PM Trudeau: Blaming victims and exonerating war criminals undermines the fight against racism; by: Khaled Mouammar

An open letter from Khaled Mouammar a prominent activist  Palestinian Canadian to Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada 

PM Trudeau: Blaming victims and exonerating war criminals undermines the fight against racism

The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau,

Prime Minister of Canada

 

One can only commend your government’s initiative to hold the antisemitism and Islamophobia summits and your commitment to stand up for hatred and intolerance in all its forms.

 

I am a Palestinian refugee who was forced to leave my country in 1948 and have not been allowed since then to return to my homeland because I am a Christian. Yet any Jew, like Irwin Cotler Canada’s Special Envoy, or convert to Judaism, like Annamie Paul of the Green Party, may move there and become a citizen.

 

You stated at the Antisemitism Summit that Canada is committed to the two-state solution and supports peace and security for both Israel and the Palestinians.

 

The Palestinians are under Israeli occupation and have no state and no army, while Israel is a state that possesses nuclear weapons and whose military is more powerful than Canada’s military.

 

In your speech you referred to the recent violence in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel and laid the blame on the Palestinian victims who have been suffering for decades under an oppressive and illegal Israeli military occupation.

 

Your statement ignored the fact that the violence was triggered by Israel’s plan to illegally evict nearly 1500 indigenous Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem and illegally replace them with Jewish colonists. This was followed by the Israeli police attacking and arresting hundreds of worshippers at the Al-Aksa Mosque compound during the Holy Month of Ramadan and setting fire to the compound.

 

By glossing over the actions of the Israeli police in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the attacks by armed mobs against Palestinian citizens in Arab-minority cities in Israel, and the heavy bombardment of residential areas in Gaza by the Israeli army, you appear to place no value on the lives of the 256 Palestinians who were killed, including 66 children and 40 women, and the 2000 who were wounded, of whom over 600 were children and 400 women.

 

Furthermore, between June 2014 and June 2021, 3,395 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military forces - 2,941 in the Gaza Strip and 435 in the West Bank - including 804 children and 374 women.  Over the same time period, at least 104,486 Palestinians have been injured, mostly as a consequence of tear gas inhalation, rubber bullets, live ammunition, tear gas canisters, physical assault, and air-launched and surface-launched explosive weapons. Yet none of these assaults and crimes against the Palestinian people warranted any mention in your speech.

 

Canada’s Charter enshrines fundamental freedoms and equal rights for all citizens regardless of their religion, race, ethnicity, gender or political opinion.

 

I was therefore baffled to hear you say that Canada has shared democratic values with Israel - a state that Human Rights Watch found has laws and policies that grant superior rights to its Jewish citizens over its two million Christian and Muslim Palestinian citizens, and that denies fundamental freedoms and basic human rights to the five million Palestinians under occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

 

Canada takes pride in supporting international law and being a strong advocate for a rules-based international order.

 

According to Chapter 1, Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations it is illegal for countries to annex occupied territories acquired by military force.

 

When Russia occupied and annexed  the Crimea in 2014 and granted citizenship to the inhabitants,  the UN and international community, including Canada, condemned the move as a dangerous violation of international law and Canada imposed sanctions within days.

 

Israel militarily occupied East Jerusalem in June 1967 and it officially annexed it in July 1980 and has not so far granted citizenship to the 380 thousand Palestinian inhabitants; however, Canada has not yet imposed any sanctions on Israel.

 

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an Occupying Power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, and as well prohibits the deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.

 

Article 8 of the 1998 ICC Statute, also asserts that the transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies constitutes a war crime.

 

As of 2017, more than 620,000 Israelis live in over 200 settlements in the West Bank. Of those, 209,270 live in settlements in East Jerusalem and 413,400 live in other parts of the West Bank.

 

Canada is a signatory of the 49th Geneva Convention and the 1998 ICC Statute, both of which assert Israel is committing a war crime. Yet you have taken no action against Israel and you proudly state that we share democratic values with a state that is committing “the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” against 7 million indigenous Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

 

Worryingly, the repeated reference to Israel in your speech may be interpreted as endorsing Israel’s false claim that it represents Jews worldwide, which is as preposterous as former apartheid South Africa claiming that it represented white Christians worldwide. Such conflation may be exploited by racists and misguided persons to blame Jews for Israel’s war crimes and its crime against humanity being committed against 7 million Christian and Muslim Palestinian subjects.

 

Disgracefully, your government’s policy appears to be based on bigotry against indigenous Palestinians, who are Arabs and predominantly Muslims, and continues to tolerate and even justify Israel’s racist laws and policies that view indigenous Palestinians as inferior human beings, thus emboldening Israel to persecute them with impunity.

 

Khaled Mouammar

Ontario,  Canada