Posted on 07/24/2006 11:20:38 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
The crisis in the Middle East poses a new challenge to multiculturalism. That new challenge is double loyalty, a loyalty to Canada and loyalty to the mother countries of Canadian immigrants, old and new.
Already the Lebanese community in Canada is protesting Prime Minister Stephen Harper's defence of Israel's "measured response." Harper's war in Afghanistan is intensely disliked by Canada's Muslim community.
But the group most open to the charge of double loyalty is the Canadian Jewish community, which does put Israel second only to Canada in its loyalty and affection.
Love of Israel is natural for the Canadian Jewish community. Israel is the only Jewish state, the only democratic state in the Mideast, and allowed Jews to survive the Holocaust and flourish.
In the present crisis, the Canadian Jewish community can't help identifying with the Israelis — they worry about Hezbollah and Hamas being the new Nazis out to get the Jewish people.
The Canadian Jewish community is certainly suspicious of the left in Canada and those in the liberal media that say Israel has overreacted in this crisis.
The Canadian Jewish community shares Harper's disdain for both the Canadian left and the Canadian liberal media, and it admires the prime minister's defence of Israel.
The problem is that every time there has been a crisis involving Israel, there has also been an increase in anti-Semitism in Canada. When former prime minister Joe Clark decided in 1979 to move Canada's Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there was a flurry of letters to newspaper editors about "pushy Jews" and "Jewish double loyalty."
In the present crisis, anti-Israel letters to the editor and the liberal media's negative response to Israel have been sharper and more bitter than they were in 1979. Israel is now being criticized for killing civilians. Few in the liberal media note that Hezbollah is hiding behind civilians in Lebanon.
There will sooner or later be a backlash against the love for Israel shown by Canadian Jews. As in 1979, there will be talk of the community having double loyalties. Canadian Jews will be accused of being clannish and un-Canadian.
Already some in the liberal media overplay the plight of the Palestinians, while showing little sympathy for Israel under attack by Hezbollah and Hamas in cahoots with Syria and Iran.
All this is a bit ironic. No other ethnic group has embraced Canada with the fervour and steadfast loyalty of Canadian Jews. They voted Liberal because Pierre Trudeau made Jews the top judges and senior mandarins in Canada. Trudeau gave Canadian Jews their place in the sun.
But Trudeau himself as a young man had no loyalty to an embattled Britain during the Second World War and didn't give a fig about the rabid anti-Semitism of Quebec and Nazi Germany. The young Trudeau was loyal only to Quebec and wanted a Quebec state. He had no loyalty to Canada at all.
Double loyalty an issue in Canada
Quebec has always been a double loyalty province. We must not forget that accusations of double loyalty has been a tool of Canadian racism in Quebec and in Canada for years.
Double loyalty charges interned the Japanese-Canadian community in the Second World War. Not a single case of sedition by a Japanese-Canadian was ever recorded.
In Western Canada, Ukrainians were interned for their supposed loyalty to the Austrian emperor, Canada's enemy in the First World War.
In the 1930s, many German-Canadians and Italian-Canadians were interned for their loyalty to Fascist Germany and Fascist Italy.
Times of crisis make Canadians forget that Canada has a British monarch and is certainly pro-British and pro Anglo-Saxon. To accuse Anglo-Saxons in Canada of having double loyalties would seem a foolish exercise.
Double loyalty is at the very core of Canadian institutions. It is sometimes difficult to avoid the double loyalty pitfall.
But Harper defends a diverse Canada. Harper also defends Israel as being the victim of wide and sustained terrorism. The war in Afghanistan is part of that war, but Harper does not tolerate double loyalties on that subject.
Sad to say, but the double loyalty charges against the Jewish community have begun. Anti-Israel feelings and anti-Semitism are a potent mixed force.
The double loyalty charge against Canadian Jews is nothing but pure racism.
The prime minister already recognizes the dangers in all this and is aware that the charge of double loyalty is often a racist argument.
Harper has called for a diverse Canada, and knows that all immigrant Canadians, new and old, have an old country they like and admire.
The love of Canadian Jews for Israel is special, since the country is not a home country but the only Jewish state in the world.
Canadian Jews are good Canadians and double loyalty is not their game.
The cries of double loyalty and Israel's role in the present crisis are false cries made by false Canadian patriots trying to spread dissension in Canada, the peaceable kingdom.
Jewish Canadians ping!
Despicable bias.
This 'double loyalty' thing is tough. First as an American I think that no one should be allowed to have dual citizenship. You are either an American citizen or not, period. Second you will never have people with out feeling to their ancestral home or their racial group but I do believe you could modify this to a large extent by insisting that as an American you speak English and that all government business be conducted in English. This would at least give us a common language with which to converse and trade our thoughts and ideals.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. also
2006israelwar or WOT
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No dual problem for Saudi-Canadians? Iranian-Canadians? Egyptian-Canadians? Syrian-Canadians? Kuwaiti-Canadians? Dubai-Canadians? UAE-Canadians? Bahraini-Canadians? Sudanese-Canadians? Yemenite-Canadians? Jordanian-Canadians? Palestinian-Canadians? Chechyn-Canadians? Algerian-Canadians? Moroccan-Canadians? Tunisian-Canadians?
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
No, because ISLAM ALWAYS COMES FIRST!
Please send me a FReepmail to get on or off this Canada ping list.
I doubt the author is addressing dual citizenship, simply Canadians who are Jewish.
Those guys arrested in Mississauga had a major dual nationality problem.
Did you know that the highest percentage of dual citizens in the U.S. are US/Canadian?
You beat me to it! That jumped right out, didn't it.
Harper wasn't even in office when that war began.
The real question of dual loyalty is whether the Canadian Liberal Party can continue to be simultaneously loyal to the West and to Islam.
Larry the burnt-out beatnick never fails to open with a lie. A significant number of Lebanese-Canadians have been singing Harper's praises since he took his anti-terrorist stand.
I didn't know for sure but it does not surprise me. Got to have a place to run to and/or a place to retire other than the 'S' hole they have 'loyalty' to.
What about the most obvious double-loyalty - French Canadians?
It was an education in Jewish culture and a wonderfully romantic interlude. Contrary to the stereotypical dating stories I had been warned with, I found that her family was brilliantly intelligent, warm and really comical at times. I loved them.
I also educated myself by attending several public presentations by then living survivors of the holocaust.
The upshot is that I believe that the culture of the Jews is one which celebrates life and its creation. The culture of Sumer, ie from Sumeria and Babylon essentially is a culture of nihilism and death. After all Shiite Islam is little different than the society created by the Sumerians in their worship of Baal and Ishtar. Indeed the crescent of Ishtar adorns many Muslim flags today. It is a reminder to Muslims that feminine creative life needs to be suppressed and controlled. It is institutionalized nihilism.
An over simplification would be perhaps to say that Jewish civilization possesses a philosophey of "life makers" while the Shia are dedicated to a philosophy of "life takers" and supression.
As the world shrinks, the Shia women come under the Western influence which appeals to them as women to be life makers, rather than to simply bear children whose most ultimate expression would be to become a martyr for Islam. This is Israel's greatest offence, and the greatest offense of the West. Therefore the Shia seek to destroy or subjugate the rest of the world in an insane attempt to seek a refuge they now cannot construct in isolation from the rest of the world, as they had done in the past.
This war is one of a clash between civilizations, and for anyone to think otherwise is just plain dumb.
In Canada we have a multitude of femino-nazis and Gays who believe that civilization according to Shiism is suitable for them and all Canadians. Our liberal socialists agree with them. They too are life takers, not life makers.
That is why the charges by liberal socialists of "dual loyalty" are so laughable. They come from people who believe in a Utopia of life takers, an oxymoronic approach.
These Canadian anti-Jewish life takers are to be mocked and ridiculed by Canadians as they well should.What Utopia could possibly be founded on militant nihilism? Any Utopian approach is doomed to failure anyway, becuase it necessarily restricts the individual freedoms which define human happiness. Ordinary Canadians are life makers and always will be, and now ordinary Canadians see quite beyond the horrors to which Canadian liberal socialists had been leading them nihilistically since Trudeau. They are dismissed, and we anxiously await for them just to crawl into a corner and die, silently.
I had no idea that Canadian Jews were suspicious of the Left and of the liberal media. If this is so I am glad, but I believe the Jewish community of Canada has been traditionally left-of-center.
Canada is much more anti-Semitic than the United States (there were riots in Quebec during WWII by French Canadians who wanted nothing to do with fighting for Britain, and Alberta was actually governed for a while by the anti-Semitic Social Credit Party).
I do wish people would stop referring to anti-Semitism as "racism" (a word that conjures up a flag-burning Sixties hippie attacking "like, racism, man!"). Anti-Semitism is simply resentment of G-d's election of Israel . . . but then people would have to talk about G-d, and people don't like doing that. Ironically, it is considered especially inappropriate to associate G-d with the Jewish People, the people G-d chose. Are they not the archtypal "victims of religion?"
The primary loyalty of each and every human being is to the G-d Who created him. Loyalty to G-d comes before all other loyalties. And since the Jewish people have been historically a Theocratic government-in-exile in which the Rabbinate had civil authority (the idea of Jews as a "religious denomination" is a modern one) insistence that Jews place loyalty to another country before what G-d has commanded of them is very tricky.
Secular states made up of various religions are a relatively recent phenomenon in history. At any rate, to place country before G-d is idolatry. Too many "G-d, family, country" conservatives imply that G-d is a projection or totem of the family/country rather than an objective Truth.
Fundamentalism and conservatism do not always mesh (contrary to popular belief). I am most definitely a religious fundamentalist, which means I object to G-d sublimated to any other loyalty or loyalty to G-d being made use of for another reason.
I don't want to get into a religious debate but I never think about loyalty and God at the same time. I see loyalty as something that can be shifted (if done correctly and I'm not going to go into detail here). Whereas my relationship with God is not about loyalty it just is.
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