WANTED: MORAL COURAGE

The “pro-Palestinian” mobs are a problem. But they couldn’t have taken over our movements were it not for a cadre of cowards who let them.

Who would hide her now? Who would betray her? Who would sit on the fence?

Some of my Jewish friends are playing a “game” where they run through their non-Jewish friends and speculate on who might hide them.

Other Jewish friends are learning to shoot guns and studying for their firearms license. (That might not seem like a big deal to a lot of Americans — to a Canadian, this draws the sort of “Oh” that might greet news of a friend’s gender transition.)

At a conference I attended, the chair of the event told us she had taken a wilderness survival course in case she ever has to endure long periods in a forest.

If you are someone who reads these lines and thinks anything along the lines of “persecution complex,” “drama queen” or “overreacting,” you are part of the reason these individuals are doing what they are doing.

The parents and grandparents of these individuals never imagined they would spend months or years in a forest, hidden under floorboards or hunted like trophy game, either. They lived in civilized European societies.

Would I be someone who would hide my Jewish friends? I would hope so, but who knows? No one can really say what we would do in extraordinary circumstances. I suspect it is usually the people you would least expect who rise to the occasion and perhaps those from whom one would expect courage who might fail in the moment.

From my long reading of history, including some immersion in the history of the Holocaust, moral courage seems to be an incredibly unpredictable trait. It is so often, it seems, the most ordinary who prove extraordinary.

If worse came to worst, surely many good people would stand up.

At the moment, though, things don’t look great.

In my city, Vancouver, there has been a rally every Sunday at 2 pm since October 7. Numbers fluctuate based on weather and presumably other factors, but the average seems to be declining weekly. More to the point, the crowd is overwhelmingly Jewish, with a smattering of others.

There has been a dependable core of Persian allies. When I asked one Iranian attendee, early on, what drew him there, he said that Iranians, of all people, understand the nature of the enemy Israel faces.

There have also been encouraging representations from Vancouver’s other large multicultural communities, notably Canadians of Indian and Chinese origin or descent. Evangelical Christians have been respectably represented as well — although all of the groups I mention are small minorities among the numbers that gather every week. I’m pretty sure this demographic mix is reflected at similar events across North America and Europe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. We’re all busy. There are a lot of problems in the world. We’re not out holding vigils for the Uighurs or the Syrians or the Rohingya either. We don’t rally every week against climate change. I get it.

The point I am making is not about counting heads. It is about moral courage — and, as I said, you never can tell.

Or, maybe, we can.

In a lot of cases, we already have the answer.

If you are someone who doesn’t really take a position on stuff, if you don’t vote, if you don’t rally or march or consider yourself an activist, fine (I guess). That’s who you are.

If you are an activist, and you consider yourself “pro-Palestinian,” I’ll deal with you later.

What really gets me lately are not the tail of radical extremists wagging the dog of our liberal, leftist and progressive movements. It’s the mass of go-along-to-get-along cowards who have allowed the anti-Israel hate groups to take over our movements without putting up a fight.

Folks with whom I have been involved in political and cause campaigning tell me that they “just don’t know enough” to take a position on Israel and Palestine.

Some people have been telling me this for decades.

They’ve had time to learn.

For most of those years, they probably realized that it was in their best interest to remain ignorant. Increasingly, as anti-Israel extremists have taken over our causes, eclipsing everything we have fought for and making it all about Palestine, diverging from the hate-Israel orthodoxy has been a bad career (and political and social) move.

(Necessary disclaimer: I’m not dismissing the crisis. Yes. Every death is a catastrophic tragedy. Too many Palestinians and Israelis have died. But if you really cared about Palestinians, you would be howling for the one thing that would end all of this suffering: the surrender of Hamas. If that’s not what you are demanding, then wipe away your crocodile tears about dead Palestinians. Your pretending to care isn’t fooling us.)

Since October 7, things have changed — not only for Israelis and Palestinians and Jews worldwide. They’ve changed for us on the left — irrevocably and massively. My friends who “didn’t know enough” are no longer practicing avoidance. They are afraid. And with good reason.

Here in British Columbia, the mobs had their sights set on the most visible Jew in public life and they finally got their Gotcha! moment when Selina Robinson made an impolitic (but not the least bit wrong) comment that the territory that became Israel was “a crappy piece of land.” The hyenas circled and her career in our (left-wing) provincial government came to a truncated end.

You should have seen her colleagues (and, presumably, erstwhile friends) take cover. That was a lesson for the ages. Never mind hiding the Jew in the attic — most of the people who form British Columbia’s government were so afraid of getting the stench of Zionism on them that they effectively threw her to the baying hounds.

So much for moral courage.

The lesson was pretty clear — those who “didn’t know enough” probably know enough now to keep their mouths shut if they have any reservations about toeing the radical extremist line that says Jewish self-determination evil / Palestinian self-determination glorious.

In today’s world, if you are not with the hyenas, your future is kind of bleak if you have any aspirations not only in progressive politics but also in a vast array of disciplines like academia, social work, teaching, nursing, visual and performing arts or a ton of other fields. The list of sectors where governing bodies and professional associations have signed on to statements that range from unbalanced to unhinged goes on and on and on.

I’ve always thought that my friends who told me that they “didn’t know enough” knew that, if they educated themselves, they would be forced to acknowledge that Palestinianism is the opposite of everything we claim to stand for. A little bookreadin and they would have to admit that Zionists are not the evil ones but those who envision peace and coexistence with their neighbors (or, at least, envisioned peace and coexistence until they had the olive branch slapped from their hands and the neck of the dove wrung).

I suspect a lot of these folks have been pushed off the fence. Now, merely pleading ignorance will not save them. If they are not among the braying hyenas, their future in a whole raft of professions, to say nothing of their social life, looks bleak.

Suffice to say, if that is the sort of self-interest, cowardice and determined ignorance that drives the people who are in charge of our social justice movements today, the people who are steering human rights organizations, guiding our queer community, leading the feminist charge, at the vanguard of everything we have always considered good, it’s not only Jews that are in trouble.

It’s not even just the left that is in danger.

It’s our entire world.

Is it me that’s overreacting? Am I the drama queen? Am I exhibiting persecution-complex-by-proxy?

I sure as hell hope so.

But all the evidence suggests otherwise.