Dear hockey fans, please don’t boo the Canadian anthem
The hatred is the point. A touch of civility would be a small victory. We can’t allow ourselves to be taken in by the Axis of Enmity.
The orange-themed front page above features a photo of redheaded Kfir Bibas on his first birthday, which was commemorated last year in Gazan captivity. Today, Kfir, who was in many ways the poster child of the October 7 atrocity, and the youngest hostage, returned home in a casket. I’ll have more to say about Kfir at the end of this posting.
It all ties together as a plea against hate. Hate can begin with small gestures, like rooting against an opposing nation, but it can lead to unspeakable things. And the journey from one end to the other is not that long.
I posted a message the other day in response to the booing of the Star Spangled Banner in Canada last weekend. But there is now a greater urgency. When the Canadian anthem is played before tonight’s final of the 4-Nations Face-Off in Boston, if you are one of the lucky people to score a ticket, please don’t boo. President Trump, who says he wanted to go but had a scheduling conflict, is trying to stoke up false patriotism to encourage Americns to hate. At this moment the target is Canada, but it’s the hatred that’s the point.
Normally, a little sporty razzing would be harmless; nothing wrong with a touch of nationalism. But with Trump, nationalism has become a key weapon in promoting his illiberal agenda. This isn’t US vs. USSR in 1980. The only miracle on ice today will be if there are no fights in the first ten seconds.
Today Trump tried to stoke things even more, posting that he would spur the U.S. “on towards victory tonight against Canada, which with FAR LOWER TAXES AND MUCH STRONGER SECURITY, will someday, maybe soon, become our cherished, and very important, Fifty First State.”
If anyone thinks his harping on the 51st state thing is funny, it’s really not. It’s no laughing matter for the most powerful person in the world to make light of the national sovereignty of a neighboring country. It’s the vernacular of a bully.
Given that the U.S. – Canada hockey rivalry has always been intense, as they prepare to meet for the pressure-packed rematch that will feel like a Stanley Cup final – boos can be expected.
That’s fine. There will be sixty minutes of clock time to do that, plus very likely overtime. Just please don’t boo the anthems.
Sometimes sports can be a useful means of redirecting international tensions, sublimating partisan passions just for a while, confining the bloodshed to a few ill-placed kicks to the shin or, on ice, a hip check into the boards. It can be healthy to take it out on your TV rather than your neighbor.
But at times like these, sports can be manipulated to exacerbate tensions that really shouldn’t be there. In the hands of a demagogic autocrat, the playing field can become a focus of distraction, unifying the home crowd in the face of a manufactured common enemy. That enemy should not be Canada.
As a Bostonian, I used to hate – literally hate – the archrival Yankees, Canadiens and Lakers. Now I look back at the heyday of those rivalries and feel a grudging admiration for the opponents. OK, except Bucky Dent in 1978. Too soon.
President Trump, feeding on this negative energy, wants Americans to hate Canadians right now. He wants me to join him in this Axis of Enmity. And I refuse to let him draw me in.
It reminds me of an old quote by Edwin Markham – I’ve used it at hundreds of weddings as I explain why couples circle each other under the huppah:
He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
That’s the kind of circle we need to draw right now.
When my eldest son was about 5, he was really into the Olympics. For his birthday party, we staged a parade of nations, and all the guests got to march in carrying a flag. A few weeks later I was telling him about World War Two and his first question was, naturally, “What were the teams?” It’s a question so many of us are asking now.
I grew up in a world where the teams were clearly defined, divided by an iron curtain and two distinct political ideologies. When the Cold War was over, the teams were defined less by ideology than the degree of freedom their nations offered and their respect for human rights. For me, there has always been an affinity for “Team Jewish,” which would include countries led by Jews, like Israel - and Ukraine and Mexico now (both coincidentally on Trump’s hit list) – but only if they respect freedom and human rights, values that Judaism promotes.
But now, overnight, the US has signaled that it is joining Team Russia, and our president is repeating an outrageous quote attributed to Napolean, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
The prophet Nathan might have turned it on its head after the Bathsheba incident, saying to King David, “He who violates the law does not serve his country.” (He actually said, "Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?")
Canada may have lots of French speakers, but they are not on Team Napoleon for this one. Even President Nixon, who famously said to David Frost, “If the President does it, it’s not illegal,” had the decency to heed judiciary rulings and resign before saying it. And even Napoleon had the decency to abandon Gaza after he seized it in 1799, true, not before pillaging, plundering and murdering his way up the coast, until his army was decimated by plague.
For Americans to boo the Canadian anthem would be a signal that perhaps we are emulating the French Emperor - and our own leader with the funny hat - and joining Team Anarchy. That is not a team I want to be associated with.
Sir Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, wrote:
“I used to think that the most important line in the Bible was ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Then I realized that it is easy to love your neighbor because he or she is usually quite like yourself. What is hard is to love the stranger, one whose color, culture or creed is different from yours. That is why the command, ‘Love the stranger because you were once strangers,’ resonates so often throughout the Bible. It is summoning us now.”
It certainly is. Sacks had it right. The Bible instructs us to find common ground with the other team precisely because they are different. We should love them, and in the case of Canada, we should root for their national success. They are our natural neighbors and teammates.
So, if you are at the game, please don’t boo the Canadian anthem. A touch of civility tonight would be a small victory in what will be a very long fight.
Over the coming months, the people of America will need all the allies we can get.
On a related note, as mentioned at the top, today is a day of great sadness, with the return of four deceased hostages to Israel, Oded Lifshitz, and likely Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas (seen above on a Tel Aviv mural on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal). The children, particularly the baby Kfir, have been highly visible “poster children” of the ongoing atrocity perpatrated by Hamas. Fomenting hate has consequences, but it’s hard not to feel a ton of anger, especially when young children are abducted, tortured and murdered. I mourn all needless suffering from this conflict. May the memory of Kfir’s face forever be a reminder that we can’t play with the fire of hate.
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