"There's Something Happening Here But What It Is Ain't Exactly Clear"

"Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid"

 

There is an alarming level of paranoia developing in Israeli media that it is hard to see as being in Israel's best interest. We hold Israel to a higher standard of governance than their never-democratic and often barbaric Arab neighbours, so including those of us who see its treatment of Palestinians as disenfranchising and a modern form of old-fashioned colonialism in their count of global anti-Semites seems offensively naive.

 

For What It's Worth

by the Buffalo Springfield
There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking' their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?

How Some Canadians View Our Aboriginals

This kerfuffle from Vancouver Island featuring printed rantings around aboriginal entitlement is intriguing.

One wonders why the local newspaper felt it had to 'apologize'. Although not particularly factually accurate or always fair, the rant does nevertheless contain several useful points of push back against the heavy guilt that First Nations and their apologists too often try to impose on all non-aboriginal residents for the state many natives find themselves living in today, whether or not our personal ancestors got here in time to inflict any remembered historic injustices.

It is unfortunate that attempting to counter the idea that pre-contact Canadian society was supplanted by an evil culture is so difficult to do in the public space. There are few debates more politically correct than the one on indigenous peoples' entitlement.

The Increasingly Pressing Need for Israel to Behave Better

On Monday the British House of Commons endorsed a Labour MP's motion supporting diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state. Though non-binding this follows hard on the heels of the new Swedish Government announcing it will recognize Palestine. Both parliaments have been up till now supporters of Israel's right to a peaceful existence.

'Richard Ottaway, a Conservative lawmaker and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who said he “stood by Israel through thick and thin, through the good years and the bad,” and “under normal circumstances, I would oppose the motion tonight; but such is my anger over Israel’s behaviour in recent months that I will not oppose the motion. I have to say to the government of Israel that if they are losing people like me, they will be losing a lot of people”'

'Advocates of the measure rejected the idea that recognition would harm the peace process: "There is no peace, and there is no process.."'

'The most recent American-mediated talks collapsed in April. Meanwhile, Israel continues to build new settlements or expand existing ones, thus shrinking the territory available for a Palestinian state and ignoring an international community that considers such construction illegal. The recent war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, which killed more than 2,000 Palestinians and 73 Israelis, has increased the sense that violence will keep recurring while peace remains elusive'.

We have travelled a long way from how we felt when we sat in front of our TVs and cheered on Israeli troops as they were winning the Six Days War.  Now, at the very same time as militant Islam gets more ghastly by the month, the Israeli government grows uglier in its determination to behave like some sort of throwback imperial power. Their military is not yet a mirror of the British Black and Tans in early C20th in Ireland, but it is trending in that direction as the intransigent Israeli settlers grabbing land from Arabs look more and more like Edward Carson's Ulster Unionist thugs in pursuing what they claim to be their right.

Nothing changes - might is still right.

Which Nation Should One Hold Most Dear?

The Jonathan Pollard case now attracting a lot of attention is of interest to both Israelis and Americans. We are told it is the only example of imprisonment of a spy from a friendly country in US history. Even for those of us of neither of those nationalities but holding more than one passport, Pollard's case is also intriguing. Israel has awarded him Israeli citizenship while still in a US prison.

For folk with multiple national connections there can be credibility issues. In Jewish areas in our cities posters exhorting readers to buy Israeli bonds are almost ubiquitous. Not all Jews of course are Zionists so the public prominence of these posters may be thought to do those who are not no favours. However people who identify themselves as Jewish in countries outside Israel are a special case in that any identification with Israel usually will not be associated with holding an Israeli passport.

Commoner are other resident citizens who hold a second passport. I am one.

Colonization by Another Name

One of the elephants in the room around Putin's loud and aggressive championing of Russian speakers and ethnics in former Soviet states is the fact of Russian colonization. Ethnic Rus have been settling regions well beyond their historical homeland for many, many generations.  When Ronald Reagan called then Soviet Russia an 'Evil Empire' he was not just referring to Russian troops garrisoning Warsaw Pact 'allies'.

Throughout the long Soviet era Russians took up residence in many countries across their borders, while at the same time expelling other ethnicities from their own territories (Crimean Tatars, Swabian Germans, and others).  In the 18th and 19th Century Russian settlers spread across Asia and even into North America via Alaska. Russian Orthodox churches remaining today on Vancouver Island are testimony to how far down the North American continent Russian pioneers went. The Russo-Japanese War of a century ago was a conflict of imperialists and colonizers. The present Russian Federation is the most ethnically diverse country on the planet, yet we hear next to nothing about its non-Russian citizens in official propaganda.

While Latvia may seem harsh in not granting full citizenship to a third of its 27% of population of Russian stock, its reluctance is understandable - these people are colonists, and staffed the local KGB who terrorized the natives in Soviet times.  Unlike most other imperialist colonizers, Russian settlers have never had to defend and atone for their usurpation of indigenous landholdings across Eastern Europe and Asia. There has been no accounting for their genocides, forced indoctrination programmes of Russian language and dogma, and land theft.

Yesterday in Canada we celebrated National Aboriginal Language Day.  Having extirpated or severely limited the use of our great variety of native languages, we are finally recognizing that they and their speakers are cultural assets. Americans have restored French as an official language in Louisiana and recognized the Gullah of rural black Carolinians and Georgians and the Hawaiian language as national treasures. Formerly obscure languages like Frisian and Scots Lallans are recognized and funded in the European Union.

While wringing our hands over the excesses of our Western European colonization in the Americas, Asia and Africa, we singularly fail to include Russia in our list of aggressive global colonizers with skeletons in their closets.