Native Activist Fed Up with Anti-Israel BS Exploiting his Cause.
Ryan Bellerose has penned another epic piece of moral clarity. Not one to mince words, Bellerose, a Metis activist from Western Canada, has written a devastating op-ed in the Toronto Sun (and syndicated in 4 other Sun papers) taking the Palestinian propaganda machine to task for dishonestly using the native rights cause.
Money quote:
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though Palestinian propagandists love to characterize Zionism (that is, Jewish nationalism) and the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 as colonial enterprises, it is the Jews who are aboriginal to the Holy Land. Alone among other nations, Jews’ language, history, culture and folklore were born and forged in the Holy Land. There is no statute of limitations on being indigenous. Accordingly, to claim the Jews are colonizers in the Holy Land delegitimizes all indigenous peoples because such attempts trivialize the unbreakable, maternal ties to the land that make us, like the Jews, indigenous.
Berllerose goes on to explain why conflating Palestinian issues with Native Issues is plainly dishonest and untenable.
This is not the first time Bellerose has spoken up against the appropriation of his cause and culture by irredentist Arab nationalists. A few months ago, he wrote in the Metropolitain an article entitled “A Native and Zionist” where he first explained the parallels between Jews and Native Canadians, and why he is so offended by Palestinian propaganda’s exploitation of his cause:
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The Palestinians are not like us. Their fight is not our fight. We natives believe in bringing about change peacefully, and we refuse to be affiliated with anyone who engages in violence targeting civilians. I cannot remain silent and allow the Palestinians to gain credibility at our expense by claiming commonality with us. I cannot stand by while they trivialize our plight by tying it to theirs, which is largely self-inflicted. Our population of over 65 million was violently reduced to a mere 10 million, a slaughter unprecedented in human history. To compare that in whatever way to the Palestinians’ story is deeply offensive to me.
Bellerose should be commended for his courage. As I have repeatedly stated and will continue to state, the Palestinians have an undeniable right to self-determination. That right, however, cannot be realized by rejecting all offers of peace and deliberately robbing the Jewish people of its history instead.
Only the truth will set Palestinians free.
keelie Said:
That depends on what you mean by “not so united”. It is only natural that people disagree on the meaning of the constitution and how its laws should be implemented. That does not qualify as disunity as long as the same people agree that the constitution is the law of the land. But if you have real citizens who reject the constitution as the law of the land, then these people disavow their citizenship. Swearing to abide by the constitution as the law of the land is the most fundamental currency of US citizenship. The problem is we have a sizable population in the US who falsely claim citizenship, the current president, for example.
And what if 50% of these citizens are not so united?
ArnoldHarris Said:
You do a great disservice to the United States of America to compare it with the Roman Empire. The United States is not an empire, it is a federation. It is already as broken up as it is ever going to be. Disunity in a nation is not necessarily a failing, but rather a confrontation between people struggling for a greater understanding. The United States is institutionally braced to accommodate disunity. Disunity in issues of all kinds is a natural characteristic of free people organized together. Controversy is evidence of political frontiers which free people are always ready to embrace.
As long as the citizens of the United States continue to be united under our constitution, then that is all the unity we need.
Ryan Bellerose, comparing the Jews to the metis peoples of Canada and the northern states of the USA, makes a point I had not previously thought of, in that the Jews are in fact the sole surviving autochthonous nation of ancient Kena’an and its hinterlands. Like the Europeans who took their lands beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Arabs now residing in Eretz-Yisrael are simply the most recent of the despoilers of the rights of the Jews as one of the world’s ancient native peoples.
Canada one day will break up into separate ethnic parts, and I think one or more of those separate ethnic parts will be restored and functioning lands under control of the metis folks.
And it is becoming increasingly obvious that the USA will also break apart one day, in the same manner that the Roman Empire first decayed and then was dismembered. I’m not looking forward to that. But I’m too old to act like a fool and hide from the growing evidence of countrywide disunity. The time may well come when just that will happen. Hopefully the next time without any Gettysburgs, which I am not certain the Federals would win again.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI