Supported by the indifference and complicity of our governments,
ISRAEL CONTINUES TO MASSACRE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
Gaza, March – April 2018: Proud, alienated by more than 10 years of an unlawful, illegitimate and inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, virtually locked up in a cage, a real open-air prison, peaceful protesters in Gaza commemorated Palestinian Land Day and undertook the Great March of Return. The repression of the Israeli army is nothing less than carnage: already thirty dead and over 3000 injured, and it is not over!
How to qualify Israel’s denial of the basic right of the Palestinian people to demonstrate peacefully to demand respect for the Right of Return in accordance with UN Resolution 194, adopted on December 11, 1948 and never implemented by Israel? How to describe the actions of this army that uses drones to spray toxic tear-gas on a crowd of unarmed Palestinian civilians, and who fire live ammunition at women, men, children and the elderly who are as peaceful as their elders were in 1976 ?
On Twitter, the spokesman for the Israeli army said the day after the massacre of March 30: « Yesterday we saw 30,000 people. We were prepared and with the necessary reinforcements. Nothing was left to chance. Everything was accurate and measured, and we know where each bullet went. » It’s likely that the realization that this tweet was a war crime confession resulted in it being erased.
We share the pain and anger of the Palestinians. Their courage inspires us in the pursuit of our solidarity. The demonstration of the Gazans, like the slap administered by the young Ahed Tamimi to an Israeli soldier, are acts of peaceful resistance, but the answer is always the same: a fierce, brutal repression, totally unacceptable, but which passes without comment with the ease of a letter delivered to the post office!
How many more Palestinian lives will Israel’s heavy hardware destroy in the thundering silence of the so-called « international community »? It is time for Canada to distance itself from the United States and openly denounce the positions of the Trump administration. The silence and inaction of our governments and elected representatives is akin to criminal complicity with Israel. Those who will not denounce these abuses support them. Those instances that do not stop the massacre of the Palestinian people become complicit in this massacre!
We demand that our elected officials not only raise the tone against Israel’s actions, but that they question the leadership of their own political parties in the face of this tragedy. It is time to force the Trudeau government to support a more courageous policy against Israel, a policy based fundamentally on international law, the only instrument capable of implementing a just political solution for the Palestinian people:
End of occupation and colonization – Dismantling of wall – End of Gaza blockade
Full Equal Right for Arab-Palestinian Citizens of Israel
Respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees
Only concrete actions such as the application of the sanctions voted by the United Nations a hundred times will guarantee the true intentions of our governments to oblige Israel to respect international law and the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people, including its inalienable right to self-determination.
Immediate Embargo on Weapons to and from Israel
Boycott of Israeli academic, cultural and sports products and events
End of investments in Israel
Coalition BDS-Québec, April 7, 2018