Friday Magazine – Volume 15 – Issue 1 06/01/12

2. EDITORIAL: WHEN IS “EXPERT” ADVICE RACIST?

By Staff writer – Ottawa Sun – December 27, 2011

The “experts” have pronounced Gatineau a racist society. It seems the city’s recent Statement of Values – a 16-point document designed to let newcomers from other countries know ways in which their new home may differ from their last – is an example of racism that’s been smoldering for decades.

The expert in question is a graduate student from Concordia University who conducted research claiming to prove that the “reasonable accommodation” debate of several years ago is racism, fed by politicians and media looking to fabricate the notion of troubled immigrants for personal gain.

“It seems history has once again repeated itself. The recent introduction of a ‘statement of values’ by one of Quebec’s biggest cities, Gatineau, harkens back to the 2007 outbreak of race anxiety when the village of Herouxville drafted its own code of conduct for newcomers,” a Concordia press release explains. “The intolerance and racism unleashed by the Herouxville charter and its subsequent reasonable accommodation controversies … saw ethnic minorities painted as a threat to Quebecois society.”

Universities like their thinkers to be opinion-shapers across our nation. So they send media outlets a regular list of the most interesting work their graduate students and professors are working on.

We know what’s going on here. Graduate students need to have punchy subjects to justify their funding. But we’re not going to sit on the sidelines and let some “expert” tell us the citizens of Gatineau are racist.

“Immigrants have been harmed in multiple ways by this debate – directly, through the new racism, and indirectly through neglect of life-and-death issues,” writes the grad student.

Right. Because to print a document stating that while bribery might be acceptable in Afghanistan, it’s not acceptable here is somehow physically harming people! We don’t need your studies. We’ll stick to plain common sense.

We don’t care what nationality people are in this great country of ours, we just want to be sure everyone knows the rules.

(This article was slightly abridged and edited for the CIC Friday Magazine.)

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3. THE COMING YEAR IN CANADIAN POLITICS

By Keith Beardsley – National Post – January 3, 2012

As we move forward from the holiday season and face another season of political warfare in Canada, it’s a good time to reflect on what awaits us in 2012.

Fortunately, this time of year provides plenty of opportunities to discuss politics, be it at family gatherings, neighbourhood parties, or a night on the town. In other words, time to meet folks who don’t live and breathe politics on a daily basis and who don’t suffer from the tunnel vision that so many connected to political life do.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has earned grudging support because of his work on the economy, but once you move away from that, he is on thin ice. Canadians are watching his management style, and the excessive use of closure to ram bills through last December has been noticed by the voting public. While the Conservatives have argued they are merely honouring election promises, that message hasn’t worked, nor have they convinced the general public that it was the right thing to do. Instead, it is being seen as arrogance and bullying, something the opposition parties will be able to capitalize on when the House returns. That being said, capitalizing on Conservative missteps requires an effective opposition, which has not emerged at this point.

The NDP remains in limbo, semi-leaderless and missing some of its best stars. Is anyone other than media types and political junkies following their leadership race? It has to be the most invisible one in recent memory, worse even than the Progressive Conservative races in 1998 and 2003. So far, name recognition of the leadership contenders remains very low and this doesn’t auger well for their next leader. Should anyone other than Brian Topp or Thomas Mulcair win, they will be faced with the difficult task of raising their profile with the public and getting it to the point where voters see them as prime ministerial material.

Add in the NDP’s dismal performance in the House and you get a sense that its public support is temporarily parked. Their past success hinged heavily on Jack Layton. Unless things change for the NDP, their support could bleed away. Nycole Turmel’s leadership has been a disaster. She was absolutely the wrong choice at a time when the party needed a strong presence to counter the Conservatives and pounce on their missteps. Someone like Peter Julian who is passionate and delivers focused questions, would have been a better choice.

Question Period has always been the key moment in the day, when opposition parties can shine, grab the headlines and pounce on government mistakes and weaknesses. Yet, most Question Period sessions have been “sleepers,” full of disorganized and scattered NDP attacks, which lack any type of focus. While this hasn’t been a stellar time for the Official Opposition, I expect this will change once a new leader is in place. Critics will be reappointed, some of the NDP stars will return and the continuous distraction that any leadership race entails will be over. Providing they return united after the leadership race ends, the NDP will have a chance to improve their performance and solidify voter support.

The Liberals are far from dead. Bob Rae has done a commendable job of keeping them alive and he remains one of the best performers in the House. They are still pretty demoralized, but if the NDP stumble and pick the wrong leader, the Liberals are well-positioned to strengthen their position in the public’s mind. We can’t forget that for most of the modern era, the Liberals had very strong popular support. To assume that one election means they are dead is a bit of a stretch.

One of the tasks facing the Liberals will be to figure out what they stand for, and get that message out to Canadian voters. It is not good enough for them to wander all over the political map. That plays to Conservative and NDP advantage. Defining their position and matching that with a superior Question Period presence would give them an opportunity to court voters and supporters who have recently moved to the NDP or Conservatives. Like the NDP, the Liberals have tough choices to make this spring. If Rae can keep the party’s profile high and encourage good staff to stick around, they can rebuild.

The next three to four months will be interesting ones. Uncertain economic times that could either strengthen or weaken Conservative support; two opposition parties in flux, fighting for influence and voter support; a new leader for the NDP and the Conservative political machine waiting to pounce at every opportunity. Canadian political life in 2012 will be anything but dull.

(This article was slightly edited for the CIC Friday Magazine.)

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4. PALESTINIAN DOCTOR’S BOOK COULD CHANGE OUR FOREIGN POLICY

By Gerald Caplan — Globe and Mail — December 23, 2011

Exactly three years ago (December, 2008), Israel attacked the Gaza Strip.
While it is of course quite impossible to write anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without being accused of bias, here are what I believe to be agreed facts.

Israel stated the attack was to stop rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel. Since 2001, thousands had been launched, resulting in 28 Israeli deaths and hundreds of casualties. The Gazans responsible said they were justified in attacking Israel as an occupying power.

During the three-week operation, 1,200 to 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed. Of the 13, three were civilians and ten were soldiers. Of the Palestinians, about 700 were civilians, 250 of them younger than 16. All the fighting occurred on Gazan soil. Four thousand homes were destroyed by the Israeli Defence Forces, leaving tens of thousands homeless. Many observers, including Israeli human rights groups and a UN commission, found the Israelis guilty of using seriously disproportionate force.

Despite those findings, Stephen Harper’s government offered its usual unconditional support for Israel and showed its usual indifference to the plight of the Palestinian people.

Among the Palestinian civilian dead were three daughters, aged 21, 15 and 14, and a 17-year old niece, of Izzeldin Abuelaish. Dr. Abuelaish was born and raised in a refugee camp in the tiny, squalid Gaza strip and Gaza remained his home until last year. He now holds a position at the University of Toronto’s school of public health.

“Thick, unrelenting oppression touches every single aspect of life in Gaza,” he writes in his remarkable little book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey.

It is “a human time bomb in the process of imploding. … Gazans are trapped. … The frustration and humiliation were a constant burden.” As in any description of Israel-Palestine relations, always that key word reappears: humiliation, the relentless humiliation of powerless Palestinians by Israelis, utterly disconnected to any legitimate Israeli security concerns.

Yet despite all the obvious obstacles, Dr. Abuelaish became a medical doctor specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and infertility. He also became the rare Palestinian doctor who worked in both Israel and the Gaza Strip and who had many good friends in Israel, mostly doctors. Nevertheless, even for him every single trip between Gaza and Israel was another protracted experience in humiliation at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

On Sept. 16, 2008, Dr. Abuelaish’s wife, mother of his eight children, died from acute leukemia after a very brief illness. He was on a working trip in Europe and the story of his frantic attempt to return is one long Israeli-imposed logistical nightmare. At last he arrived at her bedside, in an Israeli hospital, in time to be with her when she died. But the children were not allowed to leave Gaza to be with their mother at the end.

On Dec. 27, 2008 the Gaza war began with an air strike by Israel. Dr. Abuelaish and his family were all in Gaza. What followed, he writes, was Israel’s “scorched earth policy” and the “wanton destruction” of the Gaza Strip. He derides “the blind stupidity of attacking the citizens of Gaza and claiming the rampage was aimed at stopping the rockets being fired into Israel.”

On Jan. 16, exactly four months after his wife died, two Israeli rockets were fired into his daughters’ bedroom in the home where his extended family members were attempting to hide from the Israeli bombardment:

“There was a monstrous explosion.… Suddenly it was pitch dark, something was sucking the air out of me, I was suffocating. … I realized the explosion had come from my daughters’ bedroom. … The sight in front of me was something I hope no other person ever has to witness – the body parts of my daughters and niece.”

Dr. Abuelaish then describes, in clinical, detached, yet unbearable detail, the precise horror of the scene before him.

After a period of lies and denials by Israelis about what happened, he reports that the Israeli government finally took responsibility “for wrongly targeting my home and killing my daughters, but it has never apologized and no official has ever said ‘I’m sorry’.”

The nightmare was not yet over. After his daughters and niece were killed, Dr. Abuelaish travelled to Israel where other family members who had been wounded in the same attack were in hospital. But the Israelis would not allow him back in Gaza in time for the burial of his children. Nor were his daughters allowed to be buried beside their mother because, he writes, “Israeli soldiers said no one was allowed to go into that area.”

Here is where Dr. Abuelaish’s story moves to dimensions beyond the extraordinary. In an introduction to the book, Marek Glazerman, a leading Israeli doctor, articulates what all must wonder: Izzeldin Abuelaish seems too good to be true. “Having lost his daughters, how can he still speak about love and peace and keep his Israeli friends?” Yet this is exactly what he does:

“Let my daughters be the last to die,” he writes. “… If I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, then I would accept their loss. … What we need is respect [for each other] and the inner strength to refuse to hate. Then we will achieve peace.

“As a Muslim with deep faith, I fully believe what is from God is for good and what is bad is man-made and can be prevented or changed. … The Qur’an taught me … to forgive those who create the man-made injustices that cause human suffering. This does not mean that we do not act to correct those injustices.”

Let there be no misunderstanding here. Dr. Abuelaish has no illusions about Hamas, its brutality, corruption and authoritarianism. But he also shows that for the Palestinian people – his people – the chief obstacle to peace and dignity is Israel. He repeatedly and harshly criticizes Israel for its treatment of Palestinians and presents evidence from many credible sources, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, documenting the miserable conditions of life in Gaza, a virtual prison camp controlled by Israel.

Yet even so, he forgives Israel for its trespasses, even – unbelievably enough – for the deaths of his family and his lifetime of humiliation at their hands.

It seems to me that no normal person can read this book without being both moved and influenced. It’s very short and can be read in a couple of holiday afternoons. If Stephen Harper, John Baird and Jason Kenney were to do so with an open mind, how could they not review their Middle East policy with a new and balanced perspective?

After all, at this time of year we’re permitted to dream of miracles.

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Epilogue

This is an excerpt from a poem by Anael Harpaz, an Israeli woman who met Dr. Abuelaish’s daughters at a peace camp. It is dedicated to his eldest, Bessan, who died at age 21.

I feel I have been betrayed by God
By my country
By the cruelty of humanity
By the warmongers
By those who think violence is the solution
Bessan forgive me
For not being able to save you
From my own people
Forgive me for giving you hope
That peace is possible
And then taking that dream from you

(This article was slightly edited for the CIC Friday Magazine.)

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