News & Views

It’s odd that the Israel-Palestine conflict always calls up talk about solutions rather than resolutions, as if some moral puzzle bedeviled the future of the Palestinians and Israel. Perhaps this is because no state has come into existence amid such paroxysms of morality. Times change, and the moralizing about Israel is now obsolescent. The 20th Century agonies of genocide and dispossession that initiated the conflict have begun to lose their bearing on the course of events. Even the post-1967 debates about settlement and occupation are, whether we like to admit it or not, settled. The injustice of the occupation, the aggressive cruelty of the settlements, Israel’s lack of interest in peace – these now pass almost for established facts in the mainstream media. Abbas’ appearance at the UN simply highlighted how Israel is running out of friends, not to mention credibility. As for the United States government, there are other facts to be faced: that the executive branch has been against the occupation and the settlements from their beginning, and that the United States Congress, the very motherland of Zionist hysteria, is, for all the damage it does, making a fool of itself. Even this hysteria will abate somewhat as the Arab Spring and the increasing entrenchment of Muslim and Middle Eastern people in American society alter the negative stereotypes of ‘Arabs’. As for Canada, the more it apes the US Congress on Israel, the more ridiculous it will appear on the international stage.