It’s a genocide & it’s been going on for decades while the West, under the guise of a “democracy”, doesn’t even bat an eye. Call for an immediate ceasefire now !
The west is complicit. Probably because we benefit from the arms trade of wars and the leverage over the Middle East. Canada is benefiting from this war. That’s why they’re for it (pretending not to be for it cos Canadians are so nice, eh?). As soon as it’s not in our interests then we will be against it.
You appear to give the air of a humanitarian…you, like the rest of us, don’t like seeing dead children. But in your thinly veiled undermining of the extent of the massacre of civilians to support your « not a genocide » declaration, you have quoted doubt in the numbers expressed by the Israeli judge. Only you referenced him by name, and not by his country…not an oversight, on your part, but rather deliberate.
There is plenty Canada can do, and it can start with not siding with Israel in last weeks ICJ hearings and trying to convince a court NOT to rule on the legal consequences of the illegal
Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. But it has done the opposite of course. But didn’t even even have the backbone or integrity to show up in person at the court as all other countries did. Feeling ashamed? We should be.
To set you straight on the Hamas numbers, as you neglected to mention in your article but I think you’re well aware, that in every previous conflict the Hamas numbers have been very close to those of Israel’s and humanitarian organizations. And they’ve always been an underestimate. There I no reason or past experience on records of Hamas reported numbers having cause for concern.
And as for if they are militant or civilians: can we all agree that the children are not militants?
And if you have child numbers you can reasonably use proportion to determine the women and men numbers to, as a back of the napkin check. The ball park is correct.
Using weak arguments of doubts in accuracy numbers is a trademark Zionist tactic. I’m not buying it. And the fact that you do, and repeat it, raises a red flag on the veracity of anything you say.
Nice try to say « hey guys ,we super hate genocide and death, but it’s not us, it’s the U.S. ».
Again, not buying it.
Your articles are attempts to look like you care but you don’t. Maybe you’re testing the waters here on the relatively unknown Substack to see which points work and which don’t.
For me, your card is marked. You’re here to flog what the Liberal Party is selling.
Oh, it's a genocide alright. And, breaking news, the US is threatening to veto another UN Security Council vote. That's all we need to know, and we're naive if we think anything less than breaking ties, BDS etc. will stop the madness of US imperialism. If we really value the lives of our brothers and sisters across the globe, we should stop facilitating their murders and stand up to the rabid Mastodon in the room.
Thanks for your work advocating for a ceasefire. While it may still be unclear whether what is happening in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, it certainly appears evident that there have been massive violations of humanitarian law. Please advocate to restore funding to the UNRWA which provides vital assistance to the people of Gaza in this time of urgent need.
Thank you for signing the letter to the Prime Minister and upholding international law. Please continue to push for a ceasefire on behalf of Canadians who watch the tragedy unfolding, horrified , helpless and speechless with grief.
On January 24th, I wrote to our feckless parliamentarians (of all parties – not just the Trudeau Liberals who masquerade as humanitarians as Mary Farrell has rightly pointed out) calling out their callous, baseless criticism of South Africa’s principled submission to the ICJ. Nate responded on February 14th directing me to this abysmal piece which, amongst other things, made it abundantly clear that he didn’t bother to read my email in its entirety.
I concede that it’s too much to ask our esteemed MPs for 30 minutes of their time to go through a 3,000+ word message. Yet, if he’d taken just five minutes to read the following two paragraphs, then perhaps we might have been spared of self-contradicting arguments foolishly peddled within this article (assuming of course, that it was written in good faith with an intent to be both factually accurate and intellectually honest).
“To suggest that ethnic cleansing (the term used by historians such as Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and even Benny Morris until recently to describe the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from 1947-49 and another 300,000 in 1967) is irrelevant, that being on the receiving end of 56 years of military domination under a regime of Apartheid (in the words of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem) is irrelevant, that the never ending expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories (which Canada, like much of the international community, considers illegal) is irrelevant, that the imposition since 2007 of a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip (described as a “concentration camp” by Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council back in 2004, i.e. before the 17 year siege began, or the “world’s largest open air prison” by David Cameron in 2010) is irrelevant, that the ruthless suppression of non-violent forms of protest and resistance (indiscriminate shooting of unarmed protestors during the First Intifada and the Great March of Return, neutralising of BDS in the West etc.) is irrelevant, is outrageous. The examples I have cited only scratch the surface when it comes to articulating the daily indignity and humiliation that the indigenous peoples of the land endured long before October 7th. Indeed, none of this justifies acts of terror against Israeli civilians because an eye for an eye is immoral, illegal and unsustainable. Likewise, if 75 years of Palestinian suffering doesn’t excuse what Hamas did, then consistency dictates that the same logic applies to Israel. That retaliating by indiscriminately bombarding the besieged enclave as if every Gazan is culpable for the brutality of October 7th is just as immoral, illegal and unacceptable...
As far as existential threats are concerned, the Netanyahu government’s stance is a grotesque inversion of reality. The IDF is the world’s fourth strongest military that boasts state of the art weaponry and equipment. In comparison to the F-15s and F-35s that the Israeli Air Force flies, Hamas’ air force consists of fighters brandishing Kalashnikovs on paragliders. It is Israel that has the might to impose a 17-year land, air and sea siege (which has now become a total blockade) on Gaza, not the other way around. As far as existence goes, it is the Palestinian enclave that’s being reduced to rubble (again, not my words, see: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542). Many more examples could be cited to demonstrate that the balance of power is overwhelmingly in Israel’s favour, but I won’t beleaguer the point.”
Consider the following example which demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy that’s become such an enduring feature of Liberal doublespeak (masquerading as humanitarians without taking any meaningful actions to stop the carnage ensuing in Gaza):
“It isn’t hard to find dehumanizing comments, including some from senior officials. And too many people, including Israel’s President, have been quick to ignore that Palestinians are not Hamas. No, it isn’t an entire nation out there that is responsible.
At the same time, while the security context doesn’t absolve Israel for its indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing campaign, it does provide a rationale for violence that is very different from genocidal intent. In other words, one needs to consider Israel’s response in light of October 7 and Hamas’ threat to ‘repeat October 7 again and again.’”
For a start, it is palpably absurd to detach what someone says from their intent, particularly if actions that follow are in line with what was said in the first place. A vast array of alarming, bone-chilling statements, social media posts, videos etc. dehumanising Palestinians and calling for their destruction have been made by Israeli ministers, officials, media personalities, IDF soldiers and reservists (i.e. the Israeli public at large), Western politicians and the likes. This has been followed by the indiscriminate slaughter of more than 30,000 Gazans (25,000 of whom as Lloyd Austin belatedly admitted are women and children), mass displacement and starvation, a complete breakdown of the healthcare system, do I really need to keep going? Nobody seriously argues that daily radio broadcasts making horrifying, bloodcurdling comparisons of Tutsis to cockroaches and maggots when calling for their extermination was incidental or trivial to the Rwandan genocide. In fact, the RLTM was not only instrumental in inciting widespread hatred amongst the Hutu population at large, but also in distributing weapons and mobilising the mobs for the butchery that followed. The same playbook was rehashed on broadcast and social media in the massacres, rapes and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya two decades later. Yet somehow, repeated calls to roll out the Gaza Nakba, to erase, to finish the human animals like the Amalek must be downplayed as distasteful, ugly fits of rage in response to October 7th. After all, they couldn’t possibly be indicative of the vengeful bloodlust that’s motivating the bloodbath unfolding before our eyes.
Because it’ll take a lot more to gaslight me, I’ll momentarily indulge in Nate’s dystopian viewpoint. Let’s just presume, for arguments sake, that the appalling, hateful statements of Netanyahu, Gallant, Herzog, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Katz, Dichter (merely a tip of the iceberg) are all just the rhetoric of fury and shouldn’t be taken at face value. Then why doesn’t the same apply to “Hamas’ threat”? Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of this issue knows full well that the very notion of Hamas posing an existential threat to Israel is utterly ludicrous (see University of California, Berkley Emeritus Professor Jerome Karabel’s recent article available at: https://forward.com/opinion/574196/israel-choices-existential-threat/; or a clip of University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer’s recent interview on the UnHerd podcast available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyAp0R_gh24). According to Dr. Karabel, “what made October 7th so deadly was the element of surprise, not superior military capabilities.” Further evidence of the sheer asymmetry in favour of Israel can be found in the strength and military hardware of the IDF vs. the Qassam Brigades, which also explains why the Palestinians have consistently borne a grossly disproportionate share of the fatalities over the years. Simply put, the assertion that Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel is just as empty as “the threat to ‘repeat October 7 again and again.’”
There is so much more to contest, both in this and Nate’s February 18th iteration of Liberal doublespeak on Israel-Palestine. However, since Mary Farrell has already rebuked a number of the baseless and obfuscating talking points of the apologists masquerading as humanitarians, I’ll conclude with the words of the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe (in an op-ed dated May 15th, 2023, available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-nakba-destroyed-twelve-months-gone-on-75-years), which succinctly describes the continued apathy, prevalent throughout much of the West, towards the deep injustices inflicted upon the Palestinians for 75 years and counting:
“The message from the world to Israel was that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which was well known in the West, was acceptable – mainly as compensation for the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitism that had plagued Europe.
Hence, Israel continued its ethnic cleansing after 1967, when once more additional occupied space brought it more ‘undesired’ people. This time the ethnic cleansing was incremental, and goes on until today.”
Five months on and poor Nate is “tired of signing letters.” Pause for a moment and think then, how exhausted the five year old's must be, orphaned, constantly terrified, freezing, unable to even get some sleep (let alone anything else) under relentless bombardment. How exhausted the 25 year old's must be, growing up in the world’s largest open air prison for no crime other than being born in Gaza, trying to survive a major Israeli onslaught for the fifth time now, missing limbs, shell-shocked, traumatized for life having seen their mothers blown to smithereens, their fathers shot in the head. How exhausted must the 85 years old's be, to be driven out of their homes again and again because somebody else decided it wasn’t theirs, suffering the daily indignity and the destitution of a life as a refugee depending on handouts, distraught with the memories of all the loved ones lost.
I don’t care if Nate is tired. I will continue to write to him and the rest of his spineless, amoral colleagues on Parliament Hill as long as the government spends our tax dollars perpetuating the wanton devastation of the poor, exhausted people of Gaza and the West Bank.
It’s a genocide & it’s been going on for decades while the West, under the guise of a “democracy”, doesn’t even bat an eye. Call for an immediate ceasefire now !
The west is complicit. Probably because we benefit from the arms trade of wars and the leverage over the Middle East. Canada is benefiting from this war. That’s why they’re for it (pretending not to be for it cos Canadians are so nice, eh?). As soon as it’s not in our interests then we will be against it.
Canada sucks. We suck.
I can’t disagree with you more.
You appear to give the air of a humanitarian…you, like the rest of us, don’t like seeing dead children. But in your thinly veiled undermining of the extent of the massacre of civilians to support your « not a genocide » declaration, you have quoted doubt in the numbers expressed by the Israeli judge. Only you referenced him by name, and not by his country…not an oversight, on your part, but rather deliberate.
There is plenty Canada can do, and it can start with not siding with Israel in last weeks ICJ hearings and trying to convince a court NOT to rule on the legal consequences of the illegal
Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. But it has done the opposite of course. But didn’t even even have the backbone or integrity to show up in person at the court as all other countries did. Feeling ashamed? We should be.
To set you straight on the Hamas numbers, as you neglected to mention in your article but I think you’re well aware, that in every previous conflict the Hamas numbers have been very close to those of Israel’s and humanitarian organizations. And they’ve always been an underestimate. There I no reason or past experience on records of Hamas reported numbers having cause for concern.
And as for if they are militant or civilians: can we all agree that the children are not militants?
And if you have child numbers you can reasonably use proportion to determine the women and men numbers to, as a back of the napkin check. The ball park is correct.
Using weak arguments of doubts in accuracy numbers is a trademark Zionist tactic. I’m not buying it. And the fact that you do, and repeat it, raises a red flag on the veracity of anything you say.
Nice try to say « hey guys ,we super hate genocide and death, but it’s not us, it’s the U.S. ».
Again, not buying it.
Your articles are attempts to look like you care but you don’t. Maybe you’re testing the waters here on the relatively unknown Substack to see which points work and which don’t.
For me, your card is marked. You’re here to flog what the Liberal Party is selling.
I’m not buying.
Oh, it's a genocide alright. And, breaking news, the US is threatening to veto another UN Security Council vote. That's all we need to know, and we're naive if we think anything less than breaking ties, BDS etc. will stop the madness of US imperialism. If we really value the lives of our brothers and sisters across the globe, we should stop facilitating their murders and stand up to the rabid Mastodon in the room.
Thanks for your work advocating for a ceasefire. While it may still be unclear whether what is happening in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide, it certainly appears evident that there have been massive violations of humanitarian law. Please advocate to restore funding to the UNRWA which provides vital assistance to the people of Gaza in this time of urgent need.
Thank you for signing the letter to the Prime Minister and upholding international law. Please continue to push for a ceasefire on behalf of Canadians who watch the tragedy unfolding, horrified , helpless and speechless with grief.
Joyce, he’s not advocating for anything. Read between the lines. See my other comment on this thread. This guy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
On January 24th, I wrote to our feckless parliamentarians (of all parties – not just the Trudeau Liberals who masquerade as humanitarians as Mary Farrell has rightly pointed out) calling out their callous, baseless criticism of South Africa’s principled submission to the ICJ. Nate responded on February 14th directing me to this abysmal piece which, amongst other things, made it abundantly clear that he didn’t bother to read my email in its entirety.
I concede that it’s too much to ask our esteemed MPs for 30 minutes of their time to go through a 3,000+ word message. Yet, if he’d taken just five minutes to read the following two paragraphs, then perhaps we might have been spared of self-contradicting arguments foolishly peddled within this article (assuming of course, that it was written in good faith with an intent to be both factually accurate and intellectually honest).
“To suggest that ethnic cleansing (the term used by historians such as Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and even Benny Morris until recently to describe the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from 1947-49 and another 300,000 in 1967) is irrelevant, that being on the receiving end of 56 years of military domination under a regime of Apartheid (in the words of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem) is irrelevant, that the never ending expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories (which Canada, like much of the international community, considers illegal) is irrelevant, that the imposition since 2007 of a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip (described as a “concentration camp” by Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council back in 2004, i.e. before the 17 year siege began, or the “world’s largest open air prison” by David Cameron in 2010) is irrelevant, that the ruthless suppression of non-violent forms of protest and resistance (indiscriminate shooting of unarmed protestors during the First Intifada and the Great March of Return, neutralising of BDS in the West etc.) is irrelevant, is outrageous. The examples I have cited only scratch the surface when it comes to articulating the daily indignity and humiliation that the indigenous peoples of the land endured long before October 7th. Indeed, none of this justifies acts of terror against Israeli civilians because an eye for an eye is immoral, illegal and unsustainable. Likewise, if 75 years of Palestinian suffering doesn’t excuse what Hamas did, then consistency dictates that the same logic applies to Israel. That retaliating by indiscriminately bombarding the besieged enclave as if every Gazan is culpable for the brutality of October 7th is just as immoral, illegal and unacceptable...
As far as existential threats are concerned, the Netanyahu government’s stance is a grotesque inversion of reality. The IDF is the world’s fourth strongest military that boasts state of the art weaponry and equipment. In comparison to the F-15s and F-35s that the Israeli Air Force flies, Hamas’ air force consists of fighters brandishing Kalashnikovs on paragliders. It is Israel that has the might to impose a 17-year land, air and sea siege (which has now become a total blockade) on Gaza, not the other way around. As far as existence goes, it is the Palestinian enclave that’s being reduced to rubble (again, not my words, see: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gaza-destruction-bombing-israel-aa528542). Many more examples could be cited to demonstrate that the balance of power is overwhelmingly in Israel’s favour, but I won’t beleaguer the point.”
Consider the following example which demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy that’s become such an enduring feature of Liberal doublespeak (masquerading as humanitarians without taking any meaningful actions to stop the carnage ensuing in Gaza):
“It isn’t hard to find dehumanizing comments, including some from senior officials. And too many people, including Israel’s President, have been quick to ignore that Palestinians are not Hamas. No, it isn’t an entire nation out there that is responsible.
At the same time, while the security context doesn’t absolve Israel for its indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing campaign, it does provide a rationale for violence that is very different from genocidal intent. In other words, one needs to consider Israel’s response in light of October 7 and Hamas’ threat to ‘repeat October 7 again and again.’”
For a start, it is palpably absurd to detach what someone says from their intent, particularly if actions that follow are in line with what was said in the first place. A vast array of alarming, bone-chilling statements, social media posts, videos etc. dehumanising Palestinians and calling for their destruction have been made by Israeli ministers, officials, media personalities, IDF soldiers and reservists (i.e. the Israeli public at large), Western politicians and the likes. This has been followed by the indiscriminate slaughter of more than 30,000 Gazans (25,000 of whom as Lloyd Austin belatedly admitted are women and children), mass displacement and starvation, a complete breakdown of the healthcare system, do I really need to keep going? Nobody seriously argues that daily radio broadcasts making horrifying, bloodcurdling comparisons of Tutsis to cockroaches and maggots when calling for their extermination was incidental or trivial to the Rwandan genocide. In fact, the RLTM was not only instrumental in inciting widespread hatred amongst the Hutu population at large, but also in distributing weapons and mobilising the mobs for the butchery that followed. The same playbook was rehashed on broadcast and social media in the massacres, rapes and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya two decades later. Yet somehow, repeated calls to roll out the Gaza Nakba, to erase, to finish the human animals like the Amalek must be downplayed as distasteful, ugly fits of rage in response to October 7th. After all, they couldn’t possibly be indicative of the vengeful bloodlust that’s motivating the bloodbath unfolding before our eyes.
Because it’ll take a lot more to gaslight me, I’ll momentarily indulge in Nate’s dystopian viewpoint. Let’s just presume, for arguments sake, that the appalling, hateful statements of Netanyahu, Gallant, Herzog, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, Katz, Dichter (merely a tip of the iceberg) are all just the rhetoric of fury and shouldn’t be taken at face value. Then why doesn’t the same apply to “Hamas’ threat”? Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of this issue knows full well that the very notion of Hamas posing an existential threat to Israel is utterly ludicrous (see University of California, Berkley Emeritus Professor Jerome Karabel’s recent article available at: https://forward.com/opinion/574196/israel-choices-existential-threat/; or a clip of University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer’s recent interview on the UnHerd podcast available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyAp0R_gh24). According to Dr. Karabel, “what made October 7th so deadly was the element of surprise, not superior military capabilities.” Further evidence of the sheer asymmetry in favour of Israel can be found in the strength and military hardware of the IDF vs. the Qassam Brigades, which also explains why the Palestinians have consistently borne a grossly disproportionate share of the fatalities over the years. Simply put, the assertion that Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel is just as empty as “the threat to ‘repeat October 7 again and again.’”
There is so much more to contest, both in this and Nate’s February 18th iteration of Liberal doublespeak on Israel-Palestine. However, since Mary Farrell has already rebuked a number of the baseless and obfuscating talking points of the apologists masquerading as humanitarians, I’ll conclude with the words of the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe (in an op-ed dated May 15th, 2023, available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-nakba-destroyed-twelve-months-gone-on-75-years), which succinctly describes the continued apathy, prevalent throughout much of the West, towards the deep injustices inflicted upon the Palestinians for 75 years and counting:
“The message from the world to Israel was that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which was well known in the West, was acceptable – mainly as compensation for the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitism that had plagued Europe.
Hence, Israel continued its ethnic cleansing after 1967, when once more additional occupied space brought it more ‘undesired’ people. This time the ethnic cleansing was incremental, and goes on until today.”
Five months on and poor Nate is “tired of signing letters.” Pause for a moment and think then, how exhausted the five year old's must be, orphaned, constantly terrified, freezing, unable to even get some sleep (let alone anything else) under relentless bombardment. How exhausted the 25 year old's must be, growing up in the world’s largest open air prison for no crime other than being born in Gaza, trying to survive a major Israeli onslaught for the fifth time now, missing limbs, shell-shocked, traumatized for life having seen their mothers blown to smithereens, their fathers shot in the head. How exhausted must the 85 years old's be, to be driven out of their homes again and again because somebody else decided it wasn’t theirs, suffering the daily indignity and the destitution of a life as a refugee depending on handouts, distraught with the memories of all the loved ones lost.
I don’t care if Nate is tired. I will continue to write to him and the rest of his spineless, amoral colleagues on Parliament Hill as long as the government spends our tax dollars perpetuating the wanton devastation of the poor, exhausted people of Gaza and the West Bank.
Genocide denier.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/43/2/56
This you?