I read with great interest Quentin Lehmann’s opinion letter published in The Duty of July 12th (“Dismantling of our humanity”). One sentence particularly struck me: ” […] values that I wrongly imagined to be at the heart of Quebec identity — humanism and solidarity […] “.
This observation reflects a great disappointment with the reaction of Quebecers to the war in Gaza, which has so far caused more than 39,000 deaths on the Palestinian side, according to local authorities. It is true that reactions against this war are still relatively marginal, and that demonstrations of support for the Palestinian people, although regular, do not generate as much support as would have been desirable. It is therefore imperative to continue our work to raise awareness of this disaster, the consequences of which are incalculable.
From the first days after the attack by Hamas fighters in Israel in early October, the Canadian government took a position of unconditionally supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, despite the country being recognized as militarily occupying the West Bank and Gaza.
Minister Mélanie Joly and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have repeated this mantra ad nauseam, imitating the words of American President Joe Biden and many European heads of state. In the vast majority of cases, Western governments have taken months before issuing warnings to Israel to suspend its bombings. Requests for ceasefires have been timid and too conditional.
In December, we discussed within the Ahuntsic-Cartierville Citizen Convergence Collective to organize conferences on peace that would clarify things.
The one last February welcomed the philosopher Michel Seymour and one of the founders of Voix juives indépendants, Fabienne Preséntey. At the end of the evening, one of the participants suggested writing a petition addressed to Mélanie Joly, federal MP for our district and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Subsequently, we went to submit the petition to the minister’s office and we decided to enrich the requests in a second petition, which obtained at least 95 signatures from citizens of our neighborhood.
In April, after repeated requests, five members of our collective were welcomed by the political attachés of Minister Joly, our MP. We actively discussed for over an hour to explain the main demands that were the subject of this second petition:
— That Canada demands an immediate ceasefire in Palestine;
— That it demands an end to the blockade that has been suffocating the inhabitants of Gaza since 2007 and which today threatens them with famine and diseases that will leave long-term after-effects;
— That he declare an embargo not only on arms sales to Israel, but also on sales of all military equipment;
— That he demands the protection of civilians in the West Bank.
We are not the only ones demanding an end to the massacres. On Wednesday, July 10, I went to demonstrate on Sherbrooke Street against the decision of the McGill University administration to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment, one of whose main demands was that the institution stop its investments financing the sale of weapons to Israel. Even though they were evicted after months of occupation, the campers said they would continue the fight in other ways.
In 2003, at the time of the Iraq War, there must have been 200,000 people in the streets of Montreal, in the middle of winter, to demonstrate against this conflict. Opposition to the war was constant in Montreal. Clearly, the American government’s propaganda had not worked well.
More than 20 years later, can we hope that a similar phenomenon will occur and that Israeli propaganda will be clearly rejected? We absolutely must work on it. We must not give up.
It is not only the humanity of Palestinians that is at stake here. It is also ours.