The article by former premier Gordon Campbell (2001-2011) in the Victoria Times Colonist (October 8, 2024). is replete with statements, not arguments. He stated, “Some will say change can’t happen, but they are wrong. Change will happen if we all demand it and vote for it!”(1) That is exactly what was said by the electorate toward his (hybrid) political entity -libertarian(2)/liberal party (‘the hybrids’)- first elected in 2001 and ruled until their defeat in 2016.(3)
In the article, he made two initial statements that are connected to his legacy. He stated that BC’s 2024 deficit (under the NDP), “…is estimated at another $8 billion. That’s more than the entire K-12 education system cost when the current government took over.” He’s comparing apples to oranges.(4) Singling out one service area and judging it according to a deficit that is related to a bigger animal is a non-sequitur (latin for ‘whopper’).(5)
This first sentence, referencing the deficit, is connected to his promise that there would be no cuts to the education sector; as soon as he got the crown in 2001 he and his party slashed funding for eduction.(6) Aside from saying one thing and doing another, cutting education funding for the next generations of a workforce is at best self-defeating; at worst, it is a sign of ideology driving policy. In fact, such decisions are not ‘common sense’, a phrase that conservatives often use to demonstrate their alleged fitness for office. This type of vague nonsense phrase is bleated without definitions, data or explanatory notes.
Mr. Campbell’s mention of a deficit raises an associated point. Government debt, deficits etc are more complex than Mr. Campbell wants to admit. It’s much simpler to state vague words and cast blame than to back vacuity up with facts. For example, the BC debt per capita (person) in 2001, (the first year the hybrid party was in power) was $8,852. By 2016, the year the hybrids were given liberty from government responsibility, the debt was $13,942. So much for consistency in remarks about deficits by another government. From 2017-2019 the debt/person was kept under $14,000. In 2020 the debt/person was $14,230. In 2024 that debt has reached $19,471.(7)
Why did this happen? Conservative pundits infer the rise in debt level cannot be ascribed alone to the pandemic. On this point they are incorrect.(8) The arrival of the pandemic in Canada was officially noted on January 25, 2020. There is a direct cause and effect because of the decisions of BC’s government (and that of Canada) to help citizens with various financial packages during the crisis. These monies for citizens added to debt and deficit. So what? That is what governments are for: to protect and help their citizens in times of crisis. What would a conservative, neo-conservative or libertarian government have done?
Most restrictions related to covid were lifted around October 2022. Soon after, the world was swept by a massive upswing in prices which was part of the cause of world-wide inflation or the cost of living. Of this we write later.
The second initial whopper has to do with two statements about current health care in BC. The first is, we have to, “stop wait lists in health care from deteriorating in growing death lists”. This kind of statement serves to heighten emotion and obscure the necessity for substance. In BC’s health system people in a given category who are in worse shape than others are triaged for treatment. The notion that a government would allow a system to exist that creates ‘death lists’ is ridiculous. It is also insulting to the extraordinary health care professionals who keep the system running in a shape where most people get the care they need most of the time when they need it.
Then Mr. Campbell stated, “the [NDP] government randomly closes emergency wards”. This is false, and inflammatory. It is also hypocritical because his government made numerous cuts to the health care system,(10) and then, when the system began to develop problems, used those problems to argue that Canada’s health care was ‘in crisis’ and needed to be augmented by a ‘cheaper’ alternative; a private system.(11) This assumptive trope,(12) by libertarians certainly, and most conservatives, is that government is always, everywhere and in every jurisdiction inefficient and bloated. The only solution is to let loose the superior intellectual and managerial abilities of the private sector (capitalism without outside oversight).
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There are three main statements that Mr. Campbell makes that need to be pulled out and apart for facts and veracity. These are crime, taxes and the cost of living.
Crime
Mr. Campbell wrote: “if we want to stop the revolving door in the justice system where dangerous people are put back on the streets; if we want to be able to walk down their streets without fear with their children; if we want to use their parks freely and enjoy their community centres with their kids — we need to vote for change.” Campbell, like most hybrids, is implying that crime is out of control, not just in BC but in Canada. Is this perception accurate? He presents no statistics or purported facts and no argument; merely an emotive, ideological statement.
What crime? Non-severe or severe? Adult or youth? In all of BC or in some towns and cities? Drugs, theft, white collar? Property and what kind? Civil or criminal? Etc. None of this is addressed by Mr. Campbell. There is a reason for such vacuity: it is easier to frighten people than to speak about facts. By frightening citizens a demagogue can get elected where someone who makes arguments is boring and unelectable.
The facts, accessible by any, especially a person who once was premier of this province, are the following. Crime as a whole in BC and in Canada is decreasing. “In 2022, BC’s police-reported crime rate (excluding traffic) decreased by 1.6%, from 74.8 to 73.7 offences per 1,000 population.”(13) Since Mr. Campbell seems most exercised by ‘dangerous persons’ and crime in BC, there are two examples to review. In 2021 there were in BC 15.3 violent crimes/1000 persons while in 2022, that rate was 15.3. The property crime rate in 2021 was 42.2/1000 and in 2022 it was 41.9.(14) So much for that conservative/libertarian trope.
Taxes
In his article he stated, “If voters want lower taxes, if they want more take-home pay, we can do that too.” He makes the statement but doesn’t ask why someone would want taxes lowered. Again, have a look at Mr. Campbell’s history on taxes as a politician.(15) There are three important questions that loom in the background of any talk of tax cuts.
Tax policy is complex: complexity includes implementation, results, and interpretation after the results. A perfect example of this complex phenomenon is Mr. Campbell’s cuts to taxes in 2001. Let’s review.
a) Which taxes are we examining, who benefits and who is most negatively affected by tax cuts?
On his first day in office, Mr. Campbell cut personal income tax by 25%, the corporate income tax and then corporate capital taxes. Personal income taxes in BC went from being at the national average to the lowest in Canada.(16) This sounds good, but the effect was to reduce services and to close certain social benefit programs, reconfigure them or hand them to private interests. The lower income a citizen has, the more they are affected by the effects of lower taxes. Higher income citizens benefit most because some social programs they would never need and their income goes up, and their taxes down, because the cuts tend to mean more for their bottom lines. The already wealthy are better off after the cuts than everyone else beneath their earning level. And they buy more exclusive stuff when blood is on the streets.(17) This process is typical of libertarian/conservative-backed political choices.(18)
What is the purpose of taxation?
To live in a civilized state. I like to pay taxes because I know that I benefit from the services I pay for through my taxes. I also know that some of the taxes I pay for I will never use but others will need them. I am happy to pay for taxes that do both. One’s attitude to paying taxes comes down to a choice between caring about one’s neighbour, about inequity and equity. One way to judge for whom to vote in an election is to ask what is meant by reduction in taxes and get whoever is speaking to state clearly who benefits. As above, tax cuts tend to benefit persons who are already well off and affect less wealthy citizens more negatively. There are always some persons who believe that they have more of a right to build their own personal equity without responsibility and so reduce their participation in social equity.
How is funding for government services replaced, given cuts?
It isn’t. Sometimes the services are eliminated. As noted above sometimes they are reconfigured, including eliminating unnecessary positions, and sometimes privatized. In other words, some social services are snuffed out without regard to how it affects the citizens who need them or reconfigured so that there are fewer people doing jobs that used to require more employees, thus reducing service levels (e.g. numbers of doctors, nurses or school teachers).
Cost of living
Mr. Campbell stated, “The cost of living is soaring because the government is addicted to taxes, not to performance.” This is another hybridean trope, and a confused one at that. It vaguely sounds like it is logical to put ‘taxes’ and ‘performance’ together in the same sentence, opposite to one another and have it make sense, but this is another whopper. Taxes, as we saw above, are a means for a government to create and maintain social programs that help some citizens some of the time to do more than survive, but to help them live with dignity, maybe even thrive and contribute back to society. To help some citizens in this way, governments need taxes to redistribute some monies to those social programs. Of course, some tax monies are needed for governance, the court system, education, basic maintenance on roads, civil protection, to deter outside aggression, and so on.
What has ‘performance’ to do with cost of living? Performance is the process of accomplishing an action. To be honest, I don’t understand what Mr. Campbell meant when he stated the phrase, so I can only guess. My guess is that as a neo-conservative or libertarian, he meant something like the following. If we reward the performances of (few) people in government who succeed in creating good government policies (with the fewest dollars possible) those divine beings will somehow do so without taxes.
In addition, it is argued by pundits that the recent rise in the cost of living(19)-since 2020- could not possibly have anything to do with inflation. However, the cost of living has not become high just in BC or just in Canada, but over the world, which indicates that it was not the fault of any one government, any one leader, province or country. So, blaming any of these individual entities is another whopper. BC and Canada are essentially in the same position in terms of debt to GDP as most other social democratic countries in Europe. Canada’s debt to GDP is approximately 94.1%.(20)As Eurostat, Statistics Explained (‘an official Eurostat website’) states (with stats and figures), “In the euro area the government debt to GDP ratio decreased from 90.8 % at the end of 2022 to 88.6 % at the end of 2023, and in the EU from 83.4 % to 81.7 %.”(21) It is not surprising that Canada’s debt to GDP is higher because the federal, and provincial, governments used their spending power in 2020(22) to support its citizens during the emergency. Yes, the federal government needs to address this issue, but blaming any government for a deficit in the wake of the massive economic crises is disingenuous. How will a conservative government deal with the debt/deficit? How will their inevitable cuts, if elected, help any Canadians besides the wealthy who can weather such economic storms better than anyone else?
Yes, the cost of living (COL) has become higher, but the reasons are far more complex than Mr. Campbell states. COL is associated with inflation. Conservative voices will also blame this phenomenon on the ruling party, as if any one entity controls it, bounded by no less than the world, as the events in one part of the world affects all other parts. In the last three years, aside from the pandemic, inflation and the cost of living have been affected by massive shifts in unanticipated, new, weather conditions, the regular ‘forest fire season’, higher prices due to supply chain foul ups, war (especially Russia and its war on Ukraine) consequent rises in insurance rates, gas and oil etc.(23) Yet BC has the lowest debt-to GDP ratio compared to other provinces, something of which Mr. Campbell and other hybrid pundits don’t speak.(24)
While there are many points from which to critique Mr. Campbell’s article and there are more explanations for why he made them, there is one major reason that lies behind, not just Mr. Campbell’s statements or his words and actions when he was premier but lies behind most neocon, conservative, libertarian essays, comments, actions, tropes and motivation. It is a fundamental piece of dogma that any and all taxes are bad in that they restrict ‘freedom’ and steal from the pockets of consumers.
This is an extraordinary attitude. Freedom is understood to be freedom to make money and spend it in any way I wish, without the demand for taxes. Another characteristic of the hybrids is that one should always pay for the goods or products one buys. Even at the base level of thinking about government and social policy in this way should make sense to anyone who wishes to live in a civil society. To do so means taxes, fairly divided amongst the population. This means adequate or progressive taxation. Persons who think taxes are theft are in fact stealing from others in the society in which they both exist. Otherwise, the impress of inequity, rather than the constant balancing act between the moral considerations of equity and taxes, becomes a defining characteristic of a given society.
Mr. Campbell’s rant-as-essay in the Times Colonist reveals nothing of such considerations.
Endnotes
Libertarians have been around for a long time but in the years of the Reagan-thatcher-Mulroney triumvirate its ideology had a new start. Its adherents are as diverse as any other group about their ideologies. However, libertarians believe that less, or even no, government is better, that taxes are theft and civil and social democratic governments are a threat to ts adherents’ ‘way of life’. Along with that phrase another is ‘freedom’. When such persons use these words, they mean their freedom, their way of life, and their money; not yours or mine.
There are numerous one-liner whoppers from Mr. Campbell: ‘Our health system is in collapse’, ‘the government (NDP) proudly prohibit a BC citizen from getting the same access to health care as a Quebec resident’, ‘temporary trailers at schools for school rooms means parents and children are not welcome’, etc., but we cannot analyze all of them.
In a February 22, 2024 report, a Fraser Institute the authors claimed, by splitting the difference, that BC debt was 2016-17 was $14,275/person. They split the difference between 2016/2017 to come up with a figure of $14,275 but the accurate figures for each year was lost the same. $13,942/person and 2017, $13,885. The authors then claimed that NDP pundits cannot use the pandemic as an ‘excuse’ for the rise in debt. However, the NDP kept the debt per person under 14,000. The authors were wrong to infer that the pandemic was not in any way for the increase of debt/person. They were also wrong to infer that the next years to 2024 were not also affected by the repercussions of the pandemic and government response to it for the sake of its citizens. See https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/bc-government-projects-massive-debt-accumulation-and-british-columbians-will-pay-the-price. Authors, Tegan Hill and Jake Fuss.
How BC Is Making Fools of Past Health Spending Alarmists | The Tyee; https://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/08/Bill29Dies/; https://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca/index.php/briefing-note-gordon-campbell-canadas-arch-health-care-privateer-and-author-of-the-worst-cuts-in-b-c-s-history-september-20-2018; https://www.heu.org/news/media-release/heu-statement-resignation-premier-gordon-campbell; https://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/opinion/letter-admission-of-campbells-health-care-destruction-better-late-than-never-1588617.
The issue is not whether there is bias or not, but whether a writer or a newspaper or magazine or some site on the web identify their bias. Such overt acknowledgement is more important now than at any time in history because of how quickly a lie or a partial lie in an image or in words can spread.
To that end: my political bias is that a social democratic state (most countries in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc)hold as inviolable the division of power (a duly elected government -with oversight by duly elected opposition parties, the judiciary and the enforcement of the law) and that all citizens are equal and under the rule of law.
Another bias is that all entities-inanimate, corporate entities as well as human citizens- that benefit from a social democratic society must pay an equitable and progressive tax to maintain that society. Those inanimate-merely law created- entities and human citizens who hide their earnings and cheat on their taxes should be prosecuted until they pay their due taxes and penalties to government. It is also government’s duty and responsibility for the sake of social stability and fairness to enable such prosecution and closing of loopholes that allow some to pay far less tax than they should. By ‘should’ I do not mean ‘within the tax law’ because this law can be changed and used to enable some to hide and cheat.By ‘should’ I mean all persons-inanimate and human- should pay enough tax to support society because they benefit (rule of law, safety etc).
My third bias is that reporters and their employers should publicly note their biases and then make their arguments in the spirit of accuracy and completeness. Many do; I am concerned about the ones that use their bias to promote a person or an idea by means of declarative sentences but no facts or arguments for the same. Such articles proliferate under the sanctity of alleged superior knowledge and wisdom.
On July 11, 2024, Pierre Poilievre gave his first speech to First Nations chiefs. The Victoria Times Colonist in its paper version on July 12 printed a short review of the same, culled from The Canadian Press (author, Ryan Remiorz). The title was ‘Poilievre applauded as he delvers first speech to First Nations Leaders‘. This version, in words and in the picture that went with it, leads a casual reader to believe that Poilievre’s speech was well received and not controversial. However, when one turns to the online version, one notes that the title, content and authors are different.
The title of the online version was ‘Poilievre delivers first speech to AFN, leaders confront him about Harper’s legacy.’ Poilievre was confronted by some of the chiefs with what he left out of the speech. There is no room to list them here; read the article. The authors of this version were Alessia Passafiume and Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press.
Why was one version a more accurate representation of what happened than the other?
The picture used in the paper TC was the same used in the online version. The title for the picture was in essence the title used for the paper version. The person credited with the picture in the online version was the person credited with the first, and inaccurate, paper version.
The paper version was edited to present a different, and more pleasing, to some, version of Poilievre’s speech and reception than in the online version. The paper version was either edited in an unthinking and sloppy manner or it was edited with bias. The rending of a fulsome version of the events down to something that can mislead the incurious reader, if multiplied dozens if not hundreds of times across media, is problematic at best.It is subversive at worst.
Revised April 2025. And City Council seems to have adopted the principle of keep the tents moving around, rather than at least starting to think abut a set of long-term solutions.
An open letter to members of Victoria City Council
Homelessness: A 5M Approach
The ‘action,’ of May 16, 2024, cleaning Pandora Street of tents, belongings and persons, sudden and without warning, leaves one befuddled because it was not announced before-hand nor its purpose explained after.
Whatever the explanation, it was an inchoate blip in the history of attempts to address the issues related to homelessness. In fact, it was less than a blip because within a week not only were the persons who were evicted and told to move on- whatever euphemism used- were back within a week, but the encampment has grown up and down Pandora Street, past the pre-eviction boundaries.
The blip reminds one of various attempts to fully address the issue in the last thirty years. There have been multiple studies, work forces, papers, research, discussions by, among and with concerned groups of citizens, and engagement with various professionals but nothing has happened to address the underlying issues that cause people to become homeless and thereby create a coherent, long-term strategy.
There has been some specific progress on various solutions: some housing has been created and small groups patrol the city to help with food, clothing, medical issues for individuals, and so on. However, these sorts of programs have been short-term band-aid activities. Our Place Society itself is a long-term semi-permanent solution but as such it is larger band-aid. The creation of the Courtnall Society for mental Health at the Royal Jubilee Hospital is a very welcome, necessary and permanent aid to many.
There is a different approach or, rather, set of combined solutions. Bear in mind these are not impossible; they may prove to be merely improbable for a number of reasons, but not impossible.
What is necessary is the creation of a multi-disciplinary, multi-generational, multi-professional, multi-individuated and multi-economic, permanent long-term process. The basic description for this process contains an umbrella (the canopy) structure, beneath which all necessary sub-parts (the ribs) are researched and interconnected with one another to address the differentiated solutions that would come out of such a process.
The canopy can be called the permanent ‘working group’ that is held p by the ribs. Its members, ask and promulgate what the big questions are and works to develop practical means to create a robust structure that addresses the complex social concerns that are identified as homelessness, but also the hidden realities connected but not noticed, to that issue. The working group would ask for and receive information essential to address homelessness in Victoria, a process that could be replicated across the country.
A given municipality cannot address the issues alone. Engagement of both provincial and federal government partners is critical. In addition, as the process is created and grows, multiple partners would have to be engaged. Representatives from these partners would populate the ribs and have seats under the canopy.
The most important contribution of a municipality is to get it started and be the hub to gather human resources and data, pulling them together and making the argument for multiple, mutual, correlated solutions. What may be the most important role for a municipality or set of municipalities is to be resolute when the winds of negativity with slashing, cold rain try to dampen that resolve.
Again, the process itself and the results must be multi-disciplinary, multi-generational, multi-professional and multi-individuated and multi-economic.
Multi-disciplinary. By this word I mean a group of knowledgeable persons gathered to ask the initial big questions. By ‘knowledgeable persons’ I mean ethicists, medical folk, sociologists, practical financial minds (and others, no doubt). Some questions are these: What are the key questions we need to ask? What is the data we need to uncover? Is this umbrella group and the solutions it seeks going to be political or moral? What ideological concerns need to be identified, made explicit and discussed? What are the ethical foundations for the creation of the umbrella? What are the economic implications for either going ahead or not? Why should citizens support such an ambitious process/project/set of solutions? Is the status quo working? For whom?
Multi-individuated. It is no secret that persons living on the street are not of one kind; there are multiple explanations for why people end up on the street. In addition, the multiple reasons why persons are on the street leads to related issues; impacts on their families, the judiciary, the police, medical professionals, the public purse, etc.
Multi-generational. Identifying and considering the various issues cannot be a one-off activity. As noted above, there has been progress, but if the purpose is to simply create another programme, why would anyone participate? The set of issues to be identified, addressed and coordinated actions implemented cannot be addressed by a single municipality in a four year election cycle. Politicians may want to move on after a few years or the will of the people may suggest that they do. Parties get elected and then defeated and a major social issue such as homelessness gets lost or rejected by the next party or set of politicians who get elected. What we need then is politicians at a given moment to agree how they can work together multi-generationally on this multi-pronged issue, regardless of what party or set of politicians, or leaders are in place in the future. Some sort of explicit covenant that states the necessary continuance of working beyond ideological interests toward solutions must be crafted and agreed to by a first set of politicians, in such a way that all future members of their parties or ideological affiliates cannot either scuttle such significant work or chip away at it until it disappears under the weight of subtle ideological influences or quiet diversion of resources to other concerns. A covenant needs to backed up with solid, scientific, data-based, peer-reviewed evidence.
Multi-professional. Some of these are: medical personnel and resources, teachers and educational processes from K-12 and support for families with early age children, sociological studies and experts, current groups that work within the matrix of service and concern for homelessness and related issues, present and future legal matters, law enforcement, practical financial professionals and economists (see below). There are likely other professionals that would have to be brought into the work.
Multi-economic. I have cut out for commentary this category from the others because financial issues will be less complex than them but more potentially divisive. The inevitable duelling ideological principles, especially without reliable data, could bog down the entire process and project. For example, what does it cost a single municipality in terms of dollars to address the needs and impact of a single person who is on the street? There have been a number of studies that asked and answered this question.[1] These data need to be gathered and collated, based on best peer-reviewed studies with others that are significant from a ‘soft’ perspective. Other financial studies should be gathered. For example, the notion of a ‘universal basic income’ (UBI) for either all citizens or for the most disadvantaged. This is an idea that has been floating around for decades. Experiments been conducted Canada (Manitoba), the U.S. (under Nixon), Great Britain, and elsewhere. Interest in the idea has grown and has occupied the time, researches, and thinking of many more people than even a few years ago. An interesting negative response to UBIs, was from certain billionaires who have created a lobby group in the U.S. to oppose any intent to create or experiment to see how a UBI might work. For dueling articles see UBI can save the economy and it didn’t work. and ‘somewhat’.
How to get started? I invite each of you, first, to think of words of wisdom that keep you alive and hopeful in the face of adversity. If it is hard to think of any, one can find any number of them on the internet, some of which are icky sweet (and of doubtful aid) and some of which are profound. One place to start is to read Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists. Famously, Bregman was once, on air, called a ‘tiny brained moron’ and told to **** off. by former fox employee and now Putin pundit, Tucker Carlson an altercation that demonstrates the value of Bregman and Utopia. I am happy to invest in your commitment and interest by purchasing a copy for each of you. Let me know.
But, second, the most basic question is: would you Victoria City Council members start to build the umbrella?
A related question is: is the status quo working and acceptable? If not, why not? Questions that arise from that question are; A) what is the status quo and what do we mean when we say it is ‘working’? B) if we find the status quo acceptable, what are the ethical roots that determine an answer? If there are opposite answers, which do you and we wish to live with? Perhaps we can start by asking and at least find initial answers to these questions.
HEMMINGS, Jamison (Jamie) Harry
November 11, 1962 – March 27, 2024
Remembering Jamie with love. Mother, Faye. Siblings: Denise, Michael, Scott, their partners, his nieces and nephews, other relatives, numerous friends and colleagues. Pre-deceased by father, Al.
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A Mnemonic Portrait
…accountable (to and for himself), ball caps, cats, coffee…and more coffee, competitive, compulsions, curious/inquisitive, eristic, Facebook#, moderator and contributor: Ancient Wonders of Archeology, Art History and Architecture (583.3K members), Facebook #2, moderator and contributor: Ancient Civilizations, History Origin, World Cultures (113.7K followers), generous, golf, grit, headstrong, history (vikings!) and palaeontology, horticulture, ice cream, irascible, jamieswrld.com, kind, lost and found, loyal, mischievous grin, NFL football, the Oilers, opinionated [see eristic], peach pie, pies (passion for and thief of), pizza, quintessential Canadian- Eh?, renovation (of himself), searching, sci fi, snow, strong, supportive, talkative, tenacious, Tim Horton’s, trimming trees (sometimes to the dismay of both their owners and the trees), rocks: odder is better, worked hard without complaint (ankylosing spondylitis); a [very human] masterwork…
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A service for the celebration of Jamie’s life, with remembrances, witticisms and love will be held at First Church of the Nazarene (14320 – 94 Street, 780-475-9485), April 13, 2024 at 11:00 a.m.
We specially note and thank with profound gratitude Dr. Amy Franke, her colleagues and employees at the Allin Clinic** who were instantly at Jamie’s side when he was stricken in their office.
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In lieu of flowers please consider donating toA Living Tribute* (Plant a living memorial for someone in Canada’s forests).
The essay is a must read for anyone concerned about the hatred’s rising out of academia, but especially those whose careers are centred in ‘halls of higher learning’. The ideal of ‘higher learning’ is to expose students to the challenging and awe-inspiring wide world of knowledge. One of the key principles of such learning is to assume no fact can be accepted as accurate until the hard work of asking questions, searching for answers and checking those answers against what others have discovered or found to be other facts is done. ‘Alternative facts’ do not belong here. As such, the ‘Jewish problem’ on university campuses, aside from study as an historical reality, has no place in these institutions. Antisemitism is a fact. The Sho’ah and its ramifications for the Jewish people is a fact.
In the same breath as it were, this fact also must be stated: the nakba ( https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/ ) and its ramifications for Palestinians is a fact. Regardless of the arguments about how the Nakba occurred, hte fqct is, it happened. The fact that neither side can feel that the pain of the other is the same as their own means that the violence will not end.
After stating he will not allow a Palestinian state alongside Israel in the West Bank, the current prime minister of Israel (Mr. N), asked this non-rhetorical shrug-of-the-shoulders question: “What can we do?”
It is a question that reveals both cynicism and indifference. The indifference is to the harm done to Palestinians. The cynicism comes from a will to doom Israelis and Palestinians to more decades of violence and a man-made fate of Sisyphean proportions. But the good news is that that doom can be avoided because it is man-made. What is lacking is political and moral will, on both sides. The South African case before the Hague is an opening, if the two sides can stop arguing at each other from inside their own silos.
If a member of one side could sit inside the other’s silo, they would hear some of the same concepts that their side uses. For example, it is an unspoken curiosity that persons on both sides (successive Israeli and Palestinian governments and those who say they speak for the latter and those who have imposed their will upon them) use the same or similar words and concepts about themselves and at each other. There are at least six sets of words or concepts that need urgent consideration.
In order to explain that statement, I have chosen three authors who each penned recent essays published by Al-Jazeera. These are the articles: “Watching the watchdogs: The 5 Ds of US Middle East policy” by Mr. Rami G Khouri, “This past week, we all became South Africans” by Mr. Andrew Mitrovica, and “Gaza will be the grave of the Western-led world order” by Mr. Saul J Takahashi. They are all from Al Jazeera and discuss the Israel-Hamas war. Their comments are like each other, as well as to others around the world who have marched in crowds or spoken or written about the conflict. I will focus on the words and concepts, as they are the same from one to another.
The first concept is that each side cannot see/feel/know the other as a human, like them. If one sees the other as human, the human possession of Chesed/Love/Rhama can expand our perception of what is human and renovate behaviour. If the ‘other’ is only an ‘animal’, a ‘thing’, ‘disease’ or non-human entity, then indifference will enable repugnant and irrevocable, but repeatable, death-dealing. After all, the opposite of Chesed/Love/Rhama is not hatred; it is indifference. Indifference destroys the capacity to see another human being in our sights.
According to the second concept, each side has a history that has molded individuals to deny the humanity of the other. The experiences of Nakba (colonization, land theft) and Sho’ah (‘we will not disappear into the sea’) are both described with the same word in English, utter destruction (though banal in comparison). Each group, each person, has had the horrors of a collective experience embedded into their social and genetic code. Our three authors used words like; modern legacy, generational horror, crimes yesterday today and tomorrow, several decades ago, last half century, three decades. But they only used them as descriptors of Israeli culpability; they ignored similar culpability of the side they defend.
That concept leads into another. Events from history, clouded by the unwillingness of participants to name their ancestors’ responsibility for such events, allow them to justify similar actions and events today against the other. Thus, history repeats because each event today both reminds and justifies current behaviour.
For example, the people who march or those who write columns against the Israeli government ignore that Israel did not precipitate these specific events. Instead, commentators remember the patterns of old events which they overlay on today’s events and blame all of Israel for all of it. Commentators assume that Israel is guilty of all the events that have occurred; they are therefore guilty for, somehow, causing October 7. Cries of condemnation of Israel, genocide, the colonization of Palestine, land theft and so forth, ignore the fact that Hamas precipitated this round of the same pattern.
Mr. N’s statement reveals the same clouded memory. Every state has its founding myths, Israel included. Some Jews took actions against their Arab neighbors before 1948, killing innocents and frightening entire villages through threats and/or violence. Israeli historians have documented these actions, not without backlash. But who reads them? Either Mr. N and his political supporting cast have and ignore them or have not bothered to work their way through them. If based on the myths of memory and one’s unreflective absorption of those myths, why would one read an uncomfortable stripping away of myth? Myth makes wonderful, heroic stories, but historical nuance brings the wisdom that history is messy and no one is innocent. ‘What can we do?’
The third concept shared between Palestinians and Israelis is that each has or had an inextinguishable desire for self-determination. Beginning in the 1880s with pogroms in Russia, Jews started emigrating all over the world, including to Ottoman Palestine. From then to the end of WWII, tectonic events occurred, during which some Arabs and some Palestinians sometimes attacked Jews, some of whom sometimes responded in kind. One of our commentators pointed out that white European colonial racism arrived with some Jews when they emigrated to Palestine. Maps of the period clearly demonstrate an example of this racism in that Palestine looked like a vast, blank space, ready for colonization.
Palestinian desire for self-determination had a difficult birth because of the creation of the State of Israel and the previous decades of conflict between them. It is for historians to argue about data, stats and facts and counter-facts regarding how and how many Palestinians were driven from their homes in what is now called the West Bank. The arguments about those events hide the necessary detail. Since 1948, generations of Palestinians have lived in refugee camps, and this has now led to a fully grown desire for self-determination that cannot be ignored any longer.
The fourth concept is that both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples have a bred-in-the-bone, ancient connection to the same land-unacknowledged by each about the other. There have been both Jews and Palestinian peoples in that land for centuries. Again, historians argue about how to figure the numbers. But the argument, again, obscures the fact that commentators work very hard to deny the evidence of existence for either group’s ancestors before 1900.
It is also important to note that Jews for centuries, generation after generation, remembered that their ancestors came from that land, and that they practise a faith that keeps many elements that date to the first century bce. Some Jews emigrated back over the centuries. For example, when Jews were being slaughtered in the centuries before 1900, Ottoman rulers invited Jews to come back to the Ottoman Empire.
The last two ‘concepts’ are how each views retaliation. The fifth, then, is that each believes collective punishment is an efficient tool for both discouragement of future behaviour and punishment/revenge.
Hamas is but the latest group that shows this view. Since every action, time, and place involving Israel has caused suffering for ‘us,’ it is justified to consider all Israelis/Jews alive today as legitimate targets. Israeli bulldozing individual Palestinian homes in the West Bank or turning Gaza back into a field of stones, regardless of consequences to the Palestinian people, shows the same view.
If the Israeli government saw all Palestinians as human beings, as valuable as any Jew, and not just numbers on a page or dots from the sky, they could start turning back from the unequal devastation that has killed 40,000. Understanding the humanity of their enemy would be possible for Israelis if they imagined their own homes being bombed and had to pull a dead toddler out with a leg left behind in the ruins. Mr. N: how many Palestinian lives are worth one Israeli/Jewish life? Right now, that figure is around 400. Mathematics from hell on earth.
The last concept is that each side has their own ‘supporters and enablers’. Commentators refuse to note that it was Hamas who started this conflict; as such, Hamas is complicit for those 40,000 deaths. By orders of the Israeli government, their soldiers are directly responsible. Commentators also condemn the US, Canada, Britain and other countries as enablers and supporters of ‘the Israelis’.
But the commentators say nothing of Iran, a country that has for decades not only wreaked horror on Israel but also on other Arab countries by themselves or by their proxies. In fact, Iran has for decades used the Palestinian people as an excuse to do so. The commentators refuse to demand the prosecution of Hamas, an extra-national entity, for its ‘crimes against humanity’, while also ignoring Iran’s role as an enabler and supporter of various groups to kill every Jew possible.
Mr. Khouri made a curious statement. He wrote: the U.S. has “…kept most autocratic Arab governments dependent on US security and economic help to survive; and suppressed democratic aspirations and movements for socioeconomic justice in Arab states.” This is quite a claim.
It raises questions. Which Arab governments and how many? To what $$ level? Before or now? If there are any Arab ‘dependants’, why would they sacrifice self -determination under a regime they distrust or even hate? If the U.S. has done this in the past (e.g., under the Shah or the butcher of Baghdad) for oil, do they do it today?
And, most important, if such dependant Arab States take U.S. largesse, isn’t it then the responsibility of that government to build ‘democratic aspirations and movements for socioeconomic justice in Arab states’ rather than putting the monies in the pockets of cronies? It is necessary to reflect on history and present-day examples with nuance before accepting Mr. Khouri’s statement. Otherwise, it, like so many statements from these three authors, is a mere statement; emotion laden, non-factual assertions that would not pass a college-level logic or evidence test.
‘What can we do?’ asked Mr. N.
You and your coterie of personal enablers can regrow your stunted, blunted and ignored moral sense and expand it to include all humans, e.g. Palestinians. And you can resettle into Israel the settlers you have sent into the West Bank as personal shields/early warning outposts against incursions and for expanding Israeli territory. And you can cease bombing the hell out of Palestinians, their homes, and their children. And you can take the same legitimate moral outrage against the actions of Hamas and use as a cypher to analyze your continued actions in Gaza.
There are other questions that relate to human issues.
Who will help rebuild Gaza? Israel? Will oil-rich wealthy Arab states help? Will the U.S., Canada and other ‘enablers’ put their $$ into helping the Gazans? Will that grand enabler, Iran, help? Will the members of Hamas and other terrorist organizations so intent on wiping out Israel put aside their swords and make use of ploughs?
And which of all these participants will continue that support well into the future?
When I say “rebuild,” I mean starting over completely, on the ground but also supporting the Gazans to deal with the unthinkable emotional impact of their experiences.
The big question, of course. Once the Israel’s boot Mr. N and his government out and form a more democratic and humanity driven government, will Israel and Arab countries (or most of them) take the two-state solution and make it happen, regardless of which side tries to derail it?
If there is to be any hope to rise out of the dust and blood, let it be the will to see each other as human and work to give surety for everyone to ‘live under their own vine and fig tree and no make them afraid.’
