The horrific scenes of innocent women, children and, yes, men being butchered by heartless terrorists erupted on news feeds across the Western World on October 7 as Hamas terrorists swept out of the Gaza strip and into homes, shops and music festivals. Such scenes are nothing new to the world and, with actors changing from location to location, occur nearly every day in some part of the world—what makes this different?
To be clear, Hamas is not Palestine (however these monsters wish position themselves as such), nor are the vast majority of Palestinians members of Hamas, supporters of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah or otherwise aligned with those who would butcher the innocent. The Palestinians are descendants of those who were forced to flee the lands we now know as Israel during the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948.
The Palestinian people have legitimate grievances—end stop. But there are those in this world who stand in the way of finding a peaceful solution to those grievances and they do so for their own cynical reasons. There are also those among the Palestinian people (and far too many of their supporters world-wide) who leverage those grievances as justification for horrendous acts of inhumanity. Too often their victims respond in kind.
Hezbollah, which is not Palestinian, and which has had its own differences with the Hamas in the past, has funneled huge amounts of munitions, including most, if not all, of the rockets that have streamed out of the Gaza strip onto civilian homes and businesses. This is not Israeli propaganda; Hezbollah itself gleefully admits to the same. Why might that be?
Hezbollah is supplied and funded by Iran. This is also not any kind of secret or propaganda ploy by the Israeli government. Following the links, one easily discovers that Iran has been supplying Russia with weapons for its assault on Ukraine. In the evil world of geopolitics, there are few, if any, coincidences.
The US has recently diverted millions of rounds of artillery ammunition stored in Israel that had been earmarked for delivery to Ukrainian defence to the Israeli military in response to rising tensions there. The strands of the spider web that is geopolitics stretch far and the enemies of democracy are well aware of which levers to pull in order to manipulate public opinion and divert attention.
It is far easier to paint the world in colours black and white than it is to part the grey mists of reality. Gazing back to 1953, we discover our close friend and ally the US successfully overthrowing the democratically elected government in Iran to install a despotic Shah whose reign was characterized by state terror through the dreaded secret police—the Zavak. But he was our guy. In 1979 the Shah and his Zavak were replaced by an equally despotic theocracy. Sadly, in the cynical world of geopolitics there are no knights in shining white armour—just a handful of heroic men and women who choose to shelter those caught in the crosshairs.
It is easy to demonize those who identify with the plight of the Palestinians. They are a people largely abandoned by their neighbouring Arab nations and oppressed by a nation obsessed with its own survival and the security of its citizens. The Palestinians have been pawns in the Great Game, as have the Afghans, the Iranians, the Indians, and yes, the Jews of Israel before them. World leaders have callously slaughtered each by the millions in their turn—sacrificed on the altar of “our side.”
Passions rise exponentially as children, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins are torn to pieces, lives shattered. Those passions create near-insurmountable obstacles to peaceful resolutions, to the unending glee to those who would use that pain towards their own ends.
Canada is not immune to this cascading madness. Already cynical politicians are attempting to simplify events into colours of black and white for their own gain—while youth are manipulated into planning acts of terrorism in our own cities. Electors, in the meantime, like things simple, for who has time in a busy world trying to keep up with the challenges of affordable housing, rising food costs and inflation? In a world flooded with disinformation and spin, anyone can pick their own preferred flavour of reality.
But as indiscriminate rockets fly and artillery shells drop, it is the innocent baby in the sheltering arms of a mother or father who will bear the cost in this game played by madmen. Be the innocents Palestinian, Israeli, Ukrainian or Russian—they will all bleed the same.
Canadians cannot afford to be blinded by the haze of indifference. This does, and will, impact us. Our nation’s leaders must find ways to build bridges across those impossible chasms of historic pain, even as we shore up the bastions of democracy against the march of tyrannic autocracy. Some might say it is silly for such a tiny nation to believe it can make a difference on a global scale, but Canada has long shouldered these burdens far beyond its weight and numbers—and the terrible truth is, we cannot afford not to try.
