If you listen to pro-Israel Canadian Jews, their advocates and their supporters – of whom there are many in high political and powerful positions in our country — Israel hasn’t killed anyone in Gaza. There is no genocide. It’s “just” a war.

Oh yes, they will tell you there have been “skirmishes” over the years and “incidents” throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem –a few here and there.  Take for example when Israel attacked Gaza in 2014;  the IDF killed more than 2,251 Palestinians were killed including 551 children and 299 women.   Was that a skirmish? I think not.  Since 2008, Israel has launched at least five wars on Gaza including Operation Cast Lead, and Operation Pillar of Defense and Operation Protective Edge.    Israel has killed more than 6,000 Gazans, mostly civilians. 

“…an older woman interrupted a phone conversation I was having about Israel’s destruction of Gaza and yelled she hoped Israel would kill ‘10,000 more.'”

pro-Israel supporter to Yves Engler in this report

Canadian Journalist Yves Engler was in Toronto during Israel’s 51-day murderous siege of Gaza in 2014.  He reports that at a pro-Palestine rally on Bloor Street, “an older woman interrupted a phone conversation I was having about Israel’s destruction of Gaza and yelled she hoped Israel would kill “10,000 more.”

Very few pro-Israel Jews will agree today that Israel has killed 41,000 Palestinians, 16,000 of whom are children.  Yet every pro-Israel Jew will explain that on 7 Oct., Hamas terrorists killed  nearly 2,000 Jewish Israelis including  282 women, 36 children and took 251 Israelis hostages. Everything is about the Jews. And about how the Hamas attack justifies the current massacre. 

“Are we [Jews] the people who are made the objects of scorn in the international court, the objects of slander on university campuses, the objects of micro and macro aggressions in the workplace, on social media, and on the streets of our city? Yes, by the thousands.”

Rabbi Yael Splansky to show how exceptional Jews who support Israel are

As Rabbi Yael Splansky, Senior Rabbi at one of the largest synagogues in the country, Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, writes,

“Are we the people who were murdered by Nazis? Yes, by the millions. And we are also the people who survived and went on to re-establish Jewish sovereignty in our ancestral homeland. Are we the people who were slaughtered and taken captive by Hamas? Yes, by the hundreds. And we are also the people who know this is not how the story ends. Are we the people who are made the objects of scorn in the international court, the objects of slander on university campuses, the objects of micro and macro aggressions in the workplace, on social media, and on the streets of our city? Yes, by the thousands.”

Supporters of Israel will never talk about genocide of Palestinians

I have just combed the Internet for sermons and speeches in Canadian synagogues by Jewish leaders. I have looked at many Canadian synagogue sites.  Yet nowhere do I find any reference to Palestinians, to their deaths, to the murders of their children or to the Genocide in Gaza over the last 11 months.  There is virtually no comment, no public recognition, no sermon, no interview by Jewish leaders in the Diaspora about Palestinian children who are now amputees, a population enduring mass starvation, living through Israel’s dropping 2-tonne bombs on tent cities throughout Gaza – as recently as this month.  The bombs killed scores of Palestinians on the ground, sleeping in their tents, who were all but annihilated by bombs which left nine-metre deep craters, “causing entire families to disappear in the sand.”

On another note, a few pro-Israel papers such as The Times of Israel have commented about the anti-polio vaccination efforts by UNRWA.  But it seems the commentary is mainly to assuage Jews whose relatives live in Israel or are part of the IDF who fight in in Gaza, that they will remain safe from the disease.

[McGill University President] Saini “asked Jewish Zionist students to spy on professors, reportedly “calling on Jewish students to be the ears on the ground and report any breaches of conduct.”

Dr Deep Saini, president of McGill University here

The complete destruction and erasure of Palestinians by Israel and its supporters seems to be well under way.  In Canada, the pro-Israel stance is taken up by most who hold power.  One does not need to be Jewish or a Christian Zionist to support Israel without question.  We have seen politicians, university presidents, art gallery administrators, high school principals, law faculties, prestigious law firms, medical associations, hospital executives and more support pro-Israel forces that are conducting a reign of terror against all who dare support  Palestinians.  The pro-Israel forces

1. Try to stop all public meetings about Palestine whether in public libraries or universities–  Here in Halifax, the Central Library has refused  to allow speakers and workshops on Palestine
2. Punish faculty, teachers and students who speak in favour of Palestinians’ rights
3. Remove  encampments from a dozen university campuses across Canada that supported Palestinians rights. This ensures no more free debate or protests about Israel’s war crimes
4. Remove professional status, fire people, take away the occupations of those who support Palestinians
5. Run “dirty Tricks” campaigns against trade union and cultural leaders and even websites that support Palestine.
6. Push police to charge demonstrators, arrest and detain people who picket for Palestine, or dare to walk through cities in protest of genocide

“Nobody is going to be now excluded from or made to feel uncomfortable in class because they are a Zionist and support Israel,” concluded President Saini.

For more read this

It seems that Israel backers refuse to acknowledge the dead in Gaza, the tens of thousands of children, those now disabled and unable to get medicine or treatment in Gaza, the impoverished mothers giving birth to sickly children; all those civilians who want nothing more than to live.  Recognition of that is too much to ask from Canada’s pro-Israel Jews.  However  if you give them the chance, they will tell you how 7 Oct was the turning point for Jews and time to fight back – never mind disproportionality when measured against Palestinian killings which renders it a genocide.  The Jews refuse to recognise 75 years of colonization by Israel:  of Israel killing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, of them being thrown off their land, their homes bulldozed, living in refugee camps, having relatives and friends martyred to their struggle for human rights and their right to exist. 

Palestinians’ right to exist is really at stake here.  Few if any have been seriously hurt in Israel, or in the Jewish diaspora – yet Israeli politician after politician has called for the annihilation of Palestinians, killing their children, and kicking them off their land permanently.  As Israeli president Isaac Herzog noted last fall, “There are no innocent civilians in Gaza.” At least one IDF artillery shell had this scrawled on it in Hebrew, “God willing, it will hit innocent people.”

But all the rest of us (including me as an anti-Zionist Jew) are furious.  Why should we tolerate the silencing and criminalization of our struggle to help Palestinians?   

Featured painting above: Malak Mattar, “No Words,” oil on primed linen, 2024 (courtesy of the artist). Mattar’s work will be displayed at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival, from 25 September.