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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 290

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 18, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 290 - Mar/18/24
Mr. Anthony Housefather (Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, Lib.)
  • Mar/18/24 6:15:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am a Canadian. I am a Jew. I am a Zionist. I am proud to have been born in this country. I am proud that my family came here in the 19th century and helped to build this country. My family members fought in World War I and World War II. We are part of Canada and lucky to be so. I have represented Canada in swimming internationally. I have represented Canada as a parliamentarian. There is no place in the world I want to be other than in Canada. The Jewish community, of which I am part, is a religious community that has existed for thousands of years, but we are also a people. Since we have been here in 1760, we have helped build this country. We got enormous opportunities, more than we've received anywhere else in history. In academia, law, medicine, physics, science, sports and journalism, we have helped build this country. Ninety-five per cent of Canadian Jews are Zionists. Zionism means we believe that we have a right to have one Jewish state in our ancestral homeland. Jews are indigenous to Israel. We have a history where Jews have faced persecution in every country in the world. We were expelled from England in 1290. We were expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s. We faced the Crusades, where people were killed. We were put in ghettos throughout Europe. We faced the Holocaust. Jews were expelled from Arab lands in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies. We needed one place where every Jew in the world knew that, if things went wrong in their country, they could go. That is Israel. That is what Zionism means. I get horrible threats and emails saying that I am a dirty Zionist, instead of a dirty Jew, but this is what Zionism means. There are all these demonstrations around the country outside of synagogues, outside of Jewish schools and outside of Jewish community centres, where people are screaming about how horrible Zionists are. I am a Zionist. I am not embarrassed or ashamed of being a Zionist. Canadian Jews should not have to live through what we are living through right now. My community is terrified. We are being intimidated over and over by people protesting outside of Jewish buildings. Canadian Jews have no control over what happens in the State of Israel, yet, for some reason, Jewish buildings across this country are being targeted. In my own riding, at the Jewish community offices, where the Jewish Public Library and the Holocaust museum are located, demonstrators went on private property, surrounded the building, blocked access to the building and blocked anyone from leaving for over three hours. This is happening all over the place. The demonstrators, while they are allowed and right to demonstrate wherever they want, cannot go on private property and cannot block other people from exercising their right to free speech. If I cannot enter a building to hear a speaker and they block me, yell at me, scream at me and stop me from going in, then their rights are infringing on my rights. The police need to step in and act as police. All leaders across this country need to tell them to do so, because this is not fair. It is too much. Jewish Canadians do not deserve this. Jewish students have told me of horrible stories happening on campuses across this country, from British Columbia to Newfoundland, about being intimidated on campus, about walking into dormitories and having anti-Israel slogans on the walls. They walk into a building and they are asked if they are a Zionist. If they are Zionist, supposedly they are not allowed into their dorm. This is not Canada. This is not the country that I know and love. Nobody should be forced to feel this way. This is how I get to this motion. Right now the Jewish community is demoralized and intimidated. This motion would create one winner and one loser. Most Canadian Muslims will vastly support this motion. They are feeling lots of pain right now, watching the events that are happening in Gaza. If this motion is adopted, Canadian Jews will feel tremendous pain because the way the motion is constructed would clearly create a false equivalency between the State of Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. In the event that we want this war to end, Hamas can easily lay down arms and surrender, return the hostages and stop using citizens of Gaza as human shields. Essentially, while I appreciate my colleagues in the NDP, this motion, as some other colleagues have said, rewards Hamas. We, for generations in Canada, under successive Liberal and Conservative governments, have said that the way to recognize a Palestinian state, which we all want, living in peace side by side with Israel and to offer dignity to both peoples should come when the two parties negotiate their borders and the Palestinians elect a government to govern that territory. The West Bank is governed by Fatah, which has been in power without an election for 20 years. Mr. Abbas was elected in 2004. On the other side, in Gaza, there is a terrorist organization, Hamas, that has not held elections since 2007 and is recognized by Canada as being a terrorist organization. Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Israel, the deadliest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, and we would be changing our foreign policy to reward Hamas and say, “Good for you, terrorists. You attacked a sovereign state, killed lots of people, including babies, women and everyone else, raped, pillaged and brought people back as hostages, who have now been there for almost five months. Let us recognize that state that we have never recognized before.” What a great idea for other places in the world where terrorism foments. Who would love this? Iran would love this, because Iran is the people in the Middle East who are fomenting terrorism everywhere. Whether it is Hezbollah in the north or Hamas in the south, Iran is supporting this and loving every minute as the world tears itself apart to criticize Israel instead of focusing on Iran and its regime. When we talk about arms sales, let us first recognize that the American government supplies billions of dollars of arms to Israel. Canada and the Canadian government do not sell arms to Israel directly. We have provided, for many years, only non-lethal weapons, because nobody has applied for lethal weapon permits, and these non-lethal weapons are going to a friend and ally, Israel, at a time of war. We can imagine what the world would look like if all the countries in the world, which I presume is the principle of the motion, said they would not ship arms or even non-lethal weapons to Israel, while Hamas and Hezbollah would continue to get their weapons from Iran through Egypt and through Lebanon. Israel, while it has missiles launched at it from Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, would be unable to fight back and would be bereft of weapons. That is the false equivalency that we are now making between Hamas, a terrorist organization, and Israel. I do not think this motion goes toward furthering anything toward peace. In fact, it would do the opposite. It would tell our friend and ally that it is being treated in a different way than the terrorist organization, which is benefiting from weapons being shipped to it. I had the opportunity, with the member for Calgary Nose Hill, the member for Eglinton—Lawrence, the member for Thornhill and the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, to visit Israel. We saw the wreck and the destruction of Hamas. We visited a kibbutz, where we saw buildings burned and people who had been burned to death in their safe rooms. We saw blood splattered all over the place and houses ransacked. We heard from people who had been terrorized. Members have to understand that Israel feels that, if it does not destroy the terrorist group Hamas, there will be another pogrom that kills more Israelis tomorrow, the next week or the next month. I understand how horrible it is to see the situation in Gaza. I understand how the world looks at it with revulsion as we see people dying, but we also have to understand that a democratic nation has been, on many occasions, attacked and had wars started against it, and now all sides in Israel feel they need to fight back. I stand with Israel, our democratic ally and our friend. A time of war is when we look at countries and ask if they stand with our ally or not. Canada should be standing with Israel. Canada should be defending the right of Israel to fight back against a terrorist organization. We should not be passing motions that make a terrorist organization equivalent to a democratic state.
1506 words
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