On November 9, 2023, I delivered a speech to anti-apartheid protesters at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) about the humanitarian catastrophe that Israel has created in Gaza. I argued that the suggestion of a “humanitarian pause” is inhumane, and that even a ceasefire would not be adequate to address the unimaginable suffering of the people of Gaza. What is necessary, in reality, is a permanent prohibition on the bombardment of the Gaza concentration camp.
On the following day, at a Remembrance Day ceremony in Montreal, Yves Engler and I asked Canadian MP Anthony Housefather, the Chairman of the Canada-Israel Inter-Parliamentary Group, to respond to genocidal statements made recently by Israel’s leaders. Housefather acted as if it was inappropriate for Canadians to remember 4,400 dead Palestinian children on Remembrance Day.
You can watch and listen to my speech at UQAM and our intervention at the Remembrance Day ceremony below.
Once again great work Dimitri, so well said! Thank you for being a voice for the oppressed in a sea of Canadian political hypocrisy!
Jenin – David Rovics music and video
http://www.musictory.com/music/David+Rovics/Jenin
Child, what will you remember
When you recall your sixteenth year
The horrid sound of helicopter gunships
The rumble of the tanks as they drew near
As the world went about it’s business
And I burned another tank of gasoline
The Dow Jones lost a couple points that day
While you were crying in the City of Jenin
Did they even give your parents warning
Before they blew the windows out with shells
While you hid inside the high school basement
Amidst the ringing of church bells
As you watched your teacher crumble by the doorway
And in England they were toasting to the Queen
You were so far from the thoughts of so many
Huddled in the City of Jenin
Were you thinking of the taunting of the soldiers
Or of the shit they smeared upon the walls
Were you thinking of your cousin after torture
Or Tel Aviv and it’s glittering shopping malls
When the fat men in their mansions say that you don’t want peace
Did you wonder what they mean
As you sat amidst the stench inside the darkness
In the shattered City of Jenin
What went through your mind on that day
At the site of your mother’s vacant eyes
As she lay still among the rubble
Beneath the blue Middle Eastern skies
As you stood upon this bulldozed building
Beside the settlements and their hills so green
As your tears gave way to grim determination
Among the ruins of the City of Jenin
And why should anybody wonder
As you stepped on board
The crowded bus across the Green Line
And you reached inside your jacket for the cord
Were you thinking of your neighbors buried bodies
As you made the stage for this scene
As you set off the explosives that were strapped around your waist
Were you thinking of the City of Jenin?