It wasn’t that long ago when leaders of Quebec politics, labour and academia addressed a large rally in Montreal. That rally excoriated a small democratic nation that was defending itself in the face of naked aggression. The speakers made hardly a mention of the fact that citizens of that country had been killed in rains of rockets, as they still are today. Hardly a mention of kidnapped citizen soldiers. No mention at all of the enemies of that nation utilizing the vilest methods of murder and mayhem in pursuit of purposes of genocide and national extinction.
The nation under attack never targeted civilians and non-combatants. Never destroyed religious sites. Never sought to obliterate all semblance of their aggressors’ culture and history. The enemies of that nation were intent on just that and had for two generations practiced the crudest forms of nullification and interposition including turning tombstones into toilet seats.
The nation under attack that August day in Montreal was Israel. The gathered thousands at the rally lionized and stood under flags of the murderous Hezbollah, deemed an outlaw terrorist organization by the government of Canada. Israel, the frontline state in the family of free nations, was that day accused of “barbarism” and atrocities that it never committed.
We wrote then, and believe today, that what motivated those leaders who spoke to that rally was political profiteering at its most cynical. The calculus was simple. Appeal to the lowest common denominator of hate and radicalism. Labour leaders sought more card carrying members. Politicians sought votes. Left-wing academics sought validation of their most reprehensible slanders. What strikes us today is what happened to the outrage?
Tibet is once again under the repressive heel of China. Death and destruction abound in the streets of Lhasa and two other major cities. Why are the voices of Quebec civil society now stilled?
The Dalai Lama, a man who “progressives” ache to have their picture taken with, has called China’s actions “cultural genocide”. Yet the “progressives” are strangely silent. Could it be that they are fit only for picture taking and not for manning the barricades at times of moral crisis?
Israel encourages Arab culture. Funds Arab universities on the West Bank. One-quarter of the student body at Hebrew University is Arab. Israel has Arab judges, diplomats and parliamentarians. Funds Muslim cultural programs. Yet Israel is condemned and China is given a pass. China has destroyed some 6,000 Tibetan temples. Israel has never touched a Muslim mosque. Yet Israel is condemned and China is given a pass. China has killed over 1,000,000 Tibetans in a very real holocaust. Yet the Jihadists and their fellow travellers accuse Israel of committing a holocaust against the Palestinians that never happened while denying the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War that did, and preparing a second with their friends in Tehran. It is enough of Israel being the moral resort area for the world’s most perverted purveyors of prejudice.
Why aren’t we seeing labour unions and university academic groups attempt to organize boycotts of China as some tried to do against Israel? Why are those self-styled arbiters of morality appeasing the world’s largest tyranny? Why? Because they are cowards and hypocrites.
It is fear that drives the public debate on China. Fear and greed. Business profits on its slave markets. Academics on its exchange and research programs. Journalists are co-opted by the politically correct notions of every culture’s right to be wrong. And politicians don’t have the courage to challenge a regime that holds up to one-third, in some cases, of western debt.
China is a country whose leaders have killed some 40 million of its citizens over the years. Half of those were slaughtered in the 1948-51 revolution. Last year, some 20,000 political prisoners were murdered. Many tied back to back so one bullet could be used for two. Falun Gong practitioners are jailed and killed by the thousands. Organs harvested like so much wheat being threshed. The Chinese dictators, together with Iran, are the main facilitators of the Sudanese regime carrying out the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur. Where is the outrage?
The debate over the proposed boycott of the Beijing Olympics was a chance at redemption. But what poisoned messages are being sent out by the equivocation over the boycott effort. If the Olympics are just games, then it belies what the Olympic movement itself says. It believes it is propogating universal values. But if those values are hijacked by tyrants, then what do we have left? The message that brute force is everything and can bend all to its will? That this alone constitutes “winning”? That there is nothing worth standing up for?
What started out as a brave and bold effort to say no to murder and mayhem on the international scene has now degenerated into discussions about the moral equivalencies of whether countries should just boycott the opening ceremonies or better yet just walk in with black armbands. What does this say to people around the world? That you should not dare to care. That you should run between the raindrops and let thugs dictate your life? It validates winning at any cost. Is that what we want young people to retain in their institutional memories.
A generation ago the free world faced a similar, though less bloodthirsty, enemy in the Soviet Union. Two resolute American statesmen, Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington and Congressman Charles Vanik, obtained passage of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that denied Most Favoured Nation status to the Soviets until they respected the civil liberties of political and religious dissidents. The next year, the Moscow Olympics were boycotted by 61 countries. In 1981 the Helsinki Final Act accord was signed, tightening the noose around the Soviet Union by bringing Western European nations into the Jackson-Vanik orbit. Through the ‘80s the policies of Ronald Reagan continued to suffocate and ostracize the Soviets and by 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and with it the Soviet empire.
Every athlete who missed competition still understood they were soldiers in the battle for freedom. Quite a universal value that. Probably important than medals or records. At the start of World War II Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams knew that he could break every record in the book. But he chose duty over numbers and enlisted in the army. He gave up three years of his career. But he remains the ultimate winner in everyone’s books.
The American message of that bold and brave decade should be our message and metaphor today. No truck with tyrants! But sadly, if we had to answer truthfully about where are our voices of outrage today we would have only one answer. Sold to the highest bidder.
