I have been asked a number of times over the past ten or so
years I have been focusing on the Israel-Palestine conflict why I chose that
situation on the other side of the world to be my passion. It’s a question I
sometimes get from those who are genuinely interested and also one many
advocates for justice for Palestine get from apologists for Israel’s oppression
of the Palestinian people. Those apologists want to know why people like me “only
focus on the bad things Israel does” or why we hold Israel “to a higher
standard” than other countries. They implicitly (or sometimes explicitly) use
that observation to accuse us of being anti-Semitic. Of course that doesn’t
happen, at least for me, with people who actually know us because people who
genuinely know us and care about us have more respect for us than that. It’s
simply a rhetorical political tactic used to discredit anything we say. But we
don’t have to take that.
We have good reasons for focusing on Israel-Palestine
(putting aside that most of us are extremely active on many other issues). I’m
going to focus most of this post on my personal story that led to me being
passionate about justice for Palestine. After I’m done my story, I’ll conclude
by offering a bit of a broader explanation about why it’s necessary for people
who have values of peace, fairness, and justice to focus on Israel-Palestine
specifically and to not apologize for it and to not get defensive against the
apologists described above. So here it goes with my story.
My interest in Israel-Palestine traces back to my roots in
the Pentecostal (charismatic, evangelical) Church I grew up in. When I was very
young (I’m guessing 6 years old) my family became one of a handful of families
that broke off from the Church of God we were attending at the time in
Lloydminster where I grew up to start up a new church affiliated with the
Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC). It is one of Canada’s most socially
conservative denominations. Its members were (are?) the base of opposition to
same-sex marriage and abortion. It is also a denomination that tends to have a
strong focus on “end times” when they believe Jesus will return to save the
believers and condemn the unbelievers to an eternity of punishment. Those are a
couple of the highlights of the denomination anyway. My purpose here is to give
you the general idea of it rather than to provide a full picture of it. The
details of any denomination are far more complicated and often nuanced than
that, but that’s generally what the situation was when I was a teenager and a
young adult in one PAOC church in Lloydminster.
Politics was not usually taught explicitly from the pulpit
at this church, or at least the focus of the preachers’ messages were typically
not very political (I’m aware that everything is arguably political in some
way, but I think you get my drift). Most
of the more political issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and a dislike
for liberals and encouragement of conservatism were mentioned on the side,
though not irregularly. I recall a specific moment leading up to the 2004 US
Presidential election when the Senior Pastor had just returned from meeting
like-minded preachers in Texas and passed on the message that if John Kerry was
elected instead of re-electing President Bush that it would set the country
back decades. I also remember hearing from the pulpit that Israel “miraculously”
won a war for its very existence against all odds, and that not only did it
survive, but by God’s grace it subdued its enemies in a mere six days. I was appalled
at the time by the comment about the Presidential election (I was already quite
politically progressive despite my limited political knowledge), however, I
took the Israel comment at face value. I didn’t know anything about modern-day
Israel.
I did already have a passion for international affairs.
Growing up my parents had taught me and my three siblings that we were lucky to
have food every day because there were people in other places who aren’t as
fortunate. As token as that lesson seems to many people today, I think my
parents instilling that in me was actually a big part of me getting interested
in working towards a more socially just world. The first issue I remember
getting involved in was the genocide in Darfur, in western Sudan. It seemed so
simple. There was one group of people who held power who were destroying
another group of people who had next to nothing. No one I knew was standing up
for the Sudanese government or the militias they supported who were trying to
eliminate the people of Darfur. It was clear that the Canadian and American
governments didn’t care enough to do much about the violence, so the solution
from North America seemed like it needed to start with convincing politicians
that the people they represent actually care about it. I wrote up and printed stacks
of my own “Darfur 101” factsheet that I would give out to people at shows my
band played. A friend of mine donated a “Save Darfur” banner to my band that I
would put up at our merchandise tables.
You know those memories where all you can remember is a
vivid image from a moment that had a big effect on you? I have one of those
from March 19, 2003. I remember the room I was in and the angle I was looking
at the TV from and the exact position of every person in the room I was in. I
remember the dark city on the television and the massive blasts that lit up the
sky. It was Baghdad, Iraq, and the US military was beginning its destruction of
the country. I hadn’t followed the lead-up to it closely. I remember it coming
out of nowhere for me. I had no idea why the US would be bombing Iraq. It
seemed like it had something to do with the attacks on September 11, 2001, but
Canada had already helped the US invade Afghanistan for that. It was after
March 19, 2003, that I decided I had a lot of learning to do. I needed to
understand what was going on. Countries don’t just get bombed for nothing.
Innocent people were dying, and I didn’t know why.
I went to the local public library and picked up the newest
book I could find on Iraq. It was a book I now own called “Iraq: In the Eye of
the Storm” by Dilip Hiro. It was amazingly motivating one small book could be.
I don’t know that Hiro’s book is actually radical in any way. I think the most
radical thing in it for me was just the history of the US in Iraq. Not only was
there no moral reason for the US attack/invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the US
had a long history of oppressing the Iraqi people. I knew they had attacked
Iraq before, but I didn’t know how much suffering they had caused the civilian
population of Iraq. Those people clearly did not deserve any of it. And if the
story behind Iraq was so different than the general impression I had before,
what else was I missing out on about what was going on in the world?
I began to do more research on Iraq. I found information
online about a new documentary that was coming out by a guy named Michael Moore
(I had no clue who he was) about US involvement in the Middle East and the
September 11th attacks on the US. It didn’t seem like the theatre in
Lloydminster would be playing it, but that summer (it would have been 2004) I
was playing bass guitar in a worship band at a Pentecostal Bible camp called
Living Waters near Prince Albert, SK. When the camp was over, all of us in the
band traveled to Prince Albert and went to the movie theatre. Everyone else had
a Hollywood movie they wanted to see (I don’t remember what it was); I was
extremely excited to see what was probably one of the first political
documentaries I had ever seen. I happily went off to Fahrenheit 9/11 by myself.
Not long after I returned to Lloydminster I visited the
local bookstore in the Lloyd Mall to see what else I could find about Iraq and
US involvement in the Middle East. Their selection was quite limited, but I
found a small book called “Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order”
by a guy named Noam Chomsky (again, I had no clue who the guy was at the time).
It took me a lot longer to get through than I thought it would. Despite it
being a small book, it was a dense read for me. There were far too many things
I didn’t understand. But I powered through it anyway and picked up some of the
things he was saying. It was certainly clear that I could learn a lot from this
guy. I looked online and found audio files of interviews he had given with
various media outlets. I had recently picked up a part-time second job
delivering pizza to pay for my band’s studio recordings and cross-country
tours, so I had lots of time to listen to these sorts of things while I was driving
around the city.
The recording that I clearly remember was probably about an
hour long, and I probably listened through it 8 or 10 times that year. It was
an interview Noam Chomsky did with Evan Solomon (who I had also never heard of)
on CBC. I think the interview was from 2002 because the first section of it was
about the American-led invasion of Afghanistan, but Iraq was not yet a topic of
urgent discussion. It was the Afghanistan content that had me interested in the
interview. If the situation in Iraq was so different than I had previously
thought, maybe the invasion of Afghanistan, which my own country participated
in, wasn’t as justified as it seemed to be.
That interview had a profound impact on me. Not only did I
find out the invasion of Afghanistan was fraught with questionable intentions
and a history of American disregard for Afghani lives, but the second half of
the interview was all about American involvement in Israel-Palestine. It was a
part of the world I had heard bits about in church (mainly about the miracle of
Israel’s existence), but I really knew next to nothing about it. Chomsky talked
in the interview about the terrible things Israel was doing to the Palestinian
people with the support of President Bush and President Clinton before him.
Even though it seemed to me like the Democrats in the US were the “good guys”
it appeared that both American parties supported the terrible things the
Israeli government was doing to the Palestinian people. I realized I didn’t
know anything about Israel’s history and how it got to where it was. I had a
lot of learning to do.
I actually found it quite difficult to find a single source
that would give me the “101” about what was going on in Israel-Palestine. I
wanted something coming from a perspective of social justice, because that’s
what I was interested in. However, I had no idea how to find anything like
that. I found a website for an upcoming documentary film being produced by a
couple of Americans. It was called “Occupation 101”, and it seemed to be
exactly what I was looking for. I pre-ordered a copy. When it arrived, I think
I watched it a few times. I couldn’t believe it. Israel wasn’t the ancient
country I thought it was. It was actually created in 1948. And its conflict
with the Palestinian people didn’t go back thousands of years like I thought.
It was maybe 100 years old. So maybe the problems there weren’t as unsolvable
as people were making it seem. Noam Chomsky seemed to think it was worth
speaking out about. And everything I was learning seemed to be facts that my
church’s pastor either didn’t know, didn’t understand, or didn’t want to
acknowledge (I’m still not sure I know which of those it was).
Occupation 101 was so good and the situation in
Israel-Palestine was so appalling that I ordered three more DVD copies of the
film to lend out to any friend who was even remotely interested (the whole film is now available to stream on YouTube for anyone interested). I began to
read more and more books and article and watch more documentaries about
Israel-Palestine.
I decided I was going to move to Edmonton in 2008. It seemed
like the next logical step for my career as a songwriter and musician, and the
guitarist I was playing with at the time was going to be studying guitar at
Grant MacEwan College (now University). And if he was going to be in classes
all day, what was I going to do? It seemed like a perfect opportunity to do
some learning on the side. I enrolled at the University of Alberta for the
Bachelor of Arts program with a Major in Political Science and a Minor in
Middle Eastern and African Studies. That eventually became a Double Major in
Religious Studies and Middle Eastern and African Studies, which I finished in
2013.
Sorry if that was extremely long. It was easy to write, and
I thought it would make the most sense and be the most relatable if I told it
step by step, from my initial complete ignorance to basically where I am now. I
still don’t think I’ve completely answered the “Why Israel-Palestine?”
question, but now that you have the background story, the explanation seems
simple.
The Israel-Palestine conflict was one that my environment
had misled me about in a way that didn’t happen with any other conflict. With
Darfur no one was telling me the Darfuris deserved what they were getting or
that it was a miracle Sudan still existed. North American governments weren’t
supporting what the Sudanese government was doing to them. In Israel, it was different.
Innocent Palestinians were being oppressed and killed, and not only did North
American governments lack the political will to solve it, but in many ways they
were supporting the oppression. And there was a significant part of the
Canadian public, particularly my own church, who were staunchly siding with the
group doing the oppressing and killing. And even among those who didn’t support
it, it seemed like the general feeling was hopelessness. At its least extreme
it was that we just shouldn’t worry about it because it will always be that
way, and at its most extreme it was that someone should just bomb that entire
area of the world because it was the only way fighting would stop. I didn’t
(and couldn’t) accept any of those views, and I felt like all of this
misinformation and support for oppression and injustice was so close to home
that I could do something about it.
And that’s why I’m so passionate about justice and peace in
Israel-Palestine. So many North Americans are so backwards when it comes to
understanding the problems there, and North American governments are supporting
the oppression and the killing. For me, it seems to be the most extreme case of
that in Canada. There are political problems in many other places, but none in
my view where it is so acceptable to support the powerful who are oppressing
the weak. We have so far to go. I do feel like society is gradually shifting,
but it can never happen quickly enough. If Israel-Palestine is ever going to
have a just and peaceful settlement to the conflict there, it will require the
efforts of everyone who holds values of peace, fairness, and justice to stand
up together to say enough is enough. One day, this conflict will end, and I
want to be part of the solution.