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Canadian Jews Protest Israeli Occupation
(Courtesy The Dominion. By Lia Tarachansky) On May 15th, the State of Israel turned 60. Celebrations around the world were held to mark Israel’s Day of Independence. Remarked also for different reasons, this day has made a global impact under its other title, the Catastrophe, or Al Nakbah in Arabic. It is mourned as a day that commemorates the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, as a result of which Israel is today a Jewish majority state.
Resistance to these celebrations has also taken place across North America under a campaign entitled “No Time To Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakbah.” This activism demonstrates a growing Jewish presence within the movement to oppose Israeli policies, the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. In Canada, this presence was strongly felt on March 29th when over a hundred representatives of various organizations joined at the Alliance of Concerned Jewish Canadian’s (ACJC) conference. The aim of the conference was to create an effective and justice-oriented strategy for future collaboration of jews critical of Israel’s policies.
A jewish stance in solidarity with Palestinians is particularly significant, given recent remarks by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Reminding the world of the Holocaust, Harper announced that Israel was “threatened by those groups and regimes who deny to this day its right to exist.” Despite Israel’s refusal to acknowledge a Palestinian state, in deed if not in word, Harper further emphasized his alliance with the State of Israel by calling it “one of the most successful countries on earth… Israel truly is the ‘miracle in the desert.’”
“The source of Israel’s strength and success,” continued Harper, “is its commitment to the universal values of all civilized peoples: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.” Post-Holocaust Jewish settlers in Israel, according to the Prime Minister, have “led the world back to the light.”
Such flamboyant support stands in stark contrast to Canada’s historical record of siding with the majority of the world, whose national representatives have consistently voted at the UN General Assembly for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
During a teach-in held in Ottawa days before the anniversary of the Nakbah, Diana Ralph, Coordinator of the ACJC conference, reduced much of Harper’s statements to little more than myths. Ralph broke down the logic in Harper’s speech, which proposed that all criticism of Israel was equated with anti-Semitism, that Israel was the only democracy in the Middle East, and that Arab and Jewish people hate each other.
“If this is a beacon of light onto nations,” said Ralph, referring to Harper’s position on Israel’s settlers, “I think we need to turn out the lights.”
Ralph’s support for human rights in the Middle East went hand in hand with the outcome of the historic ACJC conference. The ACJC body has made a remarkable move in declaring its support for “a properly negotiated peace between the Israeli and Palestinian people” and opposing “any attempt by the Israeli government to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians.”
The organization further recognizes the world’s repeated calls for Israel to respect international law, particularly the 2004 International Court of Justice’s ruling on post-1967 affairs in the region. The ICJ ruled that the so-called “Annexation Wall,” as well as the West Bank settlements, were illegal and demanded Israel pay reparation for “all damage caused by the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, includ[ing] in and around East Jerusalem.”
Such international decisions have been amplified worldwide by opposition to the celebrations of Israel’s 60th anniversary. In San Francisco, 20 Jewish activists were arrested while protesting their local community centre’s celebrations of Israel@60. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto, and dozens of other cities across the continent, organizers put together street theatre shows, die-ins, educational and media events, mournful vigils, and peaceful disruptions, all in solidarity with Palestine. Around 70 Israelis, Palestinians, Jewish-Canadians, and allies attend a protest outside of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on May 20th Photo: Ryan Davies
In Canada’s capital, Not In Our Name (NION): Jews Against Israel’s Wars, which represents pro-justice Jewish voices in the Ottawa community, has linked with many others to form what has become the Ottawa Palestine Solidarity Network (OPSN). On May 8th, over 70 community members and activists joined to mourn outside the Ottawa Civic Centre where the local Israel@60 celebration took place. Continuing their visible support for understanding the real history of Israel/Palestine, OPSN held a teach-in on May 18th that posed the question of whether the 60th anniversary of the State’s inception was indeed something to celebrate.
Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian refugee, presented the history and fallout of the 1948 Nakbah. She spoke of the 500 villages that were destroyed in the lead-up and in the midst of the 1948 War of Independence, a war that displaced 750,000 refugees. Today, the West Bank hosts over 500 checkpoints, the Israeli State controls all Palestinian access to water, land, and employment, and an “Annexation Wall” now segregates communities from each other. In places such as Qualqilia the wall completely surrounds entire villages, while the checkpoints reinforce a segregation system. Israeli-only settlements are interspersed in the West Bank among Palestinian farms, connected to one another and Israel-proper by Israeli-only roads which are heavily protected by walls, fences, and armed soldiers. Effectively, Sabawi explained, the Nakbah Catastrophe has never ended.
Ralph followed Sabawi’s short history with a talk entitled “Which Side Are You On?” which emphasized the importance for Jews to stand for justice in Palestine. Ralph’s message was further amplified by Rabbi Dovid Feldman, who drew from the Old Testament to argue that traditional Judaism rejects the idea of Zionism. The philosophy of zionism, to which the creation of the State of Israel has been attributed, has, according to Feldman, been countered by Jewish leaders since its very inception at the end of the 19th century. Rejecting the celebrations of Israeli Statehood, Feldman stated, “every Israeli Independence Day, we have a day of fasting. It is a day of mourning.”
Concluding the teach-in, Mazen Masri, a member of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and a PhD candidate at York University, spoke about the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Arising from Palestinian civil society, the BDS campaign began in the summer of 2005. The campaign calls for tactics similar to those which contributed to the official end of South African apartheid to be applied to Israel. The BDS campaign calls for the boycott of Israeli businesses by individuals, the divestment of international corporations from the Israeli economy, and the enforcement of sanctions by governments against the State of Israel until its apartheid policies end.
Days later, on May 20th, a fundraiser was held at the National Arts Centre (NAC). The NAC fundraiser, sponsored by the Jewish National Fund, was hosted by Israeli Ambassador to Canada Alan Baker, who was also the guest of honour. Baker has been under strict in recent weeks after making remarks that have called discriminatory and racist against Muslim and Arab people. Baker argued that Canada should limit immigration of Muslim people on that grounds that they may alter Canadian demographics as well as Canada’s overt support for Israel. In response, almost a hundred protestors crowded the doors of the NAC, including over twenty Haredi religious Jews as well as dozens of Israelis, secular Jews, Palestinians, and other supporters. A mock check-point was constructed and activists, dressed as soldiers, with the inscription “Israel Offense Forces” attached to their uniforms, controlled access to the entrance. Organizers billed this as a mild demonstration of the daily humiliation and delay to which Palestinians are subjugated.
In Toronto, on Sunday May 25th, the UJA Federation’s annual ‘Walk with Israel’ was held. Advertised as a fundraiser for “programs for children and youth in Israel with a specific focus on those in Sderot and the Western Negev,” the event drew thousands of participants as well as approximately three dozen protesters. Holding a silent vigil on the outskirts of the Walk, the protestors were met with discriminatory remarks such as “go back to Jordan.” Some parents even stopped to demonstrate to their children that the men and women who were dressed in black to commemorate the Nakbah, were forever Israel’s enemy.
“I would kill another 800,000 of you!” one man yelled, referring to the 1948 ethnic cleansing.
In Israel/Palestine, 21,915 black balloons were released over Jerusalem to represent the number of days since the beginning of the Nakbah. Spearheaded by the Badil Resource Centre in Ramallah, the idea was part of an international campaign called ‘Justice is the Key to Tomorrow.’ The organization’s website explains the reasons for which thousands worldwide have mobilized in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
“How can you celebrate?” the site asks. “The establishment of the State of Israel sixty years ago was a settler-colonial project that systematically and violently uprooted more than 750 thousand Palestinian Arabs from their lands and homes… These celebrations, by definition, insult our history, violate our rights, and deepen our oppression. They also render the path to justice, freedom, equality, and sustainable peace based on international law longer than ever before.”
Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog manager. The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent his own. Read more by Matthew Brett.
Matthew Brett and his like-minded cronies obviously abhor
the idea of Israel as a Jewish State. He obviously doesn’t abhor the idea of the many many Islamic states or Christian states or Hindu states, only the one Jewish state. That makes him an…oh well, we all know what that makes him! Besides he’s got all his facts wrong but that’s never stopped Israel bashers before so why start now. To anyone with an open mind, I would encourage you to look at the real history of Israel’s founding from original sources and ignore the leftist tripe and Arab propaganda that Brett spews.
#1. Posted by Noah Glass on June 1st 2008 at 1:44pm
The article should be called “8 Canadian Jews Naively Protest Israeli Occupation”.That’s more like it. There are naive and not very informed or lacking political acumen jews. Just like everybody else.
The truth is that most Israelis do not like the occupation and are willing to work with Palestinians to establish 2 states. It’s not easy, given the hatred Israeli success causes in Arab world. Israel is in tough neighborhood. Security is not guaranteed.
Harper understands that, he knows the reason for Palestinian suffering is not the establishment of Israel, but a rejection of it by the neighbors.
It is not necessarily anti-semitic to blame Israel for everything bad in the ME, sometimes it’s just naive and stupid
#2. Posted by Alka raven on June 4th 2008 at 5:23am
Could you kindly comment - either in English or suomeksi - whether my details are correct in a dissident essay in
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm ?
E.g. “...Tel Aviv - The Silicon Wadi?
Tel Aviv (literally: Dumb-Hill of Spring) was plain desert at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, in the advent of her 100th year celebrations in 2009, it is the Silicon Wadi (Valley) of the Mediterranean since 1990’s.
It is United States that profits from Israel, rather than the opposite. Israel gets nearly 3 billion USD from USA annually, but open brain drain is its prerequisite. Astonishing number of 25% of the Israeli researchers have moved to the United States - and this figure does not yet include the people with double citizenship. The next largest drain of researchers are 12.2% from Canada, 4.3% from Netherlands, and 4.2% from Italy.
Before the Second Intifada, there were nearly 200 Israeli companies listed in the Nasdaq, at the Intifada the count dropped to 70. (The number is still greater than from all the European countries combined). It is said that the dollars are green since the Americans pull them down from the tree raw and fresh. The start-ups are imported straight from the garage, and scaling up of production in the “conflict hotspot” has been considered impossible. But the new Millennium has brought a change in tide.
In Israel, 20% of citizens possess a higher decree from the university. Over half of the export from Israel are High tech products (32 $ billion in 2007), compared to the 25% average of the OECD countries. Israel’s GDP is about $200 billion. She exhibits second highest output of new book per citizen and more patents per person than any other nation. Nobels, by definition, are awarded to the people who have made services to the whole world, and 21% of the prizes have gone to this population of less that 17 million, taking both Eretz Israel and galut (diaspora) into account.
The population of Arabs under the Israeli government increased ten-fold in only 57 years. Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-95. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-90 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child death rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000 at the Westbank. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-88 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-86 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).
Also, the biggest generic drug factory in the world was recently established in Israel. Generating US$7 billion in annual revenues, Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) is the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical company. That is: to cure people with less money. TEVA makes generic versions of brand-name antibiotics, heart drugs, heartburn medications, and more - in all close to 200 global generic products, 700 compounds, and more than 2800 dosage forms and formulations. TEVA’s pharmaceuticals are used in some 20% of U.S. generic drug prescriptions. Examples of TEVA’s generics include lower-cost equivalents of such blockbusters as anti-depressant Prozac and cholesterol drug Mevacor. Nevertheless, in biotechnology and original drug development, about 400 experimental Israeli drugs have been approved or accepted in clinical phases.
How has the United Nations reacted to such an impact especially in the field of medicine and health care? One-fourth of the judgements of the Human Rights Commission strike Israel.
There is a pious smoke screen on the industrial countries mediating peace to the Middle East. A collaboration between the Jews with their technology and science and Arabs with their oil and loyality has been a great nightmare for the Western countries. The intimate friendship between the cousin “races”, as officially declared by Chaim Weizmann and Emir Feisal in Versailles peace conference, was deliberately mutilated. The Second Intifada could be called The Oslo War.
Aviv is Hebrew for “spring”, symbolizing renewal, and tel is an archaeological site that reveals layers of civilization built one over the other. The Jewish population has been such a layer of native culture not only in the Palestine, and the expulsion of the native Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews from various Muslim countries since 1948 has been al nakba, catastrophe, for these societies…”
Pauli Ojala, evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out (MSci-Master of Sciing)
#3. Posted by Pauli Ojala on June 11th 2008 at 12:07am