Tuesday 29 July 2014

Being a Jew in Canada Who Supports Israel - My Thoughts

If you want to read about the conflict in Gaza and Israel, there are literally millions of words on the subject. I wanted to write about it but I didn’t want to be repetitive…I wanted to chronicle my own thoughts and I wanted them to be personal. The other day, I was scrolling through my Facebook timeline where I always see a lot of material. I have 4200 “friends”. It's important to know that many actually are my personal friends, but more are people who signed on with me because of my political background and my public persona which, to this day, continues to impact issues and events as they occur or as they are perceived to affect those who live and/or work in Ontario and around the GTA. And I love to engage in the public debate.

I stopped to look at a photo recently. It was of very good quality with lots of detail. It showed a father cradling his son who was in a Gazan hospital bed. The dead child, perhaps 10 years old, had the rear part of his skull blown off and grey matter quite literally hung out of the gaping wound. I was revolted and shocked, obviously the reaction that the person who’d posted it expected of viewers. The poster (a Canadian) decried Israel’s horrific and barbaric actions that had resulted in such a catastrophe. I couldn't help myself from posting on his timeline as well. I made my opinion clear…that the photo was far too graphic to have been used (as it was) solely to incite heated, visceral reaction and that the sole responsible party for this poor child’s fate was Hamas. What ensued was nothing short of chilling. Numerous posts followed, also from Canadians, holding Israel entirely to blame and, basically, calling Israel and its’ supporters, in essence, child murderers. I was so taken aback that I could not continue. I deleted my thoughts and ‘unfriended’ the initial poster.

I am now feeling ashamed that I retreated to an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. I suppose it fits with what many are feeling currently…that it’s easy for people to simply react, but not to educate themselves...and it’s equally easy to hate Israel and, indeed, to hate Jews the world over. Well, I am one of those Jews and, for me, it's pretty personal.

In my younger days, friends would sometimes ask “if Israel and Canada were ever at war, who would you fight for?”…stupid question, really, and I’d never answer. Here is how I relate to Israel…and I think it speaks for the feelings of many other Canadian Jews as well. My allegiance is and always has been to my country, Canada. But my heart is with Israel. Why? Because I, like most Jews, come from parents and/or grandparents who fled some eastern or western European country 50, 60, 70, 80 years ago, lest they be killed. They were good Germans; good Poles; good Russians; good Czechs…and the list goes on and on. But when situations destabilized, which "good citizens" got singled out? You know the answer…and here we are again.

Israel was born of these conflicts and of hatred. Israel became the Jewish homeland, though indeed it always was, even as all of those displaced people of the diaspora sought a home of their own. That arid desert dates back thousands of years as the historical homeland of the Jews and now, by God’s hand, it is again and in a miraculous form. And so my heart tells me I’m happy that there is a land that is not dominated by others and that will always be a safe haven for Jewish people. That, and the fact that Israel remains the epitome of an open society that is home to citizenry of all backgrounds and all orientations with all of the rights and privileges afforded people in any free country. Israel is, as such, a tiny island in an ocean of hate.

Why do people in many countries, people of sound mind, good background, and high educational level want to create some sort of false equivalency with a terrorist group bent on the total annihilation of Israel and of all Jews the world over? For the life of me, I don’t know.

Returning to my opening thought, I reviewed another piece of social media that flashed across my screen just two days ago. It was a YouTube monologue by a young girl…a teenager living on a kibbutz in western Israel right on the Gaza border. By her accent, I knew she’d emigrated with her family from South Africa. She sat on a bench or a swing in her kibbutz and simply spoke from her heart to the camera in hopes those who viewed her post would benefit by her verbal and visual recounting of her experiences in the past few weeks.

She cried as she talked about how horrified and awful she and her fellow Israelis felt when they viewed the same pictures and videos of atrocities such as the one I described earlier. She went to great lengths to say there was no pleasure whatsoever in bearing witness to events like these. She also described many times in the recent past where people around her described hearing noises seemingly emanating from beneath them…underground and, indeed, the noises  were coming from underground. The objective of Hamas fighters was to emerge simultaneously inside Israel from dozens or hundreds of underground tunnels wearing manufactured Israel Defense Force uniforms to attack and kill as many Israelis (like this young girl and her family) as they possibly could…and, of course, it would be carried out simultaneously with massive rocket attacks. Left unchecked, this could have done incredible damage…indeed, it could have hobbled Israel. And that has been the intent of the diversion of billions in aid to the construction of a vast underground network and the acquisition of thousands of rockets.

Now, what have I learned from my perusal of all of the material on this terrible conflict? The answer, for me, is no ceasefire! The world cannot watch this unfold again at some future time as it undoubtedly would. There can be no ceasefire  until there exists no more threat; no more tunnels; no more rockets; no more weapons caches; no more fake IDF uniforms…no more ANYTHING that can harm Israelis of any faith or background. That Hamas must be removed from control  should be obvious. That any military capability must be silenced is equally clear. 

And at the end of the day, the billions in aid to Gaza must continue to flow and must be used for the productive construction of a working country with a working economy…ultimately, jobs and productive lives must result for the people and the families in this impoverished strip of land. In the meantime, Israel simply must get the job done. If it means putting other little boys in the line of fire so that their small bodies are also shattered, the guilt will not be on Israel…that will be for Hamas' account. 

And to any and every person the world over who needs to believe that this is a Jewish offensive, believe whatever you like but know this -- if you are simply a Jew hater, I can accept that because I’ve been at the wrong end of nonsense like that  before. Just have the courage to say so and spare me the 'anti-Zionist', 'anti-Israel' bullshit. But, if you are a thinking individual, just decide you're not buying the spin. Prime Minister Netanyahu got it right: Israel uses missiles to defend its children. Hamas uses children to defend its missiles. 

Peter

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