2024-03 Israel

Israel 48,

May 5, 2024,

Hi Everyone,

In Sept. 1973, I had just returned from my 2nd year in medical school in France. I was standing in front of the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah morning. It was a good place to meet some of my old friends and perhaps to meet some girls. I certainly had no intention of going inside as that would have been against my ‘religion’. A gentleman of about 40-45 years of age approached me and asked me ‘what are you doing here?’ Me; “same as you, standing at the corner watching all the girls go by”. Him; ‘you should be in Israel’. (The Yom Kippur war was going on) Me; ‘why’. Him; ‘you should be there fighting for Israel’. My father was standing beside me and over heard the discussion. My father; ‘ tell me, you are the same age as me’. Him; ‘so what has that have to do with anything’. My father; ‘you were never in the army and if you were you certainly didn’t go overseas’. Him; staring at my father ‘hmm’. My father; ‘it’s always the same with these guys, always willing to send someone else’s boy, forgot to go when it was his turn’. Him; ‘huff and puff’ and walks away. Me… proud of my father!!

From this story we can easily draw the parallel with what is going on in Gaza today. The 3 leaders of Hamas are living safely in Qatar in luxury. They are multi billionaires who made their fortunes on the backs of innocent and poorly informed Gazans. You don’t see them in Gaza leading the charge. It is easy for them to say ‘keep fighting, your sacrifices will be rewarded in the after life’. ‘Always willing to send someone else’s boy…’ Sinwar surrounds himself with kidnapped Israelis, using them as human shields. He knows that he is safe while he pushes his troops forward. The Hamas fighters use their women and children as shields. They hide their artillery in mosques, schools and hospitals. They fire and launch rockets with impunity and complain about international law when the Israelis fire back saying that the mosques, schools and hospitals are under attack.

Sar-El is an organization that usually sends 4000 volunteers to Israel to work on IDF bases taking the place of soldiers. This year they have sent 40,000 volunteers. Over 50-100,000 volunteers have come to Israel to help Israel defend herself. 30% of these people are Christians. Non of these people are involved in fighting. As for the Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, it is very easy to demonstrate in front of synagogues and scare elderly men and women. It is very easy to demonstrate in front of Jewish schools and scare 12 year old children. It is easy to demonstrate in front of a building at McGill called the Bronfman Building. Has a Muslim ever been refused entry to the management program because of his religion? Is there a Mohammed Building at McGill? The same is true about the demonstration that took place in front of the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto that was founded by the Jewish population in Toronto. Has a Muslim ever been refused treatment at the hospital? Has a Muslim ever been refused a position as an employee at the hospital? A quick survey of the patients and the staff would immediately prove the contrary. Why have 50-100,000 volunteers not come to either Gaza or the West Bank to help their good friends the Palestinians? It is true that 7 workers were killed delivering food in Gaza. Unfortunately this is collateral damage that occurs in any war. The difference is that if you heard the interview given by the wife of one of the victims, you would have understood that these workers were highly paid workers who went into a war zone knowing the dangers. They were not in any sense of the word ‘volunteers’.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators are now camping out on campuses in the US and Canada. They want the universities to follow the BDS movement. They want the universities to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, as well as companies and universities that do business with Israel. But, are they willing to do this themselves or would this be too much trouble to ask? Tel Aviv is the 2nd largest IT development city in the world next to Silicone Valley. Will they no longer use Waze to find their way around? Will they no longer buy Dell Computers because of the inventor? Will they not use USBs, an Israeli invention? Will they not drink Soda Stream, an Israeli company, that was purchased by Pepsi? Will they not drink Pepsi products? Will they not go to Hollywood movies because all of the major companies were founded by Jews and everyone knows that ‘Hollywood is controlled by ‘Jews’? Will they divest themselves from purchasing Nvidia products, many of which are developed in Tel Aviv? Will they no longer play ‘Israeli developed games’ and avoid AI? Jews represent 0.2% of the world population but have received over 22% of Nobel Prizes and are represented in all categories. This is 110 times what you would expect given their numbers. Will they divest from using Jewish made products invented by Novel laureates or their modern derivatives? Which medicines will they not take as they were developed by Jews?

I am very disturbed to see what is happening on the college campuses in the USA and Canada. In the 60s, the French students and the American students had something personal to complain about. What have the students in the universities now have to complain about? Is anyone sending them into battle to fight someone else’s war? Has there been prejudice against Palestinian students on campus here? Why have the students taken the side of the Palestinians? Why has this degenerated into severe antisemitism. Why is there a call for intifada? Why are Jewish students being harassed on campus? Why do the Pro-Palestinian demonstrators feel that Jew=Israeli=Zionist? If this is not the case, why are they demonstrating in front of ‘Jewish institutions’? Why are they telling us to leave Palestine and go back to Poland? Have they never heard of WW2 and the Holocaust or do they believe that the whole thing is a hoax and that the numbers are exaggerated?

During a discussion that I had at dinner in my Tel Aviv hotel, I asked my colleagues, ‘what is woke’ and am I woke’? I was told that I am the opposite of woke. I suppose, seeing the crowd that I was with, I should take this as a compliment. We recently received a notice from the Royal College that as physicians we should be striving for DEI. Really? I finished ‘school’ at age 33 when I passed my final Royal College exams to receive my fellowship and was allowed to write, MD and FRCS after my name. Is that what we want in medicine today, DEI? I always thought that excellence was what we should be striving for in medicine to fight cancer and take care of trauma among other things. I have always practiced medicine with RAMQ Medicare and I personally don’t want to practice any other way. Medicare should be free and education should be given at a low cost to allow students for all backgrounds to educate themselves and improve their social status. I went to medical school in France where education was quasi free and state supported.

It is most unfortunate but I feel that we have raised a generation and a second generation that is 100% ignorant of history. How else could the university students support an organization, Hamas, that wishes to make Palestine into a country modelled after other countries in the Middle East where the rule of law is not supreme in the land? Which country in the Middle East except for Israel is a democracy that votes for its leaders? Which country does not have a dictator, a king, an emperor, iatolla, or a system based strictly on religious or ethnic terms?

Many of our students raised my us or by our children’s children, fall into the ‘don’t know because they don’t want to know’ category of my previous essay. Ask them a question and they pull out a cell phone and immediately give you an instagram or tic-toc answer. I would be most happy to engage in a discussion with one of these enlightened demonstrators but not to play tit for tat in 3 minutes. I would want to discuss the current Israeli-Hamas/Palestinian conflict on a level playing field for 1 hour with people who have read and understand what I am about to write.

What does ‘from the river to the sea’ mean? Which river and which sea? What does ‘free Palestine’ mean? Do you wish to return Palestine to a free Palestine like it was before Oct 7 with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in control? When was the last election in Gaza? When was the last election in the West Bank? Are elections supposed to take place every 4 years or every 19 to 25 years? How many political parties are there in Gaza? How many political parties are there in the West Bank? If there are no political parties, who will be the king, emperor, dictator or iatolla? Which county will the government be patterned after, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Algeria to name a few?

Now let’s discuss some history. What were the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire? Who divided up the Ottoman Empire after WW1. Who made the boundaries of the countries to their advantage? What is the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916? What was the San Remo Conference? What happened at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 which gave us the Treaty of Versailles? How did the Paris Peace Conference end up being a major cause of WW2 30 years later. What were the boundaries of the Palestine Mandate? How was given the power to oversee the Palestine Mandate? Where and when did the name Palestine come into being? When and why was Cis-Jordan split off from Trans-Jordan to form Jordan? What was the Arab revolt? Who was Lawrence of Arabia and what did he want? What was the Balfour Declaration and why did the British come out with it? What was the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement and what was pencilled in at the last moment? What was the Peel Commission? This is crucial to understanding the present conflict. What were the goals of the British? I will give you the answer. It was to protect the Suez Canal and the Iraq-Haifa Pipeline!! What did the French want and what did they get? What was a Jewish Homeland meant to be? What was the decision of the UN to the partition of what remained of the Palestine Mandate? Who accepted the partition and who refused the partition? When was the State of Israel declared? Why was Palestine not declared as a state? Which 5 countries invaded the fledging State of Israel? Who took over Gaza in 1949? Who took over the West Bank in 1949? If you do not know this history, you can not discuss the present situation with any intelligence at a university level? Why is this so hard to understand? Yes you will have to do some homework if you want to discuss the current situation with me.

Man has been at war for over 50,000 years and for 5000 years of written history. There are 5 common rules of conflict. 1) There is a winner and a loser very rarely a cease fire. 2) The victor writes the history. 3) Money changes hands. 4) Territory changes hands. 5) People are forced to move from 1 place to another. The only conflict where these rules don’t tend to be followed is in the 75 year saga of the on going Middle East conflict. I once heard an Israeli general speak He said, ‘we live in a rough neighbourhood. We have enemies on 3 sides and another set of enemies without a touching border. We are out numbered 100 to 1 and their birth rate is higher than ours. The Mediterranean is our 4th border. The Arabs can lose 100 wars and the Arab countries will still exist. If Israel loses 1 war, they will drive us into the sea and nobody will stand up for us. They never have in the past 2000 years and they never will. Israel stands alone and must look after themselves or we will cease to exist’.

Love,

Brian