Our amateur diplomats

Editorial

For a country with a relatively small population, Canada produces an enormous number of amateur diplomats. This embarrassment of riches manifested itself again last week when 37 Canadian academics, mostly from the University of Toronto, signed a letter denouncing Israel for "crimes against humanity" and the predictable litany of accompanying horrors.

This letter comes on the heels of a recent ad published in Vancouver's Georgia Straight and elsewhere by Canadian labor leaders, academics and social activists attacking Israel and calling for Palestinian independence.

More often, it seems, ordinary Canadians are taking it upon themselves to speak up on foreign affairs. This would seem like a positive development. Democracy depends on an educated, active electorate. But there is the missing element: these activists are active, but they're not educated – at least not on the issue at hand.

While Israel has attempted to find a two-state solution at the negotiating table, the Palestinian leadership (including its religious leaders) has encouraged stones, bombings and murderous propaganda.

Even the most well-intentioned critics of Israel put inordinate emphasis on Palestinian casualties, none-too-subtly debasing the sanctity of Israeli lives.
"Palestine" has become the haute issue for the activist class in Canada, it seems. Never mind that the issues are too complex to be solved by such sloganeering as "End the occupation now," a raft of Canadians, lacking even rudimentary knowledge of the history of the region, have declared Israel bad and Palestine good.

Here, according to much of world opinion, is the Middle East situation in a nutshell: When Israeli civilians are murdered by Palestinian terrorists, it is regrettable and unfortunate. When Palestinian civilians are killed during Israeli retaliation against terrorist headquarters, it is a crime against humanity and the action of a terrorist state.

Critics of Israel insist they can be critical of the Jewish state without that being an indicator of latent or blatant anti-Semitism. To be charitable – and in the interest of brevity – we will leave aside that issue for now.

So, what drives so many apparently educated Canadians to defend the Palestinian cause, warts and all, while condemning Israel, warts and all?

There is a tendency to seek out simple answers to difficult situations; that is human nature. Israel is a militarily strong country. "Palestine" is not a country at all. Israel controls the area in which the Palestinian people want to create a country. Israel is a rich country. Palestinians are a poor people. Israel is the force of the powerful, Palestinians their downtrodden victims. Canadians love an underdog.

This simplistic, ill-informed conclusion is not unprecedented. Plenty of Canadians have taken sides in international conflicts before, often, in retrospect, without great wisdom.

Two decades ago, many Canadians saw justice in the victory of Robert Mugabe over the colonialist white minority rulers in Rhodesia. The creation of Zimbabwe was greeted with optimism and enthusiasm that have since turned to revulsion as Mugabe has turned out to be perhaps the most tyrannical leader that continent has seen since Idi Amin. This example is not meant to suggest that white minority rule was preferable to black majority rule. Instead, it is an example of how complex these issues really are. Canadians who viewed Mugabe as a savior of his people 20 years ago are keeping their lips tightly sealed today.

Similarly, there were those who were happy to see the American puppet, the Shah of Iran, toppled by a revolution at about the same time that Mugabe came to power. In Iran's case, international observers watched with hope as Abdollhasan Bani-Sadr seemed poised to create a genuinely democratic government in the few months before his experiment was snuffed by Ayatollah Khomeini and a theocratic dictatorship was established. Canadians who admit cheering on the Iranian revolution are difficult to find these days.

All of this is not to say that the Palestinian people do not deserve a state of their own. They do. The world community, including Israel, recognizes that. The hesitation is based solely on the ability of the Palestinian leadership to accept terms that will ensure the security of Israel and Palestine.

So it will be interesting to canvass these Canadian activists 20 years after the creation of an independent Palestine. Will they be able to take pride in their part in helping to establish the first democratic state in the Arab world? Or will they fall silent at the sight of a despotic leader exploiting and victimizing his own people, maintaining authority through nepotism and graft?

We hope the former. We fear the latter. We expect something in between because, unlike this country's amateur diplomats, we know that political realities are not starkly black and white.

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