More crazy is not what the Middle East is in need of
Greetings from Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, the self-proclaimed “City of Peace.” Having journeyed here for some rest and relaxation following several days in the cafés of a teeming Cairo, I must confess I’ve no idea how the dream of Middle East peace will ever become reality.
Cairo’s cafés are rife with rumour, a fair outcome given the past four years of revolutionary turmoil. Perhaps it was ever thus. The Middle East, the foreign policy greybeards like to remind us, has always been a cauldron of rumour and innuendo. But listening to a table full of highly-educated, upper-middle-class Egyptian professionals endorse the idea that ISIS is an American-Israeli concoction blew my mind.
What hope can there be for the Jewish state when your educated neighbours think a band of savage jihadi thugs who rape and kill thousands of their fellow Muslims (and Christians, and American journalists, and British aid workers, and Jordanian pilots) are a Jewish plant?
Ah yes, but the ISIS videos are slickly produced, maybe a little too slickly produced. Besides, aren’t ISIS a little too organized and well-armed? And ISIS aren’t attacking Israel, you see, so case closed.
The Canadian government takes a lot of stick for its rockribbed support of Israel, but listening to the tenor of local conversation, it’s easy to see Israel as terra firma in a sea of insanity. But how solid is that ground?
Israelis are going to the polls in a few days and it’s difficult to know what the best outcome would be for the region. Or whether it will make a difference at all. Whatever the result, it’s not obvious that the status quo would help, given that Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, seems hell-bent on fouling his nest.
Netanyahu has given speeches on Iran that his own intelligence agency has called bunk, and he’s just gone to the democratic chamber of his country’s staunchest ally and prime benefactor — the U.S. — and dropped an election-shaped turd on their finely carpeted floor.
The hope is that talking tough abroad will help the prime minister at home. Perhaps that’s true, but one can’t help but think the Israeli political process is following the same narrative arc as recent Republican presidential primaries: to win, you have to out-crazy the crazies.
But is more crazy what the Middle East really needs? Unfortunately, what should be a game of absolutes for the Israelis (i.e. stay sane and principled in the face of crazy) is devolving into relativity (we’re less crazy than you).
Israeli society is polarized. Netanyahu has tacked hard right and thrown his lot in with the fringe parties who are slapping up row upon row of unhelpful settlements.
Meanwhile, Israeli Arabs, who should be prime examples to their Arab brethren of Israel’s commitment to freedom, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, risk being further marginalized in the political process.
Israel needs to get a political grip, because the stakes remain high. No matter how much some might wish to imagine it all away, Israel remains under threat. Hamas continues to brew Jew hatred. Hezbollah would love to kill again. And Iran, despite a change in political leadership, still follows the tough line of the Ayatollah (which is kill the Jews, in case you had forgotten).
So what role should Canada serve in this less sane environment?
Before you utter the words “more balanced” in front of “Canadian foreign policy,” you should first seek to answer the question “a balance between whom?” Before you can balance you need something to balance between.
If Israel is polarized, the Palestinians are fragmented. What’s good for Fatah’s goose isn’t what’s good for Hamas’ gander. There is no balance to be had at the moment.
Prime Minister Harper (rightly) views the Jews as the canary in the coal mine. If things are going badly for the Jews, the world is about to get hairy for those of us who hold the same values. Anti-Semitism is the symptom of a much broader disease. Come to think of it, that disease looks a lot like ISIS, with its fascist behaviour and reprehensible butchery of anyone who doesn’t think like them, or worship the same God in the same way.
The basics of our relationship shouldn’t change: Canada should remain a steadfast friend and back Israel’s right to selfdefence. But like good friends are meant to do, we must also push back when our friends decide that ends justify means. We mustn’t let Israel continue to degrade the ground for an eventual peace, no matter how unlikely that peace might be now.
An Israel that strays from its principles makes it just like the rest of its neighbours, and not an oasis in what is a very troubled neighbourhood, deserving of our unbridled support.