On the Sixth Day

AND GOD CREATED HUMANKIND in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.

And God gave them, the male and female, brains to think and hearts to feel. And he knew that this might be a problem, because the feeling heart and the thinking brain would not always agree, and sometimes they would disagree vehemently, and He knew (because He knows everything) that it would give them trouble. God didn't see a way around it. And anyway, the 'heart' was really the brain, it was just another aspect of it. 

And God knew humankind needed to possess agency - the ability to make decisions about how to live life and to act. Plus, humankind needed to possess awareness of having agency, otherwise what was the point of giving agency?  He didn't want to create a humankind that only followed instructions, not even if the instructions came from God. He didn't want to create automatons or robots. And the awareness of agency God called consciousness.

And God made the source of humankind's agency the heart, for it was emotion that would distinguish humankind from being just a thinking machine. For God realized that it was the experience of sadness and joy that gave life meaning to humankind. And this is what is meant by in 'His own image'. Humankind was not a creature of instinct, and not a slave to a master, but humankind had to be free to inquire about the meaning of life, the way the image of a face in the mirror inspects its own face. And this was the essence of the relationship between humankind and its Creator, and this pleased Him.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Riverbank Blues

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We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank my little gal and I,

We went down to the riverbank,

Where I made my gal cry.

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know the river's so deep, how did she make it across,

You know I love that girl so much,

Won't get over my loss.

I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

I say I ask myself, how could I stoop so low.

You know it's so hard,

When you're livin alone.

Told her I loved her before she went away,

I say I told that girl I loved her before she went away,

You know that little girl,

Took my secret to her grave.

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank, and I fall down on my knees,

I go back to the riverbank,

Where I hope she hears my pleas.

Bertha Lee

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Charley was a man, small and mean,

Worked the cotton field, when times were lean,

Drank moonshine, tried to stay clean, 

Sang us a song 'bout how to be free.

 

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

He fought with the man and was thrown in jail, 

Said the devil called from the fires of hell,

Asked to repent when they rang the church bell,

Dropped a coin in the wishing well.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

There's a good woman waiting for me,

Wondering all night long about where I'll be,

Ain't much sense to all that worry,

Livin ain't easy, on this we agree.

Said I love Bertha Lee but she don't love me,

We'll settle down together in Dockery, 

Don't the moon look pretty behind those trees,

By the Sunflower River, Mississippi. 

One In Two

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Another one bites the dust,

And by another I mean marriage.

There's an inevitability about it, like rust,

On the creaky wheels of an old carriage.

So why be surprised about this news?

When statistically we know the score.

It happens to one in every two,

A partner decides they want more.

I thought this couple had the right attitude, 

Vow-bound for twenty-five years.

Thought they'd reached cruising altitude,

With their engines humming in low gear.

A notary and a stay-at-home mom,

Who delivered Meals-on-Wheels.

Two kids and a dog, fluffy as a pom-pom,

A suburban house with curb appeal.

They seemed to have it all,

By the standards we're taught to admire.

While behind closed doors and thick walls,

Whispering remorse of the buyer.

 

We talk, the wife and I, and look around,

At our neighbours and sometime-friends.

To gauge the happiness we think we've found, 

Before wondering when for us it must end.

We see in each other the well trod path -

Our climb uphill in sun and rain. 

Count our steps, do emotional math,

Feel, at times, like we're crate-trained.

Sure we each crave the freedom,

That comes from desires unleashed.  

To break the ordered calm,

To feel that sense of release.

  

But like an elastic that rebounds,

Or else it's bound to snap.

We eventually settle down,

To avoid a fatal mishap. 

Some contracts are written in glue,

Others on brittle autumn leaves. 

Your name is signed in me and mine in you,

At least that's what I believe.

Post Script and Palette Cleanser

A Post Script for October 7th.

A brief political rant. Did you watch the October 7th commemoration from Ottawa that was broadcast on the CBC? I was pleasantly surprised to see that they aired it. The Israeli ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed spoke movingly, connecting the Leonard Cohen song Who By Fire - which is borrowed thematically and inspired by the High Holiday liturgy 'Unetaneh Tokef' - to the tragedy of the murders on that horrific day. The refrain 'who shall I say is calling' was repeated to express the pain of our incomprehension and also the urgency of our responsibility to combat evil. He pulled no punches, taking the government to task for being too wishy-washy in their public pronouncements of support for Israel and against the perpetrators. Next came Justin Trudeau who was thoughtful and appropriately solemn, paying sober tribute to each slain Canadian by name and talking about them individually, giving us a sense of the kind of people they were and the magnitude of our loss. He denounced anti-Semitism and reiterated the support of all Canadians for Israel and the Jewish community. Then Pierre Pollievre spoke, using his time at the podium to shamelessly turn the event into a political rally. It didn’t help that he was cheered on. I was frankly embarrassed by the community, and appalled at his lack of discretion and aplomb. Pollievre ended by reciting a cheesy poem in 6th grade rhyming quatrains which purported to envision Israel living in peace in the year 6785 (1000 years in the future on the Jewish calendar, God help us if it takes that long.) He exited the stage with an air of triumph when he should have slinked off in humiliation. 

There is very little chance I will vote Conservative in the next election.

Okay, now for a palette cleanser.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced, and congratulations to us Canadians, it was co-won by a fellow named Geoffrey Hinton who we can apparently claim as one of our own. I think he’s British by birth, but lives here and works at the University of Toronto, so we can celebrate, together with the Brits. What makes this even more interesting is that Hinton won for his work on neural networks in Artificial Intelligence (AI), in other words computer technology, in other words not physics in the traditional sense. Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder riffs on this in her inimitably sarcastic fashion on her YouTube channel. She’s been railing for some time about how physics, for the last 50 years or so, has made zero actual progress in its field. (I say 50 years because that's when the Higgs Boson particle was proposed. To be fair, it was finally experimentally confirmed in 2012). Instead of experimental breakthroughs, the last number of decades has been spent making up untestable unfalsifiable theories using complicated math to show… well, that we’ve gotten good at complicated math. In other words physics seems to have given up on the physical. But for Sabine the most maddening part is that so many physicists don’t seem to understand that they are working on nonsense because they get paid handsomely for working on nonsense. Now, by giving the prize for physics for work that’s not physics, the Nobel Prize committee seems to be acknowledging what Sabine's been talking about. It reminds me of a few years back when they gave the Nobel in Literature to singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. The Walrus magazine even asked me my opinion. You can probably guess what I said. All this probably means something, about the relevance of the Nobel Prize (can anyone remember who won any of the Prizes last year?) or award culture and the proliferation of prizes for all kinds of things in general (grade inflation?) and maybe about Andy Warhol's famous dictum that in the future everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes. Or maybe this year's Prize in Physics tells us that living virtually has clearly become more important to us than living physically. Anyway, I fully expect that they will soon be giving the Nobel in Chemistry to a pastry chef in the not too distant future.   

The One Year Anniversary

 

The entrance to my office building this morning. The riding office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs is my tenant. So a couple of people with a flag, two folding chairs and some chalk - perhaps there will be friends arriving soon - have set up camp. They have decided that the anniversary of a massacre of Israeli Jews was an appropriate time to protest against Israel and Canadian government policy supporting Israel (in whatever minimum, ambiguous way they have). They write "365 days of Joly (the name of the Minister) Genocide," which of course, is inaccurate. It's actually been 365 days of captivity for Israeli hostages, 365 days since a pogrom by Hamas terrorists, since a barbaric slaughter was unleashed against innocents while they danced at a music festival and families while they slept in their homes. Do I go down and point out the inaccuracy? The revision of history? The repugnance of trying to flip the script on the anniversary of a bloodbath that has set in motion so much anguish and heartbreak across the Middle East and around the world. I would go talk to them if I thought it would accomplish something. But I think they know exactly what they are doing. And that's the worst part. Not their ignorance, their shamelessness.

World War 3

I've been wondering what World War 3 might look like, and whether we are already here. And if true, that would be a good thing.

Trump talks about it all the time on the stump. Of course, that's just hyperbole designed to scare people so they'll vote for him. Maybe he's actually on to something, just not what he thinks. 

After World War 2, which culminated in the United States dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, the United Nations was established. It had a couple of main objectives, and one of them was not to establish A Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that came later. The two objectives were, first to create a forum of international deliberation in order to avoid the cascade of events that degenerated into World War 2, and could lead to World War 3. The second objective, related to the first, was to make sure nuclear weapons are never used again. It was understood implicitly that WW2 had changed the rules of engagement, and any war could henceforth potentially lead to a catastrophic conflagration that would destroy most, if not all, of humanity. Since World War 2 the UN has largely been successful. Wars have been contained to certain areas and regions. And nuclear weapons have not been used. So far so good. 

For most of the post-WW2 period, the world was bi-polar, organized around two rival ideological spheres of influence centered on the two major nuclear powers, The US and the USSR. That came apart with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, and for the last 30 years or so the new global order has been shaking out. During the Cold War terrorism and proxy war became a mainstay of international conflict. The nuclear powers engaged in it, as a way of avoiding direct conflict with each other, and minor political actors were only too happy to accept the support of the major powers.    

I began thinking about this because of what we are seeing currently in the Middle-East, as Israel and Iran climb the escalatory ladder of war. Analysts are warning about the situation becoming a regional war, as Israel contemplates its target for retaliation in response to the unprecedented ballistic missile attack by Iran. Seems to me that we are already in a regional war, one that has been waging since at least 2005/2006, when Israel unilaterally evacuated from Gaza (2005) and Hamas took over, and there was a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon (2006). The analysts say that it can get much worse, there are many more rungs to climb up the escalatory ladder. No doubt about that, there are many more bombs to drop and ballistic missiles to launch, from both sides. But in a conflict that is fundamentally ideological, not territorial or existential in nature (and won't be, remember Israel is a nuclear power), this conflict will remain a game of tit-for-tat, two sides punching at each other until they decide they've had enough. 

Israel's main concern in this conflict has been about re-establishing its military reputation and deterrence after the humiliation of October 7th, and not just with regional rivals (and allies) but also with its own citizens. This is the process of escalation in action. It's the reason that the defeat of Hamas in Gaza, even if that means destroying most of Gaza, and the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon (even if it means destroying large parts of Lebanon) became such a pressing objective for Israel. One can imagine alternative pathways that the conflict could have taken. One that was focused on the return of the hostages instead of the restoration of Israeli deterrence. Imagine that Israel chose not to bomb Gaza to smithereens and instead took a longer more tactical and gradual approach to choking off the supply of arms to Hamas. Imagine that it gave Egypt an ultimatum to respect its peace treaty or it would occupy the Philadelphi corridor. Imagine that it worked for a regional political solution with the US and other Arab allies (Jordan, Saudi Arabia) rather than a military one. It was at least within the realm of possibility. Very little time was afforded any possibility other than taking the military route, for particular reasons.  

It may be that what turned this ongoing regional ideological conflict into a 'World War' is the role played by the UN, which is extremely ironic of course. Such a statement depends on how we define 'war', which in the post-WW2 period was broadened from destructive physical conflict to include "Cold War". The globalization of war gets expressed in our age through the UN, which sometimes acts as fuel to simmering regional conflict and expands it in the global sphere. Through the UN, terrorist proxy groups became legitimate global political actors, under the guise of the Palestinian cause. UN-affiliated agencies, UNRWA in Gaza, and the failed UNIFIL in Lebanon, became a permission structure for the activities of terrorists, or in some cases became directly associated and even active with terrorist groups, by aiding and abetting them. In the broader context, Iran and its radical allies have leveraged the prestige of the UN and its agencies (including, most regrettably, the ICC and the ICJ) to promote an anti-America/anti-Israel agenda and to organize and amplify its messaging. This has spread the wildfire of hatred and anti-Semitism to the streets of western cities and on to university campuses. The Palestinian cause planted the seed of corruption that grew and spread across the planet. Iran and its ideological allies have run with it. They don't actually care about the Palestinian cause, they just use it for cover because it carries such currency in the context of the UN. This is what World War 3 actually looks like, facilitated by the UN. 

The UN is not unredeemable, but it needs major reform to stop being an agent of hatred and destruction. The first step is to recognize that the UN is not simply a disinterested political forum. Its founding and mission is an expression of the values expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those are the values of human progress, and that's democracy. There is no peace and security without human rights. The two go hand in hand. So until the UN starts to take concrete steps to promote democratic values and combat the regimes dedicated to opposing those values, it will fall prey to manipulation, and risk becoming complicit by fomenting global conflict. 

The Right Side of History

Something I've heard from pro-Palestine (usually) young people: "I know I will be on the right side of history” (or conversely, “I know you will be on the wrong side of history.”) I have to laugh at how ironic that statement is coming from people who have experienced the least amount of history, and are generally uninformed about it. Still, it's something I always feel I need to address in a thoughtful way.

They are saying it, because they have been convinced that the founding of the State of Israel was a catastrophic injustice done against the Palestinians. They believe the displacement of Arab residents, who they claim are indigenous, renders the State of Israel illegitimate. Everything they believe flows from that premise. This is questionable on a variety of grounds, chiefly whether the resident Arabs were more 'indigenous' than the Jews who can concretely trace their presence to that region from about 1500 BCE. 'Palestinian' actually only became a widely accepted political identity around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel. 

Still, the matter of 'conquest' is problematic (or as some call it 'settler-colonialism'). There were Arab communities that existed in Mandate Palestine (pre-State of Israel) that were either liquidated, displaced or absorbed when the State of Israel won its independence during the war. The same process, more or less, as happened in the United States, Canada, every country in Central and South America, Africa and most of Asia. In other words, if you have a problem with Israel, you should have a problem with most, if not all, of the modern global map, which I believe renders the argument absurd or moot. If not, you have to admit to having a double-standard bias against Israel.

But let's say we agree with the principle that every self-identifying 'People' has a 'right' to self-determination, and let's say the Palestinian People qualify. Certainly the Jewish People do too. So why don't people see it that way? Do the Palestinian people have 'more' of a right to self-determination than the Jewish people? Or again, is a double standard at work?  

They typically answer, sure the Jewish People deserve the right of self-determination, just not there, on Palestinian land. Ok, then where? Surely, displacement or occupation of territory belonging to someone else is inevitable anywhere you choose for the Jews (except maybe Antarctica). In this case, what's really meant is nowhere.

Double-standards toward Israel abound on a variety of subjects - in the past year it's concerning what Israel may or may not do in the course of self-defence. Israel is expected to adhere to standards of war time behaviour that no other country has ever been expected to comply with. Do all these double standards constitute anti-Semitism? Perhaps. I don't want to get into questions of psychology, and I think anti-Semitism is largely a socio-psychological phenomenon. Let's stick to the question of the 'legitimacy' of the State of Israel, inasmuch as any state can be said to have 'legitimacy'. 

Israel has been fighting for its existence for 76 years now, since it won a War of Independence in 1948. Actually, 76 years is not a very long time. You might say that the country is still in its turbulent adolescent stage of finding an identity. But so far, I would argue, despite efforts to brand it as an 'apartheid state' and a 'racist state', what we have seen is actually the steady march toward global acceptance. As its Arab neighbours have modernized and wanted to join the international community, they have either made peace treaties with Israel (Jordan, Egypt), recognized Israel and established diplomatic relations with it (UAE, Bahrain, Morocco) or are on the road in that direction (Saudi Arabia). The trend is clear. The countries that continue to oppose Israel are the most dysfunctional and backward Muslim countries, in particular Syria and Iran, because it serves the political interests of their autocratic leaders. Especially the theocracy of Iran, which considers Israel to be the pebble in the sandal of its project to establish a Muslim Caliphate throughout the Middle-East.

What this indicates is what is at stake in the fight for Israel's legitimacy and existence. Israel is the frontline of the battle to maintain progress and modernity in the Middle-East, a place where modernity clashes with tribalism and ethno-religious loyalties and hatreds. Israel's fight is literally the fight against a worldview that promotes intolerance, strict adherence to Islamic Law and the abrogation of individual human rights. In other words, it's opposition to turning the clock back on 1000 years of social and political progress. 

Israel is the vanguard of the West. It represents western values and acts internationally in accordance with western standards and the rule of law. The Israeli leadership engages in conflict, not out of 'hatred' and pledges to 'annihilate' a 'Great-Satan' as the mullahs of Iran declare. It does not claim to act according the will of God. Israel does not wage war via proxies, it has no imperialist ambitions, and does not engage in terrorism abroad, as Iran does. While Israel's rivals seek its extinction, Israel has only ever sought to live in peace and security with its neighbours. Every military action Israel has ever undertaken has been defensive in nature, even when it's been preemptive it has been to stop an imminent attack. Or as with Gaza and Lebanon conflicts currently, it has been in response to a direct attack(s) against its sovereignty and citizens. 

Which brings us back to the question of Palestinian self-determination, the cause celebre of university students and Islamic studies professors in the west. One thing of which I am certain, Israel is not going anywhere and time is not on the side of the Palestinians, contrary to popular opinion. Israel will emerge from the current conflict stronger than ever, and the anti-Israel coalition will be weaker. The opportunities for a negotiated political solution - a process in which Israel repeatedly engaged in good faith for decades - are becoming fewer and farther between. The next round, which will involve the rebuilding of Gaza, may well be the last. The right side of history and the future is clear.