Since the activist Left is hardly effective as a political voice, and is rapidly becoming viewed as a radical street-circus, it strikes me that we need each other more than ever.
For the record, I am a left-winger. Really I am. I have rallied against tuition increases and protested against privatizing education. I was even tear-gassed in Quebec City while protesting the expansion of a treaty that hands more of my elected leaders’ power over to corporations. As a left-winger I am a man divided. Will I vote Green Party or NDP?
But feeling this way makes me want to involve myself more. Because involving myself in different groups gives me a deeper knowledge of issues as well as a way to apply direct pressure.
Yet every time I start to attend meetings and feel myself bonding with my activist brothers and sisters, the same thing happens. “We want to protest outside of the Israeli embassy to take a stand against their hostilities towards the Palestinians,” I hear, followed by, “Israel has committed more acts of aggression…”
This leaves me furious. When all one hears about the Middle East conflict is that Israel has sent more troops and tanks into lands that are being administered by the Palestinian Authority, I admit that yes, it is easy to think that Israel is in the wrong. But things get more complicated when you take a look at the different groups involved.
Obviously, extremists who blow themselves up in pizzerias and night club line-ups do not represent all Palestinians. No, officially the Palestinian people are represented by the unelected Palestinian Authority, who speak for moderates. However, it is hard to trust this “moderate” authority when they are seen to have no control over the militants.
So the PA finds itself in a bind. Either they support the militants in their actions (something I highly doubt), or they are unable to control them, and therefore should either step down as a government or join forces with the Israelis to stamp out violence.
The fact is that Israel has to exist. No matter how welcoming the world thinks it is to multiculturalism, anti-semitism always lurks in a persistent minority of people.
These people wouldn’t matter, but the history of diaspora, until 1948, proves that these minorities have a way of rising to power and influence when times are bad. After WWII there was no doubt that no matter how well-intended another country might be, none of them could be counted on for long-term protection of Jewish peoples (nor, for that matter, any peoples without a homeland).
Israel needs to exist at any cost. And with this same philosophy, the need for a state of Palestine, with full protection, should become brutally clear to all.
If we rally behind the Palestiniana, to protect them against Israeli “occupiers,” then we must also rally behind Israelis who are under attack. Sympathy for one group does not negate sympathy for the other.
