Anne of Green Gables, Genocide in Gaza, and the Crushing of Dissent

When I first moved to Canada from the US around 2004, I learned a lot about Canadian history by reading the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery, especially the eighth and final book Rilla of Ingleside. Rilla takes place during World War I when Anne has grown up and had a family of her own.

When the story begins, Anne's youngest daughter Rilla is fifteen and she starts off characteristically obsessed with clothes, gossip, and having a good time. But one day while Rilla is going door to door for donations for the war effort, she comes upon a two-week old infant whose mother has died and whose father is away fighting. With everyone else already overwhelmed, Rilla wrestles morally with herself about whether she must commit to taking care of this baby herself. She decides the answer is yes, even though it's the last thing in the world she wants to do.

The novel is about a teenager, but it's also about war and its social and political aspects. One plot line centers on Josiah Pryor, a vocal pacifist who opposes Canada's involvement in the war for many of the same reasons pacifists oppose war in general. People will kill and be killed for what he judges to be no good reason.

Naively, I was a bit stunned at the way Pryor is condemned and ostracized for his views and the way the novel endorses those responses. Pryor is considered a traitor, someone giving aid and comfort to the enemy; no one in their small town will associate with him. During a prayer meeting, Pryor prays for an end to the war. Describing the scene, Montgomery writes:

"In a sonorous voice that penetrated to every corner every corner of the crowded building Mr. Pryor poured forth a flood of fluent words, and was well on in his prayer before his dazed and horrified audience awakened to the fact that they were listening to a pacifist appeal of the rankest sort."

People go nuts. One man shouts epithets at Pryor, grabs him by the collar, shakes him, and physically throws him out of the meeting.

It's no secret that Montgomery deeply supported Canada's involvement in the war and her support shines through the narration of Rilla. The story-telling tends toward gleeful when Pryor gets abused and the most sympathetic characters are the ones who hate him the most. Toward the end, Pryor suffers a "paralytic stroke," and the novel's point of view is summed up by Anne's helper Susan who says: "I am not saying it is a judgment on him, because I am not in the counsels of the Almighty, but one can have one's own thoughts about it."

No one will be surprised to hear that Rilla and its depiction of the crushing of dissent was on my mind these past few weeks. Israel is carrying out an unconscionable genocide in Gaza; people are saying it is wrong, and those saying it is wrong are being suppressed, threatened, and thrown in jail.

Naively, I have been a bit stunned at the misguided and wildly disproportionate response to people expressing criticism of Israel or even just care and concern for the people of Palestine.

Often I don't write about current events on this blog -- not because I think they're unimportant! -- but mostly because other people are usually better informed and have more interesting things to say on the relevant topics.

But if it's becoming impossible to say publicly that what is happening is wrong, then that seems mistaken.

So let me add my voice to that of the others. Israel is carrying out an unconscionable genocide in Gaza, and it is wrong, and obviously we should be able to say that it is wrong without fear of arrest or persecution.