On September 23, 2018, the town of Windsor in Nova Scotia, Canada commemorated the 100th anniversary of the training of the Jewish Legion, a battalion of the British army that fought to liberate Palestine from the Ottoman Empire during World War One. In 1918, a young Jewish man named David Ben-Gurion was trained along with the rest of the Jewish Legion at Fort Edward in Windsor. He would later become Israel’s ‘independence’ hero and the country’s first prime minister. But according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, Ben-Gurion was also responsible for the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinian people. Continue reading
Tag Archives: canada
Thanks to Stephen Harper, ‘Canada No Good!’
Walking through the old city of Nablus in the West Bank last week, I encountered a Palestinian man who worked as a tailor in the small store situated in his family’s home. We struck up a conversation. “Where are you from?” he asked me. “Canada,” I replied. Shaking his head from side to side, he stated, “Oh, Canada no good!”
The next day I was riding in a taxi in the city of Ramallah, which is the Palestinian capital of the West Bank and seat of the Palestinian Authority government. The driver asked me where I was from. Again I replied, “Canada.” He raised his index finger in the air and while moving it side to side declared, “Canada no good!” Continue reading
Democracy in Motion: The Student Protests in Quebec
For the past eleven weeks, thousands of university students have been protesting in the streets of Montreal demanding that the Quebec provincial government not only rescind its plans to raise tuition rates but that it provide free post-secondary education. The mayor of Montreal, Gerard Tremblay, has responded to the mostly peaceful protests by declaring that it is unacceptable “that the reputation of Montreal be stained on the international scene.” By also referring to the vandalism of businesses in downtown Montreal, the mayor made evident that he was more concerned with the reputation of Montreal in the eyes of the international business community than the potential perception of the city as an example of democracy in motion. Continue reading
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