In many ways the genocide in Palestine is the Vietnam War of today. Many Canadians under age 30 are incensed, angry and protesting. In cities from Halifax to Vancouver there are weekly rallies and marches. For six months, even over Christmas holidays, the protests against Israel have gone on. True the numbers of Canadians taking part waxes and wanes – but that is due to the harassment and discouragement they face.
Younger people are disgusted by Israel’s intransigence, racism, and its absolute refusal to stop the killings and destruction in Gaza. Israel has refused to heed even one UN vote, or to pay attention to the recommendations by the International Court of Justice. Israel’s war crimes are magnified by the astronomical body count of dead Palestinian civilians—34,000 — dominated by the number of women and children killed by Israel over the last six months.
In sympathy, young Canadians are donning Kaffiyeh scarves to show support for Palestinians.
Politicians, supporters of Israel attempt to distract from facts
Young people are also furious with Canadian politicians’ pointless dithering. Our politicians turn away from the bloodbath in Gaza caused by Israeli bombs, missiles and snipers.
Rather, our politicians and their friends in the mainstream Jewish community continue to whip up false fears of antisemitism on Canadian campuses. They point us to “look over there” – don’t look at the facts on the ground. Instead, look at how Jewish students “don’t feel safe” when there are debates, literature tables, and classroom discussions about Palestine.
Just this week, a judge in Montreal denied an injunction filed on behalf of two – count them: two – Jewish McGill students who complained they felt no longer “safe” on campus because of the pro-Palestine encampment.
The injunction named five pro-Palestinian groups. But not a single McGill building had been barred or locked. Not a single barricade was set up by pro-Palestine protesters. Not a service, a library or centre on the campus was closed to students or the public. The whole campus was accessible as always. As the judge noted, if she had granted the injunction to restrict protesters to 100 metres from any building, that would include perimeters around 154 buildings at McGill University!
The judge’s statement includes this: “the court is of the opinion that the balance of inconveniences leans more toward the protesters, whose freedom of expression and to gather peacefully would be affected significantly.”
The idea is to divert attention from the tens of thousands of Gazan civilians who are dead and dying – and insist the biggest problem is Canadians’ protests, insults and outrage about these massacres half a world away. As Australian writer and artist Caitlin Johnstone notes in her newsletter, “Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than your feelings. Your feelings don’t matter. ….Stopping the slaughter in Gaza is more important than some privileged Ivy Leaguers pretending to feel “unsafe” or “unwelcome” on campus.”
Parallels with resistance to Vietnam War
The last time I can remember when thousands of students and other Canadians took the lead in demonstrating against international injustice was during the Vietnam war. At that time, protesters held campus sit-ins, marches and went out of their way to help US draft dodgers and US army deserters settle in Canada.
It wasn’t so long ago that students sat-in and marched to oppose the Vietnam war. It wasn’t so long ago that students and other activists called for ending Canadian “complicity” with the US military-industrial complex and demanded the Canadian government oppose the US war on Vietnam.
What’s so different about Israel – and today’s detractors?
Can someone tell me what is antisemitic about criticizing Israel or marching against Israel? Or criticizing Jewish institutions such as B’nai Brith, or the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, or CIJA (the Centre for Israel-Jewish Affairs) who vow to “stand with Israel” no matter what? These three organizations not only insult and harass, they even succeed in getting anyone in public-facing jobs (such as Dr Yipeng Ge) who is critical of Israel fired.
What is wrong with criticizing Israel’s genocide of 34,000 Palestinians?
Or criticizing Israel’s shooting missiles and bombs (weapons paid for or supplied by the US and Canada) which have struck thousands of homes and left more than 7,000 women and children – alive or dead – stuck under the rubble of their own apartment buildings.
Or Israeli missile strikes which have mangled children’s legs and arms and resulted in more than 1000 child amputees?
Just this week, Liberal Anthony Housefather called for McGill University in Montreal to call the police and evict pro-Palestinian supporters who are staying in about 30 tents and sitting on lawn chairs on the campus’ lower field.
When confronted with the fact that the protest included Jewish students involved in organizing the protest. Housefather got mad. He thundered that there may be one or two Jews at the tent-in, and that 95 percent of the Jewish community in Canada is not in favour of the sit-in – or a ceasefire. That’s not true. Polls suggest that 48 percent of Jewish Canadians recognised that accusations of antisemitism are often leveraged to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s government and its policies. 37% of Jewish Canadians hold negative views about the Israeli government and 30% of Jewish Canadians believe that the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel is reasonable. Housefather attacked groups, including Independent Jewish Voices Canada of which I’m a member, involved in the tent-in claiming they had no legitimacy. Housefather really means we are pro-Palestinian; that is, against Israeli genocide, and in support of a ceasefire.
In this topsy-turvy world, stopping pro-Palestinian demonstrations is more important than ending Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
Charges of anti-semetism attempt to silence opposition to genocide
Can someone also tell me what’s antisemitic about boycotting Israeli products in grocery stores, protesting pro-Israel speakers, or arguing or debating with people openly representing pro-Israel campus group Hillel, or other pro-Israel voices on campus? The Jews who defend Israel are sometimes taunted, and their feelings sometimes get hurt. Hurt feelings are not equal to tens of thousands of women and children killed.
Didn’t we boycott South African wines, oranges and grapes in Canadian grocery stores? Didn’t we keep South Africa out of the Commonwealth, and didn’t South Africa become a pariah state?
I don’t remember any arguments about how criticism had hurt the feelings of white South Africans and their cronies during the murderous Apartheid years.
As Cailtin Johnstone writes:
“It is a symptom of the cancerousness of western civilization that there are people living their whole lives under the entirely unquestioned assumption that their feelings are so important that it is fine and normal to expect that a limitless number of impoverished foreigners may be killed without any opposition whatsoever in order to promote the interests of their favorite ethnostate, and that anyone who does oppose it is persecuting them.”
I recall a 1987 demonstration I attended in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the British Midlands when I was a student there. Thirty-seven years ago this week, scores of people including my 6-year-old son Max and I demonstrated at the opening day of the annual Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The ceremony included raising flags and short speeches from diplomats from countries who loved the bard — including South Africa.
We protested South Africa’s presence, and demanded its flag be taken down. Our anti-Apartheid group called for an end to Apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela. We used loudhailers to disrupt the ceremony. Most people understood why we protested. No one demanded we be arrested. Nor did our opponents – including the local Stratford town council – insist the event be shut down, or that we be prevented from shouting the truth about Apartheid.
Other states not above reproach
Today when we criticize Israel we are called antisemites. This is despite the fact that at most protests there is a healthy contingent of Jews, myself and others in Independent Jewish Voices Canada. In the US, according to Peter Beinart, the well-known Jewish critic and journalism professor at City University in New York City, at every US campus where he has been invited to speak, nearly half the demonstrators against Israel are themselves Jewish.
In Canada, even breathing opposition to Israel is labelled antisemitic. How is it that Israel can do no wrong – even when it does do wrong?
Everyone reading this is probably opposed to this week’s declaration by UK prime minister Rishi Sunak that his government is now arranging flights to deport undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Against their wishes and international human rights, thousands in the UK will be flown to Rwanda to face lifelong punishment because the powers that be in the UK will not tolerate Black and brown immigrants. Does opposing Sunak’s racism and denial of human rights mean we are anti-British? And so what if we are? Britain richly deserves our censure.
The Uighur issue and Chinese human rights abuses have been the subjects of many reports in the Canadian media. Does that mean we hate the Chinese? The Canadian government, since the “two Michaels” affair and the house arrest of business tycoon Meng Wanzhou, has been beating the drum against the Chinese government. Whether we are or are not against the Chinese government, most Canadians are probably not against Chinese Canadians.
The sound of silence
The worst, and most dangerous, repression of movements opposing the Israeli occupation and genocide is the silencing. The threats against free speech are real.
Our Halifax Public Library has cancelled presentations on Gaza; some universities refuse to allow us to book halls on campus for public events. Pro-Palestinian activists are disciplined and fired, as I’ve written here, here and here, at the behest of B’nai Brith and other pro-Israel organisations. There is a huge witch hunt going on — and it must be stopped.
We are supposed to be quiet and silently concerned about Israel’s genocide– but do nothing.
We are supposed to listen to Jewish and other pro-Israel supporters insist that the Hamas-led October 7 killing of perhaps 1200 people (Jewish civilians, military people, and foreign ‘guest’ workers) plus the kidnapping of 250 justifies Israel’s cold blooded murder 35 times bigger. Is that proportionality? Not by my math.
Not to mention, history did not start on October 7. It started more than 75 years ago, when Israel drove more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, took their homes and land, and forced them into dozens of impoverished refugee camps, where millions of Palestinians must live to this day. This is called the Nakba.
Since early on in Israel’s war on Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza have no homes, nowhere to go– no escape from Israel’s reign of terror. For Israel, killing Gazans is a game like shooting fish in a barrel. Chilling.
The Palestinians— for the most part — are not armed and have no army, no helicopter gunships, no armed drones, no chemical gas — but are subject to Israel’s deadly drone strikes, missile hits, and army sharpshooters.
As we all know more than 200 aid workers — those bringing water, food and medicine — have been purposely killed by Israel. The seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers targeted and killed by Israeli drone strikes three weeks ago have been all but papered over by Israel’s phony coverup. The WCK killings were war crimes.
This happens against a backdrop of rampant starvation, plastic bags for shelters, bombed out hospitals, destroyed schools and not a university building still standing. All deliberately targeted and destroyed by Israel in the last six months.
As Johnstone reminds us, we are living in “a society where more political firepower is going into stopping pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses than ending Israel’s murderous assault on an enclosed enclave packed full of children. A society where trying to stop a genocide is considered evil, and committing one is considered good.”
Did you like this article? Help us produce more like it by donating $1, $2, or $5. Donate