Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Peter Kent and Israel

A couple of elections ago “celebrity” candidate Peter Kent ran in my riding of St. Paul’s, where he was easily defeated. I have rarely been happier to be able to say I did not vote for someone. The man almost made me lose my breakfast on the subway this morning.

The ridiculous title in this morning’s Toronto Star tells the story: “Israelis hit school, Ottawa blames Hamas”. Kent, who is now the minister of state for foreign affairs, is quoted as saying "Hamas bears a terrible responsibility for this and for the wider deepening humanitarian tragedy. The burden of responsibility is on Hamas to stop its terrorist rocketing of Israel."

Let me spell it out for you, Peter, since you are obviously too dim to figure it out for yourself: Israel bombed a school and murdered 42 innocent people. Israel is responsible for this. Israel has now murdered over 500 people since they broke the truce between the two peoples.

Hamas sending rockets into Israel, which usually hit nothing, is bad. They create fear, and there is always the possibility that someone may be killed. This fades, however, in comparison to the slaughter of Palestinians by the Israeli army.

And guns and rockets are not the only weapons Israel is using against the civilians of Gaza. Those who die from lack of proper food, sanitation, medical supplies and electricity don’t even make the casualty list.

Israel appears to want a ceasefire that returns to the status quo ante, minus the rockets. That is not going to happen. People like Mr. Kent seem so willing to wear the shoes of the Israelis, subjected to rocket attacks, while ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are refugees in their own land, most of them unemployed and dependent on aid, surrounded by Israeli security guards with settlements and fences blocking off more and more of the land that they do have.

Until the inhabitants of Gaza are treated with the minimum of respect due all human beings, they will fight for that. It will be a losing battle against the large Israeli army, supported by the Americans, but they feel they have little choice.

Tell me, Mr. Kent, if your family were trapped and starving in Gaza, what would you do?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Tell me Ms. Millard, what would you do if your parents and grandparents had been raised in Residential Schools. Imagine your mother, father, grandmothers and grandfathers were beaten, raped, and humiliated regularly by immigrants that came to steal and colonize the land. Imagine your ancestors once owned a rich resourceful country and now you live on a patch of dirt because the Indian Act says your a child. Try farming on dirt, rocks or swamp lands.
Everything Israel is doing in Palestine, YOUR ancestors did here and still do.