The Search for Goodness
This article first appeared in the Minden Times in June 2025.
I got into serious trouble the other day for drawing a parallel between Netanyahu and Hitler, both democratically elected leaders who undertook genocide. Or maybe what tipped the apple cart was the comparison of the colonialism of Israel and that which spawned Canada, with the difference that we have admitted that we displaced peoples and subsequently tried to destroy them, and speak about making reparation. In any case, I was declared uneducable and was banned.
And reparation is an interesting word in this context, because if I recall correctly, the land on which Israel was founded was ‘given’ to the Jewish people by the victors in the Second World War in recompense for their victimization and continuing antisemitism. (There is no such laudable excuse for Canada’s colonization – just greed.) But two wrongs do not make a right, and the trouble that was brewing then continues to brew. Not just there: Israel and Gaza just one manifestation of the much more pervasive malfunctioning of humanity.
The religious foundation laid in my childhood and young adulthood wants me to see this as Evil unleashed. But I do not want to join the hordes who are baying for someone’s blood. That seems to me to lead to another bogus expectation that two wrongs will somehow make a right. My love of scripturely cadence leads me – quite often, actually – to Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese philosopher who spent his last 20 years in the United States, died 1931 before WWII had even begun. I wanted him to school me (although I’m deemed uneducable by one who found my stance offensive) on the nature of Evil. ‘What is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?’ Gibran says. ‘When good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.’
Ah, it seems Gibran thinks the way to fight evil is to nurture good. That certainly is how we advise parents to raise their children, by reinforcing the positive. That’s how we think learning takes root. That’s how we believe social progress is made. That’s how we hypothesize – although we’re very ambivalent and impatient – that people learn the error of their ways, the idea of restorative justice, recovery from addiction and psychological distress, repair of relationships.
It very hard to see how the individual practice of nurturing good can influence what happens in the larger world - the wars, the inhumanity, the destruction. But I come back to the point that Netanyahu and Hitler were democratically elected. I have trouble buying that Netanyahu would behave differently if he hadn’t had to make a deal with extreme parties to form government – he could have stepped down and returned the choice to the people; he didn’t, he chose to make a deal with the devil, in my books that makes him a bad guy. I also recognize that democracy doesn’t always get it right – as someone recently said re the situation to the south of us, ‘You may not like the milk, but you bought the cow.’
On the other hand, I consider that Hamas was elected in 2006, that Isreal intervened significantly in that election, and that there has not since been an election. I therefore hold the Gazans differently accountable for the activity of their political leadership, if leadership it is, rather than dictatorial imposition.
At base, I just want the senseless carnage to stop. I resent that I can’t say I think Netanyahu is a bad guy without being accused of antisemitism. It’s not right that I can’t speak up for Palestine without being accused of approving of the Oct 7th massacre or empowering terrorists, as if Hamas represents Gazan interests, which it clearly does not.
I think nurturing goodness in this situation may mean speaking out, resisting being silenced. I do not have a thorough understanding of the historical and current complexity of the situation, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize that something terribly wrong is happening and say STOP. I have no way of knowing if and how that may influence anything, but it is what I can do.
And perhaps by so doing encouraging others to do likewise, in whatever direction their hearts and minds dictate, as opportunity offers. Talking seriously about serious matters, seeking to expand understanding, seeking goodness whenever we can. Let me close with Gibran again: ‘In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.’ To the search for your giant self!
