Perhaps by the time you read this column, Israel's latest incursion into the Gaza Strip will be winding down.
There's a reasonable chance. In the grim calculus of that conflict, international outrage over Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries is beginning to outstrip the damage inflicted by Israeli Defence Forces on Hamas and Gaza's other terrorist masters, their caches of rockets and their network of kidnap-smuggling tunnels. While the conditions for peace remain vague and distant - Israel wants the territory demilitarized; Hamas wants Israel's economic blockade of Gaza lifted - Israel may decide to stop its latest offensive unilaterally and declare victory.
Until the next time. Whatever the peace, the Gaza Strip will still be a 146 square mile territory a little larger than sprawling Prince George filled with 1.6 million people ruled by Hamas, a terrorist organization that refuses to stop attempting to destroy neighbouring Israel with whatever loathsome means it can. Israel will continue to strangle Gaza with fortifications and use force to contain Hamas; it will supplement that by periodically entering Gaza and hammering Hamas and other terror groups that threaten it with its U.S.-funded and supplied military force until the inevitable butcher's bill of collateral damage becomes too hefty for anyone's conscience to bear.
To be sure, Hamas actively cultivates those civilian casualities, using them as human shields to protect their weapons and leaders and to feed the narrative of Israel as bloodthirsty oppressors; no one in Israel takes pleasure in innocent Palestinian lives taken. As the New Yorker quoted playwright Lawrence Wright: "These children are being groomed to die." But to pretend Israel and the IDF bears absolutely no responsibility for the civilian death toll requires elaborate contortions of morals and logic.
And so the conflict goes, like Poe and McLuhan's maelstrom, a storm of interlocking dilemmas composed of two-state solutions, rights to return, moral equivalency, historic wrongs, the Holocaust and the nature of democracy. Wading into it requires hubris and naivety; just ask John Kerry. In Canadian terms, the government who is required to handle it - Harper's Tories - has conducted itself with its usual absence of grace and thoughtfulness; a government that isn't - Christy Clark's B.C. Liberals - has managed little better.
In terms of the former, the only thing that can be said for Conservatives stance on the latest Gaza war and its craven politicization of the tragedy is that Foreign Minister John Baird is actually a comic book character. It's the only explanation for his foghorn diplomacy - he is normally a small, meek man, but, after being exposed to right-wing gamma radiation, he transforms into the Incredible Cur when Putin or global warming come up. Regardless, he is the perfect vessel for a Tory foreign policy drawn with black and white crayons (get out of my mind, Greg Perry!); his unequivocal rages of "Israel good! Hamas bad! Baird spit!" are proof Harper`s government has abandoned any pretence of speaking for anyone but the vicious, narrow rump of its party.
More interesting and puzzling has been Premier Christy Clark's response to the conflict. According to the Canadian Press, last month she sent a letter to The Centre of Israel and Jewish Affairs, later read aloud at a Vancouver synagogue, saying B.C. can be "counted as a friend" to Israel. She also wrote "Israel has the right to defend itself" and "Israel is an example not only to the region but the world."
Bold, Bairdian stuff. And bizarre - of all the issues outside of her purview to address, why would Clark give her almost exclusive support to one side of one of the most complex and fraught situations of this century?
In support of Clark's stance, a Vancouver Sun editorial pointed out that the premier wasn't cynically wooing the Jewish vote - it points out that B.C.'s 56,000-strong Muslim population is twice the size of its Jewish population. That's true but unquestioning support of Israel also polls well among many Christian denominations, particularly evangelicals. Moreover, such a stance burnishes the premier's credentials with the harder right-wing elements of her base, which can't hurt as the government prepares for its ever more vicious fight with teachers this September.
Politically, Clark supporting Israel is a good move with very little cost. But it's probably a little taxing on the heart and soul. Right or wrong, pro or con, they had to stack the bodies of Palestinian men, women and children in ice cream freezers and florists because there just wasn't any room in the morgues.
Is it worth earning a few points of percentage on an opinion poll from that?
