I’ve always revered the power of the mind and just how much knowledge it is capable of storing – even though at my current age I find myself remembering more of my past than what I had for supper last night, or even what day this is. Case in point: deboarding the SS Homeric in Le Havre, France, seeing my father for the first time in six months, and starting out on a trip to Zweibrucken, Germany, where my brother and I would spend the next four yours of our childhood incarceration being “Air Force brats”.
Even during what was an approximate seven hour trip, there were many things to be learned and absorbed in our exposure to cultures not unlike Canada’s, but still “different”; for instance, one requires only a tree, even if close to the roadway and easily visible by all passing traffic, upon which to relieve oneself during bladder calls (my mother’s first lesson), that French chefs don’t like clients who ask for salt and pepper before even tasting the food (my mother, again, herself an awesome cook, albeit slightly intimidated by the chef holding a meat cleaver in his right hand – not to mention my father making the experience even more traumatic by laughing, then interceding by standing between the two “combatants”), then my own experience upon passing through Saarbrucken, noticing the double-sized Olympic pool without water on our left, and wondering why it wasn’t filled with water, as it was already pushing 30° C outside.
What I remember most from that experience is seeing the bemused yet concerned look on my father’s face as he explained that it wasn’t a swimming pool, per se, but rather an enclosure that during World War II had been regularly filled with sulphuric acid to destroy corpses of Hitler’s “enemies of the state.”
At ten years of age, that’s a fairly strong “learning experience” not readily forgotten nor the lesson’s message allowed to be tainted by so-called societal “authorities” such as the Orthodox priests have until recently often referring to the Jewish people as “Christ killers” nor teachers such as Eckville, Alberta’s former mayor James Keegstra, whose Holocaust denials and raison d’etre for their inclusion in his History lessons allowed him to punish his students if they did not echo his sentiments.
Some readers of my Op-ed musings column may find that much of the sentiment laid out in this column they may have seen brought up in earlier pieces, particularly in November of 2023 when Hamas extremists decided to slaughter some 1,200 settlers in a small northern outpost of Israel, and taking another 250 or so victims as hostages in order to prevent retaliation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) during their retreat to Gaza, then disappear into their tunnels and underground “safe houses”, often strategically located near hospitals or schools that would make any counterattack by Israel troublesome by its potential to kill innocent women and children seeking such facilities as their own safe haven.
Now, for those who never read my November 2023 musings, you may well now be perceiving me as some rabid supporter of Israeli counter attempts to defend its nation from terrorism – which I am, but not in the context of how most people would interpret same – because after 18 months of watching this melodrama unfold on the world stage, I am still of the belief that this crisis could have been resolved much earlier with less bloodshed had the Israeli armed forces had been led by the generals demonstrating their resolve during the Six Day War, as opposed to the current Prime Minister.
Why rephrase my 2023 sentiments in this manner, when it’s obvious that my “point of view” has only been hardened by the chain of events that have left this humanitarian contest in a state of it having too many sub-plots, not unlike the virus-like renditions of “The Real Housewives of…” wherever – maybe even Prince Albert. That might have something to do with the fact that I have yet to see the “valiant” Hamas pilots of their civil defense forces man their Spitfires to confront the latest Messerschmidt rendition of modern aeronautical creation in their mad bombardment are wreaking havoc more on innocent women and having already killed more than five times the number of children in Gaza when compared to the 1,200 slaughtered in the original and cowardly Hamas attack in Israel.
Has such an incident occurred as happened in 1967, military leaders would have minimized the air force role in this scuffle and sent battle-hardened and well-armed soldiers into Gaza, moved the innocents aside, and rooted out the Hamas “martyrs” in their underground hideaways pretending to be soldiers of Allah, thus ending this charade. But it didn’t happen that way, did it, because Gaza chose a government they thought to be the lesser corrupted in 2006, and even though there’s not been another “election” since then, our right-wing parties can still pretend that all Gazans “support” Hamas, all while Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump are drafting plans to turn both Gaza and the West Bank into another Monaco.
Why bring this up now? Well, for starters, I’m tired of friends who have genuine humanitarian concerns as to feelings for Israel and Gazans in unison are being bombarded with social media posts proclaiming that start with the phrase, “You don’t understand…”, only to end in some polemic maintaining that Israel has some God-given “right” to defend itself from terrorist threats which NO ONE is denying exist.
When even the Israeli public AND IDF forces being constantly recalled into service are demanding that Netanyahu’s Cabinet change direction in how this campaign should truly be fought, I am but one Canadian who with many others believe that the joint communication recently issued by France, Britain and Canada are in their “It’s about bloody well time” mode of urgent necessity to be called for by our still sane leaders.
