Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who works with Doctors Without Borders, sent this photo of ER treatment of Gaza children to Democracy Now: https://www.democracynow.org/2024/3/28/gaza_msf
Tantramar Town Council once again rejected a call last week to write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau asking Canada to press for a stop to the massacre in occupied Gaza. Warktimes reported what members of council had to say and published a word-for-word transcript of their remarks. Given the scale of what the International Court of Justice found to be a plausible genocide, I’m publishing a “fact check” calling attention to inaccurate, incomplete or misleading statements from some members of council.
Background
In nearly six months of fighting, 32,600 people have been killed in Gaza, including 14,000 children. More than 75,000 have been injured, with thousands more buried under rubble and increasing numbers dying of malnutrition, dehydration and disease.
“It is without precedent in modern times,” says famine expert Alex de Waal, “and I can’t emphasize that enough. If we look at Gaza in comparative historical perspective, it is the worst and it is entirely man made.”
Waal, who is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, was interviewed last week on CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine. He is the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.
In an earlier interview on Al Jazeera, he said: “Nothing is comparable in terms of the speed and concentrated effort devoted to destroying what is essential to sustain the life of people. Nothing compares to Gaza.”
‘How would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?’
The bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes are buried in a mass grave after they were transported from al-Shifa Hospital to Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 22, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Speaking from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday, James Elder of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) pointed to Israel’s refusal to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks, you know, five miles from where I am now. You could get hundreds and hundreds of trucks within 10 minutes, if that border crossing was open in the north, to those people who are cut off. That’s an important thing to remember,” Elder said.
“When I’m on the street [in the north], every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is, ‘We need food. We need food,'” he added.
“They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?”
Council Fact Check
A Palestinian man carries a child following Israeli strikes on houses in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, October 17. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was the only member of council who spoke in favour of sending a letter to Trudeau. “At least it’s a little bit that we could do to show our support.”
Councillors Barry Hicks, Matt Estabrooks, Josh Goguen and Deputy Mayor Greg Martin remained silent.
The four others who spoke agreed that, as Mayor Black put it, “this really is not within our jurisdictional responsibility to do.”
Yet many municipal councils in both the U.S. and Canada have done just that. While it’s clear municipal councils do not set foreign policy, their members are always free to speak out, individually or collectively, on matters of concern to their local constituents. (See also the municipal list compiled by the National Council of Canadian Muslims.)
Ceasefire confusion
Councillor Michael Tower argued that “the federal government has already said they want a permanent ceasefire.” But in fact, Trudeau and his ministers have carefully avoided the word “permanent,” preferring the term “sustainable” instead. Meantime, Israel has vowed from the beginning to fight as long as it takes to destroy Hamas and achieve “total victory.”
On December 12, Canada voted in favour of a UN resolution calling for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” which is not the same as the “permanent ceasefire” that Tantramar council was asked to push the prime minister for. Global Affairs Canada issued this statement on the UN resolution, which referred to an earlier four-day “humanitarian pause” in November:
“The recent pause in hostilities saw the release of more than 100 hostages and allowed for greater humanitarian access to affected Palestinian civilians. Canada regrets that this pause could not be extended and continues to call for much-needed fuel, water and other humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza.” [Emphasis added]
Arms to Israel
Councillor Michael Tower
Councillor Tower also stated that the federal government has “already said they’re going to not sell any more weapons to Israel.”
Yet arms experts explain it’s not that simple. The Reuters news agency cites a letter from Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly acknowledging that Canadian companies can continue their military exports to Israel as long as they have existing military export permits (see report in Defense News. written by longtime journalist David Pugliese).
Furthermore, Project Ploughshares–the independent peace and disarmament group sponsored by the Canadian Council of Churches–expressed disappointment at this “significant weakening” of Canada’s promise to stop arms exports to Israel. It also noted that in the two-month period “following the onset of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Global Affairs Canada approved more than $28 million in military exports to Israel” — a figure about equal to “the total annual value of Canada’s arms exports to Israel at their peak in 1987 at $28.7 million, followed closely by $27.8 million in 2021.”
Councillor Tower also claimed that the war is unpopular in Israel and that the Israeli people do not want war. The day after Tower’s comments, however, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a column by veteran journalist Gideon Levy that began with this bitter observation:
Israel wants war. More and more war, as much as possible, and perhaps even more…Israel wants war. Now it is being said explicitly, without pretense and without whitewashing. As much war as possible in the government’s words, as much war as possible in the opposition’s words. More of this war even from the mouths of the protesters in the squares, who are certainly not crying out for the opposite. They only want a halt in the war to release the hostages and kick Benjamin Netanyahu out, and then as far as they’re concerned we can return to the killing fields forever…One can argue that if we don’t destroy Hamas, the war will continue forever, and anyway it’s a war for peace. But one cannot buy this when there’s no strategic plan behind the lust for war. So what remains is the bare truth: Israel simply wants war. Left and right and center too. Everyone.
Hamas is to blame
Councillor Bruce Phinney
Councillor Bruce Phinney admitted that: “We don’t know exactly what’s been going on in that area for however long it’s been going on,” but then added that moving a motion to write a letter to Trudeau would be taking sides and blaming Israel, not Gaza.
“Hamas was the one that started it on October 7th,” Phinney said referring to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in which 1,139 people were massacred in Israel. The dead included 695 Israeli civilians (36 of them children), 71 foreign nationals and 373 members of the Israeli security forces. About 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken hostage.
Yet the Israel-Palestine conflict did not start on Oct. 7. According to Amnesty International, “Since the [Israeli] occupation began in June 1967, Israel’s ruthless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlement and dispossession, coupled with rampant discrimination, have inflicted immense suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their basic rights.” Most of the world’s countries, including Canada, agree the continued occupation is illegal under international law and call for a homeland for the Palestinians, the so-called two-state solution that Israel now says it will never support.
Israel and Egypt have imposed an economic blockade on the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took over in 2007. Many, including Human Rights Watch, describe Gaza as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”
How could it happen?
Councillor Allison Butcher
Councillor Allison Butcher appeared torn between her expressed belief that municipalities have no role to play in foreign affairs and her concern about “standing up for ceasefires, for releases of hostages, for humanitarian aid to get through.”
She mentioned restrictions on the emigration of Jews fleeing Nazi death camps during World War Two, a possible reference to Canada’s refusal to accept Jewish refugees as well as its decision to deny entry to 907 of them aboard the ship MS St. Louis, which was also turned away by Cuba and the U.S. After the ship returned to Europe, 254 of its passengers died in the Holocaust.
“When you hear about that [restrictions on Jews], at this point, and you look back and you think, ‘Gosh, how could people have allowed that to happen?'” Butcher said.
“I think to send a letter to our federal government to say, we as a municipality believe that the horrors that are happening there should be stopped, without us even having any idea about how to fix it, is still something that we should consider.”
But later, she told CHMA’s Erica Butler that she would not be moving a motion to send a letter to the prime minister calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
A mourner reacts while burying the body of a Palestinian child of al-Agha family, who was killed in Israeli strikes, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 11. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Nobody cares. It’s has nothing to do with a CORE SERVICE of a municipality. Stop wasting taxpayers and councils time.
Bill, a lot of people care. Millions around the world. You know what people really don’t care about? Your jail. It’s a joke.
Think people do care, but most of us are aware of the fact that sending a letter from Tantramar to the PM would be a pointless exercise.
At this point it feels like there’s been a good debate, and the people who want letters sent can send their own (I’m sure Amnesty International has templates if needed). Let’s let the council get back to the more mundane details of all the local issues that need handling to keep Tantramar running.
Paraphrased quote of Martin Niemoller :
“First they came for the socialists, and Big Bad Ontario Bill did not speak out because he was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and Big Bad Ontario Bill did not speak out because he was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and Big Bad Ontario Bill did not speak out because he was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Palestinians, and Big Bad Ontario Bill did not speak out because he was not a Palestinian.
Then they came for Big Bad Ontario Bill, and there was no one left to speak for him.”
Before presenting Hamas death toll numbers as facts, consider this:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rahim-mohamed-hamas-death-numbers-cant-be-trusted-heres-more-evidence-they-are-inflated
Maybe if people don’t want to get some admittedly pretty violent pushback, they shouldn’t support terrorists who go out and murder people in broad daylight:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/new-poll-shows-palestinians-are-the-impediment-to-peace-not-israels-war
To the question, “How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?” 59.3 per cent supported it strongly, with another 15.7 per cent of people supporting it somewhat — a combined total of 75 per cent backing the slaughter of men, women and children.
With that kind of attitude, it’s unsurprising that there is… a war in Gaza.
The National Post columnist you linked argues that it’s OK that Israel is killing thousands of children in Gaza because, according to the columnist, some may actually be Hamas fighters? Do you agree that that is OK?
There’s an interesting question.
If the “child” is a 16 year-old Hamas operative holed up somewhere and shooting at the IDF, that’s not a child, that’s an enemy soldier/combatant/terrorist (we can leave that distinction for later). That one is absolutely a fair target, the same as any adult doing the same thing.
An actual child isn’t a fair target. That being said, an actual child may be unintentionally killed in a military operation where s/he wasn’t the target without it being a war crime — or with the war crime being Hamas having acted in such a way as to put that actual child in harm’s way. Put another way, civilian casualties are not in themselves war crimes. A war crime is the purposeful targetting of civilians. Like what Hamas did on Oct 7, for an obvious example.
This war crime definition isn’t specific to this war. It applies to all of them, and unintentional civilian casualties, while regrettable, are a common feature of wars. Unless the Israelis are involved, nobody seems to pay much attention unless it gets to the level of actual war crimes (and even then). Double standard?
Can you quote where in the National Post article the columnist “argues that it’s OK that Israel is killing thousands of children in Gaza”?
What I read in the first article cited above is the columnist calling Hamas’s casualty figures into question because they imply statistically that all of the child casualties are fighters, when they probably aren’t:
“Hamas casualty figures mirror the population figures almost exactly,” Wyner told me (adult males make up about 25 per cent of Gaza’s population). Accounting for the fact that at least a third of the dead are Hamas combatants, “this implies that either all Gaza men are fighters — obviously false — or that many, if not the majority, of the reported child casualties are actually fighters.”
“While Hamas has been known to deploy child combatants as young as 12, meaning that the latter possibility can’t be ruled out entirely, Occam’s razor points to the likely case scenario that the ministry, from the conflict’s outset, assigned 70 per cent of total casualties to be women and children, extrapolating this trend over the past five-and-a-half months, though some of the children reported killed are likely to have been Hamas fighters.”
The part about Occam’s razor means that the columnist sees the statistical implication that the children were all fighters to be evidence that the casualty figures are not accurate — ie, the children obviously were not all fighters. There’s nothing there about it being “OK that Israel is killing thousands of children”.
Wyner’s statistical juggling is cloaked commentary that we shouldn’t worry about Palestinian children dying (we should doubt all contrary evidence of how many kids are dying, and how they are dying — regardless of the amount of testimony and documentation) because of an idea that all Palestinians are born terrorists.
Thank you for your journalistic integrity, Bruce. I am saddened by the inaction of our politicians at all levels as this genocide continues.
That letter would have done absolutely nothing. I am pretty sure the UN isn’t sitting there thinking, “Oh I wonder what Sackville, NB thinks?” and neither is our idiot PM. He could careless what any municipality thinks, his polls are so bad he would have pretty much done with that letter what he’s always does, which is nothing.
It’s a bummer people like yourself get to vote. This has gone completely over your head, along with many others.
Is writing a letter an act of strength or a sign of submission, and begging?
Megan Mitton often tells us that she wrote a letter about blah blah blah…
so what? I’m so uninterested in what the council and mayor have to say on anything at this point but thanks Bruce Wark for making an effort to put a report together for the public and for the record — its just a shame you have spent so many years making sure my commentary is censored or edited before being published on your blog.
Great article Bruce. I apologize if someone else has made this point, but if Tantramar can’t take positions on international issues, then why were Ukrainian colours on the Sackville rink sign for so many months? Western governments and most media were quick to claim the Russians were committing genocide in Ukraine, but the same people have nothing to say on Gaza despite the much stronger evidence. Or is it just that the Council sees affirming and amplifying Canadian government policy as the default, and anything else is “taking a position?”
Actually, I’m against Sackville taking a position on Ukraine, as well.
It’s not the municipality’s business. Municipalities are about local issues, not international ones.
I haven’t seen many claims that Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine. They’re not nice, but they’re also not genocidal. Russia/Ukraine is a pretty regular war, complete with the usual nastiness. By the way, for amusement, you should check out how many Palestinians support RUSSIA on this one. You might be shocked. They’re also usually rather nasty towards gays, something that you’d also expect Sackville to consider, if Sackville is to have a foreign policy.
The IDF is also fighting this pretty much like a regular war, along with all the ugliness of that. The only genocidally-INTENT party in any of this is Hamas.
Yeah, the IDF is just like a regular army, killing unarmed UN military observers, including my friend and comrade in arms. That was in 2006, and it continues to this day.
https://legionmagazine.com/one-martyr-down-the-untold-story-of-a-canadian-peacekeeper-killed-at-war/
No one cares about your opinion Marika.