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Written by: Daniel Xie

On Sunday, December 6, Just Peace advocates, Canadian Council for Justice and Peace, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and many other organizations hosted an event titled “The Threat to Al Quds/Jerusalem”. This event discussed escalating house demolitions and the evictions in East Jerusalem of Palestinians, the threats to the Masjid Al-Asqa mosque, Canadian foreign policy regarding Israel and Palestine, and what is required from the international community and the Canadian government at this time.

The event featured these speakers:

Zakaria Odeh, executive director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem
Jonathan Kuttab, founder of Al-Haq, recognized international human rights lawyer, co-founder of Just Peace Advocates
Dr. Yousef Al Natshi, director of the prestigious Department of Tourism and Archaeology at the al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem
Azeezah Kanji, legal academic and journalist

The Escalating Colonization of Al Quds and the Rise of the Israeli Right

The workshop opened by discussing how the evictions in Al Quds have occurred in the greater context of escalating Israeli settler colonialism in the region. According to Zakaria Odeh, the brazenly pro-Israel foreign policy of the Trump administration enabled the Israeli government to escalate it’s plans for the region. Trump’s “deal of the century”, for instance, encouraged the annexation of the occupied territories and the Jordan valley by the Israeli government, as well as the confiscation of one-third of the land in east Jerusalem for the purposes of settlement building and the drawing up of plans to expand existing settlements by the Municipal planning community in East Jerusalem.

These efforts to expel the Palestinian population from Jerusalem, Odeh noted, are tied to Israeli government efforts to establish “Greater Jerusalem” which will see the expulsion of various Palestinian communities in order to maintain a large Jewish majority within Jerusalem.

Since 2020, Odeh noted, there have been 161 structures demolished as part of these development plans, including 120 residential houses, making hundreds of people, many of whom are children, displaced as a result. Even earlier in 2019, 169 residential homes were demolished with hundreds displaced. This process, which has been escalating for 20 years, was sped up recently by court rulings in favor of settlers resulting in eviction orders directed against many families.

The construction of settlements, according to Odeh, also serves to isolate Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine, with settlement construction being developed with the intention of cutting off all access to the West Bank. The cutting off of links to the rest of Palestine allowed for further restrictions to be placed on Palestinian residents within Jerusalem. Odeh goes over many of these egregious laws imposed by Israeli officials, such as laws that revoked residency for living even 5 KM away from Jerusalem in Bethlehem, having citizenship in another country, or even belonging to political groups fighting for the self-determination of Palestinians.

The efforts by the Israeli government to colonize Al Quds were also discussed within the context of the increasingly ultranationalist and fundamentalist bent of the Israeli government under Netanyahu. Yousef Al Natshi noted that the current evictions in Al-Quds are tied to the efforts of a fringe right-wing seeking to impose it’s vision of Judaism on Israel at the expense of Palestine. He contrasts the efforts of the Israeli far-right to make Jerusalem solely a place for the Jewish faith, with how Jerusalem was administrated under muslim hands, noting that when Muslims held Jerusalem in the past, they never destroyed other buildings and tried to foster co-existence. Yet today, not only are homes destroyed but, heavy police presence and militarized borders are established around Mosques.

The far-right shift of the Israeli government was also noted by Jonathan Kuttab, who stated that in the past, the Israeli government was reluctant to attempt to seize control of all of Jerusalem for itself, and it was only a small minority in the past that wanted to destroy Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem such as the Masjid Al-Asqa mosque and build the third temple in their place. But this changed in part due to a shift to the far-right by the Israeli Government and growing alliances with fundamentalists preaching an ultra-nationalistic interpretation of Judaism. The growing alliance with the far-right has coincided with efforts by the Israeli government to wipe out the Palestinian national identity within Jerusalem, as well as with the weaponization of potential historical records left behind by the ancient kingdom of Israel as weapons to justify the construction of Israeli settlements.

These instances of the erasing of Palestinian culture and history, Odeh stated in his speech, manifests through the writing of ethnocentric history books omitting the Palestinian perspective of the history of this region, the efforts by the Israeli government to change the name of streets in Jerusalem from Palestinian to Jewish names, and the weaponization of claims of linkages between certain areas and the history of the kingdom of Israel to justify the eviction of Palestinians; in one instance, eviction orders were prepared against Palestinians on the basis that King David, the ancient king of the Kingdom of Israel, founded the Kingdom of Israel on the area the settlers have seized.

Canadian complicity in Israeli crimes exposed

The complicity of the international community, particularly Canada, with the ethnic cleansing and colonization occurring in Al Quds was touched on by Azeezah Kanji, who started her speech stating the assault on the Palestinians was not much different from the settler colonialism carried out to this day by the Canadian government against indigenous activists fighting to reclaim and defend their land from further colonization. Kanji noted that the link between Canadian and Israeli settler colonialism directed against the indigenous population could be seen in how the Canadian government continues to weaponize language and discourse to justify the further perpetuation of Israeli apartheid.

Some of the discourse weaponized by the Canadian government included the language of “democracy”, “peace” and “human rights”. Namely the idea brought forward by the Canadian government that Canada is ideologically allied to another democracy in the middle east in the pursuit of peace, justice, and the expansion of free markets. Kanji points out that through the discourse of “democracy” Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians are swept under a rug under the pretext of defending “democracy” in the middle east via the imposition of colonialism against indigenous populations. Through the discourse, and by using the label “Free Market”, Canada signs with Israel special economic trade agreements: even going as far to go to court to defend the right of Israel to sell products made on stolen Palestinian land as “Made in Israel”.

Under the pretext of maintaining peace, similar tactics are employed by the police in both countries against racialized and indigenous populations. At the same time, weapons such as drones are manufactured by Canadian governments for Israel, while Israeli arms companies produce similar weapons for Canada. All this is happening while the IDF is allowed to recruit illegally on Canadian soil. Lastly, through the label of “justice”, those fighting for the right of Palestinians are punished legally and shunned, while the Canadian government works to suppress efforts by the ICC to open a case into Israeli war crimes on the basis that “Palestine is not a state”.

Canada’s unconditional support for Israel, Kanji stated towards the end of her speech, is not out of genuine misguidedness, but was instead because Canada continued to be ingrained to this day in existing, colonialist structures of injustice directed against indigenous populations in Canada, and tied to ongoing settler colonialism in Israel. She concluded her speech calling on Canadians to challenge the use of discourse revolving around “democracy” and “human rights'' in the service of colonialism from Turtle Island to Palestine.

The IHRA and the threat to anti-Palestinian dissent

Also discussed in this panel was the weaponization of antisemitism through the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, particularly in light of the appointment of Irwin Cotler as special envoy to the Canadian government to enforce that definition of antisemitism and the government of Ontario’s adaptation of the IHRA definition. Kanji pointed out the IHRA definition of antisemitism was just one way that the suppression of anti-Palestinian dissent is enforced, noting that Zoom had cancelled events about Palestine in the past—a form of silencing of pro-Palestinian voices that crossed over into meta-silencing as events talking about the cancellation of pro-Palestinian events have also been shut down.

The silencing of pro-Palestinian voices and the BDS movement through IHRA, despite being carried out under the banner of anti-racism, Kanji noted, ironically helps the far-right, stating that far-right and neo-nazi organizations have actually been moving to suppress the BDS movement in order to punish anti-racism activism against Israeli settler colonialism.

Kuttub notes, with regards to the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, that this is tied to the weakening of the pro-Israel discourse worldwide, particuarly in Europe. The IHRA definition is a last ditch effort to enforce a legal loophole to justify continued settler colonialism and to pressure the courts to silence Palestinian advocacy. A cause for the weakening of the pro-Israel narrative has been noted by Odeh, who stated that social media and the exposure of Israeli atrocities through social media can and has been a weapon to hold our governments accountable for enforcing international law on Israel, rather than violating the law in favor of Israel.

With regards to how we as Canadians can fight against the criminalization of pro-Palestinian discourse and activism, which was the question I pitched to the speakers, Kanji stated that there has been pushback from Independent Jewish Voices and various activist groups against several city council attempts to adopt IHRA. At the provincial level, the reason that Ford used an Order in Council to ram through Bill 168 was to avoid facing the activists’ wrath. People were signing up as deputies to oppose the IHRA. She stated that going forwards, as Canadians concerned about our foreign policy, we will need to work towards reducing corporate dominance, as well as the power of anti-terrorism laws, that have held our democracy hostage and have made it significantly more difficult to oppose government measures such as the criminalization of pro-Palestinian dissent.

Canadian state acts against will of Canadians

The Threat to Al Quds/Jerusalem event not only exposed the escalating colonization of Jerusalem (and by extension the West Bank) by the Israeli government that has been enabled by both Trumpian politics and the spread of COVID in Israel, but further discussed Canada’s complicity in furthering the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the roots of this complicity in Canada’s own history as a settler-colonial state.

As many of the speakers, particularly Odeh and Kanji, noted, Canadians favor greater human rights for Palestinians and believe that Israel must be held to account for human rights violations. Yet the Canadian government has continued to maintain its ties to Israel in spite of the country’s crimes, even going as far to take measures to silence pro-Palestinian voices.

These actions have not just isolated the Canadian government from the views of many Canadians, but also from the international community as a whole, and it falls to Canadians supporting Palestinian human rights and seeking a just foreign policy to hold their government accountable for its efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian voices in Canada, and push for a long overdue reevaluation of our foreign policy goals towards Israel.

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