Cindy and Craig Corrie, whose daughter Rachel was killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 will be in Abbotsford, B.C. on Saturday, November 26th. They will be among the many featured speakers at an all-day “Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” to be held at the University of the Fraser Valley. Read more…
November 29th marks the date on which in 1947, the UN voted to partition British mandate Palestine, giving a little more than half of it to create a new Jewish State mostly for European Jews. The remainder was to be an Arab state. Thirty years later, in 1977, with the creation of the Arab state still unfulfilled and with Israel occupying now all of mandate Palestine, the United Nations General Assembly called for the annual observance of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
At the time of the original UN vote, there were only 57 members of the United Nations. While all the countries in the region, including non-Arab Greece and India, voted against it, Western countries like the USA, Britain and Canada were dominant and the vote passed easily. (Ironically, Palestine did not have a vote as it was a British colony at the time.)
However, by 1977, UN membership had grown to 149, including many developing countries. Today there are almost 200 member states. It seems highly unlikely many of those new states, themselves former European colonies, would have approved the original plan to divide Palestine in two..
The UN encourages all member states to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the International Day of Solidarity. For the last 39 years, solidarity events have been taking place across Canada and around the globe.
One such event will take place on Saturday November 26th in Abbotsford, British Columbia. A coalition of civil society groups in the BC town is organizing a Day of Solidarity at the University of the Fraser Valley.
The keynote speakers are Cindy and Craig Corrie whose daughter, human rights activist Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death in 2003 by an Israeli military bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza. Motivated by their daughter’s example, the Corries established the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice. The Corries are currently leading an interfaith delegation in the West Bank and Gaza. They will speak of their experiences.
In addition to the Corries, other speakers will include representatives from Independent Jewish Voices, and the Palestinian Canadian community.
Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) spoke to Colter Louwerse, one of the organizers of the event about what they hoped to achieve. Here is a short video of that conversation
More information can be found at the event’s Facebook site.
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Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) aims to promote a serious discussion in Canada about the complicated and emotional Israel/Palestine issue. If you support our educational mission, why not join? Or make a donation? Or learn more about what we do? Contact us at membership.ctip@gmail.com.
Canada Talks Israel/Palestine 
This claim comes up all the time about the UN as if the UN were the cause of events rather than just responding to events. So let’s run your imaginary history. England is still exhausted economically and throws the Palestine mandate to the UN. What do they do? Well lets assume they assert that this is a Palestinian state and the solution to the Jewish question is to let the survivors in the death camps freeze to death. The European powers don’t agree and allow Jewish immigration to Palestine. So not much changes. In 1947 a tribal civil war with some level of foreign fighters breaks out in Palestine and the Jews start winning. Arguably there are in even better shape since the weapons blockade that the UN imposed is despised and denounced in the west, as the genocidal aims of the UN towards the Jews are much more clear. So the Jews are militarily slightly stronger.
Arab armies which were lightly committed start increasing their commitment to the war. They have a full UN mandate now for intervention. But they still lose badly. As before the Jews are fighting for the lives the foreign Arabs are merely fighting for their pride. So as before the Arab armies are driven back. The ethnic cleansing takes place but because the Yishuv as a military entity is entirely “illegal” I suspect it is even more brutal.
Now things get interesting because there is no partition and thus no legal way to achieve an armistice without recognizing the Yishuv. I suspect there still aren’t the votes. Which means all of mandate Palestine is captured and most all of the Palestinians are driven out by say 1950-1.
Now what? Obviously you have a chunk of the planet being governed by an army of a state capable of capturing the loyalty of the residents. What argument is there going to be for not incorporating Israel into the UN system and instead keeping them outside the wall. But let’s assume the votes don’t exist.
OK so Israel exists as a de facto state and many states recognize it. In particular the Yishuv (not having built a friendship with the USA and England is pro-Soviet and the Soviet Union (Stalin) likely is pro not anti-Zionism and encourages migration.
You give me your alternative history. I don’t see how the UN vote fundamentally changes things. By the time of the UN vote the events were going to play out pretty much as they did. The details of course can change and what happens after can change. The UN did not create Israel, the Zionists did.
It seems to me that a much better alternative would be for Canada (and other western nations) to have said in 1946/47/48 to the Jewish refugees in Europe – COME HERE! Bring us you artists, and scientists and lawyers. We welcome you.
Instead, we still said “JEWS NOT WELCOME HERE” GO OVER THERE AND WE WILL HELP YOU TAKE THE LAND OF THE PALESTINIANS”. That is the tragedy. We helped cause this mess as a result of our own antisemitism.
Peter —
If Canada would have willing to accept millions of Jews in 1946 then they would have been willing in 1941 and there would have been no Holocaust. The Madagascar plan (though with Canada in place of Madagascar) would have been the preferred solution for the Nazis and today Canada would be a/the Jewish homeland.
But they weren’t willing in 1946 for the same reason they weren’t in 1941. The reality is that Canada like most of the west while somewhat opposed to the idea of mass extermination didn’t like Jews very much and didn’t want large numbers of them. Antisemitism changed because of Israel, Jews are no longer seen as a variety of vermin that infest western western civilizations with godlessness and anarchy today because of Israel. They are seen as just the residents of another western civilization.
More importantly had Canada been willing to accept millions of Jews it would have been because the Napoleonic strategy of assimilation would have been successful. The ethnically Jewish who accept baptism wouldn’t have been seen as having a genetic disease making them incapable of joining society, there would have no racial antisemitism at all which means that Zionism never would have existed.
I don’t see how your scenario makes any sense. You are removing some effects without explaining what happens to the causes of those effects.
Israel absorbed 850,000 Jews from the Middle East, mostly Iraq, Iran and Morocco, when you weigh these refugees against the 750,000 Palestinian refugees you realize that this is just another population swap, very similar to the population swap between Poland and Germany and between India and Pakistan (albeit its 120 times smaller)
Without that population swap, the fate of 850,000 middle eastern Jews would have been much worse than that of the Yazidi minority’s fate