The Gaza Rorschach Test: See What You Want, Ignore The Rest

Remember as a child the colouring books that had a page with dots you were meant to join? The dots then formed a pony or a flower you could colour? 

Modern liberalism is like that colouring book. You have dots on the page representing support for single-payer healthcare and indigenous graves and trans rights. And there are dots for Trump hatred and the Truckers Convoy. It looks impressive so long as you’re never forced to connect the dots. 

But when you do? Incoherent. Nothing connects. There are no flowers, no ponies. Just a Woke Rorschach test. The ongoing crisis in Israel/ Palestine is a perfect example of perception bias. Slammed together in Gaza by Hamas, long-held liberal notions of statehood, tolerance, persuasion and global harmony have collided in a killer jumble. 

Take the notion of “sovereign territory”. In Canada we have concocted a tradition of beginning every theatre performance, sports event or political meeting with acknowledgement of the treaty rights of, say, the Stoney-Nakoda, or Blackfoot or Cree nations. Even though, by their own admission, these lands once belonged to others and were acquired through war or treaty over the centuries. And (please don’t tell Trudeau) that were taken from indigenous peoples thousands of years before that.

Fair enough. But when the same yardstick is applied to Israel— where Jews lived for thousands of years until expelled— opinion in the Western press says the Jews are an occupying force on Palestinian lands. Huh? Thousands in Canadian cities cheer the death of Jews for encroaching on what they believe is ancestral territory belonging to Hamas or Hezbollah. (The notion of a sovereign Palestine is in fact a creation of the British and French foreign offices after WW I.)

Canada’s prime minister, who once stripped the civil rights of truckers and declared a fallacious national emergency based on planted Nazi and Confederate flags, now takes a lenient tone with the Intifada crowd of academics, cultural figures and elected politicians in the Canadian streets once occupied by the Truckers. Even as they cheer Jews being slaughtered in their homes, PMJT suddenly talks of the historic right to free speech and protecting civil rights.

Which leads us to another pathetic fallacy embraced by our current prime minister and his followers. The idea that if we could just let the UN or the WEF or the WHO run the world for us everything would be tickety-boo. Because the globalists, not nations, can reason with the world’s bad guys. A little of patented diplomatic eloquence will cause the Sykes/ Picot Treaty or the Balfour Declaration to disappear, allowing for eternal peace. 

As we have written here and here the presumption of competence by protected elites is failing the test , not just in the Middle East. Trying to bribe Iran while simultaneously condemning its terrorist activities in Palestine was doable in the Obama echo chamber. Now, the admission that Iran funded and encouraged the carnage in Israel puts paid to that charade.

Or that Qatar— recent home of the FIFA World Cup— gives sanctuary to the kleptocrat Hamas leadership.  And how to apply the Liberal/ NDP worldview to the Palestinian Authority paying $2,789,430 to families of the 1,500 murderous Hamas terrorists killed this month?

These blind spots should be easy targets for a Canadian media that talks of their grasp of realpolitik. But the recent diet fed to Canadians shows a Middle Eastern history based on watching about 25 minutes of Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”. Suggestions that fleeing Palestinians be absorbed by other Arab nations? No one— not Egypt, not Jordan, not Saudi Arabia— wants them. (See: Yasser Arafat)

In this dissonance the Media Party assume business-as-usual will follow this hiccup of history. Witness the reflexive “Blame Israel” headline in the NYT for the rocket that blew up the Gaza hospital, causing 500 deaths. When faced with facts the Times sheepishly admitted to was a Hamas rocket. And 500 were not killed. But the howler monkeys of the Far Left still peddled the line 72 hours after.

The horse is out of the barn for the annointed ones. As Tucker Carlson has noted of the Donald Trump phenomenon that Canadians sneer at, ”A vote for Trump is a vote against (America's) elite class. Whatever your thoughts on him, he'd still be doing “Celebrity Apprentice" if Clinton/ Obama/ Biden had listened to the people they despise in Middle America.” 

But they didn’t, and they still refuse to acknowledge their incompetence has shattered the status quo. Here’s Hillary Clinton, the guest who won’t leave the party, saying— without irony—that  her opponents need “re-programming” From the woman whose 2016 dirty-tricks dossier launched a national crisis meant to overturn the election and give her the prize of the presidency. (Hint: you won’t hear this on CNN/ MSNBC/ CBC)

The same applies in Canada. Should PMJT cut off the millions in aid that Canada feeds to the Palestinian Authority? Be serious. When the state-supported CBC says you can’t call them terrorists you know the game is up. Trudeau and his sniffers deserve what's coming for this identity politics game.

Don’t try to dignify the “virtuous” positions of liberals by connecting the dots. When you look at their Rorschach you’ll only see confusion. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature of the plan.

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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx