A mourning day

“In Ottawa, a coalition of medical, humanitarian and advocacy groups called for a day of mourning for the Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes. On September 27, 2024, Justice For All Canada held a press conference on Parliament Hill to commemorate the “Day of Mourning” for the Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes.

The day marked an annual remembrance and commemoration of entire Palestinian families and communities killed since the massacre on September 27, 2008. The event featured impactful speeches from Canadian advocates who addressed the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, the devastation of Palestinian communities, and the urgent need for global action,” reads a CPAC announcement.  

Making the opening remarks and introducing the speakers, Ganiyat Sadiq, the Ottawa advocacy officer for Justice for all Canada, a human rights advocacy organisation challenging genocide, said: “As we approach the National Truth and Reconciliation Day on September 30^th, we reflect on the ongoing journey towards justice for indigenous communities across Canada.

At Justice for All Canada, we honour their resilience and are steadfast in our solidarity as we continue our advocacy for persecuted, indigenous and Muslim minority communities globally.

Today, we stand united to advocate for an urgent and significant cause: The declaration of September 27^th as a national day of mourning. It is a day for all Canadians to pause, reflect, and honour the lives Palestinians who have suffered decades of oppression and brutality. This day would serve as the solemn reminder of the violence that has plagued the Palestinian people and act as a call of conscience for all humanity. September 27^th, 2008 holds significant meaning as it marks a series of tragic events that have brought immense suffering to the Palestinian community. On September 27^th, 2008, Israel “Operation Cast Lead” lead to the killing of over 1,400 Palestinians, including 320 children within a brutal 23-day period.

Between 2008 and 2022, over 6,180 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza and the West Bank. And just within the past year, more than 41,000 Palestinians lost their lives to the relentless bombings, two-thirds of whom are women and children. The tragedies in Gaza, where the targeting of civilians, destruction of healthcare facilities, and the use of illegal weapons continue to this day, are war crimes that demand the Canadian government’s attention and action.

The Canadian government is responsible for respecting and upholding international law. While we welcome yesterday’s joint call for a temporary call for a 21-day ceasefire, Canada must move beyond words to action. This means aligning its policies with the rulings of the International Court of Justice and taking concrete steps at the United Nations to put diplomatic pressure on Israel and end the violence and ensure the provision of humanitarian aid to those in desperate need. We call for September 27^th to be declared a national day of mourning, as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people and a plea for the world to act now. We must stop the ongoing massacres, and we urge all Canadians across all communities to stand with us in compassion and justice.”

Many Palestinian Canadians are drowning in debt

Speaking next, Israa Alsaafin, a Palestinian Canadian advocating with the Gazan-Canadian Families’ League, held a picture of her grandfather, saying, “For almost a year, I have been advocating alongside the league. My grandfather, Aamir, was forced to leave his village, Al-Falloujah, seeking safety for his baby, wife and mother. He left behind his home, land, roots, and ended up in a refugee camp in Gaza, believing it was temporary. He told my grandmother not to pack much, thinking they would return in just a few days, but they never did. They lived their entire life, holding onto the hope of going back home.

Despite the harsh conditions, he worked hard to raise his children in an environment that was far from being liveable. All his children graduated with a higher education, knowing it was their only hope and chance to survive in this world. My grandfather was a survivor of Nakba in 1948, but I hesitate to call him that. A survivor implies the event is over, but for Palestinians it never ended. For 76 years, we have been living through the same fate and the same Nakba day after day. My father’s now living through the same fate as his dad. Despite his effort to shield us from his own childhood trauma and hardships, he lost his everything this past year. He lost his son, my beloved brother, Ahmed, was killed while trying to flee to safety with his baby in Gaza. My father lost his hope...

As a Canadian, I had hope when Minister [of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc] Miller announced a Special Economic Measures Act in December 2023. I believed I could bring my family to safety even if it’s temporary, but I was wrong: the process has been incredibly complicated as many of us saw, and many of us feel criminalised just for being Palestinian. Here in Canada, many Palestinian Canadians are drowning in debt, having to pay money to help their families escape to Egypt, or they’re anxiously waiting for news every day, fearing the worst because their families are still stuck in Gaza.

This time the Nakba has even been crueller and more painful. We witness the horrific conditions that our people endure, denied even the basic right to a safe place. This madness must stop. We need to stand up for human rights and live by the Canadian values, and take actions. Enough is enough.”

Israel’s normalising the killing of civilians by bombing Lebanon

Hakima Moktary, a registered social worker, lecturer, activist, and PHD student with over 18 years of experience in the violence-against-women sector spoke emotionally, saying, “Peace be upon you all. I never thought I would witness, in my lifetime, the worst human crisis since the end of World War 2. Yet, here I am, like the rest of us and the world, watching the atrocities and barbarism inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation forces.

The International Court of Justice has recently ordered Israel to cease all actions and to prevent real and imminent risk of genocide. According to the British medical journal, The Lancet, up to 186,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in October 2023, most of them women and children. Euromed, the humanitarian rights monitor, reports that Israel has carried out almost 12 months of systematic destruction, not only of lives, but also of the healthcare system itself. They have targeted healthcare workers and imposed a deliberate blockade, preventing food, essential medicine and medical supplies from reaching the Gaza Strip.

19 Canadian physicians and healthcare workers, all of whom have volunteered in Gaza since December 2023, have described their involvement as the deadliest place in history for aid workers. In their letter to Canadian government officials last August, they stated that over 5,000 health workers had been killed, including 63 physicians, and that more had been denied their rights, detained and tortured. These doctors performed life-saving surgeries under unimaginably dire conditions, most often on children under 16, whose homes or tents had been bombed.

Let’s not forget that the Palestinian people, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, have long faced a brutal apartheid system, ensuing the struggle for justice and human rights, under a coloniser that acts with total impunity from the international community, and now once again, Israel’s normalising the killing of civilians, including children, by bombing another country, Lebanon, while our own Canadian government remains silent, failing to condemn [Israel] or even call for a ceasefire.

I stand here with you today, not just as a healthcare worker, but as a mother and a human being. I am committed to amplifying Palestinian voices and the voices of all marginalised communities, ensuring that their stories, pain and resilience are heard.

Make no mistake, our Canadian government has the profound responsibility to uphold international law, and defend human rights for all. I urge our government to take immediate action by implementing a two-way arms embargo under Canada’s Special Economic Measures Act and holding Israel accountable to international humanitarian law. I also call on the government to fix the Gaza temporary-visa programme, ensuring safe passage for Palestinians seeking refuge in Canada and that they receive the necessary financial support to rebuild their lives here.

Finally, while we speak of the indigenous people of Palestine, we must also remember the indigenous people of Canada, the First Nations, Inuit and Metis, who share the painful legacy of being dispossessed of their ancestral lands and are subjected to genocide. As we observe September 30^th, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, let us honour their ongoing struggle for justice, equality, and let us commit to ensuring that such atrocities never happen again – not to anyone, anywhere.”

A systematic strategy of violence perpetrated by a colonial entity

Samar Odeh, a political science student and the President of the "Palestinian Students’ Association" at the University of Ottawa, sounded emotional, too, when she spoke afterwards, “1,436 lives, 410 children, and over 5,000 injured. In 2008, we witnessed in horror as Israel launched a brutal bombing campaign on Gaza. Without warning, Israeli occupation forces began an unrelenting attack on the Gaza Strip, in air, on land, and in sea, They deployed white phosphorus for the first time against crowded residential neighbourhoods, and that’s a chemical weapon that ignites in the air, suffocates the lungs, and burns through flesh until it reaches the bones – the same chemical weapon that’s illegal to use against civilians under the United Nations’ conventions.

Families were awakened in the dead of night to explosions that lit the sky, with nowhere to run or hide, while their neighbours and loved ones succumbed to injury – families like the Sammoony family, whose members were told by Israeli forces that they would be safe if they rounded up in one house. Safety never came. That night, an airstrike obliterated the building, killing 29 of them, including women, children, and elderly people.

What ensued wasn’t just one tragic event, it was the beginning of a cycle of mass murder and destruction. We saw it in 2008, again in 2012, in 2014, in 2021, and now we are seeing it once more. This isn’t an occasional crisis. This has been an ongoing reality for Palestinians every single day for the past year – a systematic, deliberate strategy of violence and displacement perpetrated by a colonial entity that seeks to erase the Palestinian people from their land.

I stand before you today struggling not to be angry at the injustice, violence, and the world’s silence and inaction in the face of Palestinian suffering – silence and inaction that equal complicity. When the world chooses to look away, it allows the occupation to continue its atrocities unchallenged. Every destroyed home, bombed school, and mother grieving her child is a testament to this complicity.

And let me be clear: this is not a conflict. It is not two equal sides battling it out. This is settler colonialism, it is apartheid, and now it’s a genocide. It is the systematic attempt to destroy a people, to erase their history, their culture, their very existence. And as a global community, we cannot afford to sanitise it, to ignore it, and to make excuses for it, so we must call it what it is: a crime against humanity.

We lost 1,436 lives in 2008, and in the past year tens of thousands more. And for what? For indigenous people daring to exist in their homeland? For indigenous people resisting their oppressor? This is why students like us are refusing to be silent and complicit; the time for justice is long overdue. This means ending the cycle of violence. It means calling on our governments here in Canada and around the world to take real action above empty claims and promises. This means a two-way arms embargo to stop funding and arming the occupation, holding Israel accountable for its war crimes, and supporting Palestinians’ right to live with dignity and self-determination.

We aren’t asking for favours. We are demanding what is owed for a future where Palestinians don’t live under Israeli bombardment and where they can dream of something more than survival. So today, let us do more than just remembering the past. Let us commit to action and accountability. We ask the Canadian government to stand in unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine because justice delayed is justice denied, and we cannot wait any longer.”

I have family in Lebanon, and I don’t know what their fate is

Professor at the University of Ottawa, Nour El-Kadri, spoke last, “Today is a day of mourning for those 1,436 people that lost their lives in “Operation Cast Lead” in Palestine, and we would remiss if we don’t mention the tens of thousands that have died since that operation in 2008.

And if we look at the root causes of the problem, it is exactly the same story of all Palestinians that Israa just stated. It started with the occupation in 1948, ethnic cleansing, and uprooting the Palestinian people from their homeland – those Palestinians that used to smell their land while they were planting their orchards and taking care of their olive trees. They are the ones that have been suffering day, in day out. The bombardment and massacres by the successive Israeli governments have been countless since 1948.

What did the world do? Condemnation after condemnation after condemnation, but nothing on the ground. What we see today is just Israel taking more land, uprooting more trees, killing more people, indiscriminately murdering innocent men, women, children and elderly, and the world is watching.

When violence becomes the fuel of the survival of Israeli governments led by ultra-right wing people like Benjamin Netanyahu, and when that normalisation of violence becomes more and more acceptable, as we see, they will fuel their survival on that blood.

Just before I came here, I watched Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations with his speech. People have started to see this. 80% of the hall left when he started to speak, because they knew that his story is based on lies after lies after lies. Yet, our government is still in shambles. They’re not taking a firm position or telling the oppressed from the oppressing.

Our [former] beloved Right Honourable Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, would be rolling in his grave if he knew that the current Canadian government of the land is not standing up for justice. We demand that his son, the Right Honourable Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, take a leadership role in the world in order to save some lives in Palestine and neighbouring countries.  

While I was watching in the room here, four huge buildings got bombarded in Beirut. I have family there, and I don’t know what their fate is… Justice cannot be just offered on a gold plate, except when pressure happens.

We prided ourselves as Canadians when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney led the Western world against apartheid in South Africa. We need this kind of leadership from our Canadian government to so that we can stop the genocide happening in Gaza, stop the bombardment happening in Lebanon, and stop all those atrocities and save lives. This is the only way that to preserve justice for all. While we are preparing for the Day of Truth and Reconciliation outside here on Parliament Hill, we want that truth and reconciliation. We want justice for everybody: The indigenous people of Canada and Palestine.

Concluding the conference, Ganiyat Sadiq thanked the attendees, offering recommendations: Canada must recognise the State of Palestine, as a majority of the globe has done. Canada must also urgently impose sanctions on senior Israeli officials who are responsible for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Lastly, Canada must take concrete steps to end Israel’s 76-year-long apartheid, 57-year long occupation of Palestinian territories, and the 17-year-long blockade on Gaza.”

No questions were made through Zoom following the conference however. The full conference can be watched here:

Humanitarian Orgs Call for Day of Mourning for Palestinians – September 27, 2024 | Headline Politics | CPAC.ca