Bill Poser

Canada has quite properly refused a request by the government of Jordan to seize the Dead Sea Scrolls, now on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, on the grounds that they were taken by Israel from East Jerusalem, then under Jordanian control, in 1967. This is the correct decision, for three reasons.

First, barring truly extraordinary circumstances, such as the likelihood that the claimant will destroy or conceal them, or clearcut evidence of ownership, items on international loan such as these should be exempt from such seizures lest museums cease to make such loans.

Second, Jordan has no legal claim to ownership. Prior to 1948, Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) as well as East Jerusalem were part of the British Mandate of Palestine. These areas were intended by the United Nations to become part of a Palestinian Arab state, but the Arabs rejected the partition plan and attacked Israel. In the course of the war, Jordan captured these areas, annexed them, and continued to occupy them until 1967 when Israel successfully repelled another Arab attack. No country other than the United Kingdom recognized the Jordanian annexation as it was the result of an illegal war of aggression and represented the seizure of territory to which it had no claim.

Third, Israel has a far stronger moral claim to the Dead Sea Scrolls than Jordan or the Palestinian Arabs. They were written by Jews in Israel about Jewish religion and related topics. They were not written by Arabs or in Arab lands and do not deal with topics of particular concern to Arabs or Muslims. In short, they are part of Jewish heritage, not Arab heritage.

An additional factor is the history of the handling of the scrolls. In spite of their clear relevance to Jewish history, while they were under Jordanian control, Jewish scholars were not permitted to see them. Only as a result of the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 did the scrolls become accessible to Jewish scholars. In other words, while the Scrolls are in Israeli custody, we can be assured that they will be accessible not only to those most directly concerned, Jewish scholars, but to all. In Arab custody, there is a grave risk that access will be restricted. This is an instance of a more general pattern: under Jordanian occupation, Israelis were denied access to Jewish holy places such as the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron.

The House of Commons has voted, in a non-binding resolution, to give asylum to US deserters who object to the war in Iraq. Unfortunately, the government has not agreed to follow this resolution. Conservative MPs have given two reasons for distinguishing the present situation from that of the Vietnam War, when many American war resisters came to Canada.

The first reason is that the US military recognizes conscientious objectors. The problem here is that the US only considers a person to be a conscientious objector if he or she is an absolute pacifist. A soldier who objects to the war in Iraq but is not opposed to all wars is not eligible for conscientious objector status.

The second reason is that US troops are all volunteers and that they knew what they were getting into when they enlisted. It is true that they are volunteers, but not that they knew what they were getting into. The Bush Administration justified the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction. Both of these grounds were spurious. The result is that soldiers who enlisted thinking that they would be defending the United States and fighting terrorism were sent to war for entirely different purposes. Furthermore, the US’s incompetent conduct of the war has put soldiers at risk in ways that they could not have expected. Finally, the US has engaged in war crimes, in which some soldiers naturally do not wish to be complicit.

The deserters who seek asylum in Canada now do so for reasons much like those that motivated the war resisters of the Vietnam era, and like them, they do not have the option of conscientious objection. Just as Canada did the right thing during the Vietnam War and gave asylum to US war resisters, so we should do so again.