Canada and the Middle East challenge

MOHAMMED AZHAR ALI KHAN

August 14, 2014
Canada and the Middle East challenge
Canada and the Middle East challenge

Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

 


Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

 


 


The Canadian government seems to be discouraging an initiative to bring 100 seriously injured Gazan children to Canada for treatment. This action had been suggested by Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian surgeon whose house in Gaza was shelled by an Israeli tank in 2009, killing three of his daughters and a niece. Dr. Abuelaish now teaches at the University of Toronto.



Dr. Abuelaish stated in the Toronto Star: “There are many severely wounded children in Gaza and the hospitals and health-care personnel there are woefully ill-equipped to treat them all. I would like to see our world-class Toronto hospitals offer to take in 100 of the most seriously wounded.



This would be a purely humanitarian effort, a way to demonstrate the Canadian values of peacemaking, diversity, tolerance and outreach to those in need and to set an example to other cities, provinces and countries…. We have a responsibility as humans to do what we can to save the innocent youth of Gaza and to hasten a peaceful resolution, together.”



Dr. Abuelaish won support from several organizations and hospitals and from Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins who said that the province would open its hospitals to injured children from Gaza and Israel who can’t be treated properly in Gaza. (No Israeli child was killed while hundreds of Palestinian children were killed and thousands were wounded). Hoskins stated that Ontario has a moral duty to help save lives.



Adam Hodge, speaking for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, declared that it made “far more sense to take Canadian medical expertise to the children, as well as the materials necessary to treat them.” He emphasized “the importance of ensuring that innocent victims receive the medical support they need close to their families and loved ones, and that include avoiding the medical risks and dangers of being transported overseas.”



In the meantime, demonstrations against the Israeli attack on civilians, and the Canadian government’s support for that policy continue.



Canada’s Green Party, which has only two members in Parliament, has criticized the three main Canadian political parties’ one-sided support of Israel.



“I am heartbroken to watch such deaths, destruction and violence,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May. “The death toll has soared to unspeakable numbers, mostly civilians.”



May said it is “simply not credible to take the stance of all three other leaders— Messrs Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau — that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s siege of Gaza is legal and meets humanitarian standards. It does not.”



She urged Canada to “press for a two-state solution, one that defends the right of the State of Israel to exist, but equally calls for a secure Palestinian state.”



Analysts suggest that the prime minister’s backing for Israel seeks to woo Jewish voters for next year’s federal election. It has been reported that the prime minister also backs Israel because he is an evangelical Christian and that he has been pained by the Jewish people’s sufferings through the ages because of anti-Semitism. Indeed, Christian conquerors of Jerusalem and Muslim Spain killed not only Muslims but massacred or exiled Jews as well and forced the suvivors to convert to Christianity.



This anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust. But discrimination and persecution against Jews has continued in Russia and eastern Europe. Even Canada and the United States refused to accept a boatload of Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi Germany just before the Second World War.



But there is no logic or justice in punishing innocent Palestinians for the sins of Europeans. Palestinians are guilty of two crimes. One, their ancestral homeland is what the Zionists want to grab and so they have to make way for people from outside. Two, the Palestinians are not Jews. If they had been, they could have stayed and enjoyed full benefits and privileges that the state can bestow.



The Liberals’ support for Israel’s “right to defend itself” is similar to that of the Tories, although less blatant. People had expected a more honest policy from Justin Trudeau. But Trudeau’s priority is not justice in the Middle East. It is to be the prime minister after next year’s election. The New Democratic party also has an eye on next year’s election and Ieader Tom Mulcair’s wife descended from Sephardic Jews whom Spain expelled during the inquisition. “My in-laws are Holocaust survivors.. That’s why I am an ardent supporter of Israel,” Mulcair has said.



The party’s stand has drawn criticism. Gerald Caplan, a former national director, wrote in part:  “Why should normal international standards of war and justice not apply to Israel? Around the world, in fact, many believe they must … As American Rabbi Michael Lerner dramatically says, we must ‘mourn for the Judaism of love and generosity that is being murdered by Israel and its worshippers around the world….’



“The Harper government, prisoner of its own one-dimensional dogma, never thinks, never wavers, simply echoes Benjamin Netanyahu… The Liberals wear their own great badge of shame. As for the NDP, its leaders face strong pressure to show greater moral courage and to speak out… Israel bears the overwhelming responsibility for the last month’s carnage in Gaza. The NDP must say as much, and now.”

 




— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge. 


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