Sunday, 22 March 2026
Denmark 1938: Canada 2026
Sunday, 14 September 2025
The Debate over Gender-Affirming Care
(Note: The following post is drawn from an academic article I wrote entitled "Trans and Women's Rights" that will be published in August 2026 in Human Rights Quarterly. Please contact me if you would like my sources for any of the material below).
A huge controversy has erupted at McMaster
University in Hamilton, Ontario over the effectiveness of gender-affirming care. According to an
article in The Hamilton Spectator on September 6, 2025, Dr. Gordon Guyatt and his colleagues concluded that “good-quality evidence was lacking for mastectomy, hormone
therapy, and puberty blockers [as treatments] for young people with gender
dysphoria.” These conclusions have angered some trans activists.
Yet Dr. Guyatt’s results are not
surprising. Several European studies came to the same conclusion.
A Finnish study found that 75 per cent of
adolescents who wanted sex-reassignment surgery had other psychiatric problems.
Most were girls with no history of gender dysphoria: seventy-five per cent had
histories of severe psychopathology. The Finnish Council of Choices in
Healthcare concluded that medical transition for minors was “an experimental
practice.”
Noting similar concerns, the Astrid
Lindgren Children’s Hospital in Stockholm announced in April 2021 that aside
from clinical trials, it would no longer prescribe cross-sex hormones and
puberty blockers to children under 18.
In 2023, the Norwegian Healthcare
Investigation Board concluded that there was “insufficient evidence for the use
of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones in young people, especially for
teenagers.” Therefore, such treatments should be considered “treatment under trial.”
In a 2024 summary report, the European
Academy of Paediatrics [EAP] noted that “the severity of discomfort that GD
[Gender Dysphoria] produces in prepubescent children varies and is often
transient….[L]ong-term follow-up studies suggest that over 80% of boys referred
…to GID [Gender Identity Development] services desisted from gender dysphoria
in adulthood.” The EAP also argued that “the
role of social media [in persuading children that they were trans]…is overdue
serious academic exploration,” suggesting that social media may be convincing
children that they should unnecessarily change sex.
Between 2009 and 2019, the number of boys
treated at the United Kingdom’s Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service
rose from 40 to 624, while the number of girls rose from 32 to 1,740. “[S]ome whistle-blower clinicians [reported]
that significant numbers of trans-identifying children and teens are same-sex
attracted…[and] seem to be interpreting their own patterns of sexual attraction
as a sign that they must have a mis-aligned gender identity.”
As a result of the controversy over its
gender-reassignment practices, the British government appointed Dr. Hilary Cass
to prepare a report on trans medical treatment. Her report noted broad
agreement that the increased number of young people presenting trans identities
was “a result of a complex interplay between biological, psychological and
social factors.” It also stated that there was “no reliable evidence base upon
which to make clinical decisions…The rationale for early puberty suppression
remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria,
mental or psychosocial health.” Moreover, “the use of masculinising/feminising
hormones in those under age 18 also presents many unknowns.”
The Cass Report further found that “Not
enough is known about the longer-term impacts of puberty blockers for children
and young people with gender incongruence to know whether they are safe.” Thus,
it argued, “For the majority of young people, a medical pathway may not be the
best way to manage their gender-related distress.”
Yet some activists have vilified Cass for
claiming that the use of puberty blockers is as yet untested and may be
dangerous. Cass was advised after issuing her final report that she should not
take public transit, given the many threats of violence against her.
This is the same kind of vilification
that Dr. Guyatt, and his colleagues are now enduring. One suspects that if Dr.
Guyatt’s research discovered strong evidence that gender-affirming care has
positive results, activists would be cheering, not vilifying, him.
Sunday, 31 August 2025
Ordinary (Israeli) Men: Jewish Guards in a Gaza Prison 1991
Ordinary (Israeli) Men: Jewish Guards in a Gaza
Prison, 1991
Lately, (August 2025) I have been reading the Israeli
journalist Ari Shavit’s 2013 book, My Promised
Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (Spiegel and Grau). This is an
episodic history of the establishment of the state of Israel, and how it
affected the original Palestinian residents. The entire history is too complicated
for me to summarize here: I just want to focus on one small part of it.
In 1991 Shavit was a member of the Israeli military
reserve. During his compulsory one-month annual tour of duty, he was assigned
to act for 12 days as a guard in a Gaza beach Detention Camp. This prison was
built in response to the 1987 intifada,
an uprising by Palestinians against Israel. At first, Shavit thought he should decline
the posting and risk being jailed. Then he thought that since he was a
journalist, it would be better to become a guard and write about what it was
like. He did so, writing a 3000-word account that he published in 1991 and
re-published in his later book (pp. 227-36).
The behavior of these Israeli guards resembles that of
the men in Battalion 101, the subject of Christopher R. Browning’s book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101
and the Final Solution in Poland (1998),
These were ordinary middle-aged German men, too old to be drafted into the
army, who were conscripted to the killing fields of Eastern Europe instead. Browning
recounts how easily these men adapted to their new jobs, especially to the
group dynamic required for them to engage in mass killings and round-ups of
Jews.
The Israeli guards in 1991 were not engaged in mass
killings, of course. Rather, they guarded, interrogated, and humiliated their
prisoners. For example, three or four times a day, the Palestinians had to
scrub the Israeli guards’ toilets. Once a young prisoner was “broken” through
interrogation and revealed names of his friends, Israeli soldiers fanned out to
arrest the friends, often bringing them back already beaten to the camp. The
camp doctor, as Shavit observed, was no Mengele, yet he screamed at a beaten
17-year-old prisoner in severe pain, “I wish you were dead.” (p. 231)
Everywhere Shavit went, he heard the screams of men and boys being tortured.
And he knew that these men and boys were not traitors, spies or terrorists.
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Shavit’s account varies in one significant way from Ordinary Men. The Jewish guards were
aware of what they were doing and discussed it. One guard, observing the
teen-aged prisoners, said “How have we come to this? How have we come to
chasing such kids?” (p. 231) Another guard commented sarcastically that he “ha[d]
accumulated so many days of reserve duty during the intifada that they [would]
soon promote him to a senior Gestapo official.” (p. 231) Another, observing a line
of prisoners moving under guard, says “Look, the Aktion has begun.” (p. 230) (Aktion
was the German term for round-ups of Jews). Others commented on the
similarity of the Gaza prison watchtowers to the watchtowers in the
concentration camps their parents or grandparents had survived.
Only one or two of sixty reserve guards recruited
along with Shavit refused duty in the interrogation wing. The others adjusted.
Just as Nazis adjusted to mass murder via its bureaucratic routinization, so
the prison camp in Gaza ran smoothly through a division of labor.
Shavit was a guard back in 1991. Imagine how guards
are behaving now. I have read horrific accounts of Israeli tortures of
Palestinian prisoners over the last several years. Often these accounts are
written by Jewish authors critical of Israeli policies. One article I recently read
described how many recently-imprisoned Palestinians have had to have their
hands amputated, because the handcuffs they were forced to wear for days at a
time cut off all circulation to their hands.
Sunday, 3 August 2025
Pre-War Malnutrition in Gaza and the West Bank
Pre-War
Malnutrition in Gaza and the West Bank
In 2016 I published State Food Crimes (Cambridge University Press). This book analyses the causes of starvation and malnutrition in several historical cases and four contemporary cases, my research ending in 2015. In North Korea, starvation was already occurring. In Venezuela and Zimbabwe, state policies were causing severe malnutrition and the beginnings of starvation. In the Occupied Territories (OT), Gaza and the West Bank, rates of malnutrition were very high.
This blog is a short summary of my findings about the
OT, in chapter 7 of my book, pp. 114-31. (I have published other blogs about the
West Bank in the past: see “Water Rights of West Bank Palestinians (2013) https://rhodahassmann.blogspot.com/2013/08/water-rights-of-west-bank-palestinians.html,
and Property Rights of West Bank Palestinians,” (2013) https://rhodahassmann.blogspot.com/2013/05/property-rights-of-west-bank.html/)
In 2012, the rate of malnutrition in the Arab world as
a whole was about 10 per cent. Yet in the same year, 31 per cent of people in
the OT were undernourished, while 42.2 per cent suffered from food inadequacy.
By the 2010s, 80 per cent of Gazans relied on food aid.
In the West
Bank, Palestinians found it increasingly difficult to herd animals or cultivate
crops while illegal Israeli settlers took over their land. The government also
confiscated land for nature reserves, transportation corridors restricted to
Israeli citizens, and military firing ranges. The illegal wall that Israel
constructed on West Bank territory cut off some farmers from their land, which
was on the other side of the wall from their dwellings.
West Bank Palestinians also suffered from lack of
water, at the same time as Israeli settlers had swimming pools. Palestinians
required permits to build new wells, which the Israeli government rarely
granted. Then as now, some settlers deliberate uprooted Palestinians’ olive
trees and polluted their wells.
After it withdrew its settlements in 2005, Israel blockaded
access to Gaza by sea and air. It also declared about 29 per cent of Gaza along
its eastern and northern border to be a “no-go” buffer zone closed to Gazan
farmers and herders, yet almost a third of Gaza’s arable land lay in that zone.
In 2009 Israel imposed a three nautical mile limit on Gazan fisheries, even though
Gazan fishing waters were supposed to extend for twenty nautical miles. After
the 2012 war, the limit was changed to just over 5 nautical miles.
In early 2009, only 20 per cent of Gaza’s water was drinkable,
as a result of Israeli restrictions on fuel and chlorine needed for water
treatment plants. By 2014 only one-tenth of Gaza’s water was fit for drinking. Many
children suffered from diseased caused by polluted water, in part because Gaza
lacked electricity to treat sewage plants. In 2015 Israel announced that it
would double its supply of water to Gaza, but this was still far from enough.
Blockaded on all sides by Israel and Egypt, and with
their own capacity to produce food severely restricted, Gazans needed to import
about 400 truckloads of food a day from Israel to survive. Yet the several wars between Israel and Gaza in
the 2000s and 2010s resulted in severe reductions of the amount of food
entering the territory. In 2008, Israel’s Ministry of Defense cynically calculated
that the minimum number of truckloads per day needed was 106, including 77
truckloads of food and 29 of other humanitarian goods. This calculation did not
take into consideration inequitable distribution of food within Gaza, or the despoiling
of food as trucks waited to get through checkpoints into Gaza.
It is not surprising, then, that as a result of Israel’s
actions during the terrible war since October 7, 2023, Gazans are now starving.
This is “genocide by attrition,” a term coined by the late (Jewish) scholar
Helen Fein, which she originally applied to countries like Cambodia under Pol
Pot (1975-1979), as well as to the way that the Nazis murdered Jews and others
in concentration camps by starvation, disease, and lack of clean water.
Hamas bears responsibility for starting this terrible
war. It also bears responsibility for neglect of its own people and conducting
warfare from civilian locations. Egypt also bears responsibility for its own
blockade of Gaza.
But it is Israel’s decision not to permit the several
hundred truckloads of food aid per day that Gazans need to enter the territory.
It is also Israel’s decision not to permit reputable international agencies
into Gaza to distribute what little food gets in, instead relying on paid mercenaries
to guard supplies (by killing Gazans desperately seeking food) and distribute
it in a random fashion. Foreign governments such as my own (Canadian) government
have also bought food for Gaza and are prevented from sending it into the
territory.
Tuesday, 29 July 2025
Letter to the US Ambassador
Here is a letter I am sending to the US Ambassador to Canada. Venting my spleen, probably. This so-called Ambassador recently called Canadians "Nasty" (Trumps favourite word) because so many have decided not to travel to the US since Trump took power for the second time. I truly believe that the US is now a fascist state. Immigrants (especially Hispanics and Blacks) are the new Jews.
Ambassador Pete Hoekstra,
Embassy of the United States to Canada,
PO Box 866, Station B,
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5T1
July 29, 2025
Mr. Hoekstra:
I am one of millions of Canadians who object to your depiction of us as “nasty” because we are boycotting travel to the US and US goods, as a reaction to bullying by your President.
You, sir, are a diplomat. Diplomats are supposed to use language that is courteous and tactful. Instead, your language is childish, churlish and crude.
Further, as you well know, the “nastiest” and most evil man in the Western world today is President Trump. He—and you as his sycophant--is bullying the rest of the world about tariffs. He is causing immense suffering and pain within the US by his cuts to welfare programs and medical care. He is a fascist. He undermines the rule of law, undermines freedom of the press, and has declared entire classes of people persona non grata. When armed, masked men without any identification or accountability can arrest people without cause on the streets of American cities, we know we have already entered the fascist era.
Shame on you.
Letter to Israeli Ambassador opposing starvation in Gaza
Here is the text of a letter I have just sent to the Israeli Ambassador to Canada (I am a Canadian). I encourage anyone who feels as I do to write to the Israeli Ambassadors to their own countries.
Ambassador Iddo Moed'
Embassy of Israel,
50
O’Connor Street.
Ottawa,
ON K1P 5E1
Your Excellency,
I am writing to you in my dual capacity as a Jewish Canadian and a retired scholar of international human rights and comparative genocide studies. I wish to express my extreme concern about the ongoing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide being committed by the state of Israel in Gaza. I am particularly concerned about the starvation that Israel’s continual blockade is causing.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has denied that there is starvation in Gaza. This is an outright lie. Israel is engaging in what the late (Jewish) scholar Helen Fein called genocide by attrition. An example of genocide by attrition is the Holocaust. Jews who were not outright murdered were starved to death, both in the camps and in the ghettoes.
Many pro-Israel organizations consider comparison of the current situation in Gaza to the Holocaust to be anti-Semitic. Sadly, however, this comparison is apt. I happened to be reading a book about the murders of Jews in Lithuania at the same time I was reading news stories about Gaza. In the concentration camps, Nazis fed Jews thin soup with potato peels. In Gaza, mothers are forced to feed their children thin soup with a few lentils.
Please
stop this starvation at once. Air drops
are insufficient and dangerous. The
so-called Gaza Humanitarian Fund is a farce. Truckloads of food donated inter alia by the Canadian government
and various well-established, efficient and knowledgeable non-government
organizations are waiting at Gaza’s border. Let them in.
Wednesday, 3 April 2024
Criticisms of International Human Rights
Criticisms of International
Human Rights
This is the text
of an entry that I was asked to write last year by a group of people in Europe
who proposed an on-line encyclopedia of global affairs, but who never followed
through on publication. In consequence, since I retain ownership of the
copyright, I’ve decided to post it on my blog, with references and further
readings deleted. Warning: it is 2083 words long.
The International Human Rights Regime
The international human rights regime is a system of declarations and treaties that the United Nations began formulating in 1948, starting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A declaration is a statement of principles that a State can vote for at the UN. Treaties are laws that countries are expected to adhere to once they ratify (legally approve) a treaty. Declarations are often considered “soft law” that countries should adhere to even in the absence of treaties.
The International Bill of Rights [IBHR] is composed of the UDHR, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR] and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, [ICESCR] both of which entered into force in 1976. A covenant or treaty enters into force when a specified number of States has ratified it.
These documents are statements of principle. It might seem obvious to readers that the principles of human rights should apply universally. However, there is much debate among scholars and activists about whether human rights should be universal. Activists and scholars also point out many other problematic aspects of human rights, as discussed below.
The Debate about Universality
Some critics deny that human rights are universal. They believe that the human rights regime is a colonial creation, reflecting the views and wishes of the Western world, or the global North. In fact, 56 countries collaborated in formulating the UDHR. These included many non-Western countries, for example, Soviet Bloc and Latin American countries, as well as China and India. Both Soviet Bloc and Latin American countries had distinct conceptions of human rights, especially “economic” human rights, which influenced the formulation of the UDHR.
Sub-Saharan African countries did not participate in the formulation of the UDHR, as they were colonies at the time. However, many representatives of African nationalist organizations lobbied the UN for the UDHR. They pushed for Article 2 of the UDHR, in particular, which stated that everyone had human rights, even if they were still inhabitants of colonies. This was especially important as the colonial powers of the time had actually opposed extending human rights to colonial subjects. As former colonies became independent, they participated in formulating the ICCPR and the ICESCR, as well as new treaties such as the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the 1987 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The one group consistently left out of formulating the international human rights regime is Indigenous peoples, who do not have their own countries. All Indigenous peoples are subject to the power of whatever State they reside in. In general, they do not have an independent say in formulating or applying any UN human rights documents. Indigenous peoples did, however, contribute to the formulation of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Critical Perspectives on Human Rights
Some critics argue that human rights reflect Western liberalism, especially its stress on individual freedom. They argue that too much emphasis is placed on civil and political rights such as protection from torture, freedom of speech, and the right to vote. This stress on individual freedom ignores the set of equally or more important economic and social rights, such as the rights to food, health care, and education. This is so even though both sets of rights are included in the IBHR.
Some critics argue that human rights have
been overly judicialized. They claim that matters that should be decided by
governments, or by discussions among groups or individuals, become legal
matters for courts to decide. This, critics argue, is an example of Western
judicial imperialism, in which Western norms of justice become universal norms,
overpowering local or indigenous legal systems.
Some feminist commentators argue that human rights are also too male. Human rights stress formal, legal demands against governments or other perpetrators, instead of informal means of dispute resolution, which women supposedly prefer. Moreover, these commentators argue that women are more interested in economic and social rights than civil and political rights. Their chief concern is taking care of their families, not speaking in public or participating in politics.
Two responses can
be offered to the criticism that there is too much stress on civil and
political rights. The first response argues that these rights have a strategic
value. Without them, people cannot act in their own interests against the
forces that oppress them. If speaking your mind about a government that steals
your food gets you landed in jail and tortured, for example, then your right to
food is meaningless. Women, like men, can be persecuted by governments for
various reasons, such as their ethnicity or religion. They, therefore, need the
right to speak out and take part in politics in order to defend their own
interests, even if those interests are mainly to feed and educate their
children.
The second
response argues that civil and political rights have an intrinsic value. They
cover many aspects of human existence that most people want, such as freedom of
religion or the right to practice their own culture, a right covered by the
ICCPR in Article 27. People also want the right to belong to a community or a
nation. This is especially relevant for Stateless people, who officially belong
nowhere, and live in a state of uncertainly with no rights and no one to
protect them, even though the UDHR in Article 15 says everyone has the right to
a nationality.
Community vs. Individualism
Some critics worry that human rights
undermine communities. This can happen if human rights contradict local customs,
which often arises in cases involving women’s rights, children’s rights, and
LGBTQ+ rights. This can also happen if human rights undermine local belief
systems, as in the case of freedom of religion. Currently some African and other
governments, including Russia, argue that LGBTQ+ rights violate their own
traditional, religious and cultural norms
It is argued that human rights also focus too much on the individuals’ claims against the state, the community, or even the family, in the case of women’s and children’s rights. That is, they undermine the sense of collective obligation that communities need to survive. They teach people to put their own desires above the collective need, principles, and ethics of the community they live in.
Thus, it seems to critics that people have rights but no duties. The human rights regime is based upon the principle that States have the duty to uphold human rights. The problem seems to be that individuals do not have similar duties. This is the case even though the UDHR in Article 29 states that “Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his [sic] personality is possible.” Human rights, in this view, reflect individuals’ desires, rather than their actual needs as expressed in international human rights documents.
The international human rights regime creates cultural clashes. For example, insisting that a young girl has the right to sex education could be seen to undermine a community’s norms regarding abstinence before marriage. Insisting that gays and lesbians should enjoy human rights could be seen to undermine the entire institution of marriage. Insisting that Indigenous people stop using corporal punishment of members that violate their rules could be seen to undermine their way of making sure individuals obey community norms.
In general, critics argue that human rights drive a wedge between different sectors of the community who might previously have lived together in harmony.
Large-Scale International Problems
Critics also argue that human rights cannot deal with the pressing, large-scale problems of the 21st century.
Among these problems are the harms created by the global capitalist system. It is argued that human rights cannot help remedy the increasing inequality in the world today. It is not enough to have a regime that stresses minimum economic rights such as the right to food. Yet there is no human right to minimum levels of inequality, or any way to use human rights to prescribe a maximum level. Nor can human rights specify the public policies that are needed to provide an adequate standard of living, as prescribed in Article 25 of the UDHR.
Either new sets of human rights, or new ways of dealing with large-scale worldwide problems, are needed to face collective threats to all humankind or to specific groups in the world. One such collective right is the right to development, protected by the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right to Development. This right is essentially the right of developing countries to be protected from exploitation by developed countries. If properly implemented, it would require wealthy countries and corporations to modify investment, lending, banking, trade, and aid practices as applied to poorer countries. It would also protect local workers and populations from the harms caused by foreign banks and corporations.
The entire world
is now threatened by climate change, yet human rights — grounded as they are in
individual claims — cannot deal with this existential threat. Although there
have been cases of people suing government entities for not protecting them
from climate change, in general individual human rights cannot solve this
problem. Nor can a human rights declaration of principles or even a treaty
force States to do what is necessary to mitigate climate change and prevent
utter disaster.
Similarly, human rights cannot solve the
problems of war and peace. Prevention of war and guarantees of peace seem
beyond the capabilities of the human rights regime.
Sovereignty and Human Rights
The biggest
obstacle to realizing international human rights is State sovereignty. While
countries that have voted for UN human rights declarations or have signed human
rights treaties are not supposed to violate the relevant rights of their
citizens, many still do. The international system simply does not have the
resources to police what countries do.
Short of war, the
best that can be done is to impose sanctions on some of the States that violate
human rights, such as restricting trade with those countries or restricting the
movements of their leaders. Unfortunately, though, it is possible to avoid
sanctions which, in any case, often harm local populations more than they harm
their rulers. In extremely rare cases, the international community can accuse a
state’s leaders of crimes against humanity or genocide and refer them to the
International Criminal Court, a UN-created body based in the Netherlands.
“Northern”
countries set their own trade policies, as long as they follow the rules of
international organizations of which they are members, such as the World Trade
Organization. Quite often, these countries will trade with other countries that
abuse human rights, as national economic security takes precedence over human
rights of foreign individuals. Similarly, both Northern countries and private
banks profit by lending to the governments of under-developed countries. Human
rights simply do not have the rules or tools to guard against economic
exploitation of developing countries by Northern States and corporations.
Many
non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, and many private
foundations that disburse funds for worthy causes were created, and are still
headquartered, in the West. Despite their worthy goals, they are sometimes
accused of setting their own priorities, disregarding the priorities of
Southern “partners”.
All sovereign
States are free to make their own foreign policy decisions. Occasionally, Western
countries take the human rights performance of other countries into account in
their foreign policies. Some countries such as Canada, the UK and the US
sometimes impose human rights conditions on their foreign aid. When they do so,
the recipient countries can accuse them of human rights imperialism. In any
case, most foreign and aid policy is based on national interests in relation to
security, alliances, investment, and trade; there is very little room left over
for human rights.
Conclusion
Human rights seem
to be irrelevant to the actual problems besetting the vast majority of the
world’s people. At best, human rights are one tool in a larger toolbox required
to obtain social justice. Perhaps the stress on laws and treaties has obscured
the reality of the limited reach of human rights.
Wednesday, 28 February 2024
Why Palestine, Why Not Sudan? The Racism of Low Expectations
A while ago I heard a Sudanese immigrant on the CBC asking why there was so much Canadian support for the Palestinians, and so little for Sudan.
There’s a civil war in Sudan between the Rapid Support
Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). As a
consequence, according to a recent report from the World Health Organization, about
6 million people are internally displaced in Sudan and another 1.8 million
people are displaced externally in bordering African countries that can ill
afford to help them. As in Gaza, these displaced people suffer from
insufficient food, drinking water, and health services, with many people at
high risk of diseases such as cholera.
Israel is subject to a quadruple set of expectations.
First, like all other states, it is bound by international laws forbidding
genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Second, expectations are
high because it is a democratic state. Third, many critics consider it a
colonial state. Finally, it is a Jewish state. Anti-Semites leap with glee onto
any evidence of Israeli wrongdoing. Others—including hundreds of thousands if
not millions of Jews within Israel and elsewhere—are horrified by Israel’s current
assault on Gaza.
One
reason for the difference between Gaza and Sudan may simply be that information
on the Gaza crisis is much more immediate and available than information on
Sudan. News media are full of day-to-day counts of those killed. Despite the terrible
death rate among journalists, many are still reporting from Gaza. Gazans still
have sporadic access to cell-phones and the ability to tell their stories to
relatives and journalists. By contrast,
news media do not deliver day-to-day accounts of the suffering in Sudan.
Many Canadian doctors have served in Gaza in the last few months, and returned with horrific accounts. If Canadian doctors are also serving in Sudan, their stories are not being reported at the same rate by the media.
Perhaps there is so little concern with Sudan because Canadians simply don’t know enough about the intricacies of Sudanese politics. We don’t understand why the two sides are fighting each other. We also don’t know which other countries are intervening in Sudan, on which side, and why.
And it doesn’t seem as if Canada has a stake in this
civil war, so there’s no reason to protest our own government’s actions in it,
whereas many Canadians want our government to call for an immediate ceasefire
in Gaza. .
Another reason may be that we don’t think there is any
way we can influence the competing factions in Sudan. We know that Israel wants
to cultivate an international image of a democratic country fighting a legal
war of self-defense, but it doesn’t seem to matter to either of the current
factions in Sudan what Canadians or other Westerners think.
Israel fits the narrative of evil colonialism, of
special concern to Canadians today given our own colonial past (and present). Sudan,
by contrast, is a post-colonial state. No matter how long a country has been
independent, anti-colonialists assume that their leaders have no independent
capacity to make decisions. Any war crimes or crimes against humanity committed
by either side can be attributed to the legacy of their former colonial rulers.
So the leaders of the warring sides are not to blame.
And while Israel is a Jewish state, Sudan is Muslim.
Many Canadians who are unafraid to criticize Israel are afraid to criticize any
authorities if they are Muslim, even the most brutal and cruel.
But perhaps part of this is just the racism of lower
expectations. There’s a long Western history of assuming that Black people are
naturally barbarous. So, it’s not fair to hold Black elites in Black countries
to the same standards we hold “white” Israelis to. In this view, we can’t
expect any better from Black people. When Black babies die, that’s just the way
it is.
Wednesday, 21 February 2024
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall: Book Note
A terrible accident occurred in the West Bank (Palestine) in 2012. An ill-maintained truck driven at very high speed in very dangerous weather crashed with a busload of pre-schoolers on their way to a park for an outing. One of those pre-schoolers was Milad, the son of Abed Salama. This book explores the accident and everyone involved in it, including parents, other relatives, the truck driver, the bus driver, rescuers, and doctors. The author, Nathan Thrall, interviewed all these individuals.
Thrall details Abed’s search for his son, once he learns
of the crash. Abed searches in hospitals all over the West Bank as well as in
Jerusalem. He is constantly delayed in his search by road-blocks, questioning
by Israeli soldiers, and the circuitous routes that Palestinians have to take
in order to get around the West Bank without wandering into any settler,
military, or otherwise reserved (for Israel) territories. All the other parents
and relatives experience the same problems, although those with Blue ID cards,
indicating they are Israeli citizens, are somewhat better off.
The men in this book have terrible patriarchal
attitudes. Abed himself is self-destructively impulsive. He does not marry Ghazl,
his first love, after a jealous sister-in-law tells him Ghazl’s father
disapproves. Instead of confronting the father and finding out he actually favours
the marriage, Abed calls off negotiations. He impulsively marries someone else
he doesn’t love, then some years later, after they’ve had four daughters, he
decides to take a second wife without telling the first. The third wife is
Milad’s mother. Another father of a child who dies in the crash blames his wife
for letting the child go on the trip. When she asks for a divorce, the father
demands, and receives, full custody of their remaining children as well as the
entirety of the $200,000 compensation the Israeli government pays because the dead
child was an Israeli citizen (no such compensation was offered to non-citizen
Palestinian residents of the West Bank). The husband of one of the doctors
involved, a high Fatah official, gives her no help at all raising their
children while she learns both Russian and Romanian so that she can complete
her studies as an endocrinologist.
Although the proximate cause of this tragic accident
was the truck driver’s unsafe driving, the ensuing deaths were also caused by
what can only be called apartheid in the West Bank. The 27-year-old truck
itself would have been in better condition if the Palestinian owner had had
more resources to repair his truck. More importantly, it took ages for either
Israeli or Palestinian emergency vehicles to arrive at the scene of the crash.
If the Palestinians had been throwing stones, several parents remarked, Israeli
soldiers would have arrived at the site immediately. As it was, Israeli fire
and medical vehicles took over an hour to reach it. Meantime, Palestinian emergency vehicles were
blocked by segregated roads and checkpoints.
Even getting ambulances through checkpoints to access hospitals within
Israel itself was difficult.
Recently I also read Daniel Sokatch’s “Israel for dummies” book, Can we Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted https://www.amazon.ca/Can-Talk-About-Israel-Conflicted/dp/1635573874/ Sokatch is the CEO of the New Israel Fund, which tries to help all citizens of Israel and promote peace among them. I am
proud to say I am a regular donor to the NIF, which Netanyahu has denounced as a foreign organization that endangers “the security and future of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.” https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/benjamin-netanyahu/netanyahus-slandering-of-new-israel-fund-accidentally-raises-them-massive-funds-549006 Sokatch argues that “Israel proper does not resemble an apartheid state: the Israeli-occupied West Bank does.” (chapter 20). Abed Salama’s search for his son Milad shows us in excruciating detail how vindictive and harmful Israel’s apartheid policy in the West Bank was, long before the current war.
Sunday, 5 November 2023
Responsibility for the (Israel/Gaza) war is not one-sided
On October 27, 2023, Harry
Shannon, an emeritus professor at McMaster University, published the following
article (now slightly revised) in the Hamilton Spectator, p. 27. I tried to post a link to it on my Facebook
account, but was prevented from doing so by Facebook’s ongoing dispute with the
Canadian government. Facebook does not permit sharing Canadian news at the
moment. However, Harry has given me permission to post the whole thing, so here
it is. I think Harry’s balanced and compassionate
opinion on the Israel/Gaza war is well worth reading.
Responsibility
for the war is not one-sided
by Harry Shannon
Author’s
siblings in kibbutz near Gaza narrowly avoided fate of residents in nearby
community
"My brother lives with his wife on Kibbutz Saad, near
the Gaza border. That weekend, my sister was visiting from Jerusalem. Saad is
right in the middle of some 20 or so villages and kibbutzim which were attacked
by Hamas. Literally across the road is Kfar Azza, where there was a horrible
massacre. Documents recovered from dead Hamas terrorists showed detailed plans to
attack Saad. But for some reason, Saad was spared and my family members
survived.
At the same time, I have Palestinian friends. I have
worked with health researchers in Ramallah. I know many Jews would be afraid to
visit the West Bank. Several years ago, I told an Israeli cabby that I was
going to Ramallah. “Don’t tell them you’re Jewish,” he said. “They’ll kill
you.”
He was very wrong. I have been warmly welcomed, not in
spite of being a Jew, but even because of it. The vast majority of Palestinians
just want what we in Canada consider a normal, peaceful life.
But instead they’re subjected to arbitrary arrest,
separate roads, a separate legal system, travel restrictions, and so on, all
based on their ethnicity – apartheid by any other name.
I’ve been appalled at some of the recent rhetoric, not
just what’s been said, but also what hasn’t been said. Sarah Jama’s post on X
(Twitter) on October 10 has been castigated for not condemning Hamas. She
certainly should have and she belatedly did so. Those who have criticized Jama
are absolutely right to revile Hamas. But they are equally wrong not to
denounce Israel’s grossly disproportionate response.
Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard believes “Israel is
racing to the moral abyss.” He writes that 75 years of imposing refugee status,
56 years of occupation, and 16 years of siege on millions of Palestinians “have
normalized a situation where there are people worth less. Much less.” He cited
a statement by Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, considered a moderate. Appallingly,
Herzog said that all Gazans are responsible for Hamas’ crimes.
Jews of all people should understand the potential
consequences of demonizing an entire population.
Justin Trudeau and other Western leaders have been
quick to condemn Hamas and support Israel, though they caution that
International Humanitarian Law (IHL) must be obeyed.
Yet it is clear that Israel is violating IHL.
The blockade of water, food, and medicines (and more arguably, fuel) is
collective punishment of civilians – not just a breach of IHL, but also
thoroughly immoral and indeed a contravention of Jewish law. The demand by
Israel that over a million civilians move from northern to southern Gaza is
likely a violation – and most certainly inhumane. Even so, Trudeau, Biden, and
other leaders issue Israel a free pass. They are spinelessly silent on Israel’s
flouting of IHL and they have failed to press for a ceasefire.
Hamas’ murders and abduction of hostages, while
horrendous, did not come out of thin air. When I spoke to my sister on October
7, she reacted (albeit before she knew the full extent of what happened): “I
guess we [Israelis] deserve this – but that doesn’t make it any easier when
you’re going through it.” She knows that Israeli settlers on the West Bank have
for years committed terrorist attacks on and murders of Palestinian civilians,
usually with impunity. Unlike terrorism by Hamas, they are almost never
condemned in the West.
As does Michael Sfard, my sister acknowledges that
responsibility for the war is not one-sided. If the conflict is ever to
be resolved, both sides and their supporters must first own up to their crimes."