This is Nothing a Sheeny Curse Wouldn't Fix

Antonia Zerbisias tips her anti-Semitic hand

This post should probably start off with an apology to any Jewish readers -- or just Jews in general -- if they're offended by the title. Please forgive.

Recently, Toronto Star columnist and blogger Antonia Zerbisias sparked another blogosphere controversy when she twittered the following:

"MP Irwin Cotler's children join IDF. http://bit.ly/1Ttsq0 Which country are you loyal to, sir?"

Irwin Cotler, as Kay notes, is known around the world for his work fighting anti-Semitism. He has also been instrumental in highlighting Canada's past failure to detect and deport Nazi war criminals.

As many Canadians would also know, Zerbisias has been far from quiet on the topic of Israel. Recent screeds against Israel include a column applauding a Toronto LGBT group protesting "Israeli Apartheid" (despite the fact that Israel has a far superior record in regard to its treatment of homosexuals than any other Middle Eastern country) and applause of the insipid boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival over its "city to city" program with Tel Aviv.

So it's clear that Zerbisias is a critic of Israel. There's actually nothing wrong with that -- there's plenty of room for constructive criticism of any state, especially Israel.

But to target Irwin Cotler and challenge his patriotism because his children -- who are dual Canadian-Israeli citizens, by virtue of Cotler's marriage to an Israeli woman -- is far, far beyond the pale.

To impugn Cotler's citizenship based on the actions of his children is nothing short of irresponsible.

It could even be interpreted as a form of neo-McCarthyism, as Dr John Baglow accuses Kay of in noting that Zerbisias' comments at least reinforce the impressions of Zerbisias' well-known anti-Zionism.

The problem for Zerbisias and her thinly-veiled threat to sue another blogger (who has actually taken quite a trip over the matter) is that her rhetoric seems to suggest that her anti-Zionism has bled into anti-Semitism.

As Kay notes, Zerbisias recently noted, on her Facebook page, that "it doesn't seem possible for Jewish people to have a RATIONAL discussion about Israel!"

So it would seem that Zerbisias insists that Israel is the problem. But more than that, she infers, the real problem is the Jews.

As the aforementioned Backseat Blogger notes, accusations of mixed loyalties have often been levied against Jews.

At a certain point, a spade just has to be called a spade. Zerbisias' criticisms of Israel themselves are far short of malignant. But when mixed with the kind of rhetoric she's indulged herself in, it becomes clear that there are darker motivations underlying her criticism.

Which brings one back to the Sheeny Curse.

Who knows? Perhaps Antonia Zerbisias would be surprissed to learn that the Sheeny Curse doesn't actually exist. Stranger things have been published in the pages of the Star -- often by Zerbisias herself.

Khadr Case Reaches Definitive Turning Point

Guantanamo interrogation tapes having a profound effect

On The Root of All Evil, Lewis Black ruled that YouTube is, in fact, the root of all evil.

In a show comparing YouTube to pornography, Black determined that YouTube has had such a decisively negative impact on western civilization -- transforming us into the words of advocate Patton Oswalt into a "country of Caligulas".

But if YouTube has really had such a negative impact on civilization, it's hard to overlook some of the good it's done as well. When Robert Dzienkaski succumbed to his injuries after being excessively and mercilessly tasered by airport security, it was YouTube that ultimately brought the outrage to the world's attention. When University of Florida student Andrew Meyer was tasered for asking Senator John Kerry a question that somebody didn't like, it was YouTube that prevented the story from being swept under a carpet.

Now, it's YouTube that has brought the severe psychological stress being experiened by Omar Khadr unignorably to the world's attention. And, just as with these and countless other previous cases, YouTube has had an abrupt effect on the case.

Such is the case with a recent National Post editorial in which Jonathon Kay has finally come around to the thinking of those who agree Omar Khadr should be repatriated to Canada:

"As I write this, at 1 p. m. on Tuesday, piteous video images from Omar Khadr's interrogation at Guantanamo Bay are not only the #1 news item on the National Post Web site, but also the lead item on BBC News and USA Today. Millions of people are now wondering why Canada's government has acquiesced-- and as the video shows, even participated -- in the unconscionable treatment of a blubbering boy-soldier.

As someone who otherwise considers himself one of the War on Terror's noisiest Canadian cheerleaders, I submit that the bleeding hearts are right on this one: Omar Khadr needs to come home.

Here's why:

Omar Khadr was a child soldier

During the carnage that gripped Sierra Leone in the 1990s, the most terrifying crimes often were committed by gangs of children who'd been abducted by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Isolated from their families, and stripped of any sort of moral compass, these child brigades were renowned for such monstrous acts as hacking off the legs and arms of defenceless villagers. When the RUF's war with the government ended, many of these children were assimilated back into civilized society. No one -- in the West, at least -- blamed them for what they had done. As in Sri Lanka, Congo and other parts of the world where children are abducted and forced into combat, it is universally recognized that child soldiers are not morally culpable for their actions in the same way as adults. That's why the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal didn't prosecute child soldiers -- it prosecuted the monsters who exploited them. Can someone please tell me why this principle has not been applied to Omar Khadr, who was all of 15 when he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Christopher Speer of Delta Force in 2002?

What makes the case for Khadr especially strong is that he was essentially recruited into combat from birth--by his own flesh-and-blood, no less. The true monster in the Khadr narrative is not Omar, but his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaeda lieutenant who moved his whole family from Canada to central Asia so they could share in the glory of jihad.

As a nine-year-old, Omar drank in his father's Islamist propaganda -- spending months by his father's bed as the jihadi patriarch lay hunger-striking against Pakistani authorities, who'd arrested him on terrorism charges in 1995. Following 9/11, Ahmed (who, thankfully, was dispatched to his celestial virgins in 2003) enlisted his son as a sort of sidekick and maidservant to a jihadi cell hiding out in the Afghan outback. It was in this capacity that Omar tagged along with the pack of terrorists who would eventually meet their maker in the June 27, 2002, firefight that claimed the life of Sergeant Speer.

I have been reading a lot of tough talk on the blogs about how Khadr should be "waterboarded until he stops crying" and such. I wonder if those same hard hearts could tell me how they would have turned out if they'd been told --literally, since birth--about the necessity of jihad and the beauty of martyrdom; if, since their early days, they'd been propagandized into believing that the West was waging a genocidal war against Muslims; and that military resistance was the only path of survival. Are we to expect some sort of inborn moral sense to activate -- to tell us that everything being told to us by our own parents is wrong -- even before one is old enough to shave?

I know about 20,000 former child soldiers in Sierra Leone who could tell you the answer to that question. And unlike Khadr, not one of them stands accused of "Violation of the Law of War."

We don't know that Omar Khadr killed anyone

The U.S. government's line on the events of June 27, 2002 -- reported uncritically, for the most part, by the Canadian media -- is that a cowardly Khadr popped up from the rubble in the aftermath of a firefight in the Afghan hinterland, killing a U. S. medic who was looking to treat wounded survivors. In fact, the grenade that killed Speer (who was fighting, by necessity, as a solider, whatever his training as a medic) was thrown when the four-hour long battle was still hot. And it is far from clear who threw it: Contrary to initial accounts, there was a second jihadi still alive when the fatal grenade was thrown -- and since Khadr was badly wounded at the time, the second militant (who later died) is the more promising suspect.

(We might also dispense with the idea that Speer was on a mission of mercy: Post-battle testimony from his battlefield companions suggests they were -- quite understandably --more interested in shooting the wounded than healing them.)

My own view is that Speer may well have been killed by a grenade thrown by one of his comrades. (Reports from the battle suggest that grenades were flying thick and fast from both sides.) As the Pat Tillman scandal shows, the U. S. military sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to cover up friendly-fire deaths. And in the Khadr case, his U. S. Department of Defense attorney claims, there is at least one instance in which a lieutenant-colonel retroactively amended and backdated a battlefield report to buttress the case against Khadr.

Even if Khadr did kill Sergeant Speer, he did so as a soldier, not a terrorist

There's little doubt that Ahmed Khadr was training his sons to be terrorists -- the sort of people who blow up buses and restaurants, or who wear civilian clothing as they lie in wait to detonate explosives under vehicle convoys. But what Omar Khadr did on June 27, 2002, wasn't terrorism. It was participation in a military engagement -- a fact that can't be changed merely by slapping a label like "unlawful combatant" on him.

Moreover, it was a military engagement fought on American terms: After U. S. soldiers sealed off the village encampment housing Khadr's cell, they prosecuted the siege with about 100 troops, some of them Special Forces, as well as Apache helicopters, F-18 Hornets and A-10 Warthogs. You can say that Khadr was fighting in an evil cause when he was captured, but you can't say that he was preying on the defenceless.

Even if you don't buy anything I've written above, Khadr's treatment still ranks as abominable

Let us assume that Omar Khadr actually threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Speer, that he did so as a cold-blooded killer, not as a soldier, and that his status as a child combatant is irrelevant -- in short, that Omar Khadr is a murderer. Well then, how do we treat murderers in Western countries? Answer: We put them in jail. We don't beat them, or move them from cell to cell every three hours, or terrify them with threats of pedophilic rape, or deny them appropriate medical care -- all punishments that Khadr has endured -- a litany of abuse so traumatic that, according to one piteous detail among many, he took to falling asleep at Guantanamo desperately hugging a Mickey Mouse book brought to him as a gift.

In the space of six years of incarceration, Khadr has endured more brutality than any ordinary jailbird would endure in 60. And if he had any intelligence value to his American captors, it surely has been exhausted. Please bring Omar Khadr home. If he is to face justice, let it be in Canada."

Naturally, those who disgustingly insist Khadr should be "waterboarded until he stops crying" will consider Jonathon Kay way off the reservation on this one.

But he's right. Whether it's to be put on trial for his alleged crimes or reassimilated back into society (but absolutely not before his demobilization can be assured, Omar Khadr must be repatriated back to Canada.

Which makes the government's insistence that they can do no such thing all the more unacceptable. In time, as the Khadr tapes continue to make their rounds via the mainstream media and YouTube, this position will become utternly untenable.

Even the alleged arch-conservatives at the National Post are beginning to see that.

Dumbing Down the Abortion "Debate"

Jonathon Kay takes us inside the pro-abortion camp

In an op/ed article published on the National Post's Full Comment website, Jonathon Kay takes his readers on a journey to the University of Toronto's "Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R vs Morgentaler".

It isn't always a pretty picture.

First off, one may have expected that such a symposium would mark a valuable opportunity for pro-abortion (an infinitely more accurate description than "pro-choice") activists to refine their arguments for the future.

Yet Kay encountered a very different scene, one that he notes is very reminiscent of what passes for "debate" regarding abortion across the spectra of interested parties:

"Abortion is the one subject on which otherwise tolerant, open-minded people cannot agree to disagree. If you truly believe that life begins at conception, then what happens in Canada’s abortion clinics and wards approximately 100,000 times every year is, quite literally, a species of genocide. If you take the opposite view — that a fetus is a component of its female host without legal rights or human identity — then your opponents will strike you as nothing but ignorant misogynists. That is why we have precious little “debate” on the subject of abortion. Instead, we have sloganeering by two distinct and mutually hostile ideological tribes."

To this end, Kay is absolutely correct. The rhetorically-charged perceptions borne by the most militant of those on either margin may seem outragenously crazed by the measure of a rational person, but one has to keep in mind that these are not rational people.

"On Friday, Canada’s pro-choice movement convened what could best be described as a convention of tribal elders — middle-aged and elderly champions of the movement, including Henry Morgentaler, whose victory in the Supreme Court of Canada served to dismantle the entire criminal-law regime surrounding abortion 20 years ago today.

The University of Toronto Law School’s “Symposium to Mark the 20th Anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler” was an odd event. On one hand, it was organized by, and sponsored by, the law school’s own faculty — and so took on the superficial trappings of a normal academic symposium. But since not one of the 15 abortion doctors, scholars, writers and politicians who spoke took a pro-life stand, or even dealt in any serious way with pro-life arguments, the event was actually more of a pro-choice pep rally. On the few occasions when the existence of a pro-life camp was even acknowledged, it was invariably dismissed as a cadre of retrograde zealots plotting to undermine the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

For these true believers, opposition to abortion is a mental defect, not a bona fide policy position. Osgoode Hall Law School professor Shelley Gavigan, the most militant and stereotypically feminist of the conference panelists, declared categorically that “The unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice — and that voice is hers.” The fact that some of her students didn’t see things her way only meant that “I have some work to do on the pedagogical front.”"

Or, conversely, that fact could be seen as proof that there are, as much as Gavigan would surely prefer otherwise, people afoot who can recognize abortion as a real issue that affects real people.

It could just so happen to be proof that Gavigan's premise is inherently flawed. If, as she asserts, pregnant mothers and unborn children do indeed speak with one voice, that would seem to be an implicit admission that abortion is an issue that deals with not merely one body -- but two: the mother and her child. The two may indeed speak with one voice. But by the same token, the unborn child doesn't really have a voice yet -- this is one of the handicaps of being unborn.

Furthermore, who is Gavigan to suggest that, in a matter pertaining to the life and death of the child, that the unborn child shouldn't have a say in the matter?

Unfortuantely, as morally satisfying as the certain inability of Gavigan and those who think like her to answer this question would be, it does make a real abortion debate unbearably complex.

Then again, what could be more unbearably complex than moral ruminations over the end of -- what at least would be -- a human life?

Perhaps there are good reasons why pro-abortion activists seem so unprepared to answer these questions.

"CBC.ca writer Heather Mallick likewise expressed approval of student associations that cut off funding to pro-life groups — because “the rights of Canadian women “are not up for debate.” She also theorized that pro-life stirrings in the mainstream media were mostly the result of over-the-hill male editors seeking to control through repression the lithesome bodies that, in their decrepitude, they could no longer enjoy in the bedroom. And Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett put up a slide entitled “Role of an elected official,” which declared that politicians have “no right” to oppose abortion — because “That is the responsibility of women.”"

Once again, these pro-abortion zealots simply drag up a host of philisophical quandries.

If the rights of Canadian women are not up for debate, why are the rights of the unborn child? Does Mallick really want to suggest that Human Rights is a zero-sum game, in which unborn children can only make gains at the expense of their expecting (or even unintending) mothers?

And who is Carolyn Bennet to suggest that politicians have no right to oppose abortion? Is the right to an opinion on the matter dependent upon support of abortion?

There are significant portions of the Canadian population who oppose abortion as well. Are they unentitled to their opinion? Are they unentitled to support political candidates who support their views?

Isn't Canada a Democracy?

These are the wrong questions for the pro-abortion movement to get stuck trying to answer. Yet they seem to be the questions they're content to provoke.

Fortuantely for them, however, they do have the wisdom to (largely) make such arguments in private, far away from the prying ears of anti-abortion activists (a label infinitely more accurate than "pro-life"), where such questions won't be asked of them.

"If anyone in the audience disagreed with any of this, you wouldn’t have known it. When the time came for questions, there were a few fawning queries, but no sparks. The intimidating-looking plainclothes security fellow who’s apparently been hired to hustle overeager pro-lifers out of the room never had to stir from his seat.

And yet, beneath the veneer of tribal sisterly celebration, I did manage to detect a strain of underlying tension. It came out on those few occasions when one of the speakers made oblique allusion to that taboo question in the pro-choice camp: How late is too late?

This should be a question of special interest to anyone who’s managed to escape the tribal polarization of the abortion debate. Squeezed between the two tribes are a few of us (including me) who think a woman should have a broad right to abort her fetus when it is an insentient bundle of cells, but are appalled by the fact that Canada — alone among industrialized nations — permits “socially motivated” abortion in the second and even third trimesters. Yet in a full day of presentations purporting to comprehensively evaluate the state of abortion in this country, no one at this symposium took on this one disturbing, and truly unique, feature of our country’s legal landscape."

This is probably for good reason: the current lack of limits on when a fetus may be aborted is a debate topic on which, frankly, the pro-abortion lobby doesn't stand a rat's ass of a chance.

"Even in the Q&A, the issue came up only twice — and then, only obliquely. The first came when an audience member bemoaned the fact that most doctors in Western nations wouldn’t perform abortions after 24 weeks — and asked, with apparently genuine curiosity, why this was so. The panelist who answered, National Abortion Federation director Dawn Fowler, refused to supply a reason, merely demurring that “It will be interesting to have the physicians appearing later today [as speakers] comment on that.” (None did.) A few hours later, a male student rose during the Q&A to broach the issue indirectly with legendary Canadian abortion doctor Garson Romalis. The student asked whether late-term unborn children should be supplied pain-killers as part of the abortion procedure. Romalis (who, by way of background, has survived two murder attempts by pro-life fanatics) dismissed any evidence that aborted fetuses feel pain, and with it the entire issue, in a single sentence. And that was it."

On the particular question of whether or not aborted fetuses feel pain -- or at what stage they would -- Romalis seems to have recieved a free pass. The factual science on the matter is incredibly difficult to tell apart from the rhetoric on the matter. (Although there are some prime examples of some remarkably specious claims afoot.)

But the most interesting thing about late-term abortions is that, in Canada, they may not be such a serious concern (perhaps even due to possible ethical concerns on behalf of those doctors who would be performing such abortions).

"The interesting thing is that several of the symposium speakers — most notably, University of Toronto Law School professor Joanna Erdman — vigorously assured the audience that very few abortions take place in Canada “for social reasons” beyond 20 weeks, and none beyond 24 weeks.

No doubt, the data show this to be true. But why was this fact so important as to deserve emphasis? Similarly, why did Gavigan take such pains to dismiss anecdotes of women having abortions for capricious reasons (e.g., looking good in a bikini on an upcoming vacation) as “preposterous misogynistic fables.” If it is really true that “the unborn child and the pregnant mother speak with one voice,” then presumably they have the right to assume a voice that is selfish and vain. If the “dominant ideology of the unborn child” is nothing but a misogynistic construct invented by patriarchal moralists, why does it matter if that so-called unborn child weighs one pound — or five? Why strike such defensive postures against a issue that no one in the room would even discuss?"

Well, Gavigan may have dismissed such anecdotes because they are just that -- anecdotes. Perhaps when such women can be convinced to make such comments on the public record they would be considered legitimate fodder for public debate. In the meantime, they're simply stories, which may or (more importantly) may not be true.

Who would know?

Perhaps the seeming percieved necessity to address such matters is indicative that these may be more than merely stories. Then again, perhaps the American fascination with conspiracy theories suggests that maybe the CIA really did order the trigger pulled on John F Kennedy.

Anyone rational care to take that one on?

Didn't think so.

"The answer to this last question, I think, is that these women are not as doctrinaire as they pretend to be. Within their own minds, they do wrestle with these important moral questions. But when in public, none of them feel comfortable exploring them. Locked in what they feel to be a tribal culture war against pro-lifers, they allow themselves no nuance. That is why on Friday, by unspoken agreement, they eschewed the opportunity for real intellectual give and take on the one fundamental aspect of the abortion issue that has needed to be addressed since January 28, 1988, and instead focused on self-congratulation, paranoia and sisterly bonding. It is no exaggeration to say that the middle-aged women behind the podium at this conference are the reason we have no abortion law: Any stirring of legislative action arouses among them such tribal war fury as to send politicians scurrying.

As for the next generation, I am more hopeful.

The Gavigan-Mallick-Bennett generation came by their militancy honestly: by witnessing the truly Byzantine and unconscionably arbitrary barriers to early-term abortion faced by Canadian women in the pre-Morgentaler era. They also bore witness to the hideous medical carnage caused by self-induced and back-alley abortions (a phenomenon Romalis described in detail in what was easily the most powerful presentation of Friday’s symposium). For these pro-choice advocates, there will never be compromise. Behind every law, they will see the hand of the old patriarchy.

But the same isn’t true for today’s 20- and 30-something Canadian women, who have grown up in a Canada where accessible, state-funded abortion is generally taken for granted. Perhaps this new generation will be the one to strike the sort of proper moral balance reflected in the legislation of most European countries. In 10 years, I like to think, I’ll be attending a “Symposium to Mark the 30th Anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler” where the participants will be trading not only slogans, but morally serious ideas as well."

Perhaps the Gavigan-Mallick-Bennet generation did comeby their militancy honestly. However, they've also passed that militancy along to the next generation, of whom Kay says he is more hopeful.

Yet, that same generation has been indoctrinated into the militant pro-abortion dogma since a much younger age. As is the case with all such things, the effects would be much harder to overcome, and even if they were, to what end?

Does Kay (or anyone else, for that matter) honestly believe that the abortion debate will ever be subject to compromise? Or even that it should?

Frankly, the only compromise what will ever bear productive fruit in regards to the abortion debate will be a compromise regarding the terms of debate. Other than that, the specific questions at hand in the abortion debate -- the rights of women, the rights of unborn children, term limits on abortion, post-abortion issues, and an infinite myriad of others -- are all simply too complex to ever simply "meet in the middle".

Abortion is a hopelessly complex issue. The solutions will either be hopelessly complex, or non-existent. There is simply too little middle ground, and too little will to debate to fill it.