Making a difference

Editorial

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, said the anthropologist Margaret Mead. "Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

In popular parlance, people enter politics, volunteer for community service and become activists in order to "make a difference."

But both "making a difference" and changing the world presuppose that activism will make a difference for the better. Recent developments indicate this is a naïve hope.

Last week in the National Post, an activist with Toronto's Coalition to Stop the War defended his attendance at a conference in Cairo convened "to forge an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism." Twenty Canadian activists joined Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood at the conference earlier this year.

James Clark, writing in the Post May 25, defended his attendance based partly on the fact that these blood-soaked allies have the support of their public.

"Whether we like it or not, these groups are considered mainstream forces in the Middle East, and have millions of supporters," he wrote.

Millions of chanting Islamists can't be wrong, of course.

But what Clark and his 19 companions who attended the Cairo conference refuse to acknowledge is not that their support is coincident to the violence and extremism perpetrated by the Islamists – it is a direct cause.

On Sept. 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon made a provocative, but peaceful, walk on the Temple Mount. This peaceful provocation – approved in advance by Palestinian and Muslim religious authorities – has been used as an excuse to justify what is now almost seven years of violence, thousands of dead Palestinians and Israelis and a "peace process" that has probably never been further from fruition.

It was not, of course, Sharon whose actions sparked and perpetuated this violence. The violence was premeditated and planned as thoroughly as anything in Yasser Arafat's Palestine was ever planned and implemented. The perpetuation of the violence is a direct result of the response by Canadian, American and European "activist" groups, among them innumerable with the word "peace" in their names, who did not condemn the Palestinian reversion to violence immediately.

Had the world community united on Sept. 28, 2000, and demanded that the Palestinians return to the peace table, there would probably today be an independent Palestine living in peace beside Israel.

Instead, the world community, led in the most hypocritical crusade ever undertaken by people who call themselves "progressives," turned their backs on the only democratic, pluralist, multicultural state in the region and sided unequivocally and without reservation with the perpetrators of violence. All in the name of peace, of course. Nothing against the Jews.

Now, as rockets continue to fall on Israel and Palestinians continue to die for a cause that was offered at the negotiating table in 2000, Canadian activists like Clark have no recourse but to stand by their massively misguided position.

North American and European leftists and liberals, along with anyone else who claims a penchant for peace, should have immediately condemned the reversion to violence and demanded that the Palestinians remain at the negotiating table like a civilized society that negotiates resolutions to its conflicts.

By justifying or supporting – or even by not unequivocally condemning – the Palestinian violence, North Americans and Europeans affirmed to the Palestinians that there would be no punishment for violence, no reward for peace. The die was cast. The attendance of 20 Canadians at the Cairo conference is a footnote, really, to the larger issue here. People who claim to support peace, multiculturalism, pluralism, diversity and personal freedom have chosen inexplicably and without restraint to take the side of violence, intolerance, misogyny and theocratic extremism.

This is true not only of the most egregious affronts to Canadian values of peace represented by the ideologically blinded Canadians who attended the Cairo conference. To far greater detriment is the willingness of Euro-American "progressives," peace activists and even mainstream politicians to accept the conclusion, if not the tactics, of violent extremists. Decent Canadians, no matter what the extenuating circumstances, cannot claim to be "peace activists" when their actions have demonstrably encouraged violence.

Since Sept. 28, 2000, the overarching position of the Canadian left and its international allies has been to support the Palestinian cause wholeheartedly. No intellectual acrobatics or cultural relativism can paint this as anything other than rewarding violence and punishing peace.

The group of committed citizens who attended the Cairo conference is small. But the influence that they and their ideologically malformed allies have had on the global debate is massive in impact and implication. They certainly have made a difference. They are truly changing the world.

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