Thankfully, laughter is free. Thus, the latter is accessible to all who have a sense of humour. Indeed, Bambi could have being writing to you now about serious issues of the world, including the endless conflict in the Middle East among many other matters. This post could have been about worrisome domestic stories in Canada like shooting at a (Jewish girls’) school yesterday. She preferred to spare you (and herself) all this, hoping to make you smile with Mr. Yannick Lemay (or “Ygreck”)’s cute cartoon, which was published this morning in the Journal de Montréal.
Before sharing Ygreck’s cartoon below, a few words about the drama unfolding on many university campuses are perhaps needed to provide some context. There are encampments here and there, at times called in the media pro-Palestinian and at other times anti-Israel. Whether there are truly this or that, or both or whatever, they have been going on for too long now. Administrators seem to be reluctant to act to end them, even if they are on private properties. Mayors, like Ms. Valérie Plante in Montreal, seem to be reluctant as well (so no police’s intervention), lawyers and judges seem to be shy as well in their judgments (which means more camping at least until July 2024; https://shorturl.at/NGArr). As a result, the situation seems to have become absurd, to say the least.
Of course, you may be someone who is cheering for such camps or finding them offensive. The latter could be perceived as a form of an imposed freedom of expression on private properties, or intimidation if you want, with odd slogans like “à bas l’empire“,which means “down with the empire” (unclear which empire though? The American, the Québécois, the Israeli?). Some other slogans, at times written in Arabic are clearly more offensive like “free Palestine from the river to the sea“, etc. As a reminder, some university students have families or friends living between the river and the sea. How would they perceive the latter, regardless of the intentions behind them?
Anyhow, if you are curious to know, Bambi happens to be someone who is not surprised at all by those encampments. She saw them coming way before the latest tragic fiasco of the Middle East. Indeed, at the height of the BLM agitation on campuses and on the streets, close to the climate justice agitation (perhaps even when her censorship saga was unfolding), she predicted (in a private conversation with her spouse) that the next cause du jour will be the Palestinian cause. Of note, the latter replaced the Ukrainian cause, which sadly is still existing.
What is sad for Bambi is how the true suffering of the Palestinian people is used by some people, despite the authentic care of some other people. As she has mentioned in a previous post, she does not believe that silencing, cancelling, and stonewalling are healthy strategies. She prefers bridges of exchanges instead to solve problems and move forward in life. This is why, on Friday evening, she happily signed a circulating petition against the Boycott of Israeli academics. In the same vein, she is against the boycott of Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian, Saudi, Chinese, or other academics (or artists) from other parts of the world, regardless of the awful actions (or reactions) of their governments.
Anyhow, enough of serious blahblahblah by Bambi. Time to laugh now with the talented “YGreck”, if you are not too shocked by what she just shared :). The title of his cartoon is: 2024 Camping Season. This couple is wondering where to go for their summer camping: McGill university or UQAM (“Université du Québec à Montréal”)? Check the flag on the backpack of the guy, it helps to understand the context of the joke.
To conclude this post, once again, for Bambi what matters the most in life is what lies deep in our hearts (our convictions and core values). Ideally, this would congruently translate into our behaviour when interacting with others. Bambi is talking about values like respect, compassion, and even love for all. For instance, we can have the utmost respect and compassion for the suffering of people, and wanting justice for them, even without any public demonstration on any private or public property. We can choose to publicly denounce an injustice while also naming another one. Yes at the same time. It is called seeing the big picture. Plus, we can respect the individual choices of people, even if ours are different (to cite a different example, it can be the choice of not using any gender pronoun for ourselves while accepting the choices of others, and vice versa). Despite the need for clever champions of social justice in our world, let’s also remember to be thinkers before being activists or to be thoughtful activists, so to speak. Let’s keep in mind that we do not solve injustice in the world by creating newer ones elsewhere. Above all, let’s keep our sense of humour, and thus perspective, alive.
