In concluding remarks at a public meeting on Canada and Gaza organized by the Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine, moderator Peter Larson raised a question he is often asked: “Why does he focus on Palestine when there are so many other issues in the world?” Read his remarks here…
WHY IS PALESTINE SO IMPORTANT?
I am often asked why Palestine is so important to me.
Why am I more interested in the plight of Palestinians than human rights in Sudan, or Kashmir, or Tibet or Xinjiang, or the Rohingha?
Sometimes that question is posed out of simple curiosity. But sometimes I think it reflects a suspicion about whether I have a hidden antisemitic agenda.
There are three very good reasons why I think all Canadians should pay particular attention to Palestine. And its not because the Palestinians are more important or better than the Sudanese, or the Rohingya or the Tibetans.
The first reason is that Canada was deeply involved in the very creation of Israel. In contrast, we had no involvement in the creation of the Sudan conflict, or the Kashmir conflict or the Rohingya conflict.
But in 1947, our representative at the UN, Lester Pearson, actively lobbied for UN resolution 181. He was assisted by Judge Ivan Rand (later to become Chief Justice of Canada). The National Post labelled him “The unlikely Canadian who helped create the State of Israel.” Resolution 181 was supported by all the European members of the UN. It was called a resolution on “partition”, but in fact it laid out the legal foundation for the “confiscation” of over half of Palestine, to be given to European Jewish refugees. They were given a state. The Palestinians still wait for theirs.
It was based on the colonial idea that the needs of white Europeans were more important than those of a few “Arabs”. And it violated the spirit of the UN Charter itself, “to develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.
UN resolution 181 is now part of international law. It was passed at a time the UN had only 57 members, and was dominated by the European powers. But it was unfair to the Palestinians who had nothing to do with the holocaust. Few think such a resolution would be adopted by the 194 members of the UN today. Some UN resolutions have been reviewed and recinded. UN resolution 181 should also be reviewed.
But at the time, Canada lobbied hard to support it, and then looked away when the Palestinians were expelled from their homes and villages. Our hypocrisy didn’t end there. Two years later we voted in favour of another UN resolution (UNGA 194) which said that the expelled Palestinians have the right to return. But neither Canada nor any other western country did anything when Israel ignored that resolution and refused at gunpoint to allow them back.
As a result, Canada bears significant responsibility for the original Nakba, and for the ongoing refugee issue including the situation of the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. They remain refugees while waiting for countries like Canada to enforce the resolution on their right to return.
Canada’s motives in supporting the idea of carving a Jewish state out of historic Palestine were partly good, and partly bad. The good part is that Canada was overcome with remorse after the Holocaust and wanted to somehow compensate and protect those European Jewish refugees who survived.
But the bad part is that it was unfair and racist. Canada was shamefully antisemitic at the time. We didn’t want those Jews to come here. “None is too many” was Canada’s watchword on Jewish immigration. We may have felt “sorry” for the Jews, but we preferred to direct them to Palestine.
The second reason to focus on Palestine is that Canada does not support and defend the ongoing oppression and denial of human rights in Myanmar, or the Sudan. We dont sell arms to Myanmar. We don’t have a free trade agreement with Myanmar and we don’t defend it from criticism at the UN. In fact, Canada intervened in support of a charge of genocide against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice.
But we do sell arms and provide diplomatic cover to Israel at the UN and in every other way, despite the fact that Israel has been found over and over to be in violation of international law.
And thirdly, Palestine should be important to every Canadian because Western governments, including Canada, are right now turning a blind eye to a real time genocide. Shamefully, we are repeating the same thing we did when information about the Holocaust in Germany reached our shores, but we ignored it.
“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide, meeting all the criteria of a genocide. There is no doubt in my military mind that that is what is going on”, said General Romeo Dallaire, Canada’s foremost expert on genocide.
“Those 13-year-olds will become adults in a few years. They have no school, no money, no jobs. no future, the infrastructure is all destroyed – And half of their family has been killed and they have lived the trauma of war. What do you think they are going to do?”, he continued.
CONCLUSION – Palestine is today’s issue.
If we really care about claimed Western values of liberty, justice and universal human rights, Palestine is today’s issue.
If we care about due process, about free speech, about respect for international law, Palestine is today’s issue.
If we care about the International Criminal Court, about the International Court of Justice, about the Geneva convention on the rules of war, Palestine is today’s issue.
If we care about the murder of thousands of children, Palestine is today’s issue.
Palestine matters because we have stated over and over and over again that all human beings matter.
And if Canada really believes this, it is now time to back up our beliefs with concrete actions.
Canada Talks Israel Palestine (CTIP) is the weekly newsletter of Peter Larson, Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine (OFIP). It aims to promote a serious discussion in Canada about Canada’s response to the complicated and emotional Israel/Palestine issue with a focus on the truth, clear analysis and human rights for all. Readers with different points of view are invited to make comment.
Want to learn more about us? Go to Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine.ca
Canada Talks Israel/Palestine 
This is a very well reasoned piece. I certainly learned some new lessons.
I would like to point out that on a regular basis Charlie Angus has been writing about Grandmothers against Genocide who stand peacefully on corners in several Canadian cities protesting the killings in Gaza.
One answer is: why not Palestine?
Once when the vigil was at Bloor and Avenue Rd, an Israeli guy from the consulate came down and I talked to him. It was cold so I was inside the building. He asked the same question:: why not Tibet? I said Tibet is a great issue. What have you done about it? This is my issue.
Excellent review.
Well presented reasons . All good points to help “arm the converted” .
This an honest, candid, informed and timely statement. I have communicated similar sentiments and moral positions to the author, and to others. Canada is grossly implicated in a human tragedy as despicable and horrifying as the Nazi Holocaust, and other intentional genocidal crimes. Even today in the depths of this morally repugnant position, Canadian citizens by the hundreds of thousands will not ask the stark question, will not look under the stone, will not challenge the religous, cultural and political tropes, and imposed “truths”, and resist the funding of what has become a lawless rogue state breaking every single value that we as Canadians publically subscribe to, through the United Nation and our own Charter of Freedoms and Rights. Our government is guilty, yes. But far too may of our businesses are guilty, our pension and other investment funds are careless and guilty. But our nighbour citizens are also grevously guilty. Ths must be said, without fear or favour.
David J.A. Douglas
Guelph
Ontario
We live in a world full of outrages. You have done a beautiful job of explaining why I feel that the continuing mistreatment of the Palestinian people over the last century is the most outrageous of those outrages. There is one thing that I would say differently. You wrote, that UN Resolution 181 gave European Jews a State. I would rephrase that. It was not just given to European Jews who had been victims of the Nazis. Resolution 181 stole land and rights from Palestinians and gave it to all Jews no matter where we came from. Israel recruited Jews who were living in the Middle East, the UK, North America, Africa, …. and set them up on real-estate that had belonged to Arab Palestinians. If UN members were only interested in compensating European Jews, they could have given them the German State of Hesse, which is almost exactly the same size as Israel. Of course, Hesse was populated but so was Palestine. Many Hessians were complicit in the Holocaust; Palestine was not involved. Hessians who did not want to live in a Jewish State could have moved and been full citizens of other german States. The UN chose to compensate European Jews for German crimes using Palestinian possessions not German ones. I am sure that many would have objected to taking Hesse from Germans and donating it to Jews, but I recall very little objection from Europeans when the best part of Palestine was donated to Jews.
thank you dr. Parnas. A very useful clarification and addition.
Very cogently and succinctly argued. I wonder how the Israeli authorities would respond to the questions put to Eichmann in 1961. I was once a supporter of Israel but no longer. It has lost its way morally; it is now engaging in de facto apartheid and worse.
Hi. I agree with almost everything you write, Peter, but much is omitted. Our attention is valuable and Palestine has to compete not just with Sudan, Kashmir, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the Rohingha, but also with climate change, working for our favourite political party, reading poetry, or walking the dog.
Here are some of the reasons I am paying less attention to Palestine …
1. It seems hopeless.
2. Pro-Palestinian support is too split and its leadership has shifted to North America. (The ANC spoke for anti-Apartheid South Africans and the anti-Apartheid movement. Who speaks for Palestinians?)
3. North American radicals split the pro-Palestinian movement by promoting a “single state” when the whole world supported two states. It was thus in harmony with the Israeli right’s strategy of “divide and conquer.” Even now, activists like Avi Lewis feel obliged to insist, with no evidence and no viable alternative, that the two-state-solution is dead.
4. The world recognized the PLO as the sole authorized spokesperson for Palestinians. North American radicals undermined that by, in harmony with the Israeli right, continually denouncing the PLO/PA and its support for a separate Palestinian state.
5. The “left” has been too accepting of Palestinian terrorism.
6. To succeed, a movement needs support from moderates and liberals — in this case, from liberal Zionists. Significant parts of the the pro-Palestinian movement seem intent on keeping the movement small and divided, by insisting that we accept their legalistic and academic language (genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism), rather than getting together on concrete actions and moderate, achievable demands.
I could go on.
Arthur
all good points worthy of discussion
Arthur,
Don’t give up. Keep talking. Keep explaining. Freeing Palestine is only hopeless if people give up.
Well said, sir.
I have long been critical of what I see as clear decades-long maltreatment of the region’s general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies — and, with few exceptions, the Western mainstream news-media’s seemingly intentional tokenistic (non)coverage of it.
Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised at reading the cutline below the large photo accompanying a story (headlined “UK’s largest Jewish group punishes members who broke silence on Gaza genocide”) posted on the Middle East Monitor’s website: “A young Charedi Orthodox Jew holds a placard during the demonstration. Orthodox Charedi Jews joined many thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors outside Downing Street accusing Israel and Zionists of genocide in Gaza.”
Source: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/nasim/uks-largest-jewish-group-punishes-members-who-broke-silence-on-gaza-genocide/
Beautiful human beings. Seeing them and their vocal humanity-first conviction is to me encouraging. … Apparently applying a stereotype that Orthodox Jews would be the last to demonstrate with pro-Palestinian protestors and seemingly support their cause, I must admit I had negatively prejudged them.
It must be difficult for decent Jews/Semites with such a strong conscience when they publicly denounce Israel’s atrocities and are then denounced and referred to as “self-hating” by the extreme-Zionism powers, likely in large part to try shaming them into self-censoring.
Also, I read that there’s been an increase in the rate of suicide among younger or teenaged Jews/Semites since 10/7. I find it hard not to feel for them. They didn’t ask for what happened and especially the horrors currently happening. (This bothers me, even though I have neither Jewish/Semitic or Palestinian/Arabic heritage.)
And then there’s the blatant anti-Semitism directed at them from outside their community. … A Canadian columnist wrote how during a post-10/7 concert at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre, “a band member said something about a free Palestine. This, according to attendee Hanah Van Borek, led to a few shouts from the audience: ‘F — — the Jews!’
“It was clearly audible in her area of the crowd, a person who was with her confirms, but nobody around them shut this down. There were some cheers of support, though. ‘My whole body went into shock,’ says Ms. Van Borek, who is Jewish.
“Ms. Van Borek left the venue and explained why to security staff. She says a worker encouraged her to go back inside and reassured her she was safe. ‘Nobody will be able to tell that you’re Jewish,’ he said, according to Ms. Van Borek. (Oy.)
“She did return to the show, but Ms. Van Borek was — and is — rattled. She supports the band’s right to make political statements. It was the shouts from this group — and the silence around them — that were alarming.” [The essay, posted October 26, 2023, by The Globe and Mail, was written by Marsha Lederman.]
Likely due to not having Jewish heritage thus experience, I never expected the level of anti-Semitic assaults in the West since the shocking 10/7 Hamas attack against Israel. It’s plainly blatantly wrong for them to be mistreated and even terrorized, let alone suffering it supposedly for what is committed overseas.
And it should be needless to say that Western-world Palestinians and Muslims similarly must not be collectively blamed and attacked for the acts of Hamas violence in Israel or Islamic extremist attacks outside the Middle East.
Immediately after the 10/7 attack, great insensitivity was publicly shown by some crazy-angry pro-Palestinian activists towards the many who were freshly mourning the Israeli victims, especially when considering that many or most young Israelis and Jews elsewhere likely were not accustomed to such relatively large-scale carnage committed against Israel.
Further concerning about all of the highly publicized two-way partisan exchanges of verbal fury is: what will young non-Israeli Jewish, and Palestinian, children living abroad think and feel if/when they hear such misdirected vile hatred towards their fundamental identity? Scary is the real possibility that such public outpour of blind hatred may lead some young children to feel very misplaced shame in their heritage.