Trudeau’s Oct. 7 Statement Perpetuates Violence by Erasing Palestinian Lives

 

The Prime Minister’s statement was obscene for what he left out, says Iman Najjar Annab, co-founder of the group Toronto Palestinian Families.

As I read and re-read Justin Trudeau’s statement on Oct. 7 of this year, my throat tightened. A silent scream of hurt and despair rose in my chest as disbelief washed over me. I thought of all the work that we Palestinian Canadians and our allies have done — putting our livelihoods on the line for speaking out, putting our bodies in the streets while being brutalized by police, week after week for a year, to make our voices heard above the relentless din of pro-genocide hegemony.

Justin Trudeau’s statement on the first anniversary of an ongoing genocide — and in the 76th year of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land — dehumanizes Palestinian Canadian families and is a glaring example of moral dystopia that values some lives over others based on their identities.

In his statement, Trudeau refers to the victims of Hamas’ October 7 attack as innocent people, yet he refuses to acknowledge the innocence of Palestinian victims of Israel’s ongoing genocide.     

Trudeau claims to speak to the pain of “all Israelis and Jewish people” while entirely ignoring the deep pain felt by Palestinian Canadians and anyone else whose empathy is not exclusionary. His words send a clear message: Jewish Israeli suffering is prioritized (non-Jewish Israelis are not acknowledged) and they are depicted as the true victims, while the lives, suffering and trauma of Palestinians don’t matter as much, if at all.

The omission of Palestinian children and civilians whom Israel has killed in staggering numbers — over 16,000 children and 41,765 civilians as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry and possibly closer to 200,000 as per an estimate in the Lancet  — is not an oversight but a cruel erasure of our humanity. There was no solemn recognition, no names recited, no plea for the world to “mourn” them, while eight Israeli-Canadians or Israelis with close ties to Canada who were killed on Oct. 7 were named and mourned individually by Trudeau.

Instead, Palestinian killings are brushed aside as collateral in the vague reference to “civilian casualties” and a “path of war and violence” supposedly led by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran — sweeping Israel’s sustained campaign of colonial genocide under the rug.  (more...)

Trudeau’s Oct. 7 Statement Perpetuates Violence by Erasing Palestinian Lives