Canada's Indigenous Solidarity with Palestine

With all due respect, there is a certain difference between injustices, as horrible as they are — committed years ago — and a crowd of people threatening my personal family’s safety today.

Demonstrators in Canada protesting make-believe things, like the notion that Israel is “bombing kids” (photo: Dania Shaeeb/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay written by Masha Kleiner, a Canadian Zionist writer.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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This incident almost made it into one of the latest antisemitism digests, but it is not antisemitic; it is just dumb.

Perhaps it is time to start writing a digest on idiocy as well?

In one of the Mississauga¹ school libraries, all books published prior to 2008 were removed from the shelves. It seems this isn’t the only school that has done so. The books started disappearing gradually, and after the summer break, students came back to half-empty shelves.

This process is called “weeding.” Initially, it was intended to find and remove damaged, torn, or moldy books. Over time, a second phase was added to the process: “anti-racist, inclusive audit.”

And so, some especially diligent librarians have concluded that all literature older than 2008 is racist and inappropriate for students. The article does not explicitly state what the destiny of the removed books was; it delicately hinted that, being deemed racist, they are considered unsuitable for reading and, therefore, could not be donated.

Several paragraphs of the article are dedicated to a discussion of whether this was a reasonable decision. Every time I promise myself not to be surprised, and yet, I am still shocked. It turns out that this dystopian initiative is not the impulsive action of a single deranged individual, no! Entire groups of supposedly educated and enlightened people are seriously defending the adequacy of this move.

My mother was a librarian, so libraries hold a dear place in my heart and hurt me the most. Last week, my friend and I met with members of a local library’s artistic board. A few weeks prior, we complained to them about an art exhibit in the library dedicated to the Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Inside a glass case, tools and decorations of Indigenous peoples were displayed, alongside a Palestinian flag and an inscription declaring: “Indigenous solidarity with Palestine.” We wrote a letter to the library; they responded with “that’s the artist’s vision,” but offered to meet and discuss it in more detail.

We were greeted by an older, tall, slender white man and a middle-aged queer non-binary person of Chinese descent (who looked like an ordinary woman, but that’s how they referred to themselves during our conversation). We sat down, and I explained that I have nothing against artistic expression, but not every exhibit belongs in a public library.

Everything needs to be considered in context, and the current context is such that, both in Canada and globally, Palestinian flags and slogans about Palestinian solidarity are associated with calls for the destruction of Israel, glorification of terrorism, blockades of roads and ports, attacks on schools and synagogues, acts of vandalism, and even burning the Canadian flag and “Death to Canada” chants.

“Different people have different perceptions of the Canadian flag,” said the person. “I’m of Chinese descent, and Canada imposed a humiliating and offensive head tax on Chinese immigrants; the Canadian flag may be offensive to many.”

For reference, this tax was introduced in 1885 and abolished in 1923. It has been a century since, but we live in a free country, and everyone is entitled to choose what to be offended by.

The white man wondered whether we opposed any display of the Palestinian flag anywhere, in principle.

In response, I asked if they knew the origins of the Palestinian flag. They did not. I explained that the flag was invented in the 1960s and had no connection whatsoever to any indigenous history. They were even more surprised when I added that the only flag flying in Gaza was the Hamas flag. Hamas is not for a national identity; it is about the global caliphate.

This information was way too nuanced to keep them engaged, so I reiterated that, as it happens, the Palestinian flag is waved exclusively in an aggressive and threatening context. It has no place in libraries, especially not where children may feel unsafe.

“Everyone finds something else unsafe,” replied the queer person. “It’s very important to us that everyone feels safe. For example, I’m a non-binary queer person, and I generally don’t feel safe in most places I go.”

We all nodded — the older white man eagerly, my friend and I politely. You’d feel a lot less safe in Gaza, I thought to myself. I was losing patience, so I dove straight into the heart of the matter: the fact that Jews are the Indigenous people of the land of Israel, and that the very essence of Palestinian solidarity is denying the ties between Jews and their ancestral homeland.

“Opinions, feelings, I certainly respect all of that,” I summarized, “but in a library, it is crucial to stick to well-known historical facts.”

This innovative idea did not resonate with them.

“Everyone interprets history based on their own experiences,” the queer person countered. “By the way, this work was created by our local artist. He lives in the neighborhood, and that’s his vision. Our main goal is to facilitate dialogue through art. Dialogue is the most critical thing.”

“Dialogue is important,” I diplomatically agreed, despite not believing in dialogues with people who want to kill me. “But if you were to display an Israeli flag in the library, at the very least, there would be protests and disruptions, and likely also vandalism.”

They sighed and shook their heads.

Finally, I played my trump card: I reminded them that the Indigenous peoples of Canada, despite all the injustices done to them — here my interlocutors nodded zealously — did not blow up any buses, nor did they kidnap or torture hostages in the struggle for their rights. Comparing our peaceful First Nations to the Palestinians should be offensive and even insulting to the First Nations people.

“Everyone finds something offensive and insulting,” the queer person passionately picked up the familiar words. “We have photos of Vancouver from the mid-20th century hanging on our walls. For some, these are just old streets’ images, but for Indigenous people, they are a constant reminder of their land being taken away!”

I couldn’t help it.

“With all due respect, there is a certain difference between injustices, as horrible as they are — committed years ago — and a crowd of people threatening my personal family’s safety today.”

“Not so much — crowds?” the white man doubted, finally brushing aside the pesky facts and recalling that the burden of white guilt rests not only on him but also on me. “These are some small radical groups, but the majority are peaceful.”

“Exactly!” the queer person praised him. “I was walking past the park the other day, there were tables with Palestinian flags, and everything was peaceful, no aggression.”

“Yes, yes,” I confirmed. “Sometimes they gather peacefully to teach the youth about famous Palestinian terrorists, preferably martyrs, about their holy resistance against the Zionists, and about the number of Jews fell victims of this glorious struggle.”

“Our local artist surely meant something different, but your perspective is also important to us, thank you for sharing it,” they concluded our conversation.

We said our goodbyes politely. I was sad and disgusted. These people are more of a parody of humans than actual humans.

People were banished from Eden for tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge and learning to distinguish good from evil. I am not religious, but nonetheless, the Bible is a source of fundamental cultural and philosophical values. Distinguishing between good and evil is our human prerogative, yet these progressive individuals do not only recoil from it — but go to great lengths to undermine the very significance of this privilege.

They refuse to distinguish between good and evil, justifying any crime with made up reasoning or emotional distortions. They refuse to distinguish an existential threat from a whining offense, cowardly enjoying a lack of real threat targeting them personally — for now.

They refuse to distinguish facts from opinions, thus undermining the accumulated wisdom of civilization and condemning our society to a meaningless floundering in a concoction of imagined nonsense.

And finally, they refuse to distinguish truth from falsehood, insisting that everything said not only has the right to be said but must also be listened to, taken seriously, respected, and trusted.

The wise Thomas Sowell² wrote: “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

You can tell people the truth, but you cannot make them hear it. People who refuse to hear the truth cannot be helped.

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1. A city in Ontario, Canada

2. A modern-day economist, social philosopher, and political commentator