War In Israel

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

for KS

On a rainy day in late December

two old Jews talking

over tepid bowls of kosher chicken soup

(we are nothing if not clichés) 

my friend across the table

says he's had enough,

decided with his Canadian wife

the time had come 

to decamp permanently 

to Israel, 

says as someone born 

in the South Bronx

even after 40 years 

he's never felt completely

at home in Toronto:

And what better time to leave?

With a war going on,

a grandchild on the way,

and the elective hemorrhoid surgery

finally behind him.

I feel jealous.

And maybe it's cause 

like my dad, I was born

in Montreal and the place

has a certain strange hold on us.

There's a mural of Leonard

20-stories high on Crescent

that you can see from inside

the Musée des Beaux Arts,

the top of Mt-Royal,

or when you stumble out of a bar 

at midnight from the street

Cohen's face glowing over the sacred city

like stained glass.

A few days ago

they threw Molotov cocktails

at a synagogue door and

shots were fired at a yeshiva

because of the war in Israel.

Between slurps, my friend says,

you can't always choose your battles,

but sometimes you can choose

where to fight them.

Moral Clarity part 17: Good riddance 2023

"I misunderstood you correctly the first time."

- Tommy Smothers (1937-2023)

The year is ending...

Israel continues to reduce Gaza to rubble and the UN votes almost unanimously to call for a 'humanitarian' ceasefire, without holding the terrorist group Hamas responsible for the catastrophe in the first place. It was a shameful vote, and you know how I know this? The next day the political leader of Hamas publicly thanked the government of Canada for their support. [What is the surest quickest and most humane way to make this tragedy stop? For all the nations of the planet to demand, in one strong unanimous clear voice, for the terrorist organization Hamas to release the hostages and surrender, not to side with the terrorists and gang up against Israel - in other words, when hell freezes over.]  

The Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and University of Pennsylvania testified before Congress refusing to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews constitutes harassment according to their school codes of conduct. The President of UPenn and Chair of the Board of Governors were forced to resign, after major donors came out publicly against them. The President of Harvard received the support of her Board of Governors to stay on, of course. 

Congressional Republicans were congratulated by Vladimir Putin for blocking further funding to Ukraine. 

14 students and faculty members in the Department of Philosophy were murdered (25 more were injured) at Charles University in Prague. Were this in the United States, it wouldn't be much of a surprise. In the Czech Republic it's the worst mass shooting in its history, and not something often seen in Europe. We don't know much at this point about the killer's motive (he was a 24-year old Masters student in History), but the symbolism is unmistakable. 

Is this what the collapse of western civilization as we know it looks like? Or this all just symptomatic of shifting political alignments? Maybe both?

To me it feels different from the usual social or political re-alignments. We've lived through regional conflicts before, especially in places where there was poverty and political instability. Perenially that's been in post-colonial Africa and the Middle East, but in the last few decades we've also seen it happening in parts of Europe, particularly in the Balkans, and former Soviet Union. 

The greatest difference of the last 20 years has been the internal political division and instability of the United States, which sends shockwaves around the world. We've seen that happen before. Perhaps the most domestically turbulent decade of the 20th century in the United States was the 1960s, marked by  political assasinations, social unrest, mass protests against war and civil rights riots. And yet, in spite of that turbulence, public confidence in the institutions of government and authority remained high. The social contract remained relatively strong and intact. The Cold War with the Soviet Union and the pride of the space race ending with the Americans planting a flag on the moon played a role. What we're witnessing today is deeper and more fundamentally threatening; the fraying of the social fabric. Trump did not initiate it. He took advantage of a process that began in the late 1990s and early 2000s which exacerbated fragilities and vulnerabilities of American democracy, including the economic stagnation of the middle classes and growing disparity of wealth between the top five percent and the bottom ninety-five percent.

As the sole true global superpower (political, military, economic, cultural), the United States has been the guarantor of international stability since the end of World War 2. For the last 20 years or so, America seems to be questioning that role. It's this turning inward, increasing isolationism, doubting itself and becoming consumed with its own insecurities, that has precipitated the current situation. Some commentators point to the advent of social media, in the first decade of the 21st century, as a key contributing factor. Undoubtedly it has played an important role, making many of us impervious to facts, doubtful of expertise and authority, and politically apathetic. We are less engaged in honest, meaningful relationships and conversations, and more interested in having our predispositions, biases and prejudices reinforced. This has led to the greatest crisis of our age: A crisis of trust, in ourselves, in each other, and by extension in our institutions, be they governmental, regulatory, educational, and even faith-based.

Yesterday I watched an interview with historian Timothy Snyder on his new book called Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Essentially, as I understand it, not having read the book, it's about resisting the western tropes we have imbibed about the Holocaust and the necessity of re-visiting it for new prescient lessons. The one that resonated with me is an observation he makes about where most Jews were murdered. It was in the countries where the local population could be counted on to participate (either actively or passively). These were countries where there was a complete absence of institutional authority, countries like Poland and the German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union, that had already been essentially wiped off the map as political and legal entities even before the Nazis invaded. The lack of authority provided by an institutional presence unleashed lawlessness that could be taken advantage of by the Germans. This was not the case in German-occupied France, for example, and French Jewry largely survived the war. His point for us, is that we rely on institutions for life and death. Not just because institutions enforce the rule of law. But more importantly because they provide us with a moral framework of values and attachment to community and to each other as citizens and neighbours. As Snyder puts it, the Nazis discovered that the easiest method to get rid of Jews was to make them stateless. It's why, they were mostly deported before being killed, instead of just killed on the spot. It's why Jews who were saved in numbers, were saved by government officials and diplomats who could issue to them papers that allowed them to escape to other countries (Wallenberg, Sugihara, de Sousa Mendes, Lutz, among others.)

Which is also why Israel is such a necessity. Why "From the River to the Sea" chants is such an affront to many of us. Why Israel is not just the front line of a war against the Jews, but the front line of a war on civilization and western values. Why the over-educated intellectual dupes who publicly attack Israel, and their morally-deficient, guilt-ridden, justice-warrior student underlings, who vocally support Palestine under the guise of free speech, don't understand how they are being manipulated by the very radical authoritarians who silence their opposition by killing them, and would do the same to them if they dared to speak 'freely' against them. This is what institutional rot looks like. They've latched on to a 'cause' that makes them feel good and important, without seeing the obvious: it's actually self-defeating. For 2,000 years Jews were targeted and scapegoated because we were weak. Today Jews are targeted and blamed because we are strong. If we've learned anything, if we can teach the west anything in 2023, it's to recognize who your enemies are, and to never believe what they say, except when they tell you who they are. 

[Postscript: Harvard's Gay resigned amid claims she was found to have plagiarized in her academic work.]

Scheherazade

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Putin says, fight!

and they fight

for some stupid reason

and die 

by the tens of thousands 

without knowing why.

 

I don't get it.

So many of them

and only one of him.

He plucks them

from the masses 

one by one

like gnats 

off an ox's ass

yoked and dumb.

Maybe it's the money,

he's got more of it 

than all of them combined

owns a $500 million

6-story super yacht

called Scheherazade

and they don't even realize

it's their money

bamboozled

LOL.

Moral Clarity part 16: The dirty little secret

I'm still reeling from the disgraceful 'emergency' UN General Assembly vote demanding an immediate  'humanitarian' ceasefire in Gaza, a resolution supported by Canada, along with other paragons of international 'humanitarian' conduct and concern Russia and Iran. In a rare move, Canada broke with the United States, one of only 10 countries having the guts (moral clarity) to dissent.     

I've always been a supporter of the UN. I have argued to anyone who would listen that no organization in human history has done more good for humanity than the UN. And we need it to work more than ever. From nuclear weapons and climate change, to trade and worldwide pandemics, our problems are global and the future of humanity has never been more interdependent. Nations will either cooperate internationally to solve these problems within a stable and orderly system of discussion, negotiation and cooperation according to conventions, norms and values such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or we will let the chips of conflict and chaos fall where they may, at our peril. The UN should (and I believe could still) offer our best hope for a safe and secure future. It has been relatively successful since the end of World War 2 on many accounts, ushering in an era of unprecedented global peace and prosperity. This doesn't mean there hasn't been international conflict and crises - that's guaranteed - which is precisely why we need a functioning UN. But as we've seen in the past few years, especially during our recent once-in-hundred-year pandemic, the UN's record has been a pretty dismal failure in several respects. 

Perhaps the worst of it, consistently so, has been its longstanding deplorable record on Israel. It's as if the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, when the UN played an important role specifically with Resolution 181 the so-called Partition Plan, is the organization's dirty little secret, an episode from its past for which it carries deep regret and shame, and would bury or reverse, if it could. The irony is that in helping to midwife the State of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel should represent a laudatory achievement of the UN. The realization of its universal humanitarian goals based on a consensus-building approach (72% of members voted in favour of Resolution 181, more than the required two-thirds). Instead, the UN has acted to undermine Israel's sovereignty continuously, not in spite of the way it came into existence, but seemingly because of it. Israel is like the pebble in the UN's shoe. The annoying emblem of everything wrong with the way the UN works (or rather doesn't work). The failure of the UN to accept Israel - and by 'accept' I mean simply to apply to Israel the standards it applies to all other member states, the foundational principle on which the UN exists, namely Article 2 of the Charter which calls on all members to equally respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other states - has been a primary reason for the perpetuation of conflict in the region. 

The original sin of Israel is that it won a War of Independence. Palestinian Jews didn't want a war. They accepted the Partition Plan promoted by the UN. The Palestinian Arabs didn't. Israel declared its Independence and the Arabs responded by attacking it, which contravenes the UN Charter. The war resulted in the nascent State of Israel successfully establishing its Independence and also in approximately 750,000 Arabs becoming displaced, which is unfortunately not an unusual consequence of war. What is unusual, however, is that the UN felt it was responsible for what happened, so it created an agency devoted to the Palestinian Arab refugees called UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency), separate from the UNHCR (The High Commission for Refugees) the agency that addresses the needs of all other refugees around the world. In addition to having their own permanent exclusive agency, Palestinians are unique in that they are the only refugees in the world who pass down their status as international refugees from generation to generation. As a result, the original 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war has now grown to approximately 6 million refugees. According to UNRWA's website nearly one-third of the registered Palestinian refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. From their own website: "Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers." It's not terribly surprising that the Palestinian refugee camps have become the principle breeding grounds for hatred, resentment, and radical political and religious ideologies, as well as factories for the creation and recruitment of terrorist organizations.

You might ask, what was the alternative? What else could the Palestinians who were displaced do after the 1948 war with Israel? Well, what happens to any other group of people who are displaced as a result of war (and not necessarily one they started)? They are typically absorbed by other countries. For example, before the founding of Israel, millions and millions of Jewish refugees fled war and persecution in Europe for decades and were eventually absorbed by other countries all over the world (after also being rejected by many countries). In fact, Palestinian Arabs could have been absorbed by Israel, and 160,000 of them were. Today, approximately 1.6 million 'Palestinian' Arabs are now citizens of Israel, roughly 20% of the country's total population. UNRWA is literally an artificial life-support system for people in limbo. People who exist outside, and in the case of Israel, in opposition to, the UN's own stated purpose to ensure the territorial integrity of sovereign member states. It's a system that legitimizes Palestinian claims at the expense of Israel, a member state.  

How unique is the case of the Palestinians with respect to Israel? In a word: Singular. Palestine is not a member of the UN but it has non-member observer status. It can make speeches but cannot vote. It is the only 'political' group with such status. The other non-member observer at the UN is the Vatican (called the Holy See). The natural question is, why haven't the Palestinians declared statehood just as Israel did? The answer: They did, on the 15th of November 1988, a state comprised of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. But at the time it did not exercise control over any territory. That changed with the negotiations of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinian representatives recognised Israel's right to exist, and Israel recognised the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established to govern their territory. The State of Palestine has already been recognized by 139 of the 193 UN members. The two-state solution de facto exists right now which means Palestinians in Gaza are not refugees, they've just been subject to dysfunctional (and outlaw) governance since Hamas took over in 2006. UNRWA should be dissolved immediately as a step toward peace.

Moral Clarity part 15: Thinking about where you actually stand

I truly didn't want to continue making these posts, but it seems I can't help myself, the world being where it is, and the situation always developing, or rather deteriorating. We live in a world in which a lot is said publicly about everything, there are already too many words spewed liberally, imprecisely and often intentionally to obscure, confuse and sow distrust by muddying the waters. How is adding more words going to help? I ask myself. Maybe if those words are intended to remind us to take a step back to sort out the confusion. To think not of words but to focus on actions and their consequences to help us reflect on where we actually stand in a moral sense. For example, consider:     

If you were a Jew who supported Donald Trump, you stood with a President (and party) who presided over the worst massacre of Jews on American soil in its history (the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting).

Or how about, if you were a Jew who supported Netanyahu, you stood with a Prime Minister (and party) who presided over the worst massacre of Jews on Israeli soil in its history (October 7th).

One may wonder if these facts are connected.

Sometimes words do match actions, and we just haven't been paying enough attention. For instance, since 2005 when Israel abandoned Gaza, Hamas has continually and regularly attacked Israel with rockets. These were all unprovoked attacks. October 7th was only the culmination of an ongoing gradual process. You might argue that the Israeli blockade of Gaza was a kind of provocation because it made life 'unlivable' for Palestinians. The facts demonstrate otherwise. The blockade was ineffective in the only way it was meant to be effective, stopping Hamas from building its war machine and network of tunnels. While there was a blockade Hamas's leadership got rich on stolen public funds, and built a formidable infrastructure to wage war against Israel. Also, consider that there is at least one Gaza border that Israel had no control over, with Egypt. The life of Palestinians in Gaza was made 'unlivable' not by Israel, but by Hamas, because Hamas was devoted not to the wellbeing of Palestinians but to their stated mission and purpose, to destroy Israel and kill Israelis. 

And then there is the case of where the UN actually stands, despite its pronouncements. The UNRWA is either wittingly or unwittingly complicit in Hamas atrocities. Its schools, hospitals and shelters have been used by Hamas terrorists to attack Israel and shelter militants. It needs to be dismantled and the effort to support Palestinians as generational refugees needs to end. In an unprecedented way, no other agency is more responsible for turning the Palestinian people into international parasites, and for maintaining that status quo for generations. Their lot has never improved since 1948, only deteriorated.  

In a rare move, the UN Director General evoked a special article to demand an emergency vote in the Security Council and the General Assembly (GA) on an immediate 'humanitarian' ceasefire in Gaza. The US vetoed the resolution in the Security Council. But this will be the first time in history that the GA will vote in favour of one of its member states standing down from defending its sovereignty after being attacked by a non-state terrorist actor, essentially siding with terrorists.

Words matter. And actions matter more in the final analysis. 

Moral Clarity part 14: Emotional stakes

Unbelievably, yesterday we learned from the presidents of three of the most prestigious Ivy League universities in the US that calling for the 'genocide of Jews' does not violate their school's code of conduct. I'm referring to the testimony given to House Committee on Education and the Workforce by Harvard president Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, and MIT president Sally Kornbluth. Specifically, when asked a direct question, the presidents hedged, answering that unless it was directed at an individual, or it was acted upon, a call for 'genocide' would not constitute a violation of rules of conduct. Magill and Gay called it "a context dependent decision." Calling for the genocide of Jews needs 'context'? Seriously?! One can only wonder what 'context' would make it acceptable. Or better, it has to be acted upon. Genocide? And we wonder why antisemitism on university campuses has exploded virtually unchecked, especially since October 7th. The university presidents demonstrated the mechanism through which antisemitism has been mainstreamed as a kind of moral relativity and obtuseness promoted by the academic institutions that we rely on to educate the next generation of supposed leaders. It's a shameful abdication of responsibility. It might also have something to do with recent reports of American universities receiving $billions from Arab governments. Tracking the ways in which this money has influenced the decisions made by academic institutions is certainly worth pursuing.   

I didn't think I'd have more to say about this, and then, sure as snow in winter, I got a message from my daughter who is in university (graduating this month thank god, it's not soon enough.) Among other things, she wrote that she felt ashamed of being Jewish and her unwanted association with a 'genocide' being perpetrated in Gaza. She even used the term 'holocaust' to describe it, saying that the Jews were doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis had done to them. I realized quickly that there was no point in trying to correct my daughter's misconceptions. She was not receptive. I did however try to answer her, in a way that would keep the channels of communication open. I tiptoed around the issues of what actually constitutes a 'holocaust' and 'genocide'. I wrote, "What concerns me most is when taking a viewpoint about an issue, which everyone is entitled to do, that it can become so emotionally charged when others disagree, that it changes the way you see others to the point of demonizing them. You start seeing them as morally deficient, even as an enemy. Demonizing people who disagree with you is one of the biggest problems we face in my view. It's the source of intolerance that tears families apart, and even nations, and leads to autocracy and fascism." Our exchange felt like my daughter and I were sleepwalking, arms locked, into a house on fire and we would both be consumed in flames. That's what happened. After some increasingly heated exchanges, she wrote that I lacked 'moral goodness' in her eyes, and she doesn't want to 'associate herself' with people like that (meaning me). 

My daughter clearly has a lot emotionally invested in her opinion. And that's the crux of my greatest fear. For a while I've been trying to pinpoint exactly when rational discussion and healthy debate became replaced with feelings of offense and being personally threatened? I figure it relates to the lens through which most subjects of a liberal education have been taught in our higher education institutions for several decades; as a function of the way the powerful dominate the powerless, the oppressor oppresses the oppressed. Our 'white privilege' (read: victimizer) is to blame, which relates to the ascendancy of identity politics in all its forms, religious, racial, gender etc., and the inherent moral righteousness of minority groups by virtue of their victimization.   

But I've also thought that there must be something else to it. An ingredient in some people that makes questions of politics emotionally charged in the extreme and overly personal. People like Gabor Maté, himself a child-survivor of the Holocaust, in whom their politics merges with their personal trauma and shame. These people seem to have a grandiose sense of self (probably related to an inherit insecurity), so that their opinions about politics become a matter of moral rectitude, and opposing viewpoints aren’t debatable on the merits, but rather represent an affront and are reprehensible and need to be scorned. To them it's not a question of policy, of political right and left, but a matter of moral right and wrong. To acknowledge an opposing perspective is tantamount to being personally invalidated.

I don't think I'm imagining it, but there was a time when a difference of opinion was just that. You could agree to disagree, let bygones be bygones, and do it over drinks. I know the informational siloing of social media also plays a part in the breakdown of civil discourse. Not to mention the depersonalization of social interaction that attends our contact mediated through screens in more and more domains of everyday life. The net result is that we are becoming emotionally ever more fragile and less resilient as our exposure to difference becomes increasingly filtered. We are hardening like glass, and our democracy is at risk of shattering. 

In response to backlash, the presidents of the Ivy League universities have made statements since their debacle before Congress. Liz Magill said that in the moment she was focused on the thorny issue of First Amendment Constitutional free speech rights, and wasn't thinking about how a call for genocide actually meant a call for mass-murder (I paraphrase). When we lose sight of the meaning of a word like 'genocide' - whether it's in the flippant way my daughter used it, on the one hand, or in the way the president of an Ivy League university neglected to consider the obvious because she was intellectually trying to dodge legal and political land mines, on the other - we're all in trouble.

Moral Clarity part 13: Atrocities against women, a moral litmus test

Lately, the extent of the savagery and barbarism that Hamas terrorists inflicted on Israeli women on October 7th has started coming into full light. Fortunately (and unfortunately) we have a lot of it in graphic detail, not just because there were surviving witnesses, but because in many cases the perpetrators filmed and posted their heinously depraved acts on social media with glee and pride. Suffice to say that they involved rape and the worst imaginable forms of mutilation and degradation. 

Women were uniquely victimized on October 7th (as well as while they were in captivity), and it's been particularly disappointing, or better, reprehensible, that almost two months after the event not more has been said of this, not even by organizations that supposedly address, defend and promote the rights of women. Some commentators have taken the position that the silence by these women's rights groups is a result of good ole anti-Semitism. For others, it's more of a political issue, namely, that Israeli women are treated differently because to highlight the attrocities they've suffered is like siding with Israel, and for those people that feels like siding with the victimizer. And then it becomes a question of who has suffered more, the Palestinians or the Israelis, and ultimately a numbers game, ie. it must be the Palestinians because so many more of them are being killed compared to the Israelis. There is something undeniably crass and simplistic about reducing any conflict to such morbid calculations. It treats the life of each victim as a commodity, and just as bad, it makes no moral distinction between the acts of the perpetrators. 

Women and children hold special status in any conflict because they are the most vulnerable in society, and typically suffer the most during war. The way women (and children) are treated is particularly revealing about the nature of the combatants and what's at stake. For anyone trying to sort out the moral and political issues at the heart of a conflict, it behooves them to pay close attention to the way the respective sides treat women and children. It's a moral litmus test.

War is part of the accepted system of dispute resolution between international parties. It's a mechanism of last resort, when diplomacy and negotiations have failed, but one that we nevertheless acknowledge will occur. As such, we have decided that we at least need to create international norms, conventions and laws to 'govern' war, to keep it within acceptable moral boundaries of engagement. This is why we can refer to 'war crimes' when we talk about acts that fall outside those boundaries. Understandably, the most heinous and objectionable 'war crimes' are ones done to women and children. And of those, the acts that are pre-meditated are the most serious. In this sense, indiscrimate bombing that inadvertently hits a school is a different kind of war crime than the targeted bombing of a school. Likewise, there is a world of difference between the inadvertent death of a woman that was the result a bombing that targeted terrorists, and the vicious rape and mutilation of a woman designed to torture, terrorize and intimidate. The former is a terrible misfortune of war. The latter is an attack on the core values of our civilization not to mention basic human decency. Anyone, but especially a woman, unable or unwilling to grasp this moral distinction, is a special kind of tragedy of the current conflict. 

Myles Goodwyn 1948-2023

A few words about the passing of Myles Goodwyn the founder, singer, and songwriter of the rock band April Wine. To a Canadian kid in high school in the 1970s with rock n' roll dreams and playing in his first bands, there was no more important Canadian band than April Wine. Unlike Rush of that era, April Wine had hit after hit after hit thanks to constant radio airplay due to CanCon regulations. In Montreal, April Wine was the darling of CHOM-FM. For me, it was their song Oowatanite, unusually for the band, written and sung by the late bassist Jim Clench, that first caught my attention. I can remember how, when the firebell that opens the song came on the radio, my ears jumped up, and then those power chords and growling guitars. There wasn't another Canadian band that sounded so heavy. One summer 7-UP had a promotion where they would print the name of rock band members on the inside bottom of their aluminum soda cans. It was a 'collect them all' sort of thing. I remember being so disappointed every time I'd get a member of the Guess Who because I wanted the guys from April Wine. Oowatanite notwithstanding, in the early 70s they were a four-piece and known for catchy mid-tempo pop songs like Bad Side of the Moon (an Elton John re-make) and You Could Have Been A Lady (unbelievably a song written by British funksters Hot Chocolate). But as the decade went along the band got heavier and heavier until their ultimate shredding three-guitar line-up. After almost a decade of selling oodles of records in Canada, the group finally broke big in the USA (the song that did it was the rock-boogie Roller). It was this line-up (Goodwyn, Lang, Moffatt, Greenway and Mercer) that I saw for the first time in concert at the Montreal Forum. They were riding high on the release of the album Harder Faster that featured ubiquitous top ten radio hits Say Hello and I Like To Rock. I was in grade 10 and in those days going to a concert almost every month. I'd seen all the biggest touring arena acts of the day, and plenty of up and comers too, from Queen and Jethro Tull to The Cars, from Rush to The Police, and not one of them could hold a candle to April Wine in concert. Sure they had the lights, the smoke machine and pyrotecnics, but it was the musicianship, the interplay of guitars trading speedy hot licks, and Jerry Mercer's legendary drum solo that made them the most exciting rock show on the planet. Not enough is said about Myles Goodwyn's singing, and the bands great live harmonies too. Originally formed in Halifax, but based in Montreal, the band was so beloved that every time they played here it was a homecoming, and the love was returned, they came back often. No Canadian band was more popular (except maybe BTO), and for a band that sold some 10 million albums, April Wine never fully got the respect they deserved. They never appealed to art-rock snobs because they had too many radio-hits and many of them were rock ballads. Their songs were generally simple in structure, three or four chords, and the lyrics basic, even as the musicality and musicianship were undeniable. But most of all, they were rock heroes who themselves paid homage to their rock heroes. Which is why the penultimate moment of every April Wine concert was I Like To Rock, probably their most popular song, in the last section leading to the outro, when one guitar plays the riff of the Beatles' Day Tripper, the second guitar plays the riff to the Rolling Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, and the third guitar weaves in seamlessly the main riff to I Like To Rock. It's a bit of rock cheekiness to be sure, as well as a nod to their inspirations. To my mind it also demonstrates that their music (the hooks of Myles Goodwyn) fit in with some of the greats of rock and roll. 

Winter

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Hope 

with all your heart

but expect 

nothing.

If you can't do that 

then hope 

with all your heart

and expect a lot,

because nothing is sadder

than expecting 

crumbs -

crumbs accumulate

like winter:

Life is made 

of more life,

your mind contrives 

some nonsense

as your heart surmises

its seasons. 

To look at the world

and not read it,

that is what I crave most

not just crumbs.

Moral Clarity part 12: Dialogue with a friend

Y: Hey it's been a while since we spoke. What's happening? 

X: I've been so depressed. I haven't wanted to interact. Particularly with my Jewish friends. I mean I can't take the images anymore. The bombed out neighbourhoods in Gaza. The bloodied lifeless bodies of the children. 

Y: I know, it's heartbreaking.

X: And my social media is a horror show of people screaming at each other. Everyone is taking a side. It's like, if you don't take a side, you're on the wrong side. Part of me doesn't want to take a side, and part of me feels guilty for not taking a side. Most of my friends are saying the same thing, that the bombing is genocide. That it can't be justified. I know what you'll say. You'll say that what happened on October 7th was barbaric. You'll say that Israel can't NOT respond. A few of my friends are saying that. But one horrific, unjustifiable action can't excuse weeks and weeks of collective punishment against innocent civilians. It can't justify the thousands upon thousands of people being killed and displaced from their homes. It just can't. 

Y: I won't justify the killing of innocent people ever, Jewish or Palestinian. It was unjustifiable on October 7th and it's unjustifiable today. But frankly, the only people I've ever heard justifying any deaths of civilians, are the Palestinians. They cheered when Israelis died, and they say they are proud to be martyrs for their cause. You can't deny that they subscribe to an ideology that regards innocent lives as expendable, even desirable politically. The Israelis are definitely doing major damage in Gaza, but I believe their intentions are defensive, and their methods demonstrate it. They're doing the best they can to respect international norms of war. They really have no choice. They have to justify their actions to the international community. They tell people to get out of the way before they take action. But Hamas doesn't. They purposely put people in harm's way. It's unconscionable. It's been proven without any doubt that Hamas militants use schools, hospitals and other places where people have sought refuge to shield their operations. 

X: Okay, but knowing that innocent people remain in harm's way, Israel needs to stop the bombing. Whether they say it or not, they are committing a genocide.

Y: That word is being thrown around a lot, and frankly it bothers me. It's inaccurate and being used to elicit an emotional response, as a rallying cry. 'Genocide' was a term coined by a Jewish lawyer in 1944 to describe the systematic murder of Jews by the Nazis. It describes extermination with the intention of eliminating an entire group of people. That it's being used against Israel is a trick of propaganda, to flip the script. It's actually what Hamas wants to do to the Jews and the Jewish state. If Israel was trying to commit a genocide it wouldn't be dropping leaflets before they bomb. It wouldn't allow Palestinian self-governance in Gaza and the West Bank. I could show you in a dozen ways how 'genocide' isn't the word to describe what is happening.

X: Semantics. Okay, then call it mass-murder. That's what it is.

Y: No, it's war, and that's different. Israel is at war with Hamas. During war there are always civilian  victims. The question becomes whether the parties of a conflict care about protecting their citizens or not. Israel clearly does. Hamas clearly does not.   

X: Then there should be a ceasefire.

Y: Hamas can end the conflict tomorrow if they wanted. All they have to do is release the hostages. But they don't want the bombing to stop. They want as much bombing as possible. 

X: So Israel is playing into Hamas's hands.

Y: They don't have much choice. They have to eliminate the terrorists. Hopefully, they do it smartly, and minimize the civilian casualties. And they have to get the hostages back. A unilateral ceasefire would short circuit that process. Israel can not live with a terrorist organization dedicated to its destruction on its border. They tried that for years and it didn't work. You wouldn't live with someone living next door to you who said they wanted to kill you, and took pot-shots at your house every once in a while, would you? That's what has happened since Israel left Gaza in 2006. They spent all that time building a war machine against Israel, and depriving the Palestinians. 

X: You guys who support Israel at any cost talk as if history began on October 7th. Like it started with Hamas. I start the story in 1948.  

Y: I see where you are going here. So the founding of the State of Israel was the first crime? Is that it? 

X: It's the way it was founded. With the intimidation, murder and expulsion of Palestinians. 

Y: What do you know about the founding of the State of Israel? Have you read any books about it? 

X: I know about 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. 

Y: That's true. Mostly as a result of Israel's War of Independence, and the year of hostilities leading up to it. War always has the effect of displacing people. It didn't have to be that way. Before Israel was forced to fight for its independence, there was a UN partition plan for two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian. That was the first time the Palestinians and the other Arab nations around it had a chance to create a Palestinian state, but they rejected the idea. They decided to try to destroy Israel instead. That was only the first time. Israel has offered other two-state deals, over and over again, and the Palestinians rejected them all. They want all the land for themselves and have never accepted Israel no matter what the proposed configuration was. Every time the surrounding Arab countries attacked Israel, in 1967 and then again in 1973, they lost land, and the position of the Palestinians got worse and worse. That's not Israel's fault. 

X: Why do the Jews think they deserve a country anyway? I mean what other religious group in the world has a country of its own? There are plenty of countries where Jewish people live in peace and security. They don't need Palestine. They should give it back.

Y: No one 'deserves a country'. And by the way, I'm not sure where you get the idea that Israel is a religious state. It's a multi-ethnic democracy. There are around two million Arab-Israelis. Arabs have served in the government. Israel was not founded by a religious movement. Actually just the opposite. The modern Zionist movement was comprised of mostly western European Jews who were not religious at all, some were anti-religious socialists and communists. Fun fact, in Israel's Declaration of Independence there is one word missing that appears in the very first paragraph of the US Declaration of Independence: God. Yes, there are a lot of places today where Jewish people live in relative safety, but history shows that this is the exception not the rule. As a minority in every place they have lived, Jews have been defenseless and vulnerable to persecution. Sometimes the persecution came in sporadic flare-ups, at other times it was officially sanctioned. Rulers scapegoated their Jewish minority to deflect blame for their own incompetence and corruption. History is littered with such episodes, from the Spanish Inquisition to the pogroms of Western and Eastern Europe, to the Holocaust. If this new crisis has shown us anything, it's how unsafe Jewish communities around the world still are. From attacks on Jewish institutions in Montreal and Toronto, to an Israeli airplane being surrounded on the tarmac by an angry violent mob in Dagestan, Russia. Israel's existence is our only guarantee of protection. My question to you is why single Jews out? Why should Jews be the only ethnic group that shouldn't live in peace in its ancestral homeland?

X: I'm not singling out the Jews. I don't blame Jews in general for what's happening. I blame the Jews who support Zionism. Not all Jews are Zionists. You have to agree that many Jews are speaking out against Israel too. So please don't accuse me of being anti-Semitic. 

Y: Okay, I guess you were equally outraged when a hundred thousand innocent Arab civilians were killed by Assad in Syria? Or the hundreds of thousands that have been killed in other wars being fought around the world? I guess you were protesting those wars in the street too? Sorry, I don't mean to sound sarcastic. But Israel is always treated differently. There are undoubtedly many reasons for it, but one is certainly just good old fashioned anti-Semitism. We've known each other for a long time and I would never accuse you of being anti-Semitic. But you've got to ask yourself why this conflict matters to you in a way that others don't. It probably has something to do with the explosive and ongoing media attention. But when you say stuff like, 'why do the Jews deserve a country', frankly, it sounds anti-Semitic. Like there are some groups of people who merit a country and others who don't. I won't question the Palestinian desire for self-governance. And I don't think anyone should question the Jewish desire. By the same token, our right to defend our country should not be questioned, and when it is, it sounds as if you're saying only Jews should be defenseless.  

X: I gotta go. I really appreciate that you've taken the time to engage with me respectfully. What you've said doesn't make me feel any better about what's going on, but you've definitely given me lots of food for thought. 

Y: Trust me, I don't feel great about it either. You'd have to be a stone not to be affected by all the suffering. Hopefully we can agree on one thing. It's not a simple issue. Complicated problems are hard to process, and shouldn't be reduced to slogans or emotional responses, based on who you think is the bigger victim. That kind of thinking is impulsive, and doesn't do justice to a complex, difficult situation.  

Heads

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

Heads.

A coin-toss orgasm.

Like words from a one hit wonder 

you never knew were there

until they're there

and Yeah!

A thought from nowhere,

a stored feeling

in your body 

shoots through you

at random

like a sniper's bullet 

fired

from a rooftop

striking a gas tank

Boom!

Heads.

Moral Clarity part 11: Survivor's guilt

Yesterday, one of my daughters saw an Instagram post that was apparently making the social media rounds. Posted by someone calling him/herself 'theindigenousanarchist', and reposted by my daughter's friend, it said "Imagine if in ten years Israel begins a holiday based on the events happening now. Imagine if they celebrate their 'success' of harming thousands of people with a federally recognized feast. That's your Thanksgiving." 

It's hard to believe that anyone would think of making a connection between Israel's response to the slaughter of 1400 of its citizens and the abduction of 240 hostages by terrorists, and the origins of the American Thanksgiving holiday, but there it is. I can understand an indigenous person wanting to call attention to the origins and myths surrounding American Thanksgiving, and how the holiday, which is so cherished and celebrated as a day of gratitude, may also represent an historical injustice to the First Nations of the Americas. But what could non-indigenous people be thinking when they gleefully share such a post as a criticism of Israel? Is this just a case of online virtue signalling, someone trying to prove their social justice warrior bonfides? Or is there something more pernicious, and perhaps subconscious, at work?

My daughter handled it well. She shut the Instagram re-poster down immediately with a firm but respectful message. I would not have been so diplomatic. In the ensuing exchange of messages one thing that her contact wrote leapt out at me: "Reading that post originally was painful. I am not indigenous, I am a colonizer and I celebrate Thanksgiving." So, she was inspired to spread a message of hate against Israel by the 'guilt' she was feeling as 'a colonizer'. She felt the 'pain' of an indigenous Canadian, and related to the 'pain' of Palestinians (implying their 'ethnic cleansing' or 'genocide' or one of the other catch-all euphemisms they use for the historical injustices suffered by oppressed indigenous peoples). And to expiate the colonialist sin to which she considers herself a party, she decided to full-throatedly join the ranks of those who denounce and demonize the State of Israel in its efforts to combat terrorism. 

This message reminded me of the exchange I had with my brother-in-law a few weeks ago when we briefly discussed the deplorable activities happening on university campuses across America. He's a professor of philosophy at a university in another province. I was telling him that one of my daughters who works at a local university was feeling unsafe to go to the office. I argued that things had gotten out of hand on university campuses and they should be shutting down political activities. My brother in law pushed back, saying that the universities had to support and encourage freedom of speech, and that they could handle any serious disruptions. (As if on cue, a few days later violence erupted at my daughter's university). I said, let them debate all they want in the classroom, it's political activity that I am objecting to, the kind that makes the students feel unsafe to come to class. Then I said to him, "The universities should be teaching their students to be informed, to do research and to think critically, not express their feelings of guilt." He answered, "They should feel guilty." The discussion ended there.

I'm not so sure how well they're doing teaching students to think, but they're certainly doing a good job teaching them to feel guilty. This week at my alma mater The Student Society adopted a pro-Palestine resolution, condemning Israel's war in Gaza as a 'genocidal bombing campaign' and criticizing the McGill administration for its "...persistent refusal to even acknowledge the mass murder of Palestinians... demonstrat(ing) a shocking, blatant, racist disregard for Palestinian and Arab lives." Not a single word in the text of the resolution - which passed by a vote of 77% - mentions the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th or the Israeli victims. If the university administration can't stop the Student Union from taking political positions, then there should at least be a way for members to opt out of paying their dues to the association.

Why don't I feel guilty for being a colonizer? What's wrong with me? Am I heartless? Am I so blinded by my 'white privilege' that I've lost the capacity to sympathize with people who are oppressed and powerless? Funny, I always thought my people were oppressed and powerless. When my family arrived here in the mass migration of Eastern European Jews during the first decade of the 20th century, they were fleeing poverty, pogroms and persecution. This country provided safe-haven, freedom and opportunity. My grandparents and parents took full advantage of the freedoms and opportunities afforded them that their predecessors never enjoyed. They worked their asses off and prospered. They planted roots and contributed to a flourishing community. They built businesses that employed thousands of people for generations (usually other recently arrived immigrants) and raised their family, educating their children to levels far above any they could have hoped to achieve. Don't get me wrong. I completely understand that there were many undeniable injustices and inhumanities done to indigenous peoples that accompanied the founding of this country 158 years ago. I understand that these injustices continue to this day and I wholeheartedly and unequivocally support further and ongoing action to make restitution for them. But I'm sorry, I can't feel guilt for being 'a colonizer'. I can only feel gratitude and appreciation for the safety, freedom and opportunity this great country has given to my kin and me. No matter what some will say, Thanksgiving remains untarnished to me. 

Moral Clarity part 10: The symbolism, practice and consequences of hostage deals

I've been struggling with the deal. It's been a battle between heart and mind. My heart says it's the right thing to do. As human beings we have to do everything possible to get our captives released, even if it means giving the hostage takers a small victory. Even if it means they get time to re-arm, re-fortify, and re-organize. Even if it means a signal is once again being sent to the evil-doers that taking hostages is an effective strategy and pays hefty dividends. Even if, out of 240 hostages only 50 are being released and there will be 190 left for the criminals to make additional deals. My heart keeps telling me that we have to behave like human beings even if they are behaving like savages and animals. We have to show that we value human life even as they show that they could care less about the lives of their people. It's a question of 'who we are' versus 'who they are'. 

To give my heart more grounding in that effort to 'show who we are' I looked to Jewish thought and tradition. Unfortunately, in our history we've had many occasions to consider the lengths we must go to redeem our kin who've been taken captive, called pidyon shvuyim, in Jewish law. The payment of a ransom is categorized by our sages as a mitzvah rabbah, a 'great' obligation, or a duty of the highest order. According to Maimonides, "The redeeming of captives takes precedence over supporting the poor or clothing them. There is no greater mitzvah than redeeming captives, for the problems of the captive include being hungry, thirsty, unclothed, and they are in danger of their lives too.” In the Shulchan Aruch, the book that codifies Jewish Law, it says “Every moment that one delays freeing captives, in cases where it is possible to expedite their freedom, is considered to be tantamount to murder.”

My head makes other calculations. Ones that were not lost on our sages. They acknowledged the potentially far-reaching consequences of paying ransoms. “One does not ransom captives for more than their value because of Tikkun Olam (literally 'fixing the world' ie. for the good order of the world, as a precaution for the general good)." It is understood that this restriction is aimed at avoiding encouragement to kidnappers who will seek to take advantage of the extremely high value Jews place on human life, and understand that they can demand equally high ransoms. The long term consequences of paying an 'exorbitant' price for a captive has been seen in the recent past. In 2011, the ransom paid for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who had been held hostage for more than 5 years, was over 1000 prisoners, many of whom had been convicted for murder and acts of terrorism. Dozens of those released resumed their terrorist activities, including Yahya Sinwar, reportedly one of the masterminds of the October 7th attack. 

And then there is the symbolism of hostage-taking. What's actually at stake is not life, but something even more valuable, individual freedom. The reaction of Thomas Hand comes to mind. When he was told by authorities that his 9-year old daughter Emily had been murdered on October 7th, he initially responded by exclaiming "Good!" He later explained, “I was relieved. It is a very strange thing to say when somebody comes up and says, 'Sorry, your daughter's dead,' and you go, 'Thank God for that.' Because I did not want her to be kidnapped and in the tunnels of Gaza. That was worse in my head.” The original report was wrong. Hand's worst nightmare came true. His daughter was a captive. It reminds us that there is a symbolism to holding a person against their will that goes beyond the loss of life. It's what Hamas, and more importantly, their religious extremist autocratic sponsors in Tehran represent. They don't care about life. For them it's an attack on individual freedom that is more potent and symbolically valuable, because it's what they hate most about the West. 

This morning I listened to a discussion about Israel's restraint at the outset of this catastrophic conflict. The commentators discussed how admirable it was that Israel resisted the temptation to 'level Gaza' out of vengeance and retribution. 'They could have done that,' one commentator said, 'they had the means, and lord knows they had the desire. There were calls for it. But the leadership resisted the pressure. Cooler heads prevailed.' Then the discussion turned to comparisons with Jimmy Carter and the hostage crisis that you might say started it all. The 1979 taking of 52 Americans at the Embassy in Tehran by fundamentalist student revolutionaries. That crisis ended with the safe return of the captives after 444 days of agonizing negotiations, and a failed attempted rescue. The consequences of that event were far-reaching indeed. In the immediate aftermath it contributed greatly to turning Carter, the man who brokered peace between Egypt and Israel, into a one-term president. It also sent shockwaves around the world, signalling to terrorist groups, how relatively inexpensive and powerful hostage-taking as a strategy could be, bringing a world nuclear superpower to its knees. It was also the opening salvo in a 'holy' war waged by Iranian Islamic fundamentalists against the West that would continue for the next four decades until today. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the actions of Iran in 1979 and the American response to it inspired and emboldened millions of religious radicals across the Middle East and around the globe, and has cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent lives.

The commentators this morning extolled Carter's restraint in response to the hostage crisis in Iran. 'He could have levelled Tehran if he wanted to,' they said, but he chose not to. Thinking about Iran's support of Hamas and Hezbollah today, I could not help wondering how the world would have been different had Carter not been so restrained.

Moral Clarity part 9: The history of it...not

I learned something from a podcast discussion between Israeli historian Noah Yuval Harari and Sam Harris. Sometimes you've got to forget about history. Let bygones be bygones. Sometimes putting history aside is essential to dealing with the present, if you want to have a future. 

Harari was talking about the current conflagration in the Middle East, a place particularly obsessed with history. For his part, Harari has written some insightful books about history that provide wisdom and understanding about our past and how it reflects on where we may be heading in the future. I suppose this makes it all the more puzzling that he's saying history is not the answer to this current problem. In fact, he's saying it's part of the problem.

Harari's message resonated with me in relation to all of the commentary I've been seeing on YouTube, TV, and articles online, that emphasize understanding the historical context of the conflict. This conflict, if it suffers from anything, it's an overemphasis on history. Like Harari I've come to the conclusion that history has its limits. In the Harris interview, Harari says something like (I paraphrase), no political dispute in history has ever been settled by trying to right the wrongs of the past. By definition, a conflict has two competing views of history, and two opposing narratives which usually includes two sets of victims, and any attempt to reconcile them is doomed to failure. Politics is by definition the art of the possible. In order to arrive at a political resolution, and that's what we are after (as opposed to a military resolution), we must take the conflict out of the absolutist realm of moral claims (ie. Justice, punishment, retribution) and focus on present realities in order to be able to negotiate and compromise. 

From this standpoint, it's history that's the problem. The Palestinians are stuck in a mindset in which correcting the 'wrong' of the past (the so-called 'nakhba') is the prerequisite to peace. Unfortunately, that means Israel should never have been established 75 years ago, because it's the result of what they call a 'colonial' injustice. That's one dimension. Another, related to living in the past, is religious. A great many Palestinians live in a 12th century messianic Islamic dreamworld (admittedly there are Israeli types like that as well). We don't have much control over that. But those people are aided and abetted by guilt-ridden Ivory Tower academics and idealistic students who champion their historical claims, and in the process advocate (some unwittingly) for the extermination of Israel. It's an odd alliance in which 'enlightened' westerners end up supporting mass murdering dark-age jihadists, and turning them into heroes. A bit of a related aside: I've always objected to the use of the term 'Zionist'. Zionism was a late 19th/early 20th century movement that advocated for the creation of a modern Jewish homeland. Calling Israelis Zionists is like using the term "Whigs" - what the British Americans called themselves prior to the Revolutionary War - to describe Americans. The day Israel declared its independence in 1948 was the day Zionism had achieved its objective and ceased to exist as a project. The reason that Arabs continue to use the term 'Zionist' to describe Israelis is to delegitimize the State of Israel. It's a way of putting a doubt into people's minds that Israel is a fact (or that it should be a fact). Israel is not just a reality, it has demonstrated the strength and resilience of its existence repeatedly over the last seven and a half decades. The sooner the Palestinians, the Arab world (and their misguided western allies) realize that Israel isn't going anywhere, the sooner peace will be possibile. If history teaches us anything in this case, it's that sometimes you have to put history aside to move forward.

Summit

I reached the summit,

        understood I was climbing 

out of a deep pit.

Moral Clarity part 8: Who's to Blame, What's at Stake

Shots were fired again at a Jewish school, the same school in my daughter's neighbourhood that was shot at last week. This time my daughter reports hearing the gunshots, they woke her up at about 5am.

That is unnerving enough.

Forget about MSNBC, and the everpresent Ayman Mohideen, who looks like he's about to explode as he tries to withhold his bias every time he's asked to provide 'analysis' of the conflict. On the weekend I watched the gorefest, otherwise known as the coverage of "Israel's War With Hamas" as they call it on CNN. Why is Fox looking moderate these days, as the so-called mainstream media tries to 'two-sides' this. Have they not learned a thing from the trump years? On CNN I watched the heartwrenching pleas from a Norwegian doctor working in Gaza  named Mads Gilbert. His face filled the screen, eyes looked desperate and frightened, as he pleaded to 'President Biden and Mr. Blinken' to stop the bombing, amid horrific background screams. You'd have to be a stone not to feel for this man's anxiety. But a few minutes passed, the high emotion of the moment receded (I changed the channel) and then I asked myself, wait, why is he asking for Biden and Blinken to take action? They aren't the ones dropping the bombs and firing the bullets. Why the two-step dance. Why not ask Hamas to release the hostages and surrender? That would do the trick in one straightforward step. Easy. The answer is just as straightforward. Because he knows Hamas won't do it. He knows they don't give two hoots about all the lives of the people at the hospital. He knows that Hamas has been sacrificing those lives, innocent women and children, for almost two decades at this point, and more bloodshed is their best strategy  because they are so outgunned. He knows that Biden and Blinken may actually be the only ones with any influence who care. A little online digging reveals that in addition to being a physician who has worked in Gaza, Dr. Gilbert is a Norwegian politician and activist. He is outspoken about US 'aggression' in the Middle-East and has been a public apologist for terror attacks against both Israel and the US. He even excused the attacks of 9/11 as morally justified. In 2006 he encouraged people to boycott Medecins Sans Frontiere (Doctors Without Borders) because they were not political enough. You wouldn't know any of this from the clip that aired on CNN. 

It's affective journalism to personalize news coverage. When it comes to covering conflict, they talk to the people directly involved, the eyewitnesses and people impacted by the terrible events. There are always victims on both sides, so once you hear from one side of the victim equation, you have to hear from the other side if there is going to be 'journalistic balance'. The coverage becomes all about which side is suffering more, which encourages the sides to play up their suffering as much as possible, of course. From the standpoint of optimizing TV viewership this gets dicey, because at some point a fascination with suffering becomes overwhelming and starts turning people off. Rather than turning people off hopefully it gets them to take a step back from the pain and horror to think about which side they should be on, the side that perpetuates the conflict or the side that wants it to end: 

The side that cares about the wellbeing of its citizens, or the side that sees them as expendable? 

The side that has achievable political goals like peace and security, or the side that is motivated by absolutist religious ideology that glorifies maryrdom? 

Whenever I've been asked about what side of the Israel-Palestine conflict I'm on, I always say the side of peace. I support any policies, actions and initiatives that I believe will take us closer to peace. What I know for certain is that Hamas is not interested in peace. Iran is not interested in peace. The media is not interested in peace. Flag-waving students chanting for intifada to 'Free Palestine' are not interested in peace. Defeating Hamas is a step toward peace. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that. 

Moral Clarity part 7: Words with consequence

A man on a balcony in a Canadian downtown takes a microphone and leads a public prayer for the violent eradication of the “Zionist aggressors.” “Allah, count every one of them, and kill them all, and do not exempt even one of them,” he says in Arabic. Below him, a crowd of hundreds respond with cheers.

The speaker was Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui, and the venue was the city’s Oct. 28 “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” rally — one of dozens of Canadian events organized over the last 30 days by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group that has openly praised the Oct. 7 massacres and called for continued violence against Israel.

Charkaoui’s speech may very well have been overlooked entirely if he hadn’t posted it online himself. He posted it (from multiple angles) to his Twitter, Instagram and Facebook profiles — along with lengthy screeds calling for the violent destruction of Israel, and denouncing Western media and politicians as Zionist collaborators.

If this does not constitute hate speech and incitement to violence, then I don't know what does.

I disembarked from the social media joyride (house of horrors) about two years ago. It initially took over my life on the day trump rode down the golden escalator. For a year before the election I tried my darndest to warn anyone who would listen about the five alarm fire a trump presidency would represent. I argued that he would try to burn the house down and dismantle the international order we've been relying on for safety and relative peace since 1945. To me it was obvious how dangerously divisive and damaging he was going to be at home and abroad. And once he was improbably elected I ratcheted up my efforts, opposing him as much as I could, like a cyber-shepherd crying out from the digital hills. Two things happened. First, the echo of my voice bounced back at me across the cyber valley, straining relationships with family and friends (and in a couple of cases ending them). Second, I realized how I had completely underestimated how dangerous trump would turn out to be. I didn't fully grasp how he and his enablers could leverage the power of social media to amplify, harden and exacerbate social and political divisions. About 6 months before the 2020 election, confident trump was going to lose, I decided I'd fought the good fight and had had enough of the vitriol. I deleted my social media accounts for good. Sure, I might miss the latest news on what my high-school graduating classmates of 1981 are up to these days, but if that was the price I had to pay for not having to wade through the cesspool of online inaninity, hostility, ignorance and uncivility, it was more than worth it.

I was rudely awakened from the blissful stupor of my online absence in the last couple of weeks, thanks to my wife and kids. As the war rages on in Israel and the heartbreaking death toll mounts every day, another battle is being fiercely waged for digital terrain.The social media war is taking a stressful sleepless toll, especially on my kids (they're adults, the youngest is 19). They've been sharing with me some of the insensitive, offensive and often blatantly antisemitic social media posts of their 'friends', acquaintances and co-workers. Messages, comments, infographics and memes, that either bluntly or implicitly side with the terrorists, justify their barbarism, and/or call for the destruction of Israel and extermination of its citizens in the name of social Justice. In response, my kids are experiencing another kind of trauma. They seem to have transitioned through stages of shock, outrage, fear, disbelief, disappointment, and have finally settled into a malaise of mistrust and grief. They’ve had to learn to accept a new reality of insecurity, one that disconnects them from many of their former friends, and reconnects them to others from our community who are feeling the same way. My kids have also been communicating a lot with each other to try to sort through their emotions, thank goodness for having siblings. I've tried to add my two cents to the discussions, providing some background and historical perspective. Admittedly, my efforts have been lame. For my kids this experience is very emotional and immediate. The aspect that has given them the most heartache has been the realization that their peers don’t care. It’s not like they try to sympathize but can’t. They just don’t care to even try. They see no problem with sharing and promoting incendiary messages that have the obvious potential of putting the security of their Jewish friend and her community at risk. When my daughters try to explain the insecurity they are feeling, their peers are often unapologetic, callous and combative. My kids can't comprehend how the desire to virtue-signal could be more important than the physical safety of a friend. One message received by my daughter was, 'Don't let your sense of safety be warped and exploited to become something that is worth the lives of thousands of childen'. Of course, this clueless social Justice warrior isn't Jewish and is writing from the safety of his cushy office on Bay Street in downtown Toronto.   

Here in Montreal, in the week after the speech quoted above was delivered and shared uncountable times online, two molotov cocktails were thrown, one at a synagogue and the other at a Jewish community center in the west end of the city. Yesterday there was student violence downtown on campus at Concordia University. Last night shots were fired at two Jewish schools in central Montreal, one located less than a block away from my daughter's apartment in a heavily orthodox Jewish neighbourhood. Suddenly we are all feeling like we're living back in another time and place. A time of atrocities that we only read about in history books, and a place we heard about from our elders who fled. The only difference is that these days the hate spreads at the speed of light, and violent mobs can organize with the press of a button. Coincidentally, today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Doktor This and Herr Professor That

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

He recalls the arrogance of his youth,

And wonders how he might get there again,

A kind of nostalgia that intoxicates and soothes,

The mind of a man aged three score and ten. 

He sips his tea to calm his indigestion,

His mind abuzz with responsibilities,

Thinks of regrets, makes a list for confession,   

And counts the blessings of his family.

Ah, to be so damned sure of what I know,

To see it clearly the smooth path ahead,

My predecessors those dumb average joes,

Who lived a short life and are better off dead.

Life is for young energetic know-it-alls,

Who'll correct the injustices of the past,

Fight for the oppressed colonials,

Victims of the capitalist upper-class.

Then he watches marchers on TV,

Students from the local university,

Waving placards and flags like artillery, 

Chanting for Palestine 'From the River To The Sea'.

Hatred rises from the street like putrid smoke,

To purify, assuage their western guilt,

Self-loathing worn like a blood-stained cloak,

Learned in the institutions their parents built. 

And now he recalls the German masses,

Who took their script from some sick theory, 

Renowned for philosophy and poisonous gases,

Convinced of their superiority. 

How fervently those folk cast their lot,

With Doktor This and Herr Professor That,

The scientific method that they taught, 

Ordaining the truth by fist and fiat.  

He watches these students declaring intifada,

Arabic that they think means 'revolution', 

No doubt there's also the whiff of marijuana, 

As they holler, justice demands a final solution.

Caught up in the moment and entranced,

Artists and poets believing themselves righteous,

Unable to grasp their own ignorance,

As bystanders stare without making a fuss.

He nervously coughs and blows his nose,

Thinks about discerning wrong from right,

Says to himself, it's always how it goes,

New slogans for the anti-Semite. 

Moral Clarity part 6: The Main Points

 1. Proportionality: There is no moral equivalence between a country waging a war to protect its citizens and the activities of a terrorist group. This should be self-evident, but it seems not to be to a lot of people. A war waging country is bound by the norms and conventions of international law. A terrorist group ignores those norms and conventions. Terrorist groups intentionally employ particularly heinous barbaric tactics, and targets civilians. Terrorist groups may claim to represent people, but in fact they don't. If they represent any group, it is the interests of their patrons. Iran funds many such groups in the Middle East as its proxies in order to skirt international scrutiny and accountability. The Israel-Hamas conflict must be understood as an assymetrical conflict. The notion of proportionality cannot apply, because in this conflict the two sides are operating by different rules. We can only ask whether a response to an aggression is proportional if the parties involved are playing at the same table. The attacks of terror groups must be seen as not only a threat to particular parties directly involved in the conflict, but also as a threat to the integrity of the entire international system of norms, conventions and rules. Any response to terror must be disproportionately great, because the stakes are disproportionately high, effecting all of us. 

2. Why no ceasefire? In the commonly accepted rules of warfare a conflict ends when the two sides negotiate a cessation of hostilities, or when one side surrenders to the other. Terrorist groups, because they are unaccountable to anyone other than their patrons, do neither. They continue to fight until they die. Israel has effectively been at war with Hamas since it unilaterally evacuated Gaza in 2006. Every temporary cessation of hostilities since then has only been an opportunity for Hamas to re-arm, re-fortify and prepare for the next battle. In a ‘normal’ war, between states, when one side is overwhelmed by the other side, as Israel is now doing in Gaza, the losing side typically surrenders to protect its citizens. But the demand for a ceasefire, in this case, is not actually a demand for both parties to stop hostilities, it's a demand for Israel to stop, because the perception is that Israel needs to protect the innocent Palestinians in harm's way. And why would Israel need to do this? Because Hamas won't take the most logical action to protect its own citizens, surrender. Hamas, in fact has no interest in taking any action to save innocent Palestinians. Its interest is for as many innocent Palestinians, preferably women and children, to die because it's the best way for them to get Israel to stop by bringing international pressure to bear. That would short circuit the inevitable, and perpetuate the conflict, leading to more bloodshed and death. The only logical conclusion to ensure the end of the conflict and the least casualties in the long-run, is the complete elimination of Hamas as quickly and decisively as possible. This is what the world should be cheering for.

3. The Palestinians are not Hamas: True. Therefore, any joining of Palestinian political rights/claims and Hamas's terrorist actions are merely a smokescreen to gain popular support. There are many militant and administrative factions claiming to represent the Palestinian people. In fact none of them do. The most recent polling in Gaza shows that the vast majority of Palestinians don't support Hamas and believe it is corrupt (the same for The Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.) It's the main reason there has not been elections in 16 years. Hamas would lose. The leadership of Hamas is located in Doha, Qatar, far away from Gaza and the West Bank. The upper-echelon of Hamas leaders is estimated to be worth many billion dollars. The net worth of Abu Marzuk, deputy chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, is estimated at $3 billion, while senior leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh are each worth about $4 billion. Gaza is essentially a kleptocracy. Hamas is financed by Iran. Supporting the Palestinian people should mean ridding them of the kleptocrats who steal from them, deprive them, and indoctrinate their children with hate. The Palestinian situation, properly understood, is that they are not the victims of Israeli aggression, but rather of their own degradation at the hands of their supposed leaders and representatives. 

4. Being pro-peace: Those in the west who wave the Palestinian flag and chant "From The River To The Sea" are calling for the elimination of the State of Israel, the Jewish homeland. They should be seen as genocidal warmongers, not peaceniks. Being pro-Palestinian should mean being pro-peace, and being pro-peace must begin with the acceptance of the legitimacy and existence of the State of Israel. There's an often repeated truism: if Israel were to lay down its arms there would be a genocide. If the Palestinian militias (funded by Iran and corruption) were to lay down their arms there would be a chance for peace. 

5. The hostage crisis: The current hostilities should be seen first and foremost as an ongoing hostage crisis. Israel's response is not solely a response to the events of October 7th. It is a rescue operation as much as it is an operation to bring to justice the perpetrators of heinous barbaric murders. The moral calculation involved in any response must take this into account. And the question everyone should be asking themselves is, how far would I go to rescue my mother, father, sister, brother and children from a hostage-taker? 

Moral Clarity part 5: Accountability

Leaving the Bring the Hostages home rally at Victoria Square in downtown Montreal, my daughter was carrying an Israeli flag on her shoulder as we walked to our parked car. “Murderer” shouted a passerby. In the upside down world of the bleeding hearts, the 'murderers' are those people who support a democratic nation defending its values and freedoms by trying to bring terrorist hostage-takers to justice. 

In spite of the fears, it was an entirely peaceful event. The Montreal police was out in force, on horseback, and fully equipped in riot gear. But they spent most of it in their cars. If there were counter-protesters I didn’t see or hear them. Someone remarked that at the pro-Palestine rally last week outside Concordia University, there were quite a few Jews and Jewish groups present. There were even Jewish speakers. “Can you imagine Palestinians showing up at a ‘pro-Israel’ rally where Hamas was denounced? Let alone one where a Palestinian spoke? Couldn’t happen. If that doesn’t sum up the difference between the sides, I don’t know what does?”

Of course, that is the ultimate point. As a democracy, Israel is accountable to its citizenry. The ‘leadership’ of the Palestinians, insofar as there is any leadership at all, more like militant factions, is completely unaccountable. In fact they use the Palestinian people to pursue their organizational political goals, and are mainly accountable only to their patrons in Tehran. The old criminal adage applies, 'Follow the money'. In this case, those who are duped into supporting the Palestinian 'cause' are in reality siding with the oppressive theocrats in Tehran. But not only is Israel accountable to its citizens, as a member in the community of nations, it's also subject to international standards and pressures. 

Over the decades the Palestinian power-holding class has become expert at manipulating international public opinion to gain sympathy. The use of human shields serves three very effective purposes. It protects the terrorists and their infrastructure physically. It creates human fodder for their international campaign for sympathy. And it terrorizes and subdues their own population. For the terrorist organizations there is no downside to creating a humanitarian disaster, and actually plenty of upsides.    

Holding Hamas and the other militant Palestinian factions accountable is the only moral imperative at this time. It will be cheered by all parties who actually have a stake in the conflict, including the Palestinians. 

Moral Clarity part 4: The Artist’s Dilemma

Big pictures and little pictures.

Artists get into the details, and it’s their sensitivity to detail and skill at transforming that sensitivity into a creative, vibrant and relatable product, be it a story, a song, or a painting, that marks their craft. When an artist gets it right, work that focuses on the particularities of the human experience, can become something universal, it resonates profoundly, and we see our own personal experience reflected in the art. The little picture, becomes the big picture. 

Because they focus on the unique details of the individual human experience, artist’s cherish and champion the right of individual self expression. It’s why they fight against censorship, the banning of books, and maximally defend the free expression of ideas. Creativity requires individual freedom. Artists can’t be artists without it. 

So why the blind spot when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict? Why do so many members of the artistic community seem to side politically with the autocrats, theocrats and terrorists, over the only democratic society in the Middle East that protects and values individual liberty and self-expression? 

It’s because artists tend to see themselves as marginalized, and suffering (the old trope of them suffering for their art). They tend to side with the powerless, oppressed and victimized because that’s how they see themselves, which makes sense. Artists often find themselves in opposition to power, since they only have one loyalty, and that’s to express the truth as they understand it. The expression of truth often conflicts with the interests of those who hold power, so artists can be a threat to the status quo. It’s why artists are frequently targets of the regime. 

This is the nature of the artist’s dilemma. On the one hand they can’t very well side with the regime, because that would be like siding with the powerful against the powerless and marginalized. On the other hand, they should be siding with the regime if it represents and protects the values of individual liberties and human rights that they cherish and require to be artists.

Artists are humanitarians. The humanitarian position should always be to oppose the oppressors. For artists the oppressors must be those who would take away the right of individual belief, thought, and self expression. Every artist taking a political stand needs to ask themself one ‘big picture’ question: Would I be allowed to practice my art freely in that society? If the answer is no, then that’s the side they should be opposed to. In the Israel-Palestine conflict, the answer is clear. 

Moral Clarity part 3: Making connections, making separations

We need to talk about genocide.

The definition of 'genocide' is the deliberate and systematic killing of a group of people, usually from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group entirely. 

What Hitler did to the Jews is genocide.

What Israel is doing in Gaza, or has done in the West Bank, is nowhere close to meeting the definition of the term 'genocide'. If Israel were genocidal against the Palestinians, they would never have treated Palestinians in their hospitals, or given them permits to work in Israel, or allowed them to study in their universities. They would have never allowed Gazans, or West-Bankers to self-govern. So the moment you hear anyone use the word 'Palestinian' together with the word 'genocide' you can surmise that they have fallen down a propaganda rabbit hole that conflates words and meanings that have no connection, and from which they don't have the means (or desire) to extricate themselves. 

Another thing about the phrase 'the events of October 7th'.

Every time you hear that phrase, 'the events of October 7th in Israel', it's being used a lot in the media, I want you to pause for a second and think about it this way: As an attempt to isolate 'what happened' in Israel from what 'is happening' in Gaza. In other words, 'what happened in Israel' happened, it can't be changed, but the response to it can be changed. Actually that's wrong. There are currently 220 hostages being held in Gaza. October 7th was the beginning of that one event, which will not be resolved until all the hostages are released. The attempt to separate it into two events is a propagandist's way of disconnecting them in your mind in order to compare them. If they are separate and distinct you may start asking yourself questions about whether 'what happened' to the Israelis and 'what is happening' to the Palestinians are 'equal' or 'proportional'. This is a rhetorical trick. 

Think of it as an active shooter situation in a school, something with which we are unfortunately all too familiar. A crazed gunman goes in to the school, kills a bunch of people, and takes a bunch of students hostage. The police and a SWAT team show up and surround the school. Is this two events or just one? Is there consideration of a proportional response to get the hostages out safely? Of course not. When negotiations fail, if there are negotiations, the police have to go in, guns blazing, to save as many hostages as possible (the lesson learned decades ago from the Columbine school shooting). That's what's happening here. And we're in the middle of it.  

One more thing.

If anybody ever doubted that there is a connection between so-called 'anti-Israel' (anti-Zionism, call it whatever you like) feeling and anti-Semitism, ask yourself this. Why is there a positive correlation between a rise in tensions in the Middle East, and a rise in anti-Semitic incidents everywhere else in the world? Simple. Because they are the same. 

Are You Utterly Insane?!

Stupid question, or maybe not: Are Jews incapable of self-governance? Do we have it in us?

I wish it were a stupid question. But I could not help asking myself when I saw the reports on TV of hundreds of Jews, some in kippot and tallitot, having a 1960s style sit-in at the US Capitol, waving placards that said "Jews for an Immediate Ceasefire" and the like. My first thought, as Israel wages war against the genocidal Hamas terrorists was, I love you, but are you utterly insane?

Yeah, I get that we are a humanitarian bunch, we Jews. Arguably, the Torah gave the (western) world its first universal moral code, one that didn't do away completely with slavery, but it did treat slaves, for the first time in human history, as more than just conquered property. According to one story, the great sage Hillel was once asked to summarize the Torah ('on one foot' as he put it) and he recited the famous Golden Rule, "Love thy neighbour as thyself... That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbour." But later another sage, Ben Azzai, disagreed with Hillel. He said that the essence of the Torah is best summed up in the line, "This is the book of the generations of Adam." The reason? Because that line demonstrates explicitly that we are all connected, part of the same family tree. While he viewed Hillel's preferred dictum as a principle for moral guidance, Ben Azzai felt that the Golden Rule was not sufficient enough to establish the universal underpinnings of morality, one that is more fundamental and less ephemeral than a person's idea of love (or what is hateful). And so we have a tension in our moral tradition between universality and individuality.  

So I completely get the Jewish impulse to want to see in our fellow, especially in our Abrahamic kin, a common humanity. But are we supposed to extend our sense of common humanity unconditionally? Even to those who want us dead? Even worse, to those who consider it the ultimate achievement of their brief time on earth to be martyred in the act of killing us? There is a very well known precedent to that 'turn the other cheek' approach, a delusional Jew who became revered for sacrificing himself for the sins of humanity at the hands of the Romans two thousand years ago. To my fellow Jews with the Jesus complex - please just stop! 

There's a reason you've never heard of Ben Azzai, but you may have heard of Hillel. Hillel understood that there are limits, even to morality. He proposed a corollary to unconditionality when he said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" Yes, the basis for morality as determined in heaven is universal. We’re all the children of Adam (and Eve). But in practice, in this world, those who refuse to acknowledge the sanctity of all life effectively remove themselves from the human family. With those people we have to be for ourselves, as a means of preserving the sanctity of life. To apply the universal moral standard to those who don't acknowledge it themselves is tantamount to suicide, which is forbidden in our tradition.

It's obvious that the Jews who are responding to the crisis in Israel by sitting in Washington DC (or Paris, or London) waving “Jews For An Immediate Ceasefire" slogans don't face the daily danger of a rocket landing in their living rooms. I still have to wonder if they are suffering from a messiah complex too, one that’s stitched deeply into the Jewish subconscious like old scar tissue. When you've depended on the kindness of strangers for as long as we have, with gruesome results, you'd figure at some point we’d eventually come around to the realization that life isn't just a gift, it requires defending. And now that we finally have the chance to run our own affairs in our ancestral homeland we have the means of doing so. Hillel's dictum is also a good slogan to prove that Jews are capable of self-governance, despite our self-destructive impulses. It takes hard moral choices to be a self-governing people, and if we aren't willing to make those choices we don't deserve it. 

A Thousand Songs

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE SONG

He had curly hair and a long slim nose,

Wore a hat with a logo and ordinary clothes.

Wore cowboy boots with pointy toes,

A t-shirt and glasses like two big zeros.

I've got a thousand songs inside my head,

And I'll sing every one before I am dead.

He used pretty words, his talk accented,

And everyone he spoke to felt complimented.

Said his folks were poor but always paid the rent,

He had a long name but said "Just call me Ken."

I've got a thousand songs inside my head,

And I'll sing every one before I am dead.

He plucked away at his Stella guitar,

Went town to town, never had a car.

Strings out of tune, hardly any gear,

But his voice stayed strong and his message was clear:

I've got a thousand songs inside my head,

And I'll sing every one before I am dead.

Said "My life was my own with a little compromise,

I told it as I saw it with these two old eyes.

One day I'll leave, maybe some will cry,

One thing they'll say, 'At least he tried'."  

I've got a thousand songs inside my head,

And I'll sing every one before I am dead.

A Time for Moral Clarity: Part Two, Proportionality

This one might court some controversy, but I think it has to be said.

We can all agree on one thing. Anyone with a modicum of humanity will feel moral anguish at the loss of a single innocent life, no matter what side of a political conflict it is on. Loss of life is not a numbers game, and to make it one is crass. One innocent death has no more or less moral weight than ten or a hundred. The numbers of innocent deaths doesn't increase or diminish the tragedy. So when you hear people say that there have been 1,000 innocent Palestinian deaths to every 1 Israeli death during the Israel-Palestine conflict, it's their effort at making a claim to which side is the actual victim, and which side is the victimizer. They are trying to turn a moral question into a political one, and doing so usually disingenuously. The reality is that they are all victims. One life has no more or less value as any other, and that's all that should matter. 

But admittedly it's hard not to think in terms of numbers. We do it all the time with just about everything. Quantifying, even when it come to human suffering, gives us a sense that we can determine better from worse, or distinguish winners from losers. Our impulse is to ask, doesn't it matter how many people died on each side? If 1,000 innocent Israelis were murdered, wouldn't it be disproportionate for Israel to respond by killing 10,000 innocent Palestinians? Doesn't that make Israel the aggressor and the Palestinians the victim? From a moral standpoint the answer is no, as explained above. 

Putting the moral question aside for a moment, the matter of proportionality nags at our sense of justice (the punishment has to fit the crime etc.) and demands some form of consideration. In purely political terms, proportionality is determined by the relative power of the sides involved in a conflict. It is a function of how much cost the sides are prepared to accept versus how much they are prepared to inflict. That's it. If one side is prepared to accept a tremendous amount of cost, then the other side must be prepared to inflict a greater amount of damage in order to achieve a resolution of the conflict. In other words, equal proportionality, which may make sense for our notion of justice, makes no sense in terms of politics because it does not end conflict, in fact it perpetuates it. Conflict resolution is only possible when one side overwhelms the other side. So for example, in a political conflict if one side does not place great value on the life of its citizens and is prepared to accept tremendous cost in those terms, then the other side must be willing to inflict great damage in those terms to achieve resolution. 

Up to now, in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Palestinians have been prepared to accept great loss of life and endure great suffering to achieve its perceived objectives, while the Israelis have been unwilling to inflict overwhelming cost in terms of human life and suffering to achieve theirs. This is the reason there has not been a political resolution thus far. Israel has sought to go about its business by tolerating sporadic flare-ups in hostilities, while the Palestinians have tolerated the losses Israel has been prepared to inflict. In a sense Israel has hampered itself since the beginning of this dispute by adhering to a moral standard not shared by its adversary, not that I am advocating that it should behave otherwise. But if the Palestinians adhered to a similar moral standard as the Israelis ie. the way they value human life, their tolerance for cost would have been significantly lower and the prospects for a resolution of the conflict would have been much greater. By this logic, a resolution is only possible in one of two scenarios; either Israel must be prepared to inflict overwhelming cost against the Palestinians beyond what the Palestinians are prepared to accept (essentially forcing them to the negotiating table), or the Palestinians must be less willing to accept the cost Israel is prepared to inflict. I believe, again, putting aside the question of morality, in purely political terms this is the only way to think about proportionality in this conflict. The good news is that both sides always have a say on how the proportionality equation will play out. We always hope that the political calculus will favour placing a higher value on human life and therefore accepting less cost, as opposed to the infliction of overwhelming cost. But as long as there is a kind of 'balance' ie. proportionality, the status quo will remain.