The answer is so simple it almost defies belief

There was a kind of political poetry that played out on Thursday night at the Asper Jewish Community Campus as supporters of the Palestinians and supporters of Israel exchanged some harsh words.The event was a rally in support of Israel and Winnipeg Jews and their supporters were comfortably ensconced inside the building. Outside, in Thursday's bitter cold, were the pro-Palestinians, kefiyas wrapped around at least a few heads but everyone well-wrapped all-round in all sorts of clothes in an effort to keep warm.

Fortunately, and perhaps thanks to the presence of a dozen police officers there to keep the peace, the only weapons exchanged were words, a far cry from what is taking place in the Middle East today, as the terrorists of Hamas fire rockets and mortars into Israeli towns and the Israeli Defence Force responds in self-defence by pounding the Gaza Strip from the air, the sea and the ground.

Disproportional? Perhaps. Justified? Absolutely.

None of this, in any case, is nice business, neither at the Asper campus nor, on a far grander and more bloody scale, in the Mideast, but the political poetry comes into it in the caricature that played out on Thursday of the intolerant attitude of Western leftists, liberals and Muslims towards Israel.

One can understand, even sympathize with that attitude, when it is held by Arabs and Muslims -- this is, after all, as much a religious war as it is a territorial one. It is more difficult to understand the virulence of opposition that exists to the existence of Israel on the part of the so-called democratic left in Canada and other Western societies.

There was a conspicuous example of that attitude this week at Ontario's York University. A representative of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which claims to speak for some of the instructors at York, provided a most egregious example of what frequently goes wrong at Canadian universities.

York has been shut down by a strike since the beginning of the academic year. The strike was settled last week with one proviso: Sid Ryan, the president of CUPE's Ontario branch, said his union would not agree to any settlement unless the university agreed to bar from its campus all Israeli academics "unless they explicitly condemn the (Dec. 29 bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza) and the assault on Gaza in general."

CUPE has a history of anti-Israel activities, so this should not come as a surprise, although many of the union's members might wonder how Middle East politics, even war in the Middle East, should affect employer-employee relationships in Canadian institutions devoted to democracy, human rights and freedom of expression, especially when Israel is the only nation in the Mideast where those concepts are embraced.

Ryan likened the Israeli government to the Hitler government of Nazi Germany, saying that, as the Nazis burned books, the Jews bomb universities. The charge ignores the fact the Islamic University in Gaza, unlike the academic institutions that Canadians are familiar with, is serving as much as an arms depot for Palestinian terrorists as a recognizable school.

That's in keeping with the tactics Palestinian militants have traditionally used, hiding from Israelis behind the skirts of women, the tears of children and the shattered bodies of their own people. It is no accident scores of civilians have been killed in the Israeli attack on Gaza, but the blame for those deaths lies on the cowards who hide behind a civilian population rather than the Israelis who must try to defend themselves from deliberate attacks on their own civilians.

Ryan quickly realized his Nazi analogy deeply offended many Canadians, including many of his own union members, but he is otherwise unrepentant. Just prior to expressing his regret for any possible offence to "any member of the Jewish community or Israelis" that his comments might have caused, he condemned the "decades of human-rights violations and outright atrocities committed by an ever-expanding apartheid-type regime."

The apartheid accusation against Israel has become a refrain of the anti-Israel lobby since it was first raised by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter in one of the most fatuous books ever written about the Middle East. Falsehoods find their echoes, as this one has, even though it is nothing more than a historical distortion or -- not to put too fine a point on it -- an outright lie.

But the truth about the Middle East has never mattered very much to those who oppose the existence of the Jewish state. Neither is the problem of Israel as complicated as every side involved in the issue makes it out to be. Like most issues, it is simpler than it looks -- Israel is a reality that cannot be ignored. Most of the Mideast is morass of corruption and despotism and, in the middle of all this hate and horror, there is one bright jewel of democracy and freedom called Israel.

Israel is in no other way the anomaly that everyone makes it out to be. Israel is, it is true, an artificial creation, but so are all of the Arab states except for Egypt -- post-colonial creations. They make no more logical sense than Israel does. Jordan, in fact, was glad to be rid of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Egypt bade a rude good riddance to Gaza. Recognizing that would be a start to undoing this Gordian Knot that Gaza has become.

What would finally cut the knot is so simple it almost defies belief -- that Hamas and Israel's other enemies stop attacking it and instead learn to live with it. Anyone who truly cares about the well-being of the Palestinians should be working towards that goal.

tom.oleson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 10, 2009 a15