44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 16, 2023 11:00AM
- Oct/16/23 2:21:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the tragic loss of life at the hands of Hamas's evil has made us angry, sad and filled with unimaginable grief as we are left trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
These terror attacks are the cruellest against the Jewish people, my people, since the Holocaust.
It is possible to live in a world where we strive for peace in the Middle East while at the same time being able to state in no uncertain terms that we condemn the rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent women, children and the elderly. We must be able to say this without the word “but” inserted to serve as the catalyst for some moral justification. There is no morality to be found in what it has done.
Even the lives of people whose interests Hamas claims to represent mean nothing in its pursuit of hatred and the eradication of the Jewish people. There is no question that we must uphold the value of all human life and extend to one another a sense of kindness and dignity as we struggle together in the days ahead.
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- Oct/16/23 8:03:57 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to thank my colleague from Thornhill, as well as colleagues on the opposition side, for their support for our community and me personally over the course of the past number of days. I have heard varying perspectives in this chamber today on the conflict in Israel and Gaza. I am wondering about one of the things I heard. A member from another opposition party talked about and characterized Israel's response as one of “revenge”. I took exception to that.
I am wondering if the member could comment, from her own perspective, as to whether she feels Israel's response is one of revenge or one that is occurring in terms of its right to defend itself.
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- Oct/16/23 8:12:39 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I would like to ask my hon. colleague if he could comment on the following two questions.
First, what does he believe would happen should Hamas announce, at this moment, that they were releasing the hostages being held in Gaza?
Second, what does he believe would happen in the region if Hamas were to change from its charter, its aim and its pursuit of the eradication of the Jewish people from the Earth?
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- Oct/16/23 8:26:39 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, does my hon. colleague think that the actions of the Israeli government constitute revenge?
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- Oct/16/23 8:38:17 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, all week, since the events in Israel as a result of the terrorist attack by Hamas, I have been saying that we have to be able to condemn without the insertion of the word “but”. The leader of the NDP just began his speech, empathetic, so it seemed, to the victims of the terrorist attack by Hamas, only to insert the word “but”. Perhaps I misunderstood him, but it sounded to me that he was suggesting that Israel is committing or on the verge of committing genocide. Genocide, of course, is the intent to eradicate a people. Therefore, my question for the leader of the NDP is twofold: One, does he believe that Israel has a right to self-defence; and two, does he believe that the current reaction by the Israeli government in its response to a terrorist organization with anti-Semitic and genocidal objectives is revenge?
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- Oct/16/23 8:59:30 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to start by sharing a story.
When I was a kid, my father would talk to me often about his life as a kid. Mostly they were positive stories filled with wisdom and great life lessons. However, one story he told took place at the Crescentwood Community Centre when he was about 12 years old. He and some other Jewish kids from the neighbourhood were attacked behind the building. They were beat up and bloodied because they were Jews. It really has not been until today that I have understood and felt the same fear that I suspect my father felt back then.
It is with that in mind that I quote something Professor Irwin Cotler said earlier as we announced a new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. It was that the Jewish population in Canada represents 1%, but 67% of all hate crimes in Canada are levied against the Jewish community.
This is not to say that we do not have an issue in diaspora communities across the world and across the country. I appreciate that emotions are running raw. I appreciate that when we are traumatized and conflicts such as this arise, we are pushed back into our most primitive state and that innately we respond in tribalistic ways where we feel that, for our own survival, we have to stick with our people. There is certainly danger in that as we seek peace, and I recognize that.
I am able to stand on the floor of this House and say that the loss of every Palestinian child's life is tragic without adding the word “but”. The loss of every Palestinian life is tragic. It seems as though my colleagues in the NDP are not capable of speaking to what has occurred in Israel without the insertion of the word “but”, and I encourage them to reflect on the perspective that they have in the ways in which they are contributing to our national dialogue right now on this critically important issue.
In the Jewish faith, we have a ceremony called the unveiling. It takes place roughly a year after the passing of someone. On Monday we had the unveiling of the tombstone for my father. As we were walking to the gravesite, we walked past the headstone of my grandmother. It reminded me of the importance of relationship. It reminded me of the importance of bridge building, and that despite the fact that our emotions are raw, we do not have to agree on everything. In fact, we are not going to solve the problems of the Middle East in this chamber or in our communities. What we can do is respect one another. We can show empathy. We can engage in dialogue.
Most importantly, I want to come back to what I saw and was reminded of on my grandmother's headstone last week during my father's unveiling. It said, “Here lies Esther Carr. She made everybody feel like a somebody.” Right now, all of us in this chamber and all of us across the country must make one another feel like a somebody as we work through this incredibly difficult period.
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- Oct/16/23 9:05:51 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I remember fondly the member opposite and I would debate one another on a local Ottawa campus radio station some years ago. Since then he arrived here much sooner than I and made important contributions to our public discourse.
The definition of genocide has a particularly important adjective: deliberate. I think of the innocent lives lost, of Palestinians and Palestinian children, that my hon. colleague from Edmonton Strathcona was right to point out in regard to the tragic nature of how it came to be.
I would suggest the reason we are seeing such loss of life is as a result of the common enemy to the Israeli people and the Palestinian people, and that is Hamas. Hamas is the enemy of Palestine and of Israel. This is something that we must be incredibly mindful of and steadfast in our repetition of as we engage in this debate.
To answer my colleague's question specifically, revenge is not a response to an organization whose fundamental pursuit and objective is to eradicate people from the earth.
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- Oct/16/23 9:09:22 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the collective punishment is the collective punishment that Hamas is creating. The conditions that Hamas is creating is collective punishment on its own people and the people of Israel.
I would ask my hon. colleague to reflect throughout this debate and afterward on what would happen should there be a ceasefire. Of course we want an end to the conflict. Of course we want to end the loss of innocent lives. If Hamas were able to continue, it would rebuild and it would rebuild stronger. It would attack again because its objective is the eradication of the Jewish people from the face of the earth.
Although I have a deep appreciation for the moral objective that members from the NDP feel they bring to the conversation, it is not a pragmatic, practical or realistic way to deal with a terrorist organization hell-bent on genocide.
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- Oct/16/23 9:37:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her sincerity, her conviction and her articulation of support for the pursuit of peace.
I understand the pain she is feeling and the fear she is feeling as a leader both in her religious and faith-based community and also in her responsibilities as a parliamentarian, broadly speaking. I think that all of us are feeling that way right now.
We will have differences in terms of the way in which we approach solutions to this very difficult conflict. On this side of the House, of course, there will be difficult conversations, as I imagine there will be on that side of the House.
In what ways can we, both within these walls and outside these walls, as colleagues and as parliamentary leaders, start to bring the temperature down in the country and work together, despite these differences, in order to restore a sense of security and safety for all Canadians?
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