Israel’s demolition of the Iranian regime shows our government at its finest. Unfortunately, because it’s pompously paralyzed amid platitudes. It took hours to say anything, then said nothing. Which illustrates the importance of ideas.
I know, I know. Rarely does one look at our leaders and have “ideas” spring to mind. As
, they’ve have perfected the art of murmuring sweet nothings at the public to the point that it’s metastasized from a tactic into a mindset. But the crucial historical maxim “ideas have consequences” doesn’t only refer to good or carefully considered ones.
Stupid kills and vacant is as vacant does. When the Prime Minister’s Office
“Prime Minister (Mark) Carney and (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron discussed bolstering co-operation on shared priorities such as critical minerals, energy security, bilateral investment, artificial intelligence and quantum technology” at the G7, Carney actually thinks those words describe meaningful actions to help create a better world.
On Israel and the Middle East, it’s worse. Far worse. It’s been clear for some time, to some of us anyway, that something is very wrong in the state of Canada. Protests in our major cities routinely, openly, smugly promote terrorism, harass Jews in their homes and places of worship and break laws, and police bring coffee. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is invisible when not dancing in purple feathers to promote “diversity.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford could care less. Academics sign anti-Israel petitions.
Amid this mental and moral feebleness, something momentous is suddenly happening in the Middle East. And a great many supposedly wise and influential persons can’t get their minds around it because, as I told my former bosses at the Reform party years ago, “you cannot fight an enemy that has outposts inside your head” (they fired me, and fizzled out).
So when you look at Canadian policymakers and pundits, before asking what tactical decisions they’re making about the Middle East, primarily about PR strategy because the word-deed fog has permeated their brains, ask yourself what their fundamental beliefs are.
Do they believe that geopolitics is a jungle where force settles disputes not paper promises or sweet-smelling sentiments? That there are people who hate our way of life and would destroy it if they could? That antisemites hate Jews not for their imagined defects but for their real virtues?
Specifically, what do they think of Israel? Do they know it’s the only democracy in the Middle East, the only place gay Muslims are free to be themselves … or cast meaningful ballots? If so, do they care?
More fundamentally, do they know or care about the story of Israel? From Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the Exodus, the construction and demolition of the temples and the Holocaust? Do they know Israel brought ethical monotheism to the world, which responded about the way you’d expect sinful humans to respond, with an unending series of attempts to slander, exile, maim or kill the messenger? Do they know they are unavoidably part of that story and that refusing to choose a side is choosing a side?
It is a remarkable feature of history, to those who know history, that no movement becomes truly evil without becoming antisemitic and vice versa. Even Imperial Japan adopted anti-Jewish laws, which is especially telling since of course they had no Jews. And the enemies of ancient Israel practised human sacrifice.
Another remarkable feature of history,
20 years ago, is that, “Whatever the attractions of anti-Semitism, it tends not to work out too well for those who over-invest in it – see the Third Reich, and the loopier parts of the Arab world today.” Do our leaders political, intellectual and cultural know it, and have any idea why it is so? Do they ever think about why antisemitism is so persistent, wicked and dangerous that it routinely engages in blood libels including a “genocide” in Gaza?
Flapping our arms and calling for de-escalation when the Jewish state is taking desperate action to avoid being overrun and raped, or nuked, isn’t just ineffective. It’s wicked.
It is also ineffective. Some people are calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to use America’s heavy “bunker-busting” bombs to smash parts of the Iranian nuclear-weapons program Israel can’t reach, if any. But nobody’s asking Canada to do anything because there’s literally nothing we could do because of our conviction that force is obsolete. So Trump left the G7 early to go do something while we stayed to pose as a moral superpower when we’re neither.
If we see Israel as David fighting Goliath, we know what to do if we could. If we see it as settler-colonial white supremacists, it also suggests a program where instead of meaning well feebly we mean ill feebly. So far our government seems to be getting it wrong. Very wrong.
National Post
