In Gaza, 2,300,000 human beings are caught in a mousetrap, bombed indiscriminately, locked in an open-air prison of 365 square kilometers (imagine, smaller than the metropolitan area of Montreal!), without bread, water or electricity. , nor gasoline, without Internet links other than intermittent, without being able to flee or escape from this hell or simply find a safe place, sheltered from imminent death… always possible.
Everywhere, countless corpses under the rubble, hospitals overwhelmed or destroyed, ruins that rise to the sky. Already, on Tuesday, there were more than 8,500 officially recognized deaths, including nearly 3,500 innocent children! Certainly a crime against the Palestinian populations, against the Palestinian people, against humanity, even!
A catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes… a possible second Nakba (exile) at the start of the 20th centuryIe century, even more violent than that which saw, in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians forced to leave their lands. And, stunned, we hear the echoes of it, as if it were certainly a catastrophe, but an inevitable catastrophe about which there was nothing to do except give in. . Despite all the calls for a ceasefire from the NGOs still there, from the vilified UN, from the desperate Palestinian Red Crescent!
And, here, in Quebec, we listen to the distant sound of these cries of despair, suddenly paralyzed by a heartbreaking feeling of helplessness.
No doubt we must first have learned to pierce the fog of disinformation which, playing on guilt, heightened emotions, decontextualized truths and the right of the strongest, sows everywhere collective disorientation, hesitation, forgetfulness, temptation to look elsewhere . After all, the one who took the direction of this vengeful operation, the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, – although so contested in his own country and prosecuted for recurring embezzlement – does he not claim precisely to defend himself from barbaric attacks having caused 1400 victims among Israelis? And is he not descended from a people who, in Europe, experienced the horrors of a genocide of hitherto unknown dimensions, demanding reparation and the right to finally be able to live in peace and security?
But then, how can we understand, in today’s context, that yesterday’s victims could have turned into today’s executioners, that there is no response from the side to these desperate Hamas terrorist attacks? Israeli than by state terrorism, that the aspirations of the Israeli people for peace and security were converted 75 years later into apartheid policies and large-scale war operations?
How can we understand, otherwise, by returning to history and putting back in the spotlight what is forgotten in official speeches and that, through their media monopoly, the great powers of the West are entering everyone’s throat, the under the cover of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and the countless missed opportunities to firmly establish its recognition? The formidable asymmetry of the forces and means present, putting in the same balance a small people forced to survive and without great means and a State clandestinely holding the atomic bomb and benefiting from the military and assured support of the leading power in the world , knowingly amalgamating, moreover, to discredit and weaken them, the legitimate desires of resistance and terrorist methods, depreciating at the same time, from the height of old colonial reflexes, the will to exist of a small people of the South?
We can thus better gauge the pusillanimity of the leaders of this world who, for more than 50 years, have remained silent and allowed the situation to deteriorate to this point, hypocritically turning a blind eye to the policies of establishing Israeli colonies. And above all measure the deterioration of the political balance of power existing particularly in Quebec between supporters of peace, progressive or left-wing forces and supporters of war and of this so unjust status quo maintained under the aegis of the United States and the rising forces from the right.
Beyond of course the much-needed humanitarian aid, this is where, as citizens, we could act: work to once again become at home, in Quebec and in Canada, a mobilized social and political force capable of moving our governments! That Trudeau, for example, contrary to the pro-American positions he has endorsed, is forced, under the pressure of public opinion, to demand an immediate ceasefire! Or that Legault refuses, as he claimed to do only a few days ago, to open the office of a Quebec delegation in Tel Aviv!
Small gestures which, through their political significance, can open the way to solidarity full of promise and, above all, allow forces to gradually emerge capable, in this so mistreated region of the world, of imposing a true and peaceful peace. , therefore, a political solution that would fully take into account the inalienable right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.