December 2004
by Barry Stagg
The National Post and the Globe and Mail provide a revealing panorama of the opinions prevailing in present Canadian public debate.
Michael Bliss writing in the National Post makes the claim that Pierre Trudeau has no intellectual heirs in Canadian public life today. Amen to that.
Then comes a column by John Ibbitson in the Globe which deals with the always touchy subject of Canadian support for Israel. Ibbitson raises the issue of Canadian support for Israel as being a current function of successful lobbying by Jewish Canadians. He then points out the essential demographic equality of Jews and Muslims in Canada. He murmurs that with the Muslim population of Canada on the rise the dynamic of support for Israel may change.
The point made is that demographics may dictate whether Canada continues to support Israel. Presumably this constantly besieged outpost of European pluralist democracy in the Middle East must stoically await its fate as the birth rates and immigration quotas duel in Canada.
It is all too facile and yet illustrative of a falsely beatific Canadian conceit: that Canada has no role to play in taking sides in issues of morality and conscience, that relativism is the new monarch of Canadian sovereignty, where all sides get equal time and consideration.
This attitude is consistent with Pierre Trudeau's pseudo-philosophy of national detachment from the conventional military alliances in the Western world. The same attitude of aloof indifference seems to permeate his remaining followers still extant in Canada. The relativist position is Trudeau's dubious contribution to Canadian life. While his intellectual successors are largely obscure, with good reason, the casual maintenance of his values makes Canada a repository for a vapid neutralism.
Some Canadians, comfortable in their neutrality and distance from any theatres of war, find it easy to be critical of the Americans and their military efforts. They seem to overlook that Manhattan Island and Ground Zero are just a few hundred miles away from Ontario's Golden Triangle which prospers mainly due to neighbourly cosiness with New York, Michigan and Ohio.
Israel, the nation, is the most current and the most volatile of the Allied decisions made following World War II. While the division of Europe and the Iron Curtain have now come and gone, the partition of Palestine in 1948 by the United Nations remains a matter of international controversy. In 1948, Israel was created and became a European democratic outpost surrounded, unfortunately, by Arab autocracies of various forms, all dedicated to Israel's vaporization.
Western support was both political and economic, military and civilian. But, most importantly, Western support was intellectual and sentimental. Then came the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Then came the Arab oil embargo and the resulting Rust Belt depression in North America during the 1970's. Support on both the intellectual and sentimental bases waned for Israel as a result of these things.
An incoherent but enduring attitude rose among Western citizens to the effect that if Israel disappeared, the Arab dictators would be happy and oil would flow. Self-interest conflicted with the moral imperatives of maintaining a state for the people decimated by the Holocaust.
Memories dim and entire generations have grown to adulthood after Israel's independence in 1948 and even after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. History is their only source of knowledge about the responsibilities of the West toward Israel. History must be taught and Rust Belt populism must be neutralized.
In 2005, President George will be inaugurated for a second term as American president. He is a steady ally of Israel, standing firm despite many fundamentally stupid slanders that accuse him of going to war to help the American oil industry. His unwavering support for oil-barren Israel is proof of his virtue. Canadians hostile to the United States should question whether their animosity toward the Americans is directly related to that country's support for an Israeli democracy. Is it a matter of Canadian neutrality in exchange for oil?
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