Moral clarity compels action on Jerusalem

So when would be a good time to move our embassy to Jerusalem? If not now, is never good for you? Because it’s not for me.

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer announced last week that as prime minister he would indeed move it, prompting my colleague Kelly McParland to question his timing. But now is usually the right time to do the right thing, especially given what happens if you start hedging.

McParland brought up Joe Clark’s hapless 1979 pledge to move the embassy followed by panicky backtracking. But arguably the latter was the crucial blunder.

McParland also suggested the timing of Scheer’s pledge risked deflecting attention from Trudeau’s Indian costume party debacle. Which might have some small tactical merit although Scheer’s announcement apparently attracted too little attention to matter. Besides, if we want more focus on principle and less on gotcha we should be happy when we see it, even if Trudeau’s India mission is a noteworthy indication of his narcissistic vacuity as well as a comedic goldmine.

Finally, McParland contrasted Harper, a staunch Israel supporter who didn’t promise to move the embassy and served nine years as PM, with Clark, who did, buckled and lasted nine months. But how might a prime minister fare who made and kept the promise, or more broadly refused to put electoral prospects ahead of geopolitical or moral considerations?

Lately I’ve been reading Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy and this Soviet political prisoner turned Israeli statesman makes some compelling comments about morality in public affairs, including that his experiences taught him “a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”

If we can manage the latter on the Middle East, we see that the determination of Israel’s neighbours to wipe it and its inhabitants off the map is evil. And then we need only ask what to do about it.

McParland wonders “why would another young and untried Conservative leader elect to emulate Clark’s effort, which, if Scheer were elected, would fall 40 years after Clark’s rookie mistake? It’s not as if the situation in the Middle East is any more peaceful or clear-cut than it was in 1979.” But the Middle Eastern “situation” is neither more peaceful nor more clear-cut precisely because generations of Western politicians and pundits have pretended not to see what is happening, rewarded belligerence, and allowed Israel’s most obnoxious critics to define the limits of the possible.

Is there any other country whose declared capital we do not recognize? Then why this one? What has the world gained by denying, ignoring or minimizing Israel’s connection with Jerusalem, including the egregious 2017 UN Resolution denying any historical connection between Israel and “East Jerusalem” and, hence, any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Western Wall?

Only six countries actively opposed that resolution including, I’m proud to say, Canada, because on such deliberate and wicked lies silence is complicity. Setting the record straight on Israel is why I’ve launched a new documentary project “Israel for Canadians” (Kickstarter. com/projects/robson-pellerin/israel-for-canadians). And it’s why I ask again: when would be a good time to move our embassy to Jerusalem?

If your answer is never, have the courage and decency to say so plainly. Another possible response is once Israel’s enemies make peace. But they do not make peace or even try, partly because their malevolence is given a cloak of legitimacy by people’s unwillingness to call them out on their lies. So a third answer is that it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.

If I asked when slavery should have been ended in the United States, from the first shipload of slaves in 1619 through the Revolution, Constitution, Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850 and on, I think every hand in the room would go up to say the right answer had always been immediately if not sooner. Who today would argue for the various “pragmatic,” moderate, tactical delays actually adopted that quickly and disastrously turned into “nevers”?

On the question of Jerusalem, before us now, it is the capital of Israel. Always was, always will be. And if tyrannical corrupt anti-Semitic regimes and their enablers lie about it, joining in that lie, loudly and forthrightly or quietly and pragmatically, won’t advance the “Middle East peace process” or make us better people.

As Sharansky wrote “We must understand the difference between fear societies and free societies … We must understand the link between democracy and peace and between human rights and security. Above all, we must bring back moral clarity … “

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. And “now” will always be the right answer to when to say it.