On Nov. 17, 2023, Eman, a 28-year-old Palestinian woman living in Cobourg, Ontario, woke up to scroll through Instagram for updates on Gaza, as she had done every morning since October 7.
As she clicked on a video, Eman quickly realized that she was watching something she never wanted to see: Her 26-year-old brother, Ahmed, laying face down on a sidewalk.
His head was blurred, but blood spilling onto the pavement was visible. Eman’s father, Saad, was crouched down beside him, clinging onto a white flag and crying out in Arabic: “I told you — let’s stay at home, my son!”
The part that gets my blood boiling is that we had an outpouring of support for Jewish institutions but zero support for Palestinians during an event where entire family trees are being wiped out.
Ultimately it comes down to whether Israel’s argument is that all 26,000 people (children included) are members of Hamas, and if we have decided to accept it.
Looking at rhetoric from our leaders (especially Mr Poilievre who may be PM one day), it seems like we have.
While international support for the people of Palestine is still a fraction of where it should be (and hopefully will be soon), I think it’s much higher than where it was in October or November (for many reasons). I have a lot of hope in South Africa’s courageous and commendable case against Israel and its genocide at the ICJ. I pray and hope that things will continue to gather momentum and get better. I think the ICJ ruling may be weeks away. I’d really like to see more action from the EU, because I think that would be influential (on other countries). It’s been really interesting, and chilling to be honest, for me to observe that there’s far more criticism of Netayahu in Israeli media than there are traditional Canadian and American media. I’ve read an hour-by-hour description of much of what happened on Oct 7th from an Israeli paper with Israeli military whistleblower sources that paints a pretty clear picture, including the Hannibal Directive, that does not match the narrative exclusively used in traditional North American outlets. Last I saw the traditional North American outlets were running a show-and-tell article about the IDF showing journalists a place where Hamas allegedly kept hostages - the coverage is propaganda
