Backseat Blogger v2.0

Mr. Caplan’s opinion got me interested in what else he’s written about Israe. Actually there’s very little that I’ve been able to dig up(I’ll keep looking when I have more time) but one opinion piece that I did come across was a doozy.

“Is there no limit to what Canadian Jewish leaders will tolerate from Israel? Wrong question. Is there any level of iniquity they’ll fail to celebrate?”

In internet terms this opinion and quote dates back to the dawn of time…. appearing as it did in 1990. But it shows that Mr. Caplan’s positions on Israel have not changed over the years.

In his piece Mr. Caplan used the word “iniquity.”  I found that choice very revealing of his thinking.  It is a very loaded word fraught as it is with Biblical overtones of absolute evil and sin.  I mean Mr. Caplan could have used neutral words to describe Israel and its policies like mistake or error.  But no, Mr. Caplan willingly chose to go all Biblical and used a word that casts Israel and its supporters in invidious moral terms.  It is well nigh impossilbe to carry on a rational argument when one party has already is willing to cast his argument in such terms.  It would be like listening to someone respond to the question, “And how often do you beat your wife, sir?  He loses not matter what his answer is.  And that seems to be the way that Mr. Caplan wants it.

Oh and by the way.. where do you think I found a copy of this article?  Well I found it on David Irving’s website.  Everyone should know Mr. Irving.  He’s the convicted felon and all round human pond scum that thinks Hitler got a bum rap,  that the Holocaust never happened, and that the Jooooos are not a very nice people.

That’s the sort of person who remembers what Mr. Caplan says about Israel.  Well,  perhaps Mr. Caplan and Mr. Irving have more in common that they might think at first glance.

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Believe it or not I rarely get angry particularly when it comes to what passes for public discourse in this country. But to every rule there is an exception and this piece of dreck, “Harper and the Jewish Question“ by the political failure, has been, and NDP hack Gerald Caplan really made me grind my teeth.

Mr. Caplan seems to have a major problem with the “Conservatives’ blatant wooing of Canadian Jews doesn’t add up. What do they want from such a tiny, privileged group anyway?” 

The fact that maybe, just maybe, the Tories are doing what they’re doing because they actually think it’s the right thing to do never seems to cross his mind. 

Oh.. and by the way Mr. Caplan you may be wealthy and privileged and never have experienced anti semitism in your life in this country but there are many, many Jews(the poor, university students on virulent anti semitic politicized campuses) that would disagree or otherwise don’t fit in with your disgusting stereotype of what Canadian Jews are or have experienced.

Let’s start with the title(which, hopefully he’s not responsible for).  The use of the words “Jewish Question” is redolent of anti semitism.  Google the term if you don’t believe me.

He starts his opinion piece with a long rant on the “Jewish neocons”(yet another anti semitic trope.)  Mr. Caplan never really says why he starts his opinion this way.  I can only assume that this drive by smear is just to make the spurious connection between American religious nutbars(of which we all know there are so many) and Canadian Tories.

He then brings up the hoary old leftist canard that any criticism of Israel is anti semitic.  Bullshit. Really.  The problem though is that much leftist criticism when it’s not actually recycling classic anti semitic tropes often slips into the demonization, use of double standards, and outright delegitimization of Israel.  In other words many blogs on the left fail Nathan Sharansky’s 3D test.

Then it’s onto a long rant about how good Canadian Jews actually have it.  And while overt Canadian anti semitism a la the 1930s is indeed no more one has only to look at what’s happening on many Canadian university campuses or read some of Ezra Levant’s posts to realize that it’s not all peaches and cream out there.

Then it’s onto criticising the defunding of KAIROS. After a few reflexive digs at a non existent political party(guess which one, I dare you) and the “Harper government’s Christian piety” Caplan finally gets to the point where he says that KAIROS was defunded because it cares about “justice in the Middle East.” 

While extolling the saintliness of KAIROS, Mr. Caplan has not a word of criticism for the company KAIROS keeps in its pursuit of “justice.”  As seems to be the case across the left part of the poltical spectrum in these darkened days, “justice” is for everyone except those evil, genocidal Israelis who should just do the world a favour, stop defending themselves, and maybe if they’re lucky disappear in a mushroom cloud.

Near the penultimate paragraph, Mr. Caplan finally reveals what’s really bothering him.  It’s “the Harperites, whose ignorance about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be a matter of principle” that really gets to him.  I think that Mr. Caplan is one of those who is embarrassed to be a Canadian.  He weeps for the days when the Liberals trumpeted their policy of “fairness” in the Middle East.  That that policy, leading as it did to the obscene moral relativism which somehow equates Hamas terrorists and their ilk with Israel and its actions, was wrong seems beyond Mr. Caplan’s comprehension. 

At the end of his piece Mr. Caplan says things don’t add up.

Why is this Conservative government so determined to woo Jewish support? Why is it so reflexive, so mindless, in its support for Israel? Given their single-minded pursuit of ethnic voters, politics seems a more plausible explanation than conviction. Yet Jews constitute only 1 per cent of the Canadian population and are a factor in only a tiny number of seats. Most Jews vote Liberal and while some have defected to the Conservatives over Israel, most still will. So the unseemly Conservative embrace just doesn’t add up.

Coming as he does from a party that seems to have embraced with open arms the anti Israelism of the Left, of course Mr. Caplan doesn’t understand.  He can’t.  I think that before Caplan criticises the Tories he should look to the actions and statements of members of his own party.

Related posts:

1. Gerald Caplan can go fuck himself II
2. Gerald Caplan recommends a book
3. KAIROS hits the fan again
4. A last post on Kairos(hopefully)
5. You are known by the company you keep II