Our own occupation

Editorial

If attendance at the latest round of anti-Israel talks in Vancouver is any indication, Canadians are particularly morally elevated, socially conscientious fighters for justice and equality, and we have a lot of which to be proud.

Granted, very few of the people who attended Ha’aretz writer Gideon Levy’s talk or Prof. Michael Keefer’s talk, or who model themselves after other “Jews of conscience,” such as Norm Finkelstein or Ilan Pappé, have been actively involved in protesting genocide, human rights violations, extreme poverty or violence against women, etc., etc., outside of Israel. That’s OK. Most of these places are far away, and most are not democracies, so what can one expect, really. Israel is a democracy, however, and, therefore, it is completely appropriate – indeed, our duty – to hold it to a higher standard.

So what would these same activists do if they lived in a democracy in which one in four aboriginal children lived in poverty, compared to one in six children in the general population? If the aboriginal children had double the rates of disability and one-third of them lived in overcrowded housing? What if, in addition to a higher rate of overcrowding, their homes were about four times more likely to require major repairs? What if one in three of them considered their main drinking water unsafe to drink and 12 percent of their communities had to boil their drinking water? In addition, what if six percent (more than 5,000) of their homes were without sewage services, and four percent lacked hot water, cold water or flushing toilets?

And could such socially conscience people sleep at night knowing that the aboriginal communities in this democracy ranked 76th out of 174 nations when using the 2001 United Nations Development Index, while the democracy itself ranked eighth? Would it upset them that about 70 percent of students in these aboriginal communities won’t complete high school, and that their unemployment rate is almost twice as high as that of the general population?

Would these “progressive” people lead marches and call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions to force the national government to do something about the fact that the aboriginals’ rate of diabetes was at least three times the national average, tuberculosis eight to 10 times more prevalent and, while the aboriginals comprised only five percent of the total population, they represented 16 percent of new HIV infections? And what about their suicide rate being more than twice the national rate, or life expectancy at birth being 7.4 years less than the national average for men, and 5.2 years less for women?

What would these sanctimonious activists do when they found out that these aboriginal populations had been discriminated against for almost 500 years (from when the first settlers arrived)? That their land had been stolen from them? That their history includes the reservation system on which apartheid was based? That they suffered sexual, mental and physical abuse at government-run schools? That the government actually pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing against them, and that they have yet to have their basic constitutional rights recognized?

What would these avid pursuers of justice do in the face of such blatant injustice? The short answer: nothing. They are too busy focusing on Israel to notice what’s been going on in Canada for centuries, and what continues to transpire. As the Assembly of First Nations, from which most of the statistics above were taken, noted in its 2004 study called Federal Government Funding to First Nations: The Facts, the Myths and the Way Forward:

“The notion that the government could have owed its own citizens a debt for several generations is unfamiliar to most Canadians. Where citizens have a rightful claim, most Canadians would expect that negative media coverage or a fight in the courts would bring resolution fairly quickly, as this is the general experience and rightful expectation of citizens in a country under the rule of law. For First Nations, despite situations involving whole communities and interests based deep in constitutional law and backed by Supreme Court of Canada decisions, this has not been the case.”

While dismissing the self-hating Jew label, Levy said in his talk that he was deeply ashamed to be Israeli and felt deep guilt over how all Israelis – all except him and perhaps, as he described it, as many as you could count on one hand that had been injured so that a finger or two was missing – treat the Palestinians. The audience’s appreciation of Levy’s superior sensitivity, goodness and decency was palpable – exhibited in nods of heads, coos of agreement and two standing ovations. Now, if only these same people could muster even a pinky’s worth of compassion for Canada’s First Nations, whose suffering they have helped cause, and whose grievances are against them and their government. If these activists could only bring themselves to care one iota about an occupation in which all non-aboriginal Canadians – first- and multi-generational colonizers – are complicit.

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