by Hans Modlich, member Beaches-East York NDP
I will never forget the morning of October 23, 2023, the day that I got kicked out of the public gallery at the Ontario Legislature at Queen’s Park. It was only ten days after the federal NDP convention in Hamilton, and just two weeks since the start of the blitzkrieg on Gaza.
That morning started with an unprecedented rally of over 2,000 mainly Jewish protesters at 8 AM in front of the Israeli Consulate at Canada’s busiest intersection, Yonge and Bloor St. Organized by Independent Jewish Voices, as well as Not in Our Name, it featured many articulate Jewish anti-Zionist speakers, among them Holocaust survivor Suzanne Weiss.
After occupying the intersection for over an hour, participants marched south on Yonge headed for Queen’s Park. Later that morning, I ended up in the visitor’s gallery sitting directly above the government benches. Flanking me were Rabbi David Mivasair, Socialist Caucus chair Barry Weisleder, and Hamilton Center NDP president Tom Baker.
Premier Ford’s motion to censure/silence MPP Sarah Jama was up for third reading. When the Speaker announced the tally of the roll call vote the four of us chanted “Ceasefire Now” – until we were ushered out of the building.
Little did we know then that Israel’s Hasbara propaganda machine had fabricated horrendous tales of Hamas atrocities such as the unfounded claim of 40 babies beheaded, and rape orgies allegedly committed by the insurgents. These brazen lies — echoed by western leaders – have since been exposed as bogus, including by Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on Palestine, a successor to Canada’s own Michael Lynk who had earlier condemned Israel’s devastation of Gaza.
In fact, Sarah Jama was vindicated for not joining the chorus of condemnation demanded by the corporate media and fellow politicians in the wake of the October 7 hostage-taking by the Palestinian resistance.
Neither did we know then that savagely one-sided Zionist war crimes would still be raging for well over a year. Who could predict that mass and targeted killings would spill over into neighboring Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran – that politically it would turn into a war on the UN itself, with its relief agencies, personnel and infrastructure being systematically destroyed.
Brazen Israeli apologists would have us forget that the League of Nations and the UN enabled the colonial partition of Palestine, with the tragic ethnic cleansing of over 750,000 inhabitants. 1948 marked the beginning of impunity for Zionist acts of terror, notably the assassination of Swedish Count Bernadotte by Lehi, known as the Stern Gang. Bernadotte was the UN’s peace broker who insisted that Jerusalem remain under Palestinian control. Menachim Begin, shadow member of the Gang, and intimate of Ben Gurion, later became Prime Minister of Israel. Bernadotte’s assassins were never brought to justice.
Fast forward 77 years. We now find ourselves with an ultra right-wing Israeli government banking on the incoming Trump administration to sanction the annexation of Gaza and the West Bank into the Zionist dream state of Eretz Israel. Pastor Mike Huckabee’s appointment as US ambassador augments this nightmare scenario.
However, in the emerging multi-polar world, Washington’s military supremacy alone will no longer guarantee the continuation of Israeli dominance over the region. This is a fact that many of its citizens have realized by voting with their feet — even if only to exit to nearby Cyprus or Greece.
In what may be the most poignant irony in modern history, Palestinians have taken the place of last century’s persecuted Jewry, the radical socialist-led Jews that Nazi Germany had demonized all the way to the Final Solution.
And let’s not forget Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s policy towards Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism: “None is too many.”
The Zionist state today, donning the mantle of the victim, has become the perpetrator of the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel is guilty of ‘plausible genocide’ – of Holocaust Take Two.
Palestinians are a Semitic people, thirteen million strong, half of whom are scattered around the world. They are not going quietly into oblivion. Their indomitable will to resist and to reclaim their occupied homeland, is evident.
If the world can see this fiendish irony, why can’t the western political elite admit that Israel has become a pariah state? The search for an answer brings me back to the Queen’s Park gallery protest.
Watching the manner in which Doug Ford manipulated his back benchers reminded me of Liberal David Peterson’s candid admission that Premiership had endowed him with “dictatorial power”. Indeed, Ford’s squared jaw demeanor reminded me of Benito Mussolini’s despotic bearing (until he was hung by his feet by Milan’s rebellious working class in April 1945).
Too much power is vested in top leaders – from Biden to Trudeau to Ford. It is power servile to corporate lobbies. Too little power in turn resides with elected members of all stripes, including the NDP, which alienated former MPPs like Rima Burns-McGown. We need only recall the Rae Days!
Marit Stiles, for a time, seemed to offer a breath of fresh air – but her conduct vis-à-vis Sarah Jama is rapidly dashing that hope.
Marit, admit your error; offer to reinstate Sarah Jama into the caucus of NDP MPPs — before yet another core NDP seat is lost!
