Palestinians: why do they have to prove their humanity?
Why must Palestinians have to prove their humanity? Surely they are the only group of more than 14 million people worldwide — 5.6 million in Gaza and the West Bank — who have to prove they are human beings.
Not so much why do they have to prove they are human, but how often do they have to prove it?
The answer is: at least 14 million times daily.
Israel continues to do everything it can to remove Palestinians’ humanity.
ITEM: Now that the Palestinians have been allowed to return to the north of Gaza, the IDF has told them they must walk for kilometres while holding their children and struggling with their few belongings; the Palestinians were not permitted to ride on their donkeys. The IDF claims it was “for their own safety” [it is so heartwarming to see the IDF so solicitous]. So in the last weeks, we have seen the hundreds of thousands of Gazans walking north on the coastal road to return to their homes, most of which have been reduced to rubble. There are also the unexploded bombs and ordnances, and the total devastation wrought by Israel.
ITEM: Eradicating Palestinians’ humanity also means that Israel continues to jail, persecute, and incarcerate more than 20,000 Palestinians – most since Oct. 2023. It also means Israel destroying, crippling, targeting, torturing and killing women, children and the elderly. Except for the IDF’s concern about Palestinians falling off donkeys, Israel’s deliberate and ongoing terrorism shows they can’t possibly think the Palestinians are human.
Israelis, and their sympathizers (mainly leaders and governments and the media) in almost every western country barely acknowledge Palestinians, a sign that their humanity means little to nothing. For instance: Israel expelled Al Jazeera news from Jerusalem and from Ramallah– which is in Area A where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to have total control. Denying that is a violation of the Oslo Accords. As for Gaza, no western news source publicly complained and fought against Israel’s prohibition to enter Gaza to cover Israel’s war on the people. Only journalists based in Gaza, in other words Palestinians reporting from Gaza — another indication of the dehumanization of Palestinians. Nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza by the IDF. UNRWA, the most longstanding, dedicated and successful means to get aid to Gazans has been banned by Israel. So the Palestinians don’t deserve news coverage, food aid, medicines or much else. But who decided they were less than human?
ITEM: Who can forget this photo from 2000—nearly 25 years ago. Muhammad al-Durrah age 12, crouches by his father Jamal; they were caught in a cross-fire between the IDF and Palestinians. Within seconds the boy was shot dead by Israeli snipers. This was on day two of the start of the Second Intifada. Two days prior to the shooting, then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon and his followers visited the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, a holy site to both Jews and Muslims– with disputed rules of entry. Sharon’s visit was a deliberate provocation which triggered protests that escalated into rioting across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The uprising called the Second Intifada lasted over four years—and cost more than 3,000 Palestinian lives.
Below: Ahed Tamimi painted on the “separation wall at Bethlehem: artist Jorit Agoch from Italy, and several others; logo for Al Jazeera; Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem; photo of the late journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
Apparently the Al Durrahs were not human beings. Though the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) initially took responsibility for killing Muhammad, an Israeli inquiry insisted the shooting was staged by Palestinian gunmen and the boy’s own father! The report said Muhammad was probably killed by Palestinian gunfire. But a Palestinian investigation said that the boy was killed from bullets shot from a nearby Israeli military post. In 2013, Prime Minister Netanyahu released a new report on the Muhammad’s murder: the report insisted there was no death at all — that Muhammad was not killed: the 59 seconds of news footage which showed the boy being struck by gunfire was attributed to a rogue French-Israeli videographer. Muhammad’s father Jamal Al Durrah offered to exhume his son to prove he was dead—but no one had the nerve to demand it.
ITEM: Then skip ahead to 2017, to the arrest and imprisonment of then-16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, Palestinian. She dared to slap and kick an Israeli soldier stationed in front of her house in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih. It was said to be “the slap heard around the world.” Tamimi’s 15-year- old cousin Mohammed had just been shot in the head by an Israeli soldier. The teen suffered a catastrophic brain injury.
Palestinians like teenager Ahed are not considered human beings: for her “crime,” she spent eight months in horrendous conditions in an Israeli prison and had to pay a $1400 fine for assault (“insulting the honour of an Israeli soldier”) and incitement. She defied the military and fought back. Throughout the world, she garnered near superstar status for her bravery. (The fact that she was blonde and blue-eyed didn’t hurt.)
In 2012, American journalist Ben Ehrenreich documented the Tamimi family, and noted her physical appearance as a factor in her celebrity. He wrote,
“A great deal of work goes into ‘othering’ Palestinians, to casting them as some really recognizable other. When suddenly the kid [Tamimi] doesn’t fit into those stereotypes—when she actually looks like a European kid or an American kid—then suddenly all that work of dehumanization can’t function.”
When the Palestinians grab people they are called hostages; when Israelis grab them, they must also be called hostages.
More recently in November 2023, Ahed’s father, Bassem, was imprisoned for speaking out and protesting Israel’s genocide; Ahed was also jailed. All the members of her family – including her mother Nariman – have been jailed often without charge for months or even years at a time. Israel hopes that people tossed in jail for long periods will become “non-people” and they will be forgotten. Israel imprisons thousands of Palestinians without trial partly to keep them for exchange – as the recent ceasefire agreement stipulated. But that erasure is not working – as thousands in Gaza turn out to welcome any and all fellow Palestinians released from prison as part of the ceasefire agreement. As of June 2024, Israeli Human Rights organization B’tselem reported that more than 9400 Palestinians were in Israeli prisons – twice as many as one year previous. Sixty have died in prison in the last 15 months In addition, since 2010, Israel has jailed more than 8,000 Palestinian children – mostly for stone-throwing.
ITEM: In May 2022, an IDF sharp shooter shot dead Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, who was standing with other reporters — all wearing press vests and helmets — to observe Israel’s violent and illegal attack on Jenin– just outside the refugee camp. Abu Akleh had worked for Al Jazeera as a TV news reporter for 25 years. Not only did Israel insist a Palestinian had shot her, rather than an IDF sniper, but they also stormed her funeral two days later and bulldozed her memorial outside of Jenin. Anything to erase her, her professional activities and demonize her, Israel did. The IDF tore down posters and photos of Abu Akleh at the Al Jazeera offices. Then Israel closed down Al Jazeera in Israel, East Jerusalem and shut its West Bank studios in Ramallah. This despite the fact that Ramallah (in Area A according to the Oslo Accords) is meant to be under full Palestinian control—not Israel’s. Israel worked hard to destroy Abu Akleh, her journalistic record and her very life. Her dehumanization by Israel meant that despite her having US citizenship, the Americans were stopped from investigating her killing. As then Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said, “”We will not allow interference in Israel’s internal affairs.” So far there has been no independent US investigation of Abu Akleh’s murder.
The above events happened in Palestine– though Israel illegally controls virtually everything that happens in the West Bank and Gaza. Since 1948, Israel has established a settler colonial state. For eight decades, Israel has conducted ethnic cleansing of Palestinians– dispossessed them of their land, their homes, their livelihood and their future. Even in Israel proper, where 20% of the population are Palestinians whose families have lived there since before the Nakba, they are treated as little more than second class citizens. Palestinians in Israel are forced to use inferior hospitals, study in underfunded schools, not own land and have fewer civil rights than Jews. Dehumanization of a population lubricates ethnic cleansing. Now Israel’s ethnic cleansing has turned into a genocide of epic proportions.
Canada: a settler colonial state
Canada too is a settler colonial state – we’ve oppressed and exploited our own Indigenous people for centuries and continue to do so. Settler colonial societies tend to resonate with other settler colonial societies. Many Canadians have no compunctions about continuing to discriminate against and dehumanize Indigenous people. And not just them.
In Canada there is plenty of evidence that successive federal governments have demonstrated racism toward Muslim or Arab Canadians.
ITEM: Jan. 2017 – A young man killed six men and seriously injured 5 others when he opened fire in a mosque in Quebec City. The shooter was tried, convicted and jailed. But there was no inquiry, no other investigation or action was taken by the authorities despite Prime Minister Trudeau’s calling the murders a “terrorist attack on Muslims.”
In June 2021, when four members of a Muslim family in London, Ont. were murdered by a white man who deliberately drove his truck into them on a city sidewalk – there was an outpouring of grief and support for the Afzaal family. But there was no public inquiry. That makes two deadly attacks on a group of Canadian Muslims – but again there was no inquiry or demand for a full investigation.
Different Rules for Ukrainian vs Palestinian immigrants
ITEM: March 2022- Canada issued 962,975 approvals for visas for Ukrainians who wanted to come to Canada. As of Dec. 2023, 286,752 Ukrainians arrived here.
Our government also offered some settlement services, and many charitable organizations stepped up to house and help. Ukrainians could settle in Canada without guarantors, no limit on family numbers immigrating, and no requirement for immigrants to have a family connection to anyone here. By comparison Palestinian immigrants from Gaza require a guarantor, have limitations on family size for immigration and of course should have some proof that the immigrants have a connection to family living in Canada.
ITEM: Oct. 2023- Canada’s government did virtually nothing to help Palestinians. By Jan. 2024, Israel had killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, and seriously injured more than 53,000. That month, Canada’s minister of immigration Marc Miller said Canada would allow 1,000 Palestinian families to settle in Canada (now adjusted to 5,000). When people protested the quota, Miller said it was a “soft cap”. Clearly the problem for Palestinians is escaping Gaza, getting a visa, getting a passport or travel document and the high cost of flying with family to Canada. For the past 17 years there has been record unemployment in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal blockade and destructive military occupation. The last year unemployment in Gaza averaged 79.7% so there is little hope of Gazans having extra money to cover the costs of coming to Canada. And Canada’s government knows it.
The rules around accepting Ukrainian versus Palestinian refugees shows a racist slant—othering Palestinians (read ‘Muslims) who want to immigrate. Isn’t that the essence of saying one group the Ukrainians are “more” human than Palestinians?
ITEM: The case of Birju Dattani is especially outrageous. After a two year process to select and appoint a new CEO of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, in spring 2024 the federal government announced the appointment of Birju Dattani, to start in August 2024. However, pro-Israel Jewish establishment organizations including CIJA, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and B’nai Brith insisted Dattani was an antisemite, who had appeared on speaking platforms while attending graduate school in the UK with some pro-Palestinian activists. More than a decade ago, he had had converted to Islam and adopted a new name —which seems to me key in the Jews’ hatred of him.
In June 2024, the federal government, worried about the backlash by some Jews against Dattani’s appointment, commissioned an independent review of Dattani’s character, qualifications and behaviour which found Dattani was not antisemitic and did not hate Jews By August the cacophony of mainly Jewish voices against Dattani was deafening. He had to resign the job before he even started it. The right wing, pro-Israel lobby—including Jewish Tory MP Melissa Lantsman—made sure Dattani was not allowed to take up the job for which he was the best qualified and experienced. This is all part of dehumanisation of those who stand up for human rights for Palestinians. Recently, Dattani sued Conservative deputy leader Lantsman, Ezra Levant, a right wing media pundit, and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) for defamation .
I have written here, here, here and here about the civil terror that has rained down on academics, law students, lawyers, doctors, politicians — even restaurant servers — in Canada who criticize Israel, who support Palestinian human rights or who call for an end to Israel’s genocide of more than 49,000 Gazans and now the hundreds being killed by Israel on the West Bank.
The issue is this: we dehumanize people at our peril. We all know that the first step in eradicating a people or ethnic cleansing is to dehumanize – so those people’s lives mean far less than ours. Is Canada still stuck on that hamster wheel of blind support for Israel—at a cost of human rights for Palestinians and Muslims rights here?
Top image courtesy of the Norwegian Refugee Council: Ali and his family, with 3 small children, live on the 4th floor of a bombed-out building in Khan Yunis after being forced to flee many times. (Credit: Photo: Amjad Al Fayoumi/NRC).
My story about CW Jefferys…
Just before his death in 1952, CW Jefferys sold his collection of 1,200 paintings and historical drawings (for a very small sum) to the Imperial Oil Company. Reproductions of the classic work were made available for a fee and dependent on whether the oil company felt like giving permission. Every public school in Canada must have been allowed one or more of these reproductionsIn 1972, NC Press a left-wing Toronto-based publisher wanted to use some of Jefferys’ illustrations for a book. Imperial Oil said no. After a very public and noisy campaign that year by the Canadian Liberation Movement (CLM), led in part by me and my husband Larry Haiven, Imperial Oil agreed to donate the collection to the Public Archives — for anyone’s use without ‘permission’ by a nasty US oil company.