In the News
All Out to Stand with the Palestinian People
in East Jerusalem!
The eyes of the world are on Palestine as the heroic Palestinian people step up their resistance to the recent attempts of the Netanyahu government in Israel to engage in land theft and expel the residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood near the Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. Hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children face losing their homes. This latest provocation is an attempt by the Israeli state to illegally annex more Palestinian lands and property during the Muslim religious observation of Ramadan, and to legitimize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. For several days now the Israeli military has carried out brutal attacks against the Palestinians of the area who have stood together as one. Israeli military and police have attacked the protesters with batons, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them. “Skunk water” has been sprayed and tear-gas fired into Palestinian homes to force the occupants to abandon their dwellings.
On May 7, several hundred riot gear-clad Israeli police officers were deployed to the Al-Aqsa mosque where 70,000 Muslims had gathered at Islam’s third-holiest site for the last Friday prayer of Ramadan, and where thousands remained after to protest against the attempted expulsion of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Over the next days the police attacked the protesters in an effort to disperse them. On May 10, the Israeli military entered the mosque compound itself and used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to against the protesters. To date more than 300 people have been hurt, many with life-threatening injuries. Countless others have been arrested. Cowardly air attacks are being carried out by the Israeli air force on civilians in Gaza in “retaliation” for rockets fired by the Hamas resistance — which had warned that it would not stand idly by while these crimes were being committed — have resulted in the deaths of more than 25 Palestinians to date.
The UN Human Rights Commission has condemned this violence by the Netanyahu govenment, as have many human rights organizations in Palestine and around the world. There have been protests held around the world to stand with the Palestinian people against the crimes against humanity and violations of international law being committed by Israel. The response of the Trudeau Liberals is par for the course for the Canadian state and the opposite of what the Canadian people are demanding. On May 8, Foreign Minister Marc Garneau issued a statement in which he said, “Canada is following the situation in Jerusalem closely. We call for immediate de-escalation of tensions and for all sides to avoid any unilateral actions,” following the lead of the U.S. State Department on May 7 which noted: “We call on Israeli and Palestinian officials to act decisively to de-escalate tensions and bring a halt to the violence. It is absolutely critical that all sides exercise restraint…”
It is unacceptable and reprehensible that Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau condones and whitewashes these crimes which are being carried out with impunity, sanctioned by Canada who Garneau calls “a close friend and ally of Israel” in his statement. Calling for the “immediate de-escalation of tensions and for all sides to avoid any unilateral action” is to equate the acts of terror, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment being committed by Israel, with the just and legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people for their right to be. Not in Our Name!
The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is urging everyone to go all out to participate in emergency actions across Canada in defense of the heroic Palestinian people and to demand and end to Canada’s silence in the face of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
These actions also commemorate Al Nakbh (Arabic for the Catastrophe), the brutal crime on which Zionist Israel was founded. On May 15, 1948, Zionist militias forcibly expelled 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland, dispossessing them of 4.2 million acres of land.
(Photos: Palestinian Press Agency, S. Sangha)