Pro-Palestinian activists at their encampment on the McGill University campus in Montreal on May 1.Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press
War is hell: Three words, inarguable. Military industrial complex aside, this is a statement we can all agree on.
The Israel-Hamas war and its consequential global cataclysms have produced an earful of slogans. Lacking nuance or context, their meaning is often in the eye (or ear) of the beholder.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” Does that mean freedom from the oppression in the West Bank and the bloodbath in Gaza, and true equality from one body of water to the other? Or is it an existential threat? Some – Israelis and Jews in particular (not all, but many) – hear this as: from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free of Jews.
Carleton University political science professor Mira Sucharov said on CBC Radio this week that she wished the phrase was instead “Palestinians” shall be free.
“Long live October 7,″ a Vancouver protest recently heard, in reference to the day about 1,200 people were murdered and more than 200 taken hostage. A cry for resistance? Please. (The speaker was subsequently arrested in a hate speech investigation.)
People on all sides are being accused of being on the wrong side of history. I would suggest that celebrating deaths is a definitive way to choose the wrong side.
“Globalize the intifada.” That word, intifada, means rebellion, an uprising. Still, the second intifada in Israel killed more than 1,000 people and gravely injured thousands more, as suicide bombers targeted buses, restaurants, a Passover seder and other gathering places. If this is what anybody wants to globalize, there is reason for concern. If what they mean is “world, join us in rising up against the oppression we have experienced since the Nakba” – that’s a different story. But that’s not what many people hear.
Some people from the pro-Israel side have referred to people advocating for Palestinian rights or speaking out against the war in Gaza as “pro-Hamas” or “pro-terrorist.” Come on. Advocating for Palestinians does not make someone in favour of terrorism – nor does it make them antisemitic.
Then there’s that word: “Nazi.” As catastrophic as Israel’s actions in Gaza are, equating them to what the Nazis did is inaccurate and, to many, offensive. Israel is not systematically herding every Palestinian it can find to their death as an end unto itself. Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas has caused horrific civilian deaths. As devastating as this is, that does not necessarily mean it is a genocide, however. As The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood noted, the prosecution at the International Court of Justice “must demonstrate the intent to destroy a protected group, and the absence of plausible non-genocidal intents that might explain the behavior of the accused.”
Why offensive? The word “genocide” was invented during the Second World War to describe the campaign to destroy European Jewry. The global Jewish population has still not recovered.
Never again, Jews say in reference to the Holocaust. This should not just mean “never again will Jews allow themselves to be shoved into gas chambers while the world yawns and keeps its borders shut tight.” Never again should mean: no more killing innocent people, no more displacement. How can anyone justify the misery caused to Gazans, as they shuffle from one unsafe place to another, having lost family, limbs, pets, homes, possessions?
Gazan officials say more than 34,000 people have died in the war. Supporters of Israel often counter that those numbers can’t be trusted. So what? So what if it’s not quite 34,000? Would we be okay with that?
Not in my name.
At the ballooning campus protests, where people with varying degrees of knowledge of the situation have chosen a side, the clashes have been described as war zones under siege – without a hint of irony.
“All Zionists are racists,” I saw on a T-shirt. In my understanding, a Zionist is someone who supports the existence of the state of Israel. That makes most (but not all) Jews Zionists. But it has taken on another connotation; for some, it has become a dirty word. There’s a video from Montreal where young people in keffiyehs sing about Zionists being racists, after another tune to the melody of Bingo (Was His Name-O). The last line of the altered ditty: “And go back to Europe.”
We all know what happened in Europe. Genocide.
The first post-Oct. 7 Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – begins Sunday evening, at a time when some memorials have been covered over concerns about vandalism, or worse. This week, Poland’s Nozyk Synagogue, Warsaw’s only pre-war synagogue still standing (the Nazis used it as a stable) was firebombed.
There’s a song that Jews all over the world sang during the recent Passover holiday. Dayenu goes through the Passover story, thanking God for each action that freed the Israelites from slavery. Dayenu means “it would have been enough.”
Enough. It’s enough.
Bring them home. Ceasefire now.
Marsha Lederman