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Reaping what you sow
By Michael Coren
January 15, 2010
Michael Coren
So the government has taken the entirely justifiable decision to remove the $7 million public funding grant from the KAIROS organization and assorted activists have reacted as though unborn babies were being slaughtered, marriage and the family ridiculed and Catholicism and Catholics attacked.
Oh no, sorry — I got that one wrong. Many of the people who have been complaining so loudly about KAIROS no longer enjoying government largesse tend to say very little when unborn babies are killed, family and marriage trashed and the church libelled. And that, surely, is the essence of the story. Catholicism and leftism are not the same thing, any more than Catholicism and neo-conservatism are joined at the ideological hip.
Oh no, sorry — I got that one wrong. Many of the people who have been complaining so loudly about KAIROS no longer enjoying government largesse tend to say very little when unborn babies are killed, family and marriage trashed and the church libelled. And that, surely, is the essence of the story. Catholicism and leftism are not the same thing, any more than Catholicism and neo-conservatism are joined at the ideological hip.
The Canadian government removed the KAIROS grant on the grounds that the organization was aggressively anti-Israel and had links to numerous anti-Zionist groups. This does not mean that it is anti-Semitic and only an extremist would argue that every critic of Israel is a Jew-hater. Mind you, while not every anti-Zionist is ant-Semitic, most anti-Semites are passionate anti-Zionists. Personally, I’ve spent far too much time in the Middle East over the years to support one side any longer but I do wonder why so many so-called progressives and liberal Christians have jumped aboard the anti-Israel wagon.
There are myriad cases of injustice in the world, some of them initiated by Western states, but numerous by Islamic and Arab regimes. It’s astounding how people who obsess about Israel’s alleged wrongs say so little about China, Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia and the rest. In the case of KAIROS it did appear to be strangely infuriated by one single little country. The one single little Jewish country. It has, of course, a perfect right to do so but the government has a similar right to not fund it.
Regarding Israel itself, the Jewish state never quite disappeared, even after it was defeated by the imperial Roman military. Not, as some suggest, after the great Jewish revolt of 70 AD and the legendary resistance of Masada. There was still a massive Jewish presence in the country, until a second uprising in 135, after which the Romans forcibly exiled most of the population, obliging the Jews who remained to live in what was effectively northern Israel. Here, in Galilee, the region remained overwhelmingly Jewish.
Jewish dominance was retained until Islamic cavalry swept across the Middle East. The Christian heartlands of North Africa and Egypt became predominantly Muslim and the Jewish presence in Galilee was reduced to a shadow of its former shape and size. But the Jews stayed, as is testified by the ruins of numerous synagogues in the area. After Islam came the Crusades of the 12th century. More slaughter, more exile.
From this point Jewish Israel was minimal, although it never died. The conduit to the original Jewish homeland was preserved by memory, aspiration and by communities in Jerusalem, Hebron and the Upper Galilee. We should not think of this as “mere history” any more than we should refer to “mere politics.” A dispersed and persecuted nation returning to its place of origin is not expansion or imperialism but the precise opposite. Arguably the most successful example of the triumph of an indigenous, native people over oppression and ejection. That the Jews were forced out of their homes for centuries makes the return not less but more laudable.
This does not, however, make life any easier for the Palestinians. They have been badly treated by almost every state in the region and perhaps with more venom by Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt than by Israel. Some of the stories and numbers we hear are debatable but what is beyond dispute is that as a people they have suffered and their suffering has to end.
The Catholic response should be to listen to both communities and to seek to find a balanced, reasonable solution, while always remembering that if the Christians of Europe had acted as genuine followers of Jesus there would have been no restored Israel in the first place because there would have been no need. Israel cannot silence criticism by alleging anti-Semitism but racists must not be empowered by taking advantage of fashionable politics. Catholics? They simply need to be seriously Catholic.
There are myriad cases of injustice in the world, some of them initiated by Western states, but numerous by Islamic and Arab regimes. It’s astounding how people who obsess about Israel’s alleged wrongs say so little about China, Iran, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia and the rest. In the case of KAIROS it did appear to be strangely infuriated by one single little country. The one single little Jewish country. It has, of course, a perfect right to do so but the government has a similar right to not fund it.
Regarding Israel itself, the Jewish state never quite disappeared, even after it was defeated by the imperial Roman military. Not, as some suggest, after the great Jewish revolt of 70 AD and the legendary resistance of Masada. There was still a massive Jewish presence in the country, until a second uprising in 135, after which the Romans forcibly exiled most of the population, obliging the Jews who remained to live in what was effectively northern Israel. Here, in Galilee, the region remained overwhelmingly Jewish.
Jewish dominance was retained until Islamic cavalry swept across the Middle East. The Christian heartlands of North Africa and Egypt became predominantly Muslim and the Jewish presence in Galilee was reduced to a shadow of its former shape and size. But the Jews stayed, as is testified by the ruins of numerous synagogues in the area. After Islam came the Crusades of the 12th century. More slaughter, more exile.
From this point Jewish Israel was minimal, although it never died. The conduit to the original Jewish homeland was preserved by memory, aspiration and by communities in Jerusalem, Hebron and the Upper Galilee. We should not think of this as “mere history” any more than we should refer to “mere politics.” A dispersed and persecuted nation returning to its place of origin is not expansion or imperialism but the precise opposite. Arguably the most successful example of the triumph of an indigenous, native people over oppression and ejection. That the Jews were forced out of their homes for centuries makes the return not less but more laudable.
This does not, however, make life any easier for the Palestinians. They have been badly treated by almost every state in the region and perhaps with more venom by Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt than by Israel. Some of the stories and numbers we hear are debatable but what is beyond dispute is that as a people they have suffered and their suffering has to end.
The Catholic response should be to listen to both communities and to seek to find a balanced, reasonable solution, while always remembering that if the Christians of Europe had acted as genuine followers of Jesus there would have been no restored Israel in the first place because there would have been no need. Israel cannot silence criticism by alleging anti-Semitism but racists must not be empowered by taking advantage of fashionable politics. Catholics? They simply need to be seriously Catholic.
Michael Coren