Skip to main content

Don't let up

Re: Joint statement on Gaza

Joint statement from the leaders of Canada....

Dear Mr Carney and Ms Anand

First of all, congratulations to you both on your election to Parliament.

Mr Carney, thank you for the beautiful words of your acceptance speech, touting humility above all else and your desire to “fight for” all Canadians (although I might suggest “govern for” is both more accurate and less adversarial in framing).

Thank you for your joint statement with the leaders of the UK and France.

Thank you for “strongly oppos[ing] Israel's military operations in Gaza.”

Thank you for denouncing the “wholly inadequate” trickle of food aid.

Thank you for “denouc[ing] the denial of essential humanitarian assistance as “unacceptable.” Please note that it does not merely “risk breaching international humanitarian law” but has clearly already done so.

Thank you for the call to release the Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity. Please note that should have been accompanied by a demand to release the Palestinian hostages in Israeli “administrative detention.” They are just as illegally and unjustly imprisoned.

Thank you for promising “not [to] stand by while the Netanyahu Government pursues these egregious actions.”

However, Israel has already received warnings like this and done nothing. In addition to their repeated and escalating actions demonstration what can only by seen as genocidal intent, Israeli government ministers have boldly stated clear genocidal intent. The time for ultimatums is long past. This is not an “if” situation. It is already happening. Whatever concrete action you have planned, you must begin to take it now. Do not wait for the inevitable “crossing of the red line." So many red lines have already been crossed that Gaza is a field of blood.
You can immediately enforce the promised arms embargo with Israel: not only enforce it immediately and completely (closing every loophole), but enforce it as a two-way embargo: absolutely no military materials destined for either country, no matter which intermediaries are involved and no matter what sort of purpose they serve. No water containers or anything. 

You can immediately crack down on Israeli military recruitment in Canada. 

You can launch CRA investigations into all organizations credibly accused of funding settler colonialism or militariasm in Israel and if they are found to be noncompliant, remove their charity designation.

You can immediately recognize the Palestinian state. You have said you support a two-state solution, so why would you hesitate to recognize one of said two states?

This egregious humanitarian crisis has been going on for far too long. The credibility of Western nations is at stake and has already been made precarious in the world due to their silence in the face of clearly illegal and utterly immoral behaviour from the Israeli government. 

You must act now. 

We are all suffering moral injury due to our complicity with this genocide unfolding before our eyes.

Mr Carney and Ms Anand, you have the power to take the wishes of Canadians and act on our behalf. Please do not delay.

Sincerely

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My favourite nativity scene

“There’s no accounting for taste.” That’s my dad’s favourite way of explaining personal tastes that are incomprehensible to him, like living downtown, and riding bike in winter. The inexplicable factors which determine an individual’s likes or dislikes are probably the only way I can explain why my favourite nativity scene contains a horribly caricatured black magus, a random adoring child attired – to my fancy – like a Roma person, an old shepherd carrying some sort of blunderbuss. And a haloed holy family with an 18-month-old baby Jesus. This is the "Christmas Manger Set – the Christmas story in beautiful cut-out scenes and life-like figures." See how the 1940s-era family admires the realistic flourishes, like raw wood beams and straw protruding from the edge of the roofline; the rough, broken wood of the stalls; the tasselled camels; the richly dressed magi; the woolly sheep; the Bethlehemites on the path in the background, ostensibly out to get water, judging...
2 comments
Read more

Upside down economics of Jesus: household action and global change

--Presented at a CAWG event in Altona -- In Living More with Less , Doris Janzen Longacre shares a story about envelopes from Marie Moyer, a missionary in India, who was studying Hindi with Panditji. Marie writes: “From his philosophic mind, which probed the meaning of events and circumstances, I learned more than Hindi.” Just before her teacher’s arrival one day before Christmas, she’d received and opened a pile of Christmas cards and discarded the envelopes as he walked in the room. She writes: “He sat down soberly and studied the situation, then he solemnly scolded me: ‘the reverberation of this wasteful act will be felt around the world’.” Marie was stunned. “What do you mean?” she asked him. “Those envelopes,” he said, pointing to the wastebasket. “You could write on the inside of them.” “Chagrined”, Marie apologized and rescued the envelopes with the help of Panditji, who “caressed each one” as he pulled it out of the garbage. This forever changed Marie’s relationship to p...
2 comments
Read more

Broken people...

After reflecting with one coworker on how often churches in all their forms really mess up and hurt a whole bunch of people in the process -- and how "we gotta do better" -- I stumbled into another conversation with a coworker which highlighted our brokenness, and I suddenly realized what was wrong with my take in the first. I wanted the church to be better at fixing our mistakes, or better yet, at not making them in the first place. But maybe this "fix-it" attitude is partly the reason we keep blowing it again and again! My friend recollected an experience when a church community was in a terrible place: compounded mistakes, hurts, and frustrations had blown up, spewing pain all over all parties. (I'm sure anyone with a long history in the church can think of one, if not several, such occasions in their past.) A new Christian who observed all these goings on responded in an unexpected way. Instead of "you people are a bunch of screw-ups! How could this pos...
5 comments
Read more