To the editor:
As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, killing and maiming thousands of children and other innocents, our politicians continue to display a moral cowardice that is appalling.
It is hard to understand how Canada can give unqualified support to Israel under circumstances that much of the world recognizes as a genocide being committed against the Palestinian people.
As horrific as the attack on Oct 7th by Hamas was, any amateur historian should be able to comprehend that for 75 years, Israel has oppressed the Palestinian people, driving them out of their homes and lands in 1948 and ever since violently controlling every aspect of their lives and taking more of their lands.
While the world, including Canada, understood and largely supported the armed resistance against Apartheid in South Africa, our leaders apparently cannot now comprehend that people living in the desperate circumstances of the concentration camp called Gaza, can reasonably be expected to resist and eventually take up arms. This is not to condone violence but to understand how oppressive circumstances can make it almost inevitable.
Canada’s Prime Minister condemns hate crimes at home and the opposition denounces the “glorification of terror” by pro-Palestinian supporters. Does it then not also seem fair that we should expect our representatives to condemn the terror and war crimes to which the citizens of Gaza are being subjected?
Our leaders have reduced themselves to the role of timid and hapless witnesses to the industrial levels of death and suffering being visited upon the Palestinian people. And if Canadian politicians find it impossible to condemn Israel’s actions they cannot even find the moral courage to call for a ceasefire to at least temporarily alleviate the suffering.
And even as Israel’s Netanyahu has now gone so far as to identify Canada as a new home for the Palestinians he expects to expel from Gaza while absorbing their lands into an enlarged Israel, our leaders don’t have very much to say in defense of the Palestinians.
By now we should be able to discern how our politicians cynically manipulate us by lying, conflating different aspects of reality, or simply not telling the full story.
Support for a two-state solution is convincingly expressed even as silence is the rule as more and more Palestinian land is gobbled up by illegal settlements. People who oppose Israel’s actions are deemed to be anti-Semitic. Our Prime Minister and other members of Parliament try to equate popular concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people with support for Hamas. And anyone who disagrees with government policy is identified as hateful or worse.
And what is that policy in practice if not to passively watch as many thousands of children are slaughtered and the dream of a Palestinian state is rendered impossible by Israel’s expressed intention to drive people off their lands?
My simple questions to my fellow citizens are these: Are you proud of your leaders? Do you believe they are operating in good faith?
Sincerely
Peter Ferris
North Bay
