Thursday, March 21, 2024

Top 5 This Week

spot_img

Related Posts

Why CUPE’s boycott is shameful

A message to all CUPE members. Your Ontario region has passed an anti-Israel motion that has made your union internationally notorious. It is so extreme, shrill and one-sided that CUPE is now more opposed to Israel than Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas and several Arab governments.

The vote was held on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and thus no observant Jew could even be present.

If they had been there they might have given a basic history lesson to the assembled comrades. The Jewish state, Israel, came into existence more than 1300 years before the birth of Jesus Christ and 2000 years before Islam existed.

The Jewish people have lived in the country for more than 3000 years and resisted Greeks, Persians, Syrians, Romans and legions of other tyrants. They will resist CUPE Ontario as well.

There never was a Palestine. After the Romans murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews and destroyed entire cities they attempted to expunge any trace of Jews and Judaism from Israel. Thus they renamed the land after the ancient Philistines, a people who had creased to exist.

Modern Arabs who call themselves Palestinians certainly have a valid claim to justice and peace but their ties to Israel are relatively recent. Their claims to Jerusalem have even less historical justification. It was the capital of the Jewish state for 3300 years and when it was relatively briefly in Jordanian hands no Arab leader came to visit it.

Nor did many Jews. They were not allowed to make pilgrimages to their holy places and some of the most sacred Jewish shrines were purposely desecrated by their Muslim occupiers.

Contrast this with modern Israel, where millions of Christians and Muslims visit each year and are treated with the utmost respect and protection.

Indeed, Muslims often have more freedom of worship in Israel than they do in many of the 22 Muslim states that currently exist, very few of which boast even basic human rights. Nor do the Arab Muslim countries boast many Jews.

More than a million Jewish citizens, most of whom had lived in these nations for centuries and in the case of Iraq and others pre-dated the rise of Islam, were forcibly removed after the resurrection of Israel in 1948.

There has been no compensation for these victims and organizations such as CUPE seem unaware that they exist.

Israel welcomed them, assimilated them and gave them freedoms they had not experienced in their former homes.

Considerably fewer Palestinians, around 630,000, left Israel in 1948. They did so because of fear, military defeat and propaganda. Sometimes the fear was justified, and there were undoubtedly cases of injustice and violence for which many in Israel have apologized on numerous occasions.

It was a war

This was, however, in the middle of a war in which the tiny Jewish state was threatened by all of its surrounding Arab neighbours. It should also be remembered that hundreds of thousands of Arabs opted to remain in the new Israel and now number more than 16% of the Israeli population.

They have full voting rights, several members of the Israeli parliament, full access to the law and public education, freedom of movement and expression and a higher standard of living than most Arabs who live in the Arab dictatorships. Numerous polls show that if offered citizenship of any Arab country, they would decline and retain their Israeli nationality.

Israel has withdrawn from Gaza, Israel has made peace with Egypt and Jordan. Israel has returned more than 80% of the land it inherited when it dared to win wars against invading Arab armies and Israel reluctantly built a fence, not a wall, to protect its children from crazed religious fanatics who lust for innocent blood. Israel, by the way, is also the only country in the region with free, independent and multicultural unions.

In the Arab nations across the border, strikers are beaten and genuine unions are illegal. Rise up good men and women of CUPE and tell your leaders to represent and not shame you.

Susan Martinuk
Latest posts by Susan Martinuk (see all)
Previous article
Next article

Popular Articles