Israel’s independence, conservatives were either very skeptical of the project or mildly supportive of the new nation. They were rarely enthusiastic Zionists. Today, a much stronger Zionism has become the norm among conservatives. It would be one thing if this were because of all the things mentioned in the preceding paragraph, if they were taking the position “look, it is thanks to your moronic bleeding heart foolishness in the past that Rhodesia, South Africa, and every other country in the Third World has gone to pot, we are not going to let you destroy yet another civilized country in your idolatrous worship of human rights.” They are not. Their reasons for supporting the Israelis are almost as stupid as the reasons the liberals support the Palestinians.

There are basically two segments of the right today which are militantly Zionist – the neoconservatives and the Christian Zionists. The neoconservatives maintain that we ought to support Israel because she is a “liberal democracy”, the only one in the Middle East, and because she is a loyal ally. With regards to the first point, while it is not entirely false, there are many things about Israel that the neoconservatives would find intolerable in any other “liberal democracy.” The last point, however, is laughable in the extreme. No one has supported her as faithfully as the Americans have since the Lyndon Johnson administration, and no other country has she stabbed in the back and betrayed the way she has the United States. Her attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, her sale of American secrets to the Soviets in the 1980s and to the Red Chinese in the 1990s and much more recently are but three examples. Many more could be given.

The neoconservative arguments are, however lame, better than those of the Christian Zionists which rely upon abysmally bad theology. By Christian Zionist, I mean something more specific than just someone who is both a Christian and a supporter of Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I mean someone who holds to a theology that says that God requires him as a Christian to be a supporter of Israel. The foundation of this theology is the idea that God irrevocably gave the land of Canaan to the nation that grew out of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Old Testament and that therefore it belongs to the Jews by divine right today. The following will demonstrate what is wrong with this kind of argument. While the term Jew originally designated a member of the tribe of Judah, and later, by the end of the intertestamental period, all of national Israel, by the end of the first century AD it had come to refer to an adherent of the religion Judaism and it has held this meaning ever since. Although the adherents of Judaism are for a large part drawn from the ethnic stock of ancient Israel, Judaism has always admitted converts even though it has never made seeking them the high priority that Christianity and Islam have. Post-Second Temple Rabbinic Judaism explicitly rejects Jesus of Nazareth’s claim to be the Christ or Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Somebody who converts to this religion is a Jew even if he has no Hebrew blood. For Christian Zionism to be true, it would have to be true that everyone without a drop of Abraham’s blood in him who converts to this religion that explicitly rejects Jesus’ claim to be the Christ, the Son of God, thereby gains a God-given right to an inheritance in the land of Canaan/Palestine/Israel. Do I really need to explain further why from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy this is rank and utter heresy?

Of course, the theology of those who argue that Christians need to support the Palestinian cause because “social justice, blah, blah, blah” is no better.

While I see no good reason for civilized Western countries to be drawn in to this Middle Eastern tribal blood vendetta and plenty of good reasons for us not to touch it with a ten-foot pole, if we absolutely must stick our noses in where they don’t belong it seems to me that the most rational position is to support – in a very moderate way - Israel. I would base this on everything that I said five paragraphs previously although the fact that Captain Airhead is now supporting the Palestinians is also a pretty good argument for the Israeli side.

Israel’s supporters, however, need not be worried that Canada’s reversal on this UN resolution is going to harm that country in any way. Captain Airhead knows as well as I do that UN General Assembly resolutions are toothless when opposed by a permanent member of the Security Council and the United States is not likely to change its position any time soon. Like everything else Captain Airhead does, this is all for show. In this case, Airhead wishes to dazzle all the Third world countries who hate Israel into supporting his bid for a temporary seat on the Security Council. With any luck, not only will he fail to obtain this goal which would serve only his own vanity and not any real need of Canada’s, but he will also alienate the large segment of the Canadian Jewish community which have historically been faithful supporters of the Liberal Party and do irreparable damage to that party’s interests.

On Israel/Palestine and Minding Our Own Business

“Mind your own business” is generally good advice. It is good advice for individuals. It is even better advice for families and communities. It is especially good advice for countries. Unfortunately, it is advice that is seldom followed. It is part of our fallen human nature to wish to stick our nose into the concerns of others.

It is one thing to offer unsolicited advice and opinions and to pass moral judgment on the decisions of others concerning their own affairs that in no way, shape, or form, affect us. We all do that. I am doing that in writing this essay. We can pontificate all we like and others are free to ignore us. Unfortunately some people go beyond that. They get themselves all worked into a tizzy about something that is happening miles away, among people they have no connection to, and that has no discernible impact on their lives. Then they write or call their government representative, or stage a protest or boycott, or in some other way make known their demand that “something be done about it”.

It is the people who insist that “something be done about it” that you have to watch out for. They are the perpetual troublemakers in any society and governments, especially democratic governments, have an nasty tendency to listen to them.

Twenty years ago it was South Africa’s business that everybody else was trying to run from afar. The evils of apartheid were decried in our classrooms and from the pulpits of our churches. Protesters demanded that the South African government adopt one-person, one-vote democracy, end apartheid, and release Nelson Mandela from prison. These were not South African protesters demonstrating against the policies of their own government in the streets of Preoria or Johannesburg. This was going on in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and all over Europe.

You could try to reason with such people. You could point out that Mandela was not a prisoner of conscience but a terrorist thrown in prison for violent criminal acts. You could point out that South Africa was hardly the only country in Africa to practice racial discrimination and that her achievements were such that people were flocking into South Africa from all over the African continent in search of the prosperity no other country in Africa could offer them. You could point out that the African National Congress, which stood to take over the country if their demands were met, was an obvious Communist front supported by the Soviets. For your efforts you would be denounced as a racist.

South Africa was a country that was an established, loyal ally of Canada, the UK, the United States, and all the other Western countries that foolishly listened to their progressive, left-wing fringe elements, and conspired to destroy it. Mandela and the ANC were criminal terrorists allied with international Communism. Apartheid was an unjust system, to be sure, but it was not comparable to the crimes of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, or for that matter of the ANC regime that replaced the nationalist government in South Africa in 1994. It was not any of our business.

Today it is Israel and the Palestinian situation that has got the knickers of the bleeding-heart protesters all twisted in a knot. Earlier this year left-wing academics and their gullible protégées on campuses all across North America treated us to the latest episode of “Israel Apartheid Week”, an annual orgy of self-righteousness in which anything and everything the Jewish state does in its struggle against terrorism is routinely denounced. The other week, when the Israeli navy took to high seas piracy against a supposedly humanitarian flotilla headed towards Gaza, the self-righteousness broke out again with renewed force.

What is different about the Israeli-Palestinian brouhaha however is that the self-righteousness is two-sided. On the one hand you have the protesters, who look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and see heavily armed, modern soldiers beating up on primitive, poor people, and, being more heart than brains, they naturally sympathize with the Palestinians. On the other hand, you have Israel’s defenders who angrily denounce all criticism of Israel’s actions as “The New Antisemitism”.

The pro-Palestinian protesters believe that we have a moral imperative to support the Palestinians because they are an oppressed, victim, group.

Israel’s defenders, on the other hand, believe that we have a moral imperative to support Israel.

The moral imperative, however, is to mind our own business!

What the two sides are really arguing over, is not the validity of the claims of the two sides in the Middle East conflict, but over what actions the governments of Canada, the United States, and other Western countries should take towards the two sides.

The pro-Palestinian protesters want our governments to boycott Israel and place other pressure on her to conform to how they feel she should run her internal affairs.

Conversely, the pro-Israel side want our governments to back Israel with money, and military and moral support.

Both sides are interfering busybodies who should be told to mind their own business.

When it comes to Israel and Palestine it is fairly obvious which side a sensible person, who supports civilization, order, and liberty should be rooting for. While I find Israel’s practice of collective punishment towards the Palestinians for the acts of a few terrorists to be repugnant, Israel is an established, civilized society, with a functioning government, fairly decent laws, and order. She has not been established long, but neither has any other country in the Middle East. To the extent any country in the Middle East can be said to have prescriptive authority hers does. Organizations like Hamas are criminal gangs who specialize in committing acts of violence against ordinary Israelis in ordinary situations in order to disrupt everyday life and create maximum terror among the populace. No sane person would ever side with Hamas against Israel.

It is not, however, the responsibility of Western countries to maintain Israel’s security and civilization for her. If she wishes to practice collective punishment that at times borders on state terrorism she can do so without our help.

Its not like she’s been such a great ally to us after all.

Prior to her achieving modern statehood she was not above stooping to terrorism herself. The Irgun and Stern Gang waged terrorist war in the 1940’s against the British government. The significance of this for us, fellow Canadians, is that the terrorism was directed against the British Crown – which is also our Crown. In 1977 Israel showed her contempt for us by electing Menachem Begin (who had headed the Irgun) Prime Minister. In 1986 she showed that contempt again by electing Yitzhak Shamir (who had headed the Stern Gang). Neither man had ever shown any remorse or repentance over their terrorist past. Of course the Israelis can elect whoever they want, that is their business not ours, but for them to elect men who had waged terrorism against our Sovereign while expecting us to support them in their fight with Palestinian terrorists is a bit presumptuous.

Since achieving statehood her biggest supporter has been the United States which she has managed to get away with betraying in a truly spectacular manner on countless occasions. In 1954 her spies botched an attempt to fake terrorist attacks against American holdings in Egypt in order to trick the Yanks into going to war with Egypt. Five years ago she honored the spies involved in the affair. Then in 1967 she attacked an American ship, the USS Liberty during the Six-Days War. The attack was almost certainly deliberate, despite her claims that it was a case of “mistaken identity”. In the 80’s she was caught spying on the United States. She falsely denied involvement at first, then refused to return all of the information Jonathan Pollard had stolen for her, while demanding that the Americans release Pollard. Eric Margolis, writing in the Toronto Sun in 1999, speculated that she may have bartered some of the information to the Soviets. She was certainly guilty of selling American nuclear secrets to the Chinese in the 1990’s.

Then there was the revelation that she was confiscating the passports of Jews making aliyah and handing them over to Mossad agents for use in covert ops, including assassinations. She was found using the passports of Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand and Canada in this manner. This, of course, placed every citizen, Christian, Jewish or otherwise, from any of these countries in danger of being arrested as a Mossad assassin should they be traveling abroad in the Middle East. This is a matter that IS the business of our governments.

If Israel’s actions affect the safety of Canadians, the Canadian government has a responsibility to stand up for Canadians against Israel. If her actions don’t affect Canadians, they are none of the Canadian government’s business. Our government should be neither boycotting Israel nor subsidizing her.

A couple of decades ago, our government, the American government, and other Western governments, used their influence to destroy a country that was a far more loyal ally and friend than Israel, based solely on its internal affairs that did not affect us in any way.

If the moralizing twits on the campuses of our colleges and universities have their way, we will do the same to Israel, not because of her own demonstrable history of faithlessness, but because these gullible fools feel that morality and justice are on the side of criminal terrorists seeking the destruction of a civilized country rather than the other way around.

When will we learn to mind our own business?