A curious amnesia strikes certain representatives of the Canadian and Quebec political class. Listening to them, you would believe that the history of the conflict in the Middle East began on October 7, 2023. The media often reflect this perception. Most discussions of any aspect of the conflict inevitably begin with “since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7…”.
However, in this conflict, as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, we must put things in their historical context. This violence is unfolding as part of a hundred-year war aimed at the appropriation of Palestine and the expulsion of its indigenous inhabitants.
The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has lasted 56 years. It is a military occupation, maintained by the violence of the occupying army. According to the Business Coordination Office humanitarian agency of the UN, OCHA, there were, between 2008 and September 2023, therefore before the Hamas attack of October 7, 6,407 Palestinians killed and 308 Israelis killed. That is 20 times more Palestinians killed than Israelis.
When there are no or few Israeli casualties and it is the Palestinians alone who are killed, the mainstream media speak of a “lull”. The deaths of Palestinian civilians do not usually make the news, nor do the destroyed homes, the imprisonment of hundreds of minors without charge, the raids of Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages and the destruction they cause to the century-old olive trees under the protection of their army, etc. Humiliation is daily. Several Israeli human rights organizations document these violations in detail. Their reports are largely ignored by the international press. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have described this system as “apartheid”, a hidden aspect of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.
Let those who doubt it listen to the testimony of Dr.r Gabor Maté, Jewish Canadian doctor and Holocaust survivor.
“I visited the occupied territories […] during the first Intifada. I cried every day for two weeks because of what I saw. The brutality of the occupation, the petty harassment, its murderous nature. The burning or felling of Palestinian olive groves, the denial of water rights, the humiliations. And it continues. And the situation is much worse than then. »
But the empathy of some politicians is rather selective.
This violence is part of a global project of appropriation of the land of Palestine by European Jewish immigrants first, to whom Jews from elsewhere have joined, sometimes against their will, to the detriment of the indigenous inhabitants, the Palestinians. .
This is a century-old project, well documented by Israeli historians such as Ilan Pappe (The ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Fayard, 2008). In the war that followed the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, 75% of Palestinians were expelled from their villages and homes, and were never allowed by Israel to return to their homes, despite of Resolution 194 of the UN General Assembly which confirmed their right of return. This first phase of ethnic cleansing was followed by a second, less significant phase in the 1967 war.
It appears that the most recent war against the Palestinians in Gaza aims to continue this ethnic cleansing, by violently forcing the Palestinians to leave northern Gaza permanently. Gabor Maté continues: “ […] it would not have been possible to create this exclusive Jewish state without expelling or oppressing the local population. This is the longest ethnic cleansing operation in the 20e and XXIe centuries. It still continues today.”
It is the forgetting of this history which is the basis of selective indignation in the face of the war crime committed by Hamas on the famous October 7. The war unfolding before our eyes is not between Israel and Hamas, as the Israeli narrative, which has become dominant among political and media elites in Canada, Quebec and France, would have it. The extent of the violence and the identity of the victims clearly show that this is not a war between Hamas and Israel, but a war against all Palestinians.
It is this context which is sorely lacking in the current debate, and which Antonio Guterres wanted to recall. He will undoubtedly have a political price to pay for having demonstrated moral integrity. But it is the civilian population of Gaza who will pay the highest price, because Israel has already begun to suffocate the population of Gaza even more, to “punish” the UN for not having fully adhered to its colonial discourse.