Rachel Small occupe le Parlement d’Ottawa avec plus de cent pro-palestiniens

Par les Artistes pour la Paix solidaires de cette action

 

Rachel Small, l’index levé au centre de cette photo, est une alliée de longue date des Artistes pour la Paix : artiste activiste pour une justice sociale et environnementale, membre de la COALITION JEWS SAY NO TO GENOCIDE, elle a bâti sa solide réputation en animant plusieurs revendications pacifistes via l’organisme World BEYOND War avec qui nous avons développé de forts liens. Ce 3 décembre, elle occupe un édifice du Parlement pour protester contre un Canada qui alimente le génocide à Gaza en contournant l’embargo par l’acheminement d’armes à Israël transitant par les États-Unis.

Amy Goodman on radio for democracy.now : In Canada, about 150 Jewish activists and allies have just launched a protest inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa to demand Canada stop arming Israel. We’re joined now by Rachel Small.

RACHEL SMALL: Thank you. We are in a Parliament Hill building. Right now we have completely taken over the lobby of this building, that has hundreds of parliamentarians’ offices. Our demand is clear: Canada needs to stop arming Israel and implement an immediate arms embargo. We know that every F-35 fighter jet, every Boeing Apache helicopter dropping bombs on Lebanon and Gaza right now is full of hundreds of Canadian components. We’re here as Jews to say this violence cannot continue in our name. And we’re here as people of conscience to say that the absolute bare minimum Canada needs to be doing right now is stop arming a genocide.

HAGGAI MATAR (Israeli journalist and activist, executive director of +972 Magazine and conscientious objector who refused to serve in the Israeli army) This is the exact kind of protest that people should be taking on in Canada and definitely in the U.S., which is the biggest supplier of weapons and funding and diplomatic support to Israel. So, yes, this is what we should be seeing more of. I’m afraid that in Israel, these protests are usually seen as antisemitic or, in the case of Jews protesting, of self-hating Jews or people that are unhinged. That’s the way it’s being perceived. It’s our job as Jewish Israelis on the ground, talking in Hebrew, talking to our communities, to help them understand that it’s not the world that has gone mad, it’s us.

AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, just met with President-elect Trump in Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Rachel Small, we’re looking at the group of people, one of them saying “Jews for a Free Palestine.” What has been Trudeau’s position? And what’s going to happen to you this morning?

RACHEL SMALL: We have seen an unprecedented wave of resistance across Canada over the past 13 months, many, many thousands of people across the country not only petitioning their MPs, not only protesting, not only meeting with them, but actually holding blockades at weapons factories (i), doing just really everything we can to get Canada to stop arming Israel. And that pressure has resulted in the Canadian government taking a stance that we would have not thought possible a year or two ago. They have committed to stop arming Israel. They have, in fact — the foreign affairs minister recently, Mélanie Joly said that Canadian weapons are not going to be going and used in Gaza. Unfortunately, it’s not true. Unfortunately, we know that they have not tackled all the permits, and they have continued to conveniently send weapons to the U.S. without even requiring a permit. Those are going into every F-35 Israel is using. That is going into Israel’s primary weapons of war. So we have backed the Canadian government into a corner where they know what the right stance is. They know they need to stop arming Israel. And we’re here to make sure they do it. The broad Arms Embargo Now Coalition has come together across the country and has, in fact, gotten 45 parliamentarians to formally endorse the call for an arms embargo. We just need the government to step up and take that action to actually cut off the flow of all weapons to and from Israel. It’s the bare minimum they need to be doing.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rachel Small. If you’re having a little trouble understanding her, she’s inside the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa. And in the studio with us in New York…

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Haggai, I wanted to ask you about President-elect Trump’s decision to select former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is an U.S. Christian Zionist who’s openly advocated for Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and declared in 2008 : “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”. What do you expect from this ambassador from the new Trump administration?

HAGGAI MATAR: So, obviously, Trump appointments and Trump policies are terrifying to us and should be, too, to anyone who cares about the rights of Palestinians. I do want to also point out, however, Trump policies have an inherent contradiction. As an isolationist, Trump does not want to get involved in too many wars. As someone who wants to break deals with Saudi Arabia and Arab Gulf states, he may want to ensure that they don’t drift into the Iran-China field of influence. And those two policies, being pro-annexation and pro-settlements and pro-Israel and being pro-war and wanting to sign deals, they collide. And I think it’s our role on the left to kind of put a wedge in there and try and make sure that it becomes more and more apparent how those policies conflict with each other.