History Simplified for Simpletons

"While a community standard of tolerance may constitute a reasonable limit on offensive advertisements which 'create controversy' is unnecessarily broad ... citizens, including bus riders, are expected to put up with some controversy in a free and democratic society."
Supreme Court of Canada Justice Marie Deschamps

A little bit of controversy never hurt anyone. The issues involved might make people think. They could present as sufficiently intriguing to provoke those interested in pursuing the matter further. In the process instructing themselves about the fine points, the complications, the complex issues involved. And then, fully armed with the well-rounded data they might have retrieved and thought about, they might be in a position to weigh the manner in which the controversy erupted.

That's obviously the best of all possible worlds, when people are interested enough in making themselves knowledgeable about issues that present in a facile manner, condemning one 'side' in a controversy, and in so doing, supporting the alternate side. People are often in a hurry when they make use of public transit, and not particularly inclined to pursue a matter of little interest to them personally; whatever they view is more likely to be accepted at face value.

In Vancouver, TransLink which represents the public transit system and sells advertising space to anyone interested in paying for it, has agreed to permit a special-interest political group to mount their own very special alert to the Canadian people about the situation in the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinians. TransLink has had previous incidents that has made it wary about refusing to host controversial advertisements.

Its previous policies were to prohibit advertising that seemed "likely in the light of prevailing community standards, to cause offence to any person or group of persons or create controversy", and which "advocates or opposes any ideology or political philosophy, point of view, policy or action". Perhaps laudable in a way, but seen by the courts to offend against free speech. And so it was found to have violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Freedom of speech means telling it the way you feel like. After all, if it's there, printed and permitted to be on public view, it obviously represents an issue that someone in presumed authority has studied and is helpfully circulating so that others who haven't the time to make their own search for information can accept. And if like-minded of groups representing the Palestine Awareness Coalition put together a simple-to-absorb and evaluate chart, the casual onlooker is likely to accept it as is.

Unless they, like the coalition itself, have a vested interest or a previous introduction and conclusion that runs counter to what they see in a public venue. They are then free to protest. As have done Jewish groups on the basis that the "Disappearing Palestine" undertaking by the Palestine Awareness Coalition is simplistically insulting, and clearly represents an anti-Israel propaganda bias shaking hands with slander.

What the posters depicting four maps of Israel/Palestinian Territories depict is Palestine in 1946 becoming Israel in 1948, displacing and making hapless refugees of five million Arab Palestinians. The land originally inhabited by Arab Muslims and Christians, and Jews was partitioned by the United Nations to demarcate and separate the original Palestine geography to provide for two sovereign entities; Israel accepted, the Arabs declined.

Six hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs fled or were persuaded to leave, while the remainder stayed and became Israeli citizens and remain so to this day, electing their own Members of the Knesset in a democratic state. Eight hundred thousand Arab Jews were expelled from the Arab/Muslim countries of the Middle East, their properties confiscated, and they were absorbed by Israel, the new Jewish state whose purpose was thus being fulfilled.

Arab countries of the Middle East preferred not to absorb the Palestinians, although the Palestinians absorbed Lebanon, after attempting to do so with Jordan. The generational issue of the original refugees are said now to number about five million; their procreative abilities not hindered by their long-standing refugee status, special and unique within the United Nations. The state that the Palestinians grieve to own, sits as well on the geography where Israel exists.

That is the map that the Palestine Awareness Coalition prefers not to notice.


The fact that the Palestinian Authority regularly publishes maps, including those used for their school curricula, where the State of Israel does not exist, but over the entire area is the state nomenclature of Palestine, is of course another issue altogether. One that begs the question of the sincerity of the Palestinians in bargaining for peace and a country of their own to sit alongside that of Israel, in amity and co-operation.


Their version of a viable map is one that makes the State of Israel invisible, it has completely disappeared, no more, gone, an illusion and the Nakba a bad dream that has finally concluded.