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Canada’s actions at the federal and international levels are now impacting on provincial and municipal jurisdictions.
With all due respect I would like to share with you the feelings of many Ontario Canadian supporters of Palestinian human rights.
The conflict between Israel and Palestine is not a battle of equals. One is the oppressor; the other is the oppressed. Ironically, Canada has an international reputation for standing up for the underdog; in the case of Palestine this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Canada-Palestine relations are currently at their lowest since Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson first pressed the idea to partition Palestine in 1947 – when Canada with the British, French, America, and Soviet Union agreed to give 57% of historic Palestine to invading Jewish Zionist colonialists for the creation of the state of Israel. For this and related activities regarding Palestine, Pearson received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1956.
In 1918 when the British Mandate over Palestine began, Jewish Palestinians owned 2% of the land and constituted 8% of the population.1 In 1947 Jews owned 6% of the land and the Jewish population had increased through immigration to about 25% of the population. However, in 1948 the state of Israel was created by force on 78% of historic Palestinian lands. In 1967 the rest of Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, were occupied by Israel. Since then, by building hundreds of illegal settlements, and now building the up to 25 meter high Apartheid2 or Separation Wall (built mostly on Palestinian land in the occupied territories over the 1967 green line) another 12% of Palestine has been illegally taken, leaving the indigenous Palestinian people cut off in the world’s “largest open-air prison” with only 10% of historic Palestine remaining.
Palestinians are the world’s largest refugee population with approximately 5 to 6 million displaced people and no country of their own. Indigenous Palestinian civilians with legal deeds and multiple generations of living on their properties were forcibly expelled from their lands or fled in terror as reports of massacres such as Dier Yassin and Kjur Qassen were circulated. The memory of long lines of people, carrying bundles of their possessions, being forcibly marched out of their villages by Jewish Zionist colonialists remain vivid in many Palestinian-Canadians’ memories - such as that of Professor Abdul-Hamid Emwas, an adult member of the University of Waterloo’s Students for Palestinian Human Rights organization whose family was marched off its land by invading Zionist Jews. Entire villages and orchards were systematically dynamited and bulldozed in June of 1967. (“Dossier on Palestine” co-editors Gary Zatzman and Tony Seed, p 22, October 2002, Shunpiking Magazine) “Canada Park” now sits on the ruins of his old village Enwas. Canada Park was built as a picnic area for Israelis accessible from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with tax-deductible Canadian dollars donated by the Canadian Jewish National Fund and by Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum of Toronto, Ontario. Many of the people and children of Enwas and other villages remain stateless.
Canada shares the blame for this intolerable situation. For example, Canadian Justice Ivan Rand of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1947 was head of the United Nations Palestine Commission of Inquiry, which on May 13, 1947 decided to pass as its first item of business an article excluding all reference to the independence of Palestine from the terms of reference of the Commission of Inquiry. Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson publicly defended the Zionist army’s invasion in April 1948 of territory explicitly reserved by the United Nations for a future Palestinian state. (Globe and Mail Archives)
In 1917 the now famous "Balfour Declaration" supported a home for Jews in Palestine; however at the time, Balfour was more famous for his Aliens Act, which blocked Jewish immigration to Britain. Similarly, after WWII Canada recoiled at accepting 2000 more Jewish Displaced Persons, but expected tiny Palestine to take 100,000 immediately.
In May 1968 Canada was one of only two countries to vote against UN resolutions which would invalidate Israeli attempts to change the status of Jerusalem. Then in 1979, under Prime Minister Joe Clark Canada proposed to relocate the Canadian Embassy from the capital of Israel in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in essence treating the capital of Israel as Jerusalem, which it is not. Following a public outcry, the Canadian Embassy was not moved.
Although no longer on the UN Security Council, Canada is still a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights, where it blocked the UN investigation of war crimes in Jenin. Of 53 member countries, only two voted against the Jenin investigation: Guatemala and Canada. (“Canada and Palestine: double standards” by Gary Zatzman, p 35, October, 2002, Dossier on Palestine.)
On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that the Israeli wall was illegal and ordered it to be dismantled. However, Israel refuses to do so. Canada, who had enthusiastically encouraged the establishment of the International Court of Justice, ironically abstained from the ICJ vote regarding the Wall and refuses to help enforce the ICJ ruling.
Canada is a charter member of the United Nations. The charter is based on the principle that all nations, big and small, are equal; international rule of law is based on preserving their sovereignty and equality - and their inalienable rights to self-determination. Canada repeatedly betrays this fundamental principle on the question of Palestine.
We adamantly disagree with the Canadian policy that, “This support of Israel has been at the center of Canada’s Middle East Policy since 1948.” (e-mail from John D. Maloney, MP, Welland Riding, April 16, 2005 malonJ0 (at) parl.gc.ca JDM/dd ), possibly a Freudian slip, but a comment reflected in the views of many Canadian MPs and MPPs, and in the policies and actions of our federal government. Canada's strong leaning, both federal and provincial, towards Israel shows bias, a conflict of interest, and an absence of social justice. Israel is in violation of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions and literally hundreds of General Assembly Resolutions. On a daily basis Israel illegally breaks the 4th Geneva Convention and human rights legislations which they are signatory to.
With the establishment of the Canadian Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel Committee, the Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel policy paper of June 6, 2003 (see pdf from Canadian Jewish News), and with subsequent pro-Israel lobbying, Canada has shifted its foreign policy drastically and unjustly further towards Israel. Five members of the Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel are now members of the ruling federal cabinet.3 A tiny minority, speaking for Palestinian human rights in the cabinet, is rarely heard above the din of pro-Israeli maneuvering. In consequence, Canada fails Palestinians. (“Behind Canada’s Mideast Shift – Has ‘even-handed’ Canada swung to Israel’s side? Surprise No Vote at UN signals marked change” by Lynda Hurst, December 18, 2004, The Star. )
Now this bias, lack of justice, disregard for international law, and naivety has seeped down to the provincial and municipal level.
Notes
1. Numbers indicating the increase in the Jewish population in Palestine from 1918 to 1948 are difficult to ascertain reliably as numbers at the time were kept by the British Mandate, which are therefore inherently suspect.
2. The word Apartheid comes from the Afrikaans word for separateness. Both the state of Israel and the system of Apartheid were officially put in place in 1948. (Rashid Abu Ghazalah, Arab Student Collective. Police Bias Forum, June 30, 2005, University of Toronto.)
3. Federal liberals who were members of Liberal Parliamentarians for Israel when it released its alarming Mid-east Policy Paper June 3, 2004 and who are now Federal Cabinet Ministers: Jacob Austin, Leader of the Government in the Senate; Jim Peterson, Minister of International Trade; Irwin Cotler, Minister of Justice; Joe Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration; Carolyn Bennett, Minister of State.
susanha103@yahoo.ca
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