Dreaming of peace in the Middle East

 

You know you’ve been watching too much news when you start dreaming about Israel. 

A couple nights ago I dreamed I was in a kibbutz (a rural town) in Israel near the Gaza Strip. My wife and I had joined a bunch of tourists to come to Israel during the war (as good a time as any!) About twenty of us crowded into a one-room house. I had two concerns in my dream: first, where were we going to sleep and, second, would Hamas pay us a visit during our sleep? 

Before I could worry too much, a young Palestinian family started to dance in the middle of the room. With nothing else for entertainment, we watched with interest as two young kids began a little jig. Then my alarm went off. 

I’ll resist the temptation of prophetic interpretation and admit that I’ve become too involved in this conflict – watching too much news and listening to too many podcasts, to both Israelis and Palestinians. I’ve been trying to understand both sides of the conflict.  

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, a Jewish voice on the liberal side of the spectrum, has been guiding me through much of it. He made a particularly salient point when he said support for Israel in the West is largely generational. The older generation remembers when Israel was vulnerable - when its very existence was at stake. The younger generation (his and mine) has grown up witnessing Israel's occupation of the West Bank and general power over the Palestinians. Their greatest vulnerability has been to terrorist attacks, some of which can be tied to the treatment of the Palestinian people. 

Both sides share blame, but one side is clearly stronger militarily. This drives perception. Even in the U.S., support for Palestinians is rising faster than for Israel. 

An Israeli professor and former soldier said it’s of utmost importance to not show the surrounding countries, some of which want Israel to be destroyed, that they are not weak when attacked. Yet when he was pressed as to whether the invasion of the Gaza Strip was the right approach strategically, he admitted it might not be. He spoke as if it had to be. 

Understandably, any country with superior military might will want vengeance upon its attackers. But I question the assumption that other countries feel Israel is weak. Most countries understand Israel is backed by the U.S. almost unconditionally. In the past, they have had the tendency to strike back at the smallest provocation. 

Hamas knew how to draw Israel into a conflict. If the goal was to disrupt any chance of peace in the region, they have already won. Hamas may be destroyed or weakened to the point where it has no more power, but will the hostility of Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations be worth it? It’s a conundrum for any country dealing with an unspeakable tragedy. 

The greatest problem for Israel is that there is no real end game. This might suit Israel’s current leadership, a government that was on the brink of defeat. The country was on the verge of civil war before the attacks, only now brought together with common purpose. Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to ride this wave of support as long as he can. 

Who suffers in the meantime? The people of Gaza, obviously. They have virtually no place to run or hide. Their lives, homes, and economy are ruined. Jews throughout the world are also threatened, with antisemitism on the rise. Israeli hostages and their families are bearing a heavy price. The longer the invasion continues, the less hope they may have of seeing their loved ones alive.  

On the world stage, the U.S. is losing credibility with a large portion of the world. While they will be on the right side of history regarding the war in Ukraine, supporting Israel unconditionally is fraught with perils. 

With media present everywhere, anyone can watch the destruction unfolding in the Gaza Strip. It's hard to watch the suffering in real time. 

At this point, we can only dream of peace.

 

Black holes keep sucking me in

  

There are many things I cannot and never will understand about physics. Yet I continue to try. I’ve read so much about black holes, it hurts. 

There’s a mystery about them that illustrates the ridiculous nature of reality. In a black hole, our current laws of physics may cease to exist. 

An acquaintance of mine once gave a sermon about how ridiculous the claim was that two plus two may not equal four in a black hole. He was suggesting this was a denial of objective reality. The congregation laughed at the thought. 

To be fair, it depends what you mean by “objective.” The theory of relativity would suggest that some things are relative, dependent on the observer. Those at the top of a mountain experience time at a slower pace than those at sea level. Gravity speeds up time. 

Once you near a black hole, the gravitational pull is so strong that time goes into overdrive. A mere second on the event horizon, the point before you get ripped to shreds, is equivalent to a thousand years on earth. Once actually in the black hole, time might wrap back onto itself allowing you to go back to an earlier time. As some speculate, you might actually enter a “white hole” within the black hole, where time reverses and you de-age yourself out of existence. If only we could put some of that in a bottle. 

But no one has ever or ever will be in a black hole, as the closest one is 1,500 light years away. Besides, you would never survive entry after being pulled to shreds in a rather technical term called spaghettification. 

Infinity is another perplexing concept. Do some things go on forever? Does, for example, the universe simply continue, as it cannot be demonstrated there is in fact an outer edge? If it stretches for infinity, one can assume (as some have) that there is a limitless number of galaxies and therefore a limitless number of possibilities for life. 

Theorists take this to the next level, suggesting there could be multiverses, where there are endless possibilities for life. Just think – if the universe is actually endless, then there are endless possibilities of earths and outcomes that could very much resemble ours but be slightly different. That tuna sandwich you ate today could be a chicken sandwich in another universe. 

 That’s a hard one to wrap one's mind around, so let’s bring it down to a more practical level. Imagine cutting a carrot in half over and over again. If one could slice each new half with an increasingly microscopic knife, would the halving ever stop? Theoretically, you should be able to continue to do this infinitely. At such a small scale, however, there is a limit. There’s a point, according to scientific theory, where you can no longer cut the distance in half – because at this point, distance no longer can be measured. In fact, time can no longer be measured because it no longer exists at the quantum level. This is called a Plank – a unit that’s a quadrillion times smaller than one quadrillionth of a meter. It’s small. 

How do physicists know this? Sometimes I doubt they really do. But more often than not, their theories are eventually proven. It took over 80 years to demonstrate that gravitational waves are produced when black holes collide. In 2016, two large observatories in the United States showed that a very small gravitational wave passed through the earth as a result of two black holes colliding a billion light years away. Space-time was disrupted for a brief millisecond. 

We observed the ripple effect of something that happened one billion years ago. 

Wrap your head around that. 

Canada's divisions not as deep as they appear

  

It was in my fourth year of university when I realized I was majoring in the wrong subject. As dry as it sounds, Political Science 100 was enlightening. 

The class’s fundamentals guide me to this day... Okay, maybe not every day, but it has helped me understand why Alberta hates Ottawa (usually) and why Quebec wants to be left alone. It helped me realize that our Constitution is not so clear cut. Provincial and federal responsibilities overlap in strange and confusing ways. 

Hence, the Supreme Court’s ruling on the federal government’s new environmental impact legislation remains a mystery to most of us. What we do know is that environmental protection is under the jurisdiction of both Canada and the provinces, leaving grey areas subject to interpretation. 

Another grey area is healthcare. Even though this significant government expense falls under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government holds influence. With cold, hard cash, the federal government tries to maintain a consistently funded healthcare system across the country. 

Ottawa often uses money to influence provincial policy. One area where it is interestingly absent is education. Despite this, public K-12 education runs nearly as seamlessly as healthcare, with similar curricular requirements across the provinces. 

Advanced education is another provincial domain where universities have tended to operate at similar levels across the country – even maintaining similar tuition rates. Until last week, that is, when Quebec announced tuition rates for Canadians outside of Quebec would nearly double. In an effort to save its French universities, Quebec may cannibalize its most successful schools like McGill. 

Then there’s equalization.... Most people don’t know much about it. The old joke is that only three people understand the formula and two of them have since passed. Equalization is a means to redistribute the country’s wealth, where provinces like Quebec receive up to $14 billion a year for essentially having a weaker economy, and Manitoba gets over $3 billion because hydropower is not included in the formula (again, few know why). Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia get nothing, and resent the rest of Canada because of it. 

As always, there are cracks in the federal experiment that both narrow and widen over time. Some provinces think they should run things on their own. Quebec has been afforded the most autonomy with fewest strings attached to federal funding. Together with hefty equalization payments, some would suggest this is the price we pay to keep Quebec in Canada. 

Recently, Alberta has followed Quebec’s lead with plans to run their own pension plan. The Alberta government claims they’re putting more into the Canada Pension Plan than they are taking out. With a younger, wealthier population than the rest of Canada, that could very well be. I would argue it’s all part of the give and take of being in Canada, and until Alberta has a PST of its own, it has more to give!

Our nation's governing is full of give and take. Some provinces like Alberta grow resentful over time from continuous “giving.” Quebec and the Maritimes, on the other hand, don’t want to be made to feel like they’re receiving handouts. 

As worrisome as these issues are, they are relatively small cracks in our federation. Compared to the very real threat of Quebec separating from Canada in the 1990s, this is peanuts. 

Western alienation has also diminished in the last couple decades (and will further diminish should Trudeau lose the next election). Despite central Canada’s historic control over the country’s politics, Western provinces have begun to show greater political and economic influence. 

Remember, as my university professor taught, the provinces still hold the cards when it comes to government’s two biggest sectors, healthcare and education.  

How and when they play their cards is all part of Canada’s complicated constitution game.