At last, end of Honours

I picked up my copies of my Honours thesis from central printing: Five thermally-bound, ten spirally-bound, total cost of 70.69 dollars Canadian but I was spared having to pay the last 69 cents. Dr. Murray has the department's copy, and the library's copy, both done separately; I gave copies to Dr. MacLaine (supervisor, of course) and Dr. Moran (in history, who looked over my introduction), I'll E-mail Drs. Murray and Dasgupta to see if they'd like their own copies, and I'll take a couple with me to Toronto and Kingston, just in case there's a need for them.

Passing through the library on my way to drop off some books, I bumped into Justin Perry fresh from defending his thesis. Its 65 pages, of course, went quite well; he got a 90. We talked a bit about our plans for the future and promised to exchange honours theses before I left for southern Ontario.

This feels fun.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Me On Israel

I posted this originally on Daniel's blog Trivial Pursuits. Here it is. It basically explains my thoughts on Israel, and so is reposted here with minimal modifications.

I don't have any problems classifying Israel along with countries of mass European immigration like Algeria, South Africa, and New Caledonia. In other words, there was substantial European immigration (generally fostered under colonial auspices) from metropolitan countries. These immigrants usually fit into the upper levels of colonial life, while the colonized "native" majority fit into the lower levels (societally, economically, politically).

Israel, however, is an outlying member of this group. For one thing, the colonization wasn't sponsored by a country. (Maybe if there hadn't been a Second World War, Poland had remained independent, and Britain agreed to accept Polish Jewish emigrants in large numbers ...) For another thing, the colonization represented an effort to reproduce a complete society, not just to implant a Jewish upper class. And for yet another thing, as Jonathan pointed out on his blog, Zionists were motivated by a desire to establish a partnership. And certainly, no one can deny that there was, in the Diaspora, a very strong attachment by Jews to the concept of Israel as their homeland.

But still. I'm reminded of the history of the Maritime provinces of Canada. The Acadians were expelled from their fertile marshland homeland on the Bay of Fundy; many were later reestablished further north, but many more were dispersed to Québec, Louisiana, the Thirteen Colonies, France.

Would Acadians longing for their ancient homeland have the right to begin to recolonize the Bay of Fundy area, buying land from locals and making plans to declare their own sovereign and separate state in the area irregardless of what the natives thought?

The relative formlessness of Palestinian/Arab identity in the area in the first part of the 20th century is accepted without any protest or question by me, but to discount their concerns at having their ancestral lands being bought out by a group of European immigrants who traced their roots over two thousand years back to here as entirely racist seems, well, problematic. How would Americans like it if (say) Canadian and French Acadians tried to buy up Louisiana?

But then, Israel's established. What's done is done, and there's no undoing of it. To hope to undo it is an exceedingly dangerous and immoral thing to do.