David Solway has become an unlikely prophet for our time. Now over 80 years old, he is one of Canada’s most prolific authors of literary criticism and poetry. Having taught in various universities and colleges and travelled all over the word, he now lives in Vancouver. Over time, his interests have shifted toward politics and history because he fears that trends in international politics could lead to a new Holocaust.His latest book, Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam and the West, is a collection of essays written over the last 15 or so years — but much of it reads as if written after the Hamas atrocity of October 7, 2023. Solway is truly a prophet for our time.Solway was born in a small town in Quebec. His father didn’t like other Jews, so David grew up with almost no religious instruction. He still keeps his religious beliefs private, except to say he has trouble finding common ground with either ultra-Orthodox or Reform Jews.What, then, defines Jews if not common belief or racial ancestry (they now come in all colours?). Jews, says Solway, are defined by persecution throughout history — literally millennia of it. Some of the worst examples are the Assyrian deportation, the Roman empire’s oppressiveness, the Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms and Nazi Germany’s genocide. As the Holocaust shows, the Jews’ enemies will kill them no matter how secularized or even Christianized they become.You’d think this eternally oppressed minority would stick together for self-defence. Yet the paradox of Jewish history is how fractious they have been, ever since Cain slew Abel in an escalating food fight. Solway sardonically calls this disputatiousness the “Jewish gene.” Still, in Solway’s view, stick together they must, in a land they can call their own.Hebrews, Jews, Israelis — whatever you call them — have lived in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea since the time of the patriarchs and prophets and they exercise sovereignty there today. And they deserve to, Solway believes; it is their last and only refuge against persecution by other nations.My inner historian would love to debate this further. The Book of Genesis tells us that Abraham came from “Ur of the Chaldees,” i.e., modern Iraq. The Book of Joshua recounts how the Hebrews, after escaping from Egypt, conquered the city of Jericho, slaughtering all the people as well as their animals. Ergo, Jews in their own telling haven’t been there forever. To be clear, I support contemporary Israeli sovereignty. But I remain wary of arguments based on ancient history, sacred texts and oral traditions.For Solway, the great modern enemy of persecuted Jews is Islam. The threat comes in several forms: the nuclear weapons that Iran is developing; the terrorist movements subsidized by Iran and, at times, by some of the Arab powers; and, most sinister, mass immigration from Muslim countries to Europe and North America. In Solway’s opinion, “moderate Islam” is merely a fiction, a disguise that protects Muslims while their political power is growing.While birthrates in the feckless Western democracies slide far below replacement level, Solway points out that mass immigration causes the Muslim share of the population to rise inexorably. Backed by the weight of growing Muslim populations, radical activists start to demand Sharia law, agitate for their government to abandon support of Israel, and stage terrorist attacks on Jewish citizens.These trends, Solway asserts, are visible now in Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, North America, exacerbated by the Western world’s self-imposed weakness. The regnant ideology of misnamed “Progressivism” (along with critical race theory and wokism) divides society into oppressors and oppressed and lists Muslims as an oppressed minority. Far less numerous Jews, however, are lumped in with 'white' oppressors'.Thus arises a bizarre concatenation of forces. We have seen many illustrations after October 7 of how Muslim firebrands in Western countries receive the support of feminists, gay and trans activists, trade unionists and other leftists who in Muslim countries would probably be imprisoned if not executed. But in the name of “intersectionality,” Western Progressives welcome Islamic radicals into their midst while driving Jews outside their coalition on grounds that they are kin to the “settler-colonialists” of Israel.As mentioned at the top, Crossing the Jordan reads as if its essays were written after October 7, 2023. What Solway describes is what we see today — attacks on Jews in Western cities, loss of support for Israel, frightening moves by an almost-nuclear-armed Iran.Maybe it is time, as Solway sings on one of his CDs (he spent time with Leonard Cohen in Greece as a young man), Children of Israel, to praise the Israel Defense Forces as “Joshua’s children come once again.” If Iran’s theocrats are really thinking of using nuclear weapons against Israel, they may be forcibly reminded of what Joshua did to Jericho.The original, full-length version of this essay was recently published in C2C Journal. Tom Flanagan is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary
