Skip to main content

REFLECTION ON A CHILDHOOD MEMORY: THE STATE OF ISRAEL by Toni Boonstra

It was a bitter cold winter. We had one warm barn for our dairy herd with a space at the front for calves born during the winter. For the yearlings, we only had a shelter with no heat. That year during the month of January the temperature dipped below -40 degrees. We felt sorry for the yearlings shivering in the cold, so we brought them into the barn to share a pen with the younger calves.


We supplied nice fresh hay for the yearlings and the younger calves to eat. But, instead of eating the fresh hay the yearlings began to push the calves out of the way and made life miserable for them. The only choice we had was to remove the yearlings and return them to the cold shelter outside.

This is a good metaphor for the age of colonization. After the discovery of the “new world” people moved in and settled into these resource rich areas they had come upon. Rather than sharing the resources equally, they pushed out, and made life miserable for, the people who had lived there for millennia. Instead of the ones in charge saying this behaviour is unacceptable they encouraged and supported it.

Centuries ago, the Catholic Church put out the “Doctrine of Discovery”i which gave permission to take over any land that was not inhabited by Christians; and Protestants came up with the doctrine that Christianity is the only true religion. During this colonial age, a great number of Indigenous People in the world lost their lives and a great number of Indigenous People were converted to Christianity.

And today?

It seems to me - the decision to carve out a state for Israel in 1948, was a colonial decision using a colonial method. It is much the same as those who support Christian nationalism. One keeps on carving up the world into gated countries with borders to keep out the ones who don’t belong, which are usually people who are different, the ones who are less human than the “superior race”.

What is happening today, is that Indigenous People in the world are beginning to claim their rightful place at the global table. They no longer accept the role of servants or second-class citizens. We are seeing the ending of the colonial age and the beginning of the post-colonial age. Whenever one age ends and a new one begins, it often is traumatic. It is a little like going through a birthing process. Hopefully, we will begin to realize that one cannot stop a birthing process no matter how large our military budget.

I visualize Israel as becoming a country from the river to the sea where all its people, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, and the ones who already have made it their home, and the ones who
have been driven out and live in refugee camps, have full human rights, including full voting rights. It will become a secular nation where each faith is entitled to full human rights. (This will require a constitution which Israel presently does not have.)

Realistically, I do not see this happening in my life time. Regretfully, we are still living with the maxim, “Might makes right.”

________________________________________________
i This doctrine was articulated in a series of papal "bulls," or decrees; the first one was issued in 1452. They gave the colonial powers, such as Spain and Portugal, the right to seize lands and subjugate people in Africa and the "New World," as long as people on the lands were not Christians. Though the Roman Catholic Church has long disassociated itself from its practical use, the Vatican only formally repudiated the "Doctrine” in March of this year.

Tony Boonstra has been a Presbyterian minister since 1978. He has served churches in B.C. Alberta, and Ontario. In retirement he has remained active doing interim/transitional ministry and pulpit supply.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW THE COVID PANDEMIC HAS CHANGED PANHANDLING by Jim Ward

Panhandling, i.e., begging for small change on the street, has been under considerable threat since the coming of Covid. Of course, the practice has been under threat before whenever the good burgers of some city find that the poor have resorted to “inconveniencing” the public and they feel the “moral” need to criminalize it. But Covid is causing different constraints. In these times very few people carry cash with them. In fact, many retailers will not accept cash, since it may well be ‘dirty money’. The term panhandling had its origins, so I’m told, during an economic depression in the United States in the late 19th century. That depression hit the panhandle area of northern Texas particularly hard and it caused many workers to head to New York City, where the ‘Buddy can you spare a dime?’ request was given birth. The practitioners of this art became known as the panhandlers. Back in the early 1970s I conducted studies of panhandling approaches in six North American cities, one of th...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE PROFOUND EMPTINESS OF PIERE POILIEVRE by Bill lee

“You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.” - Mark Twain. There has never been any very substantial evidence that Pierre Poilievre is an even moderately well-rounded human being, or someone with even a modicum of depth. What he clearly is, is a career politician with no experience of, and no apparent interest in, life outside of the narrow, dark recesses of the CPC caucus room; i.e., he’s a pure political operator. Though that is something, let’s be honest, it is not a whole lot, at least if one wants to become an authentic political leader. At this point however he is becoming (has become?) a completely plastic image created by the gang of back-room boys whose task it is to construct something that looks like a leader. Whether what they have rendered in PP is, or even looks like, a leader however is questionable. Good leaders (never mind great ones) have an ability to, and interest in, showing an unders...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gun Violence and Bigotry, Due South & in Canada

Bill Lee August 24, 2019 Trump in his Florida speech asked how “these people” could be “stopped”. Someone among the crowd shouted, “Shoot them!” At first laughing, Trump responded, "That's only in the [Florida] panhandle, can you get away with that statement. [1] Given the obscene number of deaths from mass shootings in the USA recently it is probably not surprising that some of the old "rationales" have been taken off the shelf and dusted off. One GOP “legislator” has opined that there is a link to the spread and consumption of violent video games. Leaving aside that this is an exceedingly tired trope that has never been proven, there are a couple of others that clearly have much greater power as explanations. It is not, for example a fanciful notion that high capacity automatic weapons are a more likely link. [2] But there is another issue that really deserves much more full attention. When, oh when will the denizens political class, the media, a...
Post a Comment
Read more