[R-G] Where's Palestine in the Canadian Election?

[Anthony Fenton]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 146 ... October 13, 2008
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Where's Palestine in the Canadian Election?
Kole Kilibarda

Many will certainly remember that incredibly friendly moment, during  
the otherwise acrimonious recent U.S. Vice-Presidential debate, when  
Republican candidate Sarah Palin reached out to her Democratic rival  
Joseph Biden, saying she was: "encouraged to know we both love Israel  
and I think that is a good thing to agree on." Arguably, observing the  
Canadian election process, one gets the impression that this warm  
sentiment would be shared by party leaders north of the border – from  
Stephen Harper all the way through to Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton,  
Elizabeth May and even Gilles Duceppe – most of whom appear ready to  
join Palin (though with varying degrees of enthusiasm) in endorsing  
Israeli apartheid in one variety or another.

Injustice's Shinning Allure?
In Canada, we are witnessing another election cycle in which foreign  
policy questions have been largely relegated to the proverbial  
'backburner.' To the extent that the oppression of the Palestinians  
has been an issue, cross-party affirmations of support for Israel have  
been widespread. Thus, even Green Party leader Elizabeth May felt  
compelled to argue that: "We need to recognize that Israel is the  
bulwark of democracy and a healthy society" in the Middle East during  
a recent interview. May didn't bother to offer reasons why voters  
'need to recognize' this contentious assertion, instead treating  
Israeli apartheid as so self-evidently virtuous that she felt no  
compulsion to offer evidence to back her claims.

While many small 'l' Canadian liberals might justifiably laugh-off  
Palin's Reaganite naïve view of the USA as 'that shinning city on a  
hill,' many will nonetheless insist on maintaining a similarly  
idealized picture of that other 'city on a hill' – Israel's gleaming  
colonial project in the Middle East. For many middle-class liberals,  
Israel has served as a symbolic beacon of 'shared democratic values'  
in a region of the world that many seem afraid of. For others, the  
topic has been 'too controversial,' or 'too complicated' or 'hopeless'  
and the preference has been to simply stay quiet. Such (heavily  
racialized) predispositions are something that Israel's consul general  
in Toronto, Amir Gissin, is trying to play-up in order to convince  
residents of the city – by means of a $1-million 'Brand Israel' re- 
branding campaign – that Israel is worth another chance.

Of course, one does not need to look far to understand the ability of  
Canadian party leaders to ignore Palestine's ghettoes and Bantustans  
during this election season. One just needs to consider their  
deafening silence on the situation of indigenous peoples here on  
Turtle Island and it becomes clear how what Ryerson sociology  
professor Alan Sears has identified as 'settler solidarity' functions.  
This type of 'solidarity' is something that Israeli brand experts have  
apparently picked up on, by promoting North American tourism to Israel  
in what are apparently meant to be enticing images speaking directly  
to very masculinist (and often pubescent) settler sensibilities.

The campaign has thus included images of everything from 'real Israeli  
cowboys,' to the redemptive/Biblical marketing of 'Holy Land' sites,  
to the 'hotness' of Israeli women (witness last year's MAXIM feature  
on 'The Women of the IDF'). Recent Canadian variations on this  
campaign have tried to play-up Israel's alleged 'multicultural  
democracy', its 'environmentalism' and its health-care system by  
simply omitting the racial differentiation characterizing access to  
these.

Meanwhile in Palestine...
The mythmaking quality of Israel's rebranding campaign aside, it's not  
like opportunities have been lacking for Canadian party leaders to  
condemn Israel's legislated racism and militarized control over  
Palestinian life. According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights  
(PCHR), in the month since the Canadian elections' were called the  
Israeli military has:

	• carried out at least 170 incursions into Palestinian villages,  
towns and cities;
	• arrested 155 Palestinian civilians (including 30 children);
	• injured at least 68 Palestinian civilians (including 16 children),  
and transformed three houses into military bases.
Settler militias have also started attacking Palestinian farmers and  
burning down olive trees in what has become a yearly occurrence  
coinciding with the seasonal olive harvest. There were also the  
intense race-riots triggered this past week in the city of Akka  
(Acre), after Taufik Jamal and his daughter were nearly stoned to  
death by Jewish extremists for having 'provocatively' smoked  
'cigarettes' and 'played music' in his car ('violating' Israeli  
religious proscriptions on such behavior during Yom Kippur even though  
the father and daughter aren't of the same faith and deny behaving in  
these 'offensive' ways).

Finally, during this period, PCHR reports that 6 Palestinian civilians  
were killed at the hands of Israeli forces, including:

	• Naheel 'Awni 'Abdul Rahim, 21, from Qasra village southeast of  
Nablus, who gave birth to a dead baby at Hawara checkpoint due to the  
restrictions on Palestinian movement imposed by the Israeli military  
(September 5);
	• Waleed Fareed Waleed Fraitakh, 22, a plumber from Nablus shot by  
the Israeli military while returning home after work (September 10);
	• an unnamed Palestinian boy shot by the Israeli army in Taqqou'  
village near Bethlehem (September 13);
	• Suhaib Yasser Ahmed Saleh, 14, from Southern 'Assira village near  
Nablus shot through the chest and right leg (September 20);
	• Miriam Ahmed 'Ali 'Ayad, 56, killed in Abu Dis, near Jerusalem,  
when she was pushed down the stairs of her family home by an Israeli  
soldier, splitting her head open as a result (September 20);
	• and Yahia 'Atiya Fahmi Bani Monya, 18, from 'Aqraba village  
southeast of Nablus, kidnapped by settlers while grazing his sheep,  
only for his bullet riddled body to be found later dumped 1km from the  
Jetit settlement in an area prohibited to Palestinians (September 27).
In the Gaza Strip, as the PCHR explains, the conditions of siege  
continue to take their toll, with health services

"severely affected by the siege...Critically ill patients are still  
being denied permits to access vital health services in the West Bank,  
Israel and abroad.  Water facilities, including access to clean  
drinking water, and the treatment of raw sewage continue to be  
severely disrupted by fuel shortages. 50-60 million liters of  
untreated and partially treated sewage are being dumped into the Gaza  
Strip Mediterranean Sea daily, posing a public health risk.  Hundreds  
of Gazan students are currently unable to resume their university  
studies...The Gaza Strip had been suffering from chronic shortages of  
fuel supplies, especially cooking gas, and electricity is still being  
cut-off for long periods of time."

This is in addition to poverty rates of some 80%, massive  
unemployment, and increasing malnutrition that are all attributable to  
the blockade. As the PCHR notes:

"despite the Egyptian brokered 'Tahdiya' or truce between Palestinian  
resistance groups and Israel that began on 19 June; there have been no  
major changes regarding the movements of civilians and goods through  
the six Gaza Strip border crossings."

Grabbing Some Votes by Increasing Civilian Pain?
In fact, the only candidate to actually refer to Palestinian civilians  
with anything resembling a clear policy preference, was Liberal  
candidate Ken Dryden, who during an all-candidates debate in Toronto  
chillingly stated that Canada must: "Stop all aid that flows into  
Gaza. While that may seem a harsh measure that will hurt Palestinian  
civilians... it is the right thing to do at this time." While Dryden  
has since 'clarified' that he only meant cutting government-to- 
government assistance – on which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians  
depend! – his initial comments highlight an almost reflexive  
callousness towards Palestinians that is shared by many politicians  
currently running for office in Canada.

In fact, Dryden's comments endorsing collective punishment, faithfully  
echo the main justification for Israel's blockade of Gaza. The siege  
is thus explicitly calculated to impose massive civilian suffering for  
the audacity of Palestinians to choose a government through...  
ballots!! Dov Weisglass, one of Ariel Sharon's top advisors, clarified  
shortly after the 2006 Palestinian elections that the blockade was  
intended to be:  "like a meeting with a dietician. We have to make  
them much thinner, but not enough to die."  Last spring Israel's  
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went further, arguing that  
Palestinians were risking a 'shoa' (catastrophe / holocaust) in Gaza  
if they continued their resistance.

Moving Forward After Election Day?
Of course, this is not to say that the position of every party in  
Canada reflects such racist (even génocidaire?) positions. There are  
grassroots currents within the Green Party, the NDP and the Bloc that  
consistently push for principled positions on international issues.  
However, in cases where parties have taken an official stand – the NDP  
and Green Party electoral platforms are the only ones that contain  
explicit policy statements on 'Israel and Palestine' – they simply  
fail to unequivocally condemn Israeli apartheid, preferring instead to  
equate the oppressed and the oppressors. This is often done in a  
usually unsuccessful attempt to avoid neo-conservative, rightwing and  
racist 'pro-Israel' flak, while simultaneously attempting to placate  
social-justice seeking constituencies within their own party. A 'safe'  
position thus becomes supporting a 'two state solution' while  
remaining silent on the fate of 5-million Palestinian refugees denied  
the fundamental right of return or the 1.5-million Palestinian  
citizens of Israel living legislated racism everyday.

These silences are especially problematic given that in recent years a  
consensus has developed within Palestinian civil society on the best  
non-violent method of moving forward with the struggle for justice in  
the Middle East – i.e. support for a comprehensive grassroots boycott,  
sanctions and divestment (BDS) campaign that seeks an end to Israel's  
occupation of all Arab lands (40+ years), the return of refugees (60  
years) and the recognition of equal civil and political rights for  
Palestinians living in Israel (60+ years).

Concretely, what support for this campaign would mean if translated  
into the context of the Canadian political scene, would be to call on  
the next government to immediately suspend cooperation agreements with  
Israel, including the Canada Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) and  
the Canada Israel Industrial Research and Development Fund (CIIRDF).  
These agreements contribute to the over $1-billion dollars in  
bilateral trade and over $2-billlion worth of foreign direct  
investments linking Israel and Canada (including dozens of security  
related joint projects).

However, support for such measures will mean bringing the carefully  
constructed, semi-biblical image of Israel fostered within the North  
American political imaginary into question. Endorsing Palestinian  
perspectives on their dispossession during an election campaign might  
also mean that settler politicians in Canada might have to confront  
the uncomfortable truth that Canada itself was built on and continues  
to depend on the exploitation of lands stolen from the indigenous  
peoples of Turtle Island. I guess this is something progressives will  
be thinking about long after Election Day, which this year falls right  
after the 'Thanksgiving Weekend.'

To learn more about the global BDS visit www.bdsmovement.net or log on  
to www.caiaweb.org. •

Kole Kilibarda is an organizer with the Coalition Against Israeli  
Apartheid (CAIA). He can be reached at kole at riseup.net.