October 14, 2023
HERE'S MY TAKE
“Red and yellow, black and white, they’re all precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” This classic Christian kids’ song echoed in my brain as I followed the events of the past week through social media, mainstream North American media, and the Fox, CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera networks. Their takes varied, and while I could dispute a few specifics, the overall narrative stands. None of them pretend that the preciousness of human life is at the core of the story.
War is always regrettable, but sometimes it is necessary and justified. The Geneva Conventions are relatively recent, but their provisions protecting civilians—defining war as “soldiers fighting soldiers”—reflect basic, long-standing principles of human morality.
Language is loaded and is often the first casualty of war. Choosing between the terms “terror”, “resistance”, or “occupation” is understood by some to betray your “bias” in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is naïve to think one can talk about the events of the past week without that context. My point today rises above the specifics of that circumstance and division. I don’t equate Hamas with Palestine, but one cannot dispute that Hamas has substantial popular support among Palestinians.
There are more informed opinions than mine regarding the complexities of just war, the nuances of Middle East politics, how to de-escalate, and where to find a path out of this complicated mess. I’ll recommend Dr. Robert Joustra’s "Justice After Atrocity" if that’s what you are looking for. I defer to his expertise applying the insight that a just war “must be used for the right reasons, in the right way, and for a right outcome” to this situation.
We need to begin with moral clarity. This isn’t a just war. It started last Saturday with a military ambush on a music concert, massacring hundreds of unsuspecting civilians and taking others hostage. It continued with stories of babies beheaded, and reports of rape, torture and murder, and the threat of executing a civilian hostage every time a retaliatory bomb lands, with the sounds and images of the execution made public through social media. There was even a call for world-wide jihad against Jewish people for October 13th, leaving many Canadians fearful for their basic security walking on their hometown streets.
While my stomach churned at the images I saw from 9,000 km away, my mind was equally wrenched to try to make sense of some of my fellow Canadians’ reactions to this. I presume the stories are familiar enough that I don’t need to document the range of messages of unqualified support for Hamas, and even celebration (thanksgiving is what I read from one academic) offering justification for these events. What is it, I wondered, that makes anyone so blinded to their cause that they don’t recoil at the inhumanity of their celebration?
It is important to keep perspective. Although the numbers of those supporting and rationalising the terror caused by Hamas was more than incidental, it certainly was a comparatively small minority. Both our prime minister and opposition leader jointly appeared at a Jewish community centre last Monday and made clear, unequivocal statements. There were many whose politics would predispose them to be pro-Palestinian and negative towards the Israeli government who were unequivocal in their condemnation of these horrific events.
But the noisy minority is not without consequence. Among the most notorious was CUPE leader Fred Hahn (who has served as the union president representing almost 300,000 Ontario civil servants since 2009) who tweeted “Palestine is rising, long live the resistance.” When challenged, CUPE doubled down on his remarks. There were numerous activists including elected officials, academics, and organisations–most of whom are known as advocates of left-wing causes–who made similar statements. Given the backlash, some organisations, including Black Lives Matter, apologised for issuing statements like “I stand with Palestine.” Pro-Hamas protests took place in most major Canadian cities, the largest of which seems to have been in Toronto where media reports suggest a thousand or so gathered. Reports regarding Mahmoud Kahlil, a Palestinian activist at the core of organising some of these rallies, suggest that he has promised “to be the nightmare here (in Canada)” just as “we’re going to be the nightmare in Gaza.”
It is natural to want to suppress these views and to prevent protests from happening. However, I agree with Joanna Baron who forcefully argues that as repulsive as these views are, suppressing them through force of law does not serve us. Citing the constitutional protection for peaceful assembly under Section 2(c) of the Charter, Baron argues that we should rely on existing laws regarding hate and peaceful assembly. We need to protect free speech, even horrific and offensive speech. There is even a sense in which the starkness with which we could watch these events unfold on X (formerly Twitter) was in the service of truth, allowing us to see with unvarnished clarity what was happening in the world.
Others, including PPC Leader Maxime Bernier, argued that we should just ignore this since this is “another foreign war that has nothing to do with us.” I will grant that there can be legitimate debate regarding when, how much, and in what manner countries need to respond to atrocities outside of their own borders, but indifference is effectively collusion and not a moral option.
Our democratic context requires speaking up. Sean Speer rightly argues that our commitment to pluralism “cannot be a one-sided surrender to illiberal and reactionary forces.” There is a “collective responsibility to condemn such behaviour.” Terry Glavin documents how the perspectives advocated by our fellow citizens shouldn’t be a surprise given how official Canada has turned a blind eye to the “toxins … spread deep into Canada’s activist bloodstream.” True, Canada has officially declared Hamas a terrorist organisation (and one wonders about the efficacy of media standards when the CBC instructs its journalists not to use terms that are explicitly part of government descriptions) but the issue goes much deeper than semantics. New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, a progressive Jewish columnist, lamented the “betrayal” by allies trained by “an amorphous campus-bred left-wing tendency that communicates in hashtags and soundbites,” calling for the “need for a decent left.”
But even beyond the exposure of our immature political dialogue, the events of this week exposed with raw starkness the realities of the human condition. It’s easy to blame “them,” those who celebrate what is objectively repulsive. But I can’t doubt their sincerity and zeal. Hannah Arendt famously reminded us of “the banality of evil.” She was describing Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for the deaths of so many in the Holocaust. I recalled Arendt this week as I tried to understand how fellow human beings, made with the same stuff that I am made of, did and defended evil. All this not in a world far-away removed from my reality. Last weekend this was celebrated with a protest just a few blocks from my home.
How easy it is to be blinded in our zealous pursuit of causes. By God’s grace, on most days this depravity isn’t on full display, but the minute I adopt a smugness that I am better than this is the minute I drop my first line of defence against descending into this inhumanity. The human condition has a great potential for evil and none of us is born immune. Being committed to imagining a flourishing society should not make us naïve about the dangerous potential that we also have to contend with, which comes not from without but from within.
This occasion requires moral clarity. Last week’s events are not “on the one hand and on the other hand.” There is no other hand. There’s a difference between dignity and depravity. But when calling out depravity, we are all inclined to feel an inherent superiority. The danger is that this smugness only seeds another set of problems. This moment calls for humility, not self-righteousness. We need to call out evil even as we acknowledge our own vulnerabilities to it.
Everyone is precious in His sight. That includes the person I most profoundly disagree with, the group I am ready to despise. I need to see in my fellow citizens–Israeli and Palestinian, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, black and white–the image of our Creator that requires a basic respect even in the context of war. From within comes smugness and self-righteousness. It takes a grace that can only come from outside of ourselves to have the moral clarity and humility we often lack. But Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.
WHAT I’M READING
Capitalism Divides
An Angus Reid poll released this week suggests that by an almost 2 to 1 margin, Canadians view capitalism as a system that helps “the rich get richer and the poor stay poor,” rather than a system in which “anyone can get ahead.” While half of Canadians are inclined to think that people should be able to use the money they’ve earned as they choose, there is a solid third of Canadians who prefer the view that “money should be redistributed from the wealthy to the rest of society.”
Still a People Workforce
In the context of fears that technology is taking jobs, this Harvard Business Review article highlights that workers are still most at risk of losing their job to other workers. The article lists five helpful ways for management to “pre-skill” their workforce for tomorrow’s realities: focusing on potential; providing crucial feedback; focusing on talent expansion; investing in mid-level managers; and investing in leadership skills.
Dividing a Pension
A report commissioned by the Alberta government suggesting that a stand-alone Alberta pension plan would be entitled to $334 billion of asset transfer from the Canada Pension Plan (53% of its value when the current population represents only 16% of CPP contributions) has prompted significant debate. This Calgary Herald analysis suggests three flaws in the formulas that created this proposal.
A Democrat for School Choice
The ongoing debate about school choice in various US states took an interesting turn this week. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat seen by some as a rising national star, publicly declared his support for a Republican proposal to send $100 million to families of children in independent and religious schools for tuition and school supplies.
Monitoring Podcasts
Former CRTC Commissioner Peter Menzies outlined his concerns with a recent CRTC decision to include podcasts within the broadcast regulator’s scope. He outlines the logical dominos that will fall as a consequence of this, arguing that Canadian podcasts will operate in an environment that is something well short of free speech.
MEANINGFUL METRICS
The Rise of Hate
It seems timely to revisit Cardus research from earlier this year which documents that religiously motivated hate crimes more than doubled between 2009 and 2021, with Jewish communities targeted the most frequently by a considerable margin over Catholics and Muslims.
TAKE IT TO-GO
Word Pray
Ordinarily this space is reserved for something more light-hearted that usually involves a play on words. In the present context, it seems more appropriate to sign-off with some words to pray. The words of Psalm 122 are appropriate. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls and security within your towers! For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, 'Peace be within you!'”
Until next week.