Overwrought and Counterproductive
Jewish Counterproductive Responses to the Current Wave of Antisemitism
In response to a policy decision by our Prime Minister to suspend armament exports to Israel during the current conflict, some American Jew decides to collectively convict the whole nation with antisemitism.
If I was more of a staunch nationalist, or if the opinion piece struck a nerve, I might be offended. However, the sophomoric rant was manifestly ignorant and an insult one might encounter from a beggar on the streets after he was refused a Loonie to feed his addictions.
I subscribe to the belief that there exists a strange, endemic, and mutual animus between the Jew (re: Jonah) and the goyim. This preceded Christianity. Therefore logically, the land of my birth has had, has, and will continue to have its share of anti-Semites. While I have suspected that there has been a general cultural drift towards antisemitism, mostly because of an influx of non-Caucasian immigrants, even I am bit surprised at the extent of that drift. Yet, the antisemitism, which presently exists here, is nothing like the virulence that exists in the U.S., something first detected on the streets of New York City in 1998.
But only in early 2016, did I go ex cathedra, blogging about the emergence of a strain of antisemitism which would lead, at minimum, to a rapid emigration of Jews from the United States, and giving some of the reasons for it. These articles are not always flattering to Jews. But then again, if I was constitutionally capable of flattering, I would have had a better love life.
Blanket complaints of antisemitism should always be suspect if the propagandist must cite incidents from so long ago (MS St. Louis, 1939; Samuel Rabinovitch, 1934). I had not known about the earlier incident, in which Québécois Catholics protested the hiring of a Jewish intern over their own kind. But I recall reading virulent anti-Semitic screeds by French priests during the interwar years. Moreover, the anti-Semite Duplessis would become Premier of Quebec in 1936. So, none of this is particularly surprising from that proud and insular culture.
In 1930-31, the Canadian government responded to the Great Depression by applying severe restrictions to entry. New rules limited immigration to British and American subjects or agriculturalists with money, certain classes of workers, and immediate family of Canadian residents. The result was dramatic. In the 1930s, an average of about 16,000 immigrants entered Canada per year, an enormous drop from an average of about 126,000 per year during the 1920s.
However, Halpern fails to contextualize events. Not everything is about the Jews. For while between “1933 to 1945, Canada admitted just 4,000 Jewish refugees,” only 171,300 immigrants in all were allowed into the country during that same time. Jews constituted in excess of 2.4% of the few that were allowed to immigrate.
For it is natural and reasonable to feed those who dwell within the household, especially during periods of great economic distress, before attempting to feed those outside.
There was another incident during that same time as the MS St. Louis incident of which only 254 of the 907 passengers perished in the Holocaust, (a correction to Halpern’s lazy journalism, although incidental to the argument).
Britain asked Canada to take some Sudeten German refugees who had fled the Nazis to Prague. The railroad companies were sent to investigate potential immigration of farmers and glassworkers. Canada agreed to take 1,200 but insisted on Britain paying $1,500 per family for transportation and resettlement costs (Britain had offered $1,000). While negotiations were going on, Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, preventing the resettlement of most of the refugees. (November 1938)
While antisemitism might have played a part in the MS St. Louis incident, there was a larger concern and a reason why Canadians have, in past, been called a “nation of accountants.”
The Present Circumstances
My first reaction to news, that our inconsequential fop of a prime minister suspended all armament exports to Israel, was, “What? We have an armaments industry?” Our nation’s military is so derelict that our soldiers need to thumb a ride to locales beyond our own shores. Trudeau’s announcement may score diplomatic and propaganda kudos for a PM who governs by mere shadows and mirrors. But this material support to Israel is trifling that knee jerk responses, like those of Halpern, are over the top and shall prove counterproductive.
We dwell, at least in the West, in an effete age with little stomach and patience for altercations like that in Gaza, or Ukraine, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, etc. One kicks against the goads in complaining about the dispositions of such persons who have lived charmed lives. Political realism, the art of politics, requires that one operate within objective social realities, the “is,” rather than whine fruitlessly about the “ought.”
Therefore, despite Netanyahu’s assertions of the need for a long struggle, if Israelis and Diaspora Jews have any existential need to be concerned about Western opinion, then Netanyahu has always had a limited time window to effect whatever he deemed necessary.
From this perspective, the Israeli rout of Hamas has dragged on too long. The longer the conflict continues, the greater risk for mishaps, like the recent bombing of aid workers, hereby becoming a propaganda tool for Israel’s adversaries. Moreover, the scrupulous elimination of its current foes shall only instigate more future foes from a pool of 1.9 billion Muslims.
None of these comments are news to cooler heads in the Israeli administration and military, I imagine. But if Israel is currently losing the propaganda wars, much of the reason is over the top screeds like Halpern’s.
Hamas will always convince that small plurality of rowdy radicals in the West who do not need much convincing in the first place. For the rest, the question becomes what does it really matter to us whatever happens in a far off land? I doubt that ten percent of Canadians could locate Gaza on an unmarked map of the Mediterranean. Americans are even worse. Yet, I also doubt that 1% of Israelis could locate Great Bear Lake, James Bay, and Saskatoon on an unmarked map of Canada.
I do not buy into the argument that Hamas constitutes an existential threat to the state of Israel, even if it constitutes an ever present and random threat to its people. Moreover, Islamists do not constitute a real existential threat to Western principalities, even if they may constitute a random threat to some of its people. Moreover, Western Europeans are moving towards reclaiming their heritage (a dynamic which occurs throughout history, as early as native Egyptians overthrowing the Libyan and Nubian Dynasties three thousand years ago). But maîtres chez nous has not necessarily been a good thing for the Jew.
So, let us not exaggerate and thereby distort our perspective out of petty pique. Disagreeing with present Israeli policy does not constitute a litmus test for loyalty or antisemitism.