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Context: House Hansard - 232 - Oct/16/23

Oct/16/23 8:47:04 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the only solution to conflict is a political and diplomatic solution, not war. That is what we are proposing because we know that war only leads to more more death, destruction and devastation. That is why we are calling for a ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and a path to peace and security. That is the only way to find a solution.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Oct/16/23 8:47:47 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, it seems like the NDP leader has essentially offered a defence of complete pacifism. He has stated, as a principle, that he seems to believe that war is never the solution, that more war is never going to lead to peace. I want to just clarify his views on that. Does he believe that there is no case in which war is necessary or just? If there is any such case, it would seem to me that a response to this kind of terrorist attack against civilians would likely qualify. Does he believe there is such a thing as a just war, that there is any instance where the use of force against an aggressor is justified? What is that case, in his view?

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Mr. Jagmeet Singh

Oct/16/23 8:48:37 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, we are denouncing and are concerned about an approach of collective punishment. Of course, there are serious concerns, and we denounce the terrorist attack of Hamas. However, our concern is that there are many innocent lives that are being put in a condition of desperation and a dire lack of access to basic necessities. That is a serious concern. The approach that we have to take is one in which we resolve conflicts through peace and through a desire to achieve safety and security for everyone. That cannot be achieved with more war.

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Mr. Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Lib.)

Oct/16/23 8:49:18 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg South Centre. Let us start by asking ourselves why we are here tonight. We are here tonight because a terrorist organization that has in its charter the destruction of the State of Israel and of the Jewish people launched the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust. It crossed the border into Israel. It slaughtered babies. It slaughtered women in their 90s who were Holocaust survivors. It took men, women and children who were huddled together in bomb shelters and kibbutzim, slaughtered them brutally and put it on video. It went to a music festival where young people were having fun, and slaughtered them all. Among the 1,400-plus people who were slaughtered, which is the number that we know right now, were six Canadians: Alexandre Look, Ben Mizrachi, Adi Vital-Kaploun, Shir Georgy, Netta Epstein and Judith Weinstein Haggai. I have just learned from the family of Tiferet Lapidot that she was also slaughtered and that her body has been found. Seven Canadians have been slaughtered. I have been speaking to the families of those people, and it is devastating for them. Something that has been impressed on the Jewish community for a very long time is the feeling that in the world today, we are very isolated. Anti-Semitism is on the rise, people are worried and this has exacerbated the situation. Israelis never thought this could happen. They thought their intelligence was better than this. Jewish Canadians are left shocked, vulnerable, apprehensive, afraid and angry. That is where we are today. Israel, as a nation, has the right to defend itself within international law. We talk about the Holocaust, and the difference between today and the Holocaust is that in the Holocaust, we had no army for the Jews. We had nobody to stand up for us. Now we have a democratic state that has an army that can defend itself and the Jewish people, and that army has a right to eradicate a terrorist organization that has wreaked misery not only for Israeli families but for Palestinian families as well. Hamas uses its population as human shields. We absolutely need to make sure that in Gaza, there is a humanitarian corridor. We need to make sure, and Israel has historically had the idea to make sure, that it does not attack civilians. We need to make sure that civilians are protected as well as possible, that humanitarian aid reaches Gaza and that there is a safe zone in the south. All of these things are important, but Israel has the right and the duty to defend itself. That is important. I want to turn to something that has not come up as much as it probably should, which is that in Canada, there are two communities right now that are very vulnerable and nervous: the Jewish community and the Muslim community. Of course, all people who identify as Palestinians, whatever their religion, feel very vulnerable. Jews in Canada are not responsible for the actions of the State of Israel, and Palestinians in Canada are not responsible for the actions of Hamas. These two populations in Canada have historically gotten along very well and been allies, and we, as parliamentarians, have a duty. We all have a duty to ensure that, here in Canada, we avoid the battles being fought in the Middle East, that all communities get along here in Canada, that we, as parliamentarians, offer our full support to the people in our ridings who feel extremely vulnerable right now, especially young people and students in our schools and universities. That is critical. We, as politicians, have to set an example for everyone. Whether we agree or not, we need to be seen talking to one another and sharing our concerns in a civil way, because that is the way we set an example for future generations and other countries around the world.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Oct/16/23 8:54:13 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to ask my hon. friend about his views on the Iranian regime's role behind this attack. It is clear, I think, that the Iranian regime is seeking to support terrorist organizations throughout the region. If we look at Israel's borders, we see Iranian regime engagement with Hamas, with Hezbollah and with the Assad regime in Syria. We have called for the government to take additional steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable, listing the IRGC as a terrorist organization, for example, and taking additional steps in terms of sanctions. This attack is another data point in terms of the horrors we have seen over the years with regard to the actions of this regime. I wonder if the member could share what his views are on listing the IRGC, on the role of Iran in this particular attack and on what Canada can do to hold the Iranian regime accountable.

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Oct/16/23 8:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, that is a very important question. Iran is definitely responsible for Hamas having the resources it had to carry out these terrorist attacks. Whether or not Iran was actually involved in plotting these attacks, we do not know yet; I imagine we will at some future date. However, what we do know is that Iran is actively involved with Hezbollah and may well try to get it to create a second front in Lebanon. We need to make sure, along with our allies, that Iran does not further exacerbate tension in the region. Of course, I have voted in the House to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and I certainly continue to support that vote that I made several years ago.

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Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

Oct/16/23 8:56:04 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague opposite for his speech, which was passionate as usual. I would first like to let him know that my thoughts are with him. This evening, we are dealing with a difficult situation that requires sensitivity. I will ask my colleague a question about something he said. Where does one draw the line between defence and revenge?

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Oct/16/23 8:56:30 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I always enjoy getting questions from my hon. colleague, who is very intelligent. He always asks good questions. In my opinion, we are in a situation where a western democratic country was attacked by a third party, a terrorist group, whose stated purpose is to eradicate that country. The terrorist group's goal is not to create two states but to eradicate the State of Israel. Israel has the right to defend its population, just as every other state in the world does. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems as though the issue is dealt with differently only in the case of Israel. I am grateful to the Bloc Québécois for taking a clear stance on this issue.

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Ms. Heather McPherson (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP)

Oct/16/23 8:57:23 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I know my colleague to be a very kind man, and I feel for him and his community. I know how difficult this week must have been for the member, as a Jewish Canadian, and I am deeply sorry. However, my concern is that the member speaks about the right that Israel has to eradicate Hamas, and I utterly agree with him on that. Israel has every right to eradicate Hamas. The problem is that it is not Hamas that I am worried about; it is the children in Gaza. Israel does not have the right to undertake collective punishment. In fact, Noi Katzman, whose brother was murdered by Hamas, has said, “The most important thing for me and also for my brother, is that his death will not be used as a justification for killing innocent people.” There has to be a way we can protect civilians, and right now, that is not happening. There is no corridor. There is no safe place for these families to go. There is no safe place for these children to go. There is nowhere for them to go to escape from the bombardment. How do we stand by and say that killing innocent children will make up for the murder of innocent people?

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Mr. Anthony Housefather

Oct/16/23 8:58:51 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I also know my hon. colleague to be a very nice and well-reasoned person, and I consider her a friend. We disagree on this. I do not believe that anybody is saying any of the things she just said. Israel will do its best, as always, to make sure to make civilian casualties as low as possible. The difference between Hamas and Israel is that Hamas attacks civilians; that is its goal. Hamas wants to kill as many people as possible; Israel does not. Israel wants to go after military targets of Hamas, and I trust the State of Israel will do that.

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Mr. Ben Carr (Winnipeg South Centre, Lib.)

Oct/16/23 8:59:30 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I want to start by sharing a story. When I was a kid, my father would talk to me often about his life as a kid. Mostly they were positive stories filled with wisdom and great life lessons. However, one story he told took place at the Crescentwood Community Centre when he was about 12 years old. He and some other Jewish kids from the neighbourhood were attacked behind the building. They were beat up and bloodied because they were Jews. It really has not been until today that I have understood and felt the same fear that I suspect my father felt back then. It is with that in mind that I quote something Professor Irwin Cotler said earlier as we announced a new Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. It was that the Jewish population in Canada represents 1%, but 67% of all hate crimes in Canada are levied against the Jewish community. This is not to say that we do not have an issue in diaspora communities across the world and across the country. I appreciate that emotions are running raw. I appreciate that when we are traumatized and conflicts such as this arise, we are pushed back into our most primitive state and that innately we respond in tribalistic ways where we feel that, for our own survival, we have to stick with our people. There is certainly danger in that as we seek peace, and I recognize that. I am able to stand on the floor of this House and say that the loss of every Palestinian child's life is tragic without adding the word “but”. The loss of every Palestinian life is tragic. It seems as though my colleagues in the NDP are not capable of speaking to what has occurred in Israel without the insertion of the word “but”, and I encourage them to reflect on the perspective that they have in the ways in which they are contributing to our national dialogue right now on this critically important issue. In the Jewish faith, we have a ceremony called the unveiling. It takes place roughly a year after the passing of someone. On Monday we had the unveiling of the tombstone for my father. As we were walking to the gravesite, we walked past the headstone of my grandmother. It reminded me of the importance of relationship. It reminded me of the importance of bridge building, and that despite the fact that our emotions are raw, we do not have to agree on everything. In fact, we are not going to solve the problems of the Middle East in this chamber or in our communities. What we can do is respect one another. We can show empathy. We can engage in dialogue. Most importantly, I want to come back to what I saw and was reminded of on my grandmother's headstone last week during my father's unveiling. It said, “Here lies Esther Carr. She made everybody feel like a somebody.” Right now, all of us in this chamber and all of us across the country must make one another feel like a somebody as we work through this incredibly difficult period.

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The Chair

Oct/16/23 9:04:10 p.m.
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I just want to say that I was here for the last speech by the previous member for Winnipeg South Centre, and it does seem that he did pass on some great genes to the member. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan.

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Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)

Oct/16/23 9:04:33 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I am not sure if that was the member's first speech in this place, but we were actually at the same university together years ago. I did not expect to be agreeing with him when I asked him my first question in the House. I look forward to future opportunities no doubt to cross swords with the member with greater sharpness in the exchange. I do thank the member for what he shared in his comments. I invite the member to reflect on some of the foregoing discussion about proportionate response versus vengeance. Some members of the House have, I think, tried to characterize any kind of military response to a terrorist attack as being necessarily vengeful. To me, vengeance implies a vicious desire to inflict harm, rather than a response that is survival or protection oriented. I wonder if the member could reflect on that distinction.

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Mr. Ben Carr

Oct/16/23 9:05:51 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I remember fondly the member opposite and I would debate one another on a local Ottawa campus radio station some years ago. Since then he arrived here much sooner than I and made important contributions to our public discourse. The definition of genocide has a particularly important adjective: deliberate. I think of the innocent lives lost, of Palestinians and Palestinian children, that my hon. colleague from Edmonton Strathcona was right to point out in regard to the tragic nature of how it came to be. I would suggest the reason we are seeing such loss of life is as a result of the common enemy to the Israeli people and the Palestinian people, and that is Hamas. Hamas is the enemy of Palestine and of Israel. This is something that we must be incredibly mindful of and steadfast in our repetition of as we engage in this debate. To answer my colleague's question specifically, revenge is not a response to an organization whose fundamental pursuit and objective is to eradicate people from the earth.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

Oct/16/23 9:07:37 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I welcome the member to the House. There is no doubt that Hamas is the enemy of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. The human rights violations have been widespread. The killing of 1,400 innocent people attests to that. They are brothers, sisters, parents and children who died. I know if any member in this House could have done anything to stop the deaths of 1,400 people, they would have stepped forward. That is the point the member for Edmonton Strathcona and the leader of the NDP made. At this sombre occasion, there is the collective punishment that is taking place and the bombing in Gaza right now. The death toll is rising to 3,000 people. There are 1,000 children dead so far and 10,000 wounded. The question is if we could stop the killing of those innocent lives, those brothers, sisters, parents and children, through this bombing, would we not step up to do that? Is that not what is behind the important call for a ceasefire, to have that humanitarian corridor so that food and water can get to the people who have no food, no medicine and no water? Ensuring that the hostages are released is absolutely fundamental as well. Is that not our role? Should it be Canada's role to ensure there is no further loss of life?

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Mr. Ben Carr

Oct/16/23 9:09:22 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, the collective punishment is the collective punishment that Hamas is creating. The conditions that Hamas is creating is collective punishment on its own people and the people of Israel. I would ask my hon. colleague to reflect throughout this debate and afterward on what would happen should there be a ceasefire. Of course we want an end to the conflict. Of course we want to end the loss of innocent lives. If Hamas were able to continue, it would rebuild and it would rebuild stronger. It would attack again because its objective is the eradication of the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Although I have a deep appreciation for the moral objective that members from the NDP feel they bring to the conversation, it is not a pragmatic, practical or realistic way to deal with a terrorist organization hell-bent on genocide.

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Mr. Pierre Paul-Hus (Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, CPC)

Oct/16/23 9:10:33 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley. First of all, we are having a lot of trouble clearly identifying who we are dealing with when it comes to Hamas. Last week, for example, I was flabbergasted to hear that CBC/Radio-Canada had asked its news anchors not to use the word “terrorist” to refer to Hamas. Last night, on the program Tout le monde en parle, news anchor Céline Galipeau answered a question from Guy A. Lepage by saying, “Out of concern for remaining neutral, we prefer to use more specific and neutral language, but we can speak of combatants, armed men or hostage-takers. That's what we prefer.” I am going to use the time I have left to talk about Hamas in more detail, because I think some people may not understand exactly who we are dealing with. Hamas emerged in late 1987, at the beginning of the first Palestinian intifada. The group's charter calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the place of Israel and rejects all agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Hamas has a military branch that has led many anti-Israeli attacks in Israel and in Palestinian territories since the 1990s. Hamas continues to refuse to recognize Israel or to abandon its violent resistance against Israel. It proactively encourages and leads terrorist attacks and does everything it can to sow hatred against Jews. As a result, the American government designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997, and Canada followed suit in 2002. Hamas's explicit mission is to murder Jews and to eradicate Israel and replace it with a Taliban-type theocracy. Videos distributed primarily by Hamas and posted on social media document acts of torture, sexual violence, violence against children and desecration of corpses. Even Palestinian officials have recognized that the missiles fired by Hamas constituted war crimes. A Palestinian envoy to the Human Rights Council said that every missile launched against Israel constitutes a crime against humanity, whether or not it hits its target, because it was directed at civilian targets. On October 7, 2023, over 1,500 Hamas terrorists attacked the Israeli border around the Gaza Strip and went on a murderous rampage in the southern regions. Over 1,300 people were killed and thousands more were wounded in this bloody attack, which was accompanied by a barrage of 5,000 rockets launched indiscriminately on Israeli towns and villages. Why deny reality? The members of Hamas are terrorists. There is ample evidence of that. It is time to tell the whole truth about these violent criminals. This is not merely a conflict between two peoples. These are acts of terrorism and war crimes. What is more, I think it is despicable that anyone in Canada can express support for Hamas knowing that at least five Canadians are among the victims, including Alexandre Look of Montreal. Israel has the right to defend itself and to exist. We will always unequivocally the terrorist acts without mincing words. We will always stand by the Israeli people. Hamas must be destroyed. Hamas has provoked something irreparable, and it must pay the price.

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Mr. René Villemure (Trois-Rivières, BQ)

Oct/16/23 9:14:31 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague for his speech. This does not happen often, but for once, we are in agreement. The members of Hamas are terrorists. Hamas is seeking the annihilation of Israel. Hamas is evil. We all agree on that. However, does the fact that these terrorists want to cause harm and the annihilation of Israel justify any action that will affect the entire Palestinian people? Is my colleague for or against the establishment of a humanitarian corridor?

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Mr. Pierre Paul-Hus

Oct/16/23 9:15:06 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, as we have indicated today, we are in favour of establishing a humanitarian corridor and providing support in safe zones. We also support the evacuation. As a priority, we obviously call on Hamas to release the three Canadians being held hostage and to allow the evacuation of other Canadians in the Gaza Strip or elsewhere in Israel who want to leave. Obviously, we support those calls.

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Mr. Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal, Lib.)

Oct/16/23 9:15:43 p.m.
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Mr. Chair, I thank my hon. colleague for his excellent speech. Unfortunately, the hon. member may not have heard that the bodies of two of the three Canadians we thought might have been taken hostage were found today. That means the Canadian dead now number seven. I believe it was an attack. Does my hon. colleague agree with me that it was an attack not only on Israel but on Canada, on the United States and on humanity?

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