To All Members of Canadian Parliament
Re: petition e-2565 and comments made in Parliament by Paul Manly, MP Nanaimo-Ladysmith, on October 6, 2020
Dear Mr. Manly,
Your recent comments in parliament which I insert below for reference, promote a false narrative about Gaza, the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, and also breach a long history of Canada’s support for its major Middle Eastern ally, the State of Israel.
Below your statements is our response and I invite you and all members of Parliament to become more informed.
Manly:
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present petition e-2565, which has 2,686 signatures. It calls upon the Government of Canada to request that Israel immediately lift the blockade on Gaza, in order to enable medical and humanitarian aid during the COVID-19 pandemic; insist that Israel permanently end its blockade of Gaza; and vote at the UN General Assembly in alignment with the majority of the international community taking a stance in line with international law and human rights for Palestinians.”
CAEF:
Notwithstanding your long personal history of animosity towards the Jewish state, your role as an MP should be to present truth not fabrication to members of Parliament, to your constituency and to all Canadians. Your statement is ignoble, misleading and unworthy of someone holding an elected position in the Canadian parliament. Surely by now you have been able to grasp that no blockade of Gaza has inhibited any distribution of medical supplies by Israel and never has. Here is an excerpt from correspondence by Professor Zion Hagay, Chair of the Israeli Medical Association, published September 26, 2020 in the Lancet, in response to a similar maligning unverified political piece that attempted to denigrate Israel.
To put matters into better perspective: since the outbreak of COVID-19, Israel has continuously transferred critical medical equipment to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A statement from the UN Secretary General in late March, 2020, noted that “Israeli and Palestinian authorities continue to coordinate their responses closely and constructively, a major factor in the containment achieved so far. Israel has also facilitated the entry of critical supplies and equipment into Gaza since the beginning of the crisis. This is in addition to Israel's cooperation to allow for the movement and access of personnel involved in the COVID-19 response to and from both the West Bank and Gaza.
In addition, despite continued rocket fire from Gaza by terrorists with no concern for the innocent people living among them, Palestinian patients continue to enter Israel to receive life-saving medical treatment.
You also failed to mention that the real substantial blockade has been held by Egypt for years, because that country does not want terrorist infiltration and has had to put down repeated attacks from the Sinai and Gaza.
Your comments come close on the heels of anti-Israel falsehoods stated in the house by Elizabeth May, outgoing Leader of the Green Party, so together with your mischievous remarks, are we to understand that a major concern of the Green Party of Canada is to denigrate, demonize and hold Israel to some duplicitous double standard? That might indicate why we so desperately need adoption and implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism to be approved across all levels of government.
Mr. Manly, you present a total lack of historical, legal and humanitarian knowledge of the area. Such misrepresentation has helped to proliferate Antisemitism across our nation, and contributes to such antisemitic happenings as Israel Apartheid Week on campuses. The only apartheid that exists in the Middle East is under fundamentalist Islamist regimes, including that of Hamas in Gaza.
You make no mention of the horrific attacks by fire and rockets that Israelis were subjected to from the very area in Gaza where they had removed entire communities and left viable farms to the care of Gazan residents, leaving real economic opportunity. These farms were totally destroyed by Hamas, the terrorist organization that holds all of Gaza hostage.
You state that you care about the Palestinian Arabs, and there is no doubt that these people absolutely deserve better lives, better than they have under the dictatorship of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Why not direct your campaign for change to Hamas, and not misuse Canadian resources nor abuse Canadians with lies?
Why not speak on behalf of all the Palestinians killed in Syria, removed from Jordan and harassed in Lebanon? Why do you not address the constant hatred and violence taught through UN, EU and possibly Canadian funded education that is delivered by UNRWA and the PA?
Canada relies on our members of parliament to be informed beyond the hollow propaganda that overtakes some of our news reports. Palestinian Arabs living in Israel share free lives in a democracy with a higher standard of living that those Arabs who live elsewhere in the Middle East. I can only imagine the onslaught of pressure on you to commit to this pseudo cause, but I urge you in the name of a free Canada to take a good long, constructive study of the situation from both sides.
I’ll leave you with two thoughts-both for you to have a ’taste’ of alternatives to the obviously popular Green Party of Canada viewpoint.
Justice is justice, even when the players are reversed. If I steal from you, you are the victim. If you steal from me, then I’m the victim. Imagine this reversal with the Middle East countries and it would look like this: There is one very tiny, Muslim country that Palestinians legally created after 2000 years of persecution living under varied regimes. Jews live freely in their midst. Surrounding this small Muslim country are 22 huge, oil-rich Jewish states. All Muslims were forced to leave these countries where they’d lived for centuries. Does this picture look different? Why?
View this webinar in which the historical and legal facts are presented by Dr. Jacques Gauthier, the Canadian expert on international law as it pertains to Israel’s legal rights. Anyone wanting to be an activist in pursuit of justice in the Israel/Arab conflict, should first have to consider these facts based on primary sources, documents and maps. ( Dr. Jacques Gauthier, an international jurist, scholar and human rights advocate. Dr. Gauthier's presentation will highlight the nexus between the historical facts and events which support the legitimacy of Israel's sovereignty claims to all of Jerusalem and the disputed territories.)
With hope for a real peace in the Middle East and hope that Canada will not consider the bias presented in petition e-2565, and will seek the truth before adopting any resolutions.
Sincerely,
Anita Bromberg
Andria Spindel