Issues, ethics, memory
NATO leaders, including Canada, have agreed to spend 5.0% of Gross Domestic Product on the military. Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada will more than double its military spending. That will fuel the arms race and crowd out spending on much-need social programs.
Omer Bartov is a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He says that Israel is conducting genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and Western countries are complicit in their silence.
In an earlier post, I wrote about some of the books that I had read and enjoyed in 2024. There were too many to squeeze into one post, so this is a second instalment.
Many supporters of Israel in the current war upon Gaza claim that Jewish people are indigenous to the region and have a right to claim it as their homeland. Author Rashid Khalidi, whose ancestors were a prominent family in Palestine prior to the creation of Israel, reminds us there were Palestinians living there long before the creation of Israel in 1948.
Armed and violent Israeli settlers are attacking the homes and fields of Palestinians with the support of the Netanyahu government.
Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac preached a Christmas homily at the Evangelical Lutheran church in Bethlehem, in which he described the Israeli bombing of Gaza as genocide. He castigated western countries and their citizens, especially Christians, for supporting a bombing and artillery attack that have killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, 70 per cent of them women and children.
Whose Land Is Palestine? was written by Mennonite pastor Frank Epp in 1970. It remains a good historical grounding for ever-shifting events in Israel, Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Michael Lynk is the United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, but the Israeli government denies him access. In fact, one of Lynk’s predecessors was detained upon arrival in Israel and was put on a departing plane on the following day. Lynk, who is also a law professor... Continue Reading →
Former Liberal cabinet minister Irwin Cotler says that he will nominate Syrian Civil Defense, better known as the White Helmets, for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. The group has drawn world-wide attention for pulling wounded people, including children, from the rubble created by aerial bombing raids carried out by the Syrian government and the... Continue Reading →
I have contributed, along with 35 other writers and researchers, to a book called  The Harper Record 2008 – 2015.  It is a project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. My chapter is called: White Hats, black hats, the Harper government’s policy toward Israel. As you will see I draw the title from a simplistic... Continue Reading →
Pulpit and Politics 