For any appeal to ethics and morality to have any legitimacy, the principles so enounced must be applied rigorously, without favor or prejudice, to all human beings whatever grouping they may be slotted into. In other words, favoritism and morality are an antithetical mixture.
The principle that holds morals apply equally to all humans seemingly eludes Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau.
On 7 November, Trudeau stood in the House of Commons and railed against anti-Semitism and rightly so. Anti-Semitism, as with any form of racism or hatred expressed against any grouping, is anathema.
Yet Trudeau’s taking up the cause of anti-Semitism by attacking the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is transparently, logically, and morally flawed.
Trudeau correctly apologized for Canada’s turning away Jewish refugees in 1939. Trudeau followed up the apology bemusedly:
Anti-Semitism is far too present. Jewish students still feel unwelcomed and uncomfortable on some of our colleges and university campuses because of BDS-related intimidation.
And out of our entire community of nations, it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely and wrongly questioned.
Any form of racism in any iota is an iota too much. This applies to all groupings of humans. No one should be despised, looked down upon, or discriminated against merely by virtue of being attached to a group through birth or circumstances beyond one’s control.1
Yes, anti-Semitism exists. Probably every form of racism exists. It is deplorable to despise someone for the mere fact of being Jewish. However, Zionism is a different animal. Political Zionism is racist to its core and highly discriminatory. Hence, if one is opposed to racism, then one must also speak out against racism by Jews against others. Some try to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; however, this is palpably fallacious. Imagine if someone tried to argue that if a person is opposed to the KKK that that person must therefore be against all white people (which would include most Jews). It is patently ludicrous, and it speaks ill to the intellectual rigor of any individual who would make such a claim.
Trudeau made blanket assertions. He did not back up what he said. What did he mean by they “feel unwelcomed”? What is “BDS-related intimidation”? BDS is widely understood to be a non-violent means of attempting to end Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
Furthermore, even if there were intimidation, it would pale in comparison to the slow-motion genocide experienced by Palestinians, the open-air concentration camp maintained by Israel against Palestinians (in blatant contravention of the Geneva Conventions — thus being a war crime), and the myriad racist laws designed to humiliate Palestinians. BDS is a means for Palestinians to keep their heads up and resist with dignity. Trudeau attempts to take this dignity away from Palestinians.
One might even think after listening to Trudeau that Jews were being oppressed by Palestinians instead of vice versa. Renowned academic Noam Chomsky put the racism into a comparative framework:
Anti-Arab racism is, however, so widespread as to be unnoticeable; it is perhaps the only remaining form of racism to be regarded as legitimate.2
… Contempt for the Arab population is deeply rooted in Zionist thought.3
And what should one make of Trudeau’s proclamation that “it is Israel whose right to exist is most widely and wrongly questioned”? What about the state of Palestine? When has the government of Canada, and when has Trudeau, ever spoken sincerely of the right for a Palestinian state to exist?
Could Trudeau be unaware of how the Canadian state came to be? It is established on the territory of the First Nations, also through the dastardly crime of genocide.4 What about the right of First Nations to a nation state or nation states?
Trudeau might do well to learn from anti-racism activist Tim Wise who explained the antipathy that Jewish Zionism arouses.5
Of course, Israel itself is a suicide culture, though they left this part out of my Hebrew School classes. What else could one call a nation erected amidst folks who don’t want you there, whose land you had to steal, if not a land rooted in a death wish? We may not blow ourselves up, but we sure as hell have come up with a creative way to put our individual and collective lives in danger — become usurpers of other people’s stuff: always a sure way to make people hate you.6
Human rights and opposition to racism are not pick-and-choose principles. To be regarded seriously and exude moral integrity, one must resolutely support the equal and fair application of human rights for all humans, and one must resolutely oppose racism against any group of people.
- For example, some mitigating circumstances might exist such as having been raised in a white-supremacist household.
- Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (Haymarket Books): 550.
- Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: 551.
- See, for example, Bruce Clark, Ongoing Genocide caused by Judicial Suppression of the “Existing” Aboriginal Rights (2018). Review. Tamara Starblanket, Suffer the Little Children: Genocide, Indigenous Nations and the Canadian State (Clarity Press, 2018). Review. Kerry Coast, The Colonial Present: The Rule of Ignorance and the Role of Law in British Columbia (Clarity Press and International Human Rights Association of American Minorities, 2013). Review. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). Review.
- Yes, there are Christian Zionists as well. They are basically motivated by Scriptural interpretation rather than the racially based in-group supremacism of Jews. Also, it should be axiomatically understood that when one speaks of a group that the members of a group do not form a monolithic consciousness.
- In Adam Engel, A Conversation with Tim Wise, Counterpunch, 6 December 2003.