It is right and proper to highlight the suffering that Israelis have suffered over the years and decades, including on October 7, but it is simply dishonest to suggest that there is any symmetry in what each population has inflicted upon the other.
Dear Walrus editorial team:
I’m writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to provide feedback on today’s piece, “What Can Canada’s Recognition of Palestinian Statehood Achieve?”
You begin by equating the recognition of Palestinian statehood with Canada’s stand against apartheid South Africa. That is a welcome comparison, drawing parallels as it does between Israel’s treatment of indigenous Palestinians with the white supremacist regime’s oppression of its own indigenous population.
Unfortunately, the rest of the piece suffers from serious shortcomings. The fact that you either quote or cite no fewer than four Zionist organizations and not a single Palestinian group is a particularly flagrant (and inexcusable) example of lack of balance. What possible reason could there be for choosing not to give Palestinians a platform to speak on the historic occasion of Canada’s recognition of their own statehood?
The piece then descends into the tiresome, lazy framing of “both sides” rhetoric, as though this were a conflict opposing two equal parties. Without question, there has been horrific suffering among both Palestinians and Israelis, but only one of these groups suffered ethnic cleansing (the Nakba) at the hands of the other. Only one has suffered well over half a century of brutal, illegal occupation by the other. Only one has seen countless settlements – recognized as illegal even by Israel’s own Foreign Affairs Ministry – implanted on its territory by the other. And only one has suffered apartheid and, according to a growing international consensus (one that includes Israeli experts), genocide, at the hands of the other. It is right and proper to highlight the suffering that Israelis have suffered over the years and decades, including on October 7, but it is simply dishonest to suggest that there is any symmetry in what each population has inflicted upon the other.
Having downplayed the ordeal of the Palestinians, your piece then enters disturbing territory by referring to “tribally driven responses,” as if reactions to the atrocities taking place in Gaza must be the product of some primal, reptilian instinct and not of reasoned thought and analysis. What we have witnessed over the past two years is horror beyond imagination, at a level we thought consigned to the history books and certainly not one that anyone thought could be committed in full public view. It is a horror acknowledged by a large and growing number of international organizations, not a figment of some tribal imagination, and to imply otherwise is to flirt with racist and orientalist tropes. Terms such as “tribal” evoke the stereotype of Arab societies as inherently pre-modern and governed by kinship ties rather than institutions, especially when contrasted, explicitly or implicitly, with purported Israeli modernity and rationality. Incidentally, while I will leave it to Israel’s advocates to respond to you, I would imagine that they would find this framing equally insulting.
After all that, your piece manages to add another glaring deficiency when it criticizes the use of the word “colonizers” in describing Israel’s actions. First, that is simply the correct term to describe the illegal settlers in the West Bank. Second, early Zionists freely called themselves colonizers. To give a few examples, the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, called his movement “something colonial.” Among the major organizations that facilitated Jewish immigration to Palestine was the Jewish Colonization Association. The first Zionist bank was the Jewish Colonial Trust. The intellectual godfather of the Israeli right, Vladimir Jabotinsky, explicitly described what Zionists were doing in Palestine as colonization and referred to Palestinian Arabs as the territory’s native population. While the term’s profoundly negative connotations may make this history awkward for today’s Zionists, it exists all the same and to ignore it is simply to rewrite the past.
I appreciate that there are few issues as challenging to report on as this one, but any serious journalistic endeavour requires a commitment to the truth, an effort to provide voice to all parties, and a thoughtful effort to avoid dehumanizing, dismissive language. At a minimum, I would urge you to update your piece with Palestinian voices and to bear in mind the points raised above in your future reporting.
Sincerely,
Adam Allouba
Media Advocate
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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