October 24, 2012 | National Post

Canada’s Boat for Gaza Movement Still Lives in an Anti-Israel Svend Robinson-Era Time Warp

October 24, 2012 | National Post

Canada’s Boat for Gaza Movement Still Lives in an Anti-Israel Svend Robinson-Era Time Warp

In 2010, militant activists on board a flotilla to Gaza provoked a violent confrontation with Israeli commandos. In the confusion, the Israelis shot and killed nine of the activists, who did not have guns but were armed with knives and blunt instruments. The deaths were an embarrassment for Israel, and served to pressure the country’s leaders to increase the amount of goods permitted into Gaza.

Since then, anti-Israeli activists have tried to recreate this early success in a variety of ways — including fly-in stunts at Israeli airports — but with no success.

The problem for the activists is that their story always follows the same arc — provocation, detention, release, teary post-event press conferences. And it’s gotten boring. Other narratives in the Arab world — Libya, Egypt and Syria, most notably — have taken over the front pages. Among pro-Israel types, the most common riposte to Boat-for-Gaza activists is some variation on “If you really cared about protecting beaten down populations, and were willing to put your safety on the line for it, you’d sail to Syria” — which is harsh, but accurate.

Moreover, recent human-rights reports scrutinizing Hamas’ dictatorial rule in Gaza have disqualified the terrorist group from Western sympathy, except in the most militant left-wing circles. Plus, the founder of the Free Gaza movement has been outed as an anti-Semite. With so many activist causes available, a skeptic might ask, why pick one founded by a woman who believes Zionists caused the Nazi holocaust?

The answer might be that these activists increasingly live in a delusional universe — a media bubble created by their own Twitter accounts. The Canadian Boat to Gaza group, for instance, regularly sends out communiqués demanding to know why Ottawa isn¹t doing more to help Gaza, or secure the speedy release of Canadian pro-Hamas activists and their equipment. Given the Harper government’s hard line on Hamas and terrorism in general, an aggressive intervention on behalf of detained anti-Israeli activists must rank somewhere below “send fact-finding mission to Uighur region” on the government’s list of foreign-policy objectives.

On Saturday, the latest Boat for Gaza stunt was broken up when Israeli forces peacefully boarded the Finnish-flagged ship Estelle. One of the activists on board was former B.C. MP Jim Manly, 79. He hasn’t been released by Israel yet because he refuses to sign a statement acknowledging that he broke the law. “He seemed to be in good spirits and he has refused to sign a waiver,” says wife Eva Manly. “The waiver implies that he has entered Israel illegally, but he did not intend to enter Israel. [It] would basically mean he would be signing on to a lie. It would be a false confession.”

It’s not clear what Manly’s precise intentions were. But on the legal front, he and his fellow activists have a losing case. The United Nations’ own Palmer Report concluded in 2010 that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is a legal and appropriate means to protect itself. And the argument about Manly’s waiver is largely academic anyway — because, either way, an Israeli judge likely will simply order the man deported. (In the meantime, moreover, a Canadian consular official has visited Manly, and ensured his access to proper medical care.)

More evidence of self-delusion came on Monday, when Jim Manly’s son Paul expressed his disappointment to reporters that the federal NDP was not doing more to help his father. (Thomas Mulcair’s party has limited itself to a statement calling for “restraint” on all sides — the diplomatic equivalent of saying nothing). “The NDP and the [predecessor Co-operative Commonwealth Federation] took unpopular positions,” Manly the younger told the Vancouver Sun. “[But] now I think they’re being very cautious, and obviously the new leader has his opinions and policies on Palestine and so, you know, my own [NDP] MP [Jean Crowder] — my father’s MP — wouldn’t speak out publicly this weekend.”

Manly also added that he thought NDP deputy leader Libby Davies — who once was personally involved in strident anti-Israel street activism — has been “muzzled and whipped” by Mr. Mulcair, who is generally seen as pro-Israel.

Paul Manly is largely correct on these points: There once was a day when NDP MPs could be relied on to spout anti-Israel positions little different from those trafficked on college campuses during Israel Apartheid Week. For instance, read this 2002 pro-Palestinian manifesto from then-NDP MP Svend Robinson — a one-time Middle East affairs critic for his party, no less. Such a document would be utterly unthinkable in today’s more disciplined, centrist NDP. Since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, when Michael Ignatieff got burned over the issue of accusing Israel of war crimes, all three major federalist parties in Ottawa have closed down any outreach to anti-Israel activists. As the Free Gaza example shows, when you scratch the surface of such groups, there is always a chance that you will find terrorist sympathizers or anti-Semites. Politically, it’s simply not worth the risk.

We live in a post-9/11 world, in which Canadians and their politicians empathize primarily with other Western nations that are defending themselves against the scourge of terrorism and militant religious ideologies. The Manly family, it seemed, just never got the memo.

— Jonathan Kay is Managing Editor for Comment at the National Post, and a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Issues:

Israel Palestinian Politics