Speaker, this morning, we began speaking on the motion to condemn the horrific attacks carried out by Hamas. We spoke about the trauma triggered and the immense pain that so many Jewish community members are feeling across the world. I shared my personal belief that is deeply rooted in the teaching of my faith that forbids and condemns the killings of innocent civilians. And with that belief, I want to reiterate my values, as a Muslim and a human, to condemn killings of all innocent lives. We must join together in condemning the attacks by Hamas, and with that responsibility to human rights and justice, we must also look at the bigger conflict that has brought horror across Israel and Palestine.

As an immigrant from a nation that was born out of a liberation war and as a daughter and descendant of people who faced war crimes in their own country—a country that experienced the horrors of genocide—I come to you asking for a call for peace: peace for the Israeli people; peace for the Palestinian people.

I want to quote an essay that scholar Peter Beinart published in the New York Times here, because it really resonated with me and I think it resonated with a lot of my colleagues and friends that I have spoken to over the last couple of days. Mr. Beinart is a professor of journalism and political science, and editor of the Jewish Currents magazine:

“As Jewish Israelis bury their dead and recite psalms for their captured, few want to hear at this moment that millions of Palestinians lack basic human rights. Neither do many Jews abroad. I understand; this attack has awakened the deepest traumas of our badly scarred people. But the truth remains: The denial of Palestinian freedom sits at the heart of this conflict, which began long before Hamas’s creation in the late 1980s.”

I felt Mr. Beinart’s words were powerful. The violence did not start last weekend with Hamas’s attack. The people of Palestine have endured brutality for decades—violence that has endangered the lives of civilians in Israel and Palestine—and we cannot deny the complex history that has impacted generations in this region and the deep trauma it has caused. Today, we are seeing innocent Palestinians suffering at a scale we have never seen before as a result of the siege of Gaza; two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children. These children must have the same rights as everyone else, and should not and must not be treated any differently because of where they live, who they are or what their families believe.

Within hours of Saturday’s tragedy, shock and horror, we saw what many feared: a massive bombardment on Gaza, killing thousands of innocent Palestinians civilians; a bombardment led by the current Israeli government—a hawkish government, one that has been called out by many of its own citizens in Israel as not reflective of their views, the values and the people it supposedly serves; a government whose defence minister called the people of Palestine “human animals.” These are innocent people who must not be punished for actions they are not responsible for, Speaker. And I want to reiterate: Palestinian people are not human animals. Palestinian people are not human animals. Palestinian people are not human animals.

We are outraged by the terrorist attacks by Hamas, and we are appalled by what we are seeing from the siege of Gaza by the Israeli government. We are seeing children, women and elderly people being attacked without discern—2,808 Gazans have been killed so far, including more than 1,030 children. More than 10,000 have been injured, and more than one million Gaza Palestinians displaced. Blockades and moves to stop or slow the flow of food, fuel, water, electricity and medical supplies into Gaza and the absence of a humanitarian corridor out of Gaza is causing massive suffering and casualties. Canada must urgently insist that Israel respect international law and protect the lives of innocent Palestinian civilians who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s horrendous attacks.

Just yesterday, the Israeli government bombed the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt, further preventing humanitarian aid from reaching those who desperately need it. Hospitals in Gaza are in the midst of a catastrophic shortage of medical supplies, and blockades are not only preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the region but also further jeopardizing the very lives of innocent civilians.

To make matters worse, the State of Israel has also cut power in Gaza, leaving hospitals reliant on external generators that are running on borrowed time, as confirmed by the United Nations. This power crisis places thousands of patients in even more immediate danger, particularly those already on the brink of life and death, including kidney and cancer patients. And according to the United Nations Population Fund, the situation is further exacerbated by the alarming fact that nearly 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza cannot access health care due to the damaged hospitals. This power outage is also threatening the lives of newborns in incubators.

Just on the health care front, Speaker: 24 health facilities, including six hospitals, have been directly damaged by air strikes. Tragically, 15 health care workers have lost their lives, while another 27 have been injured. On top of this—just today, I believe—the Toronto Star reported a story of a direct air strike on a hospital that killed 500 Palestinians and had thousands of others that were in that hospital—this just happened.

On top of all of this, the UN relief agency has reported that almost 500,000 people have been left without access to food. How can we, as a global community, stand idly by while health care facilities are not only targeted but decimated, leaving countless innocent lives in jeopardy?

Lastly, access to clean drinking water—something we talk about in this House, Speaker—in Gaza is becoming increasingly scarce, with families spending hours just searching for water. Those who do find water often rely on private vendors operating small desalination and water purification plants, primarily using solar energy. Others are left with no choice but to drink brackish water from agricultural wells, sparking concerns about the potential outbreak of water-borne diseases such as cholera.

From food, fuel, power, water—humanitarian aid has been blocked. The blockade which has been ruthlessly imposed by the Israeli forces has deprived Palestinian residents of freedom of movement and crippled Gaza’s economy. These tactics by the Israeli government may very well amount to a war crime; in fact, they have all been well-documented by Human Rights Watch—not us here, but Human Rights Watch—Amnesty International and the Jewish organization B’Tselem as war crimes against Palestinians of all faiths. The United Nations Secretary-General has said that “we are on the verge of the abyss” as he urged Israel to consider the humanitarian rights of Palestinians.

So I ask this House: Do innocent Palestinian civilians not have the same rights to survive as everyone else in this world? I ask again: Do innocent Palestinian civilians not have the same rights to survive as everyone else in this world?

The UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini says this: “The siege in Gaza, the way it is imposed, is nothing else than”—and this is what they called it—“collective punishment,” demanding an immediate passage for essential supplies. When the UNRWA commissioner general calls it a collective punishment—and you can just look up on Wikipedia what a collective punishment identifies as. You are co-signing on something that gives a free pass for any state, for anybody, to go ahead and do whatever they want. Just think about what you’re signing on to. Just think about what you’re signing on to if you’re giving carte blanche to do what they want to do and commit such crimes. Just think about it.

This morning, I talked about members who have their own stories. There were Parliaments that were sitting and there were debates in 1971, when the genocide happened in my nation, where I was born, and there were genocides that took place in other places.

The impact of this war has also been felt here in Canada—and I talked about this this morning, as well—as we are seeing an alarming rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate. In a concerning incident last week, the Toronto police arrested three individuals, and their hate crime unit is now actively investigating threats that were aimed at a Jewish high school in North York—a school, we’re talking about. Such acts of blatant anti-Semitism are deeply, deeply troubling, and it is essential that they are thoroughly investigated and addressed, to ensure the safety and security of all community members.

The Toronto police have also investigated two recent acts of vandalism at a local mosque, both believed to be hate-driven, one of which occurred on October 12 at the mosque at Danforth and Donlands Avenues, which was targeted with hate symbols and hateful writing.

In the United States—and I want to share this example because it was particularly horrifying—we have also heard about the heartbreaking story of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy being stabbed 27 times by their landlord, simply for being Palestinian. His mother, Hanaan Shahin, was attacked and severely injured by a man because she said she would pray for peace as the conflict in Israel and Palestine raged on.

In these times, the urgency for de-escalation and a ceasefire cannot be overstated. The loss of thousands of innocent lives, including women, children, the elderly and their entire families, is unjustifiable. We must join the international community in calling for an immediate end to the violence.

I join my Ontario NDP colleagues—and I think I can say this for everyone in this Legislature—to call on the federal government to do everything possible to reunite family members of Canadians who were horrified and impacted by these attacks. We cannot lose any more lives.

A colleague of mine, a staff member of our caucus, my friend Farah, has given me permission to share this, so I will share her story: Last week, Farah received a call with unimaginably devastating news, news that she had lost 18 members of her family in Khan Younis, Gaza, and 10 members of her family are still under rubble. That’s 18 members of her family, the Samoor family, gone in minutes: grandparents, children, moms and dads gone, and 10 of them are still under rubble.

Speaker, her story is just one of many. It is with her family in mind, and the families of everyone affected by this horrific crisis, that we call for a ceasefire, a humanitarian aid corridor to save human lives. And we call for us to work towards a sustainable solution where Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace, security and mutual self-determination.

The solution can only be political. There is no possible military solution to this decades-long conflict. I’m calling on our federal government to do everything in its power to stand with the United Nations in calling for peace and justice, and to ensure the protection of civilians and respect for international law.

Canada must also support international justice efforts by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to investigate war crimes by all military actors in Israel and Palestine. All war crimes by all parties to this conflict must be prosecuted.

I stand with all people in Israel and Palestine who yearn for peace, freedom and security.

Good afternoon. I want to begin by acknowledging the pain being felt by the thousands of Ontarians who have connections to Israel and Palestine. For Jewish people in our province and all around the world, the heinous attack on Israel was felt acutely, both by people with family and friends in Israel and by those who felt this as an attack on all Jews.

Six Canadians were killed in these terror attacks that we know of so far and two are missing. They are among the more than 1,400 people murdered in these acts by Hamas. We mourn them all. Some 3,400 others—that we know of so far—were injured; 199 Israelis remain hostages of Hamas, a terrifying reality that leaves their families in agony. I know some of their families, Speaker, are right here in our communities, in our province, and they are feeling that pain.

We in the NDP official opposition unequivocally condemn these terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians. There can be no justification.

We have seen the ripple effects of this violence across the globe, including right here in Ontario, where Jewish and Arab and Muslim communities have seen a rise of hatred, increased police presence near Jewish community spaces and places of worship, the vandalism of mosques.

People in Ontario are very worried. Now, as the war between Israel and Hamas continues, they are watching in absolute horror as Palestinian civilians, who bear no responsibility for the actions of Hamas, are caught in a devastating siege. Some 2,778 Palestinians have been killed at this moment. A significant number of them were children. That number is already out of date as I say this, because we have reports coming in that thousands of Palestinians were killed just this afternoon in an air strike on a hospital in Gaza.

Nearly 10,000 people are wounded in Gaza and hundreds of thousands more displaced by an evacuation order, going without food, without water, without electricity and unable to leave. Here in Ontario, people are desperately trying to reach their loved ones, family and friends in the area. Others have already received devastating news and are mourning their loss and experiencing real pain. Members of this assembly, our staff, our constituents are all deeply impacted by this, and my heart is with them during this impossibly difficult time.

The region is spiraling, and Canada must act now to save lives. We are watching potential war crimes in real time, and the pain and the suffering we are witnessing is only going to get worse. As provincial legislators, it can feel sometimes like we are powerless to affect conflicts on a global scale, even as we see the reverberations here in our own communities. We can’t resolve this war in this chamber, but we can use the power we do have to bring people together, to acknowledge the hurt and work together in healing. This is a moment that this government could use our time here in this place to do just that.

I have to say, Speaker, unfortunately I don’t believe that this motion accomplishes that. That’s why we in the opposition worked in good faith. We put in a lot of time to put forward an amendment to this motion to recognize the scale of what’s happening and who is affected. It was an amendment that takes nothing, absolutely nothing, away from the motion that we are debating. I want to reference that addition because I think it will inform our debate on the main motion. It reads as follows:

“The House calls on the government of Canada to advocate for the immediate release of all hostages, the protection of all civilians in accordance with international law, an end to the siege and bombardment of Gaza, and for humanitarian aid to reach Palestinian civilians urgently and without restriction.”

That was added to the existing language. We didn’t try to change the language that exists there. We just wanted to add this because we think that by omitting this aspect of the current conflict, this motion that’s before us risks obscuring what’s happening in the region right now as we speak. Without this, I fear we won’t be meeting the moment we are in. Instead of bringing people together, we risk raising the temperature here in Ontario and, with it, the very real impacts on people in our communities. I urge the government to support our amendment or withdraw the motion and work with communities and all parties in this Legislature to bring forward a motion that truly unifies people. That would be true leadership.

Speaker, we cannot look away from what is happening in Israel and Gaza right now, and we need the federal government to be a voice for peace. Anything less would be a betrayal of our values as Canadians. Israel has suffered one of the most horrific tragedies in its history. They are still experiencing rocket attacks and evacuating parts of the country. People remain in a state of fear and vigilance. Palestinians are suffering on a scale we have never seen as a result of this siege of Gaza.

Canada must today insist on the respect of international law, of humanitarian principles and urge Israel to rescind the evacuation order as the United Nations has called for. Canada must continue to call for immediate release of all hostages and the protection of all civilians in accordance with international law. We must call for a ceasefire and an end to the siege and the bombardment of Gaza. With the rest of the international community, we must work to ensure humanitarian aid reaches civilians urgently and without restriction.

It’s about humanity, like finding the humanity in all of us in this moment, in a really difficult time. It’s a challenge for a lot of people who are hurting. I feel it. But all of us in this chamber, in our communities, we must condemn all acts of anti-Semitism and all anti-Palestinian racism. That includes any glorification or calls for the killing of innocent people, Israeli or Palestinian. These are difficult and perilous times. It’s difficult for many of us to even imagine the pain and the devastation—you know, when I wrote that, I thought to myself, actually, there are many people in this chamber who themselves I’m sure have experienced war and oppression. And I will say I think it’s inevitable that we bring those experiences with us and that they inform much of who we are. But things are not without humanity, because so many Israelis and Palestinians—medical workers, human rights advocates, humanitarians and just ordinary citizens—are doing what they can to preserve life in the face of such horror.

I want to challenge those of us in this chamber to look at what we can do to end the scourge of war and terror; to fight for peace; to bring people together, not tear them apart; and to never use this horrific conflict for domestic political gain.