Dear editor,
On March 18 the NDP introduced a motion for Canada to recognize Palestine as a state.
The Conservatives (MP Michael Chong) and Liberal Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, stated they supported the idea of a two- state solution, but this motion was not good enough. Both of them continued to explain that the horrors of Oct. 7, so atrocious they were, exempted their party from supporting the NDP motion of Palestine as a state.
Conservative MP Chong was adamant in arguing that to support the motion was a nonstarter because to create an independent state took months and often years. And that to support the NDP motion would be useless because it would only be a motion in words not deeds. Therefore it should not be supported, more forcefully perhaps, because Hamas has been recognized as a terrorist state.
True, yet, to do nothing here leaves the Palestinian people hostage to not only Hamas but to the genocidal bombardment of the Palestinian people, which has to date killed more children in a few months than years and years have done.
So, what to do?
In 1947, when Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in Major League Baseball, many people said it was a gesture bound to fail. And it was hard. But it was a recognition that change had come. The recognition of Palestine as a state is similar, it will not create immediacy except an immediacy of hope, where today there is none. And as but it is a public declaration, of which 139 nations have done, all people deserve the dignity of having their own state.
The definition of insanity is said to be doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. Well, considering that the British-led Balfour Declaration of 1917 was used to create Israel while not Palestine, and that was over 107 years ago, to claim that it is still not time to recognize Palestine in some form is a continuation of insanity. Please let the government of Canada know your thoughts on this, by sending emails to Foreign Minister Melanie Joly (melanie.joly@parl.gc.ca) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca)
Steve C. Faraher-Amidon,
Comox