| NDP Headquarters <info@ndp.ca>, Anne.McGrath@ndp.ca, Dave.Hare@ndp.caPaul Dewar <paul.dewar.p9@parl.gc.ca>,
| |||
Dear Dave, Ann, Paul, Tom,
Your fundraising messages have been coming thick & fast
recently, but in case you haven’t noticed, many people aren’t donating so much
to the NDP of late, for a variety of reasons. For many of us, it is hard to
hear your persistent call for cash these days over the weeping of mothers and
fathers of the Jabaliya camp in Gaza whose children were killed in the recent
Israeli shelling of the UNWRA school where they had been told to go for safe
refuge.
I am among the growing number of Canadian voters who would
like to support a party in parliament that stands clearly for human rights and
international law, but can’t find one. For a bunch of reasons, both personal
and political, it would be great if that party were the NDP. But right now the
NDP is not rising to the occasion, and frankly, time is running out for your party
to take a principled stand. Your latest fundraising message says “the clock is
ticking”, and I agree: the time to take a stand for international law is now!
We all know that many of your MPs have strong, principled
positions but are not able to speak their consciences fully on the subject of
Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza. At times like
these, that imposed collective silence seems a lot like complicity with war
crimes. This eerie caucus uniformity is all the more troubling when MPs from
the UK Labour Party (together with members from the
Conservative-Liberal-Democratic government coalition) are able to speak their conscience
freely and name Israeli aggression for what we all know it is. Similarly in
Australia, Labour
MPs have spoken out along with Green Party and independent MPs, and many
social-democratic parties in Europe and elsewhere allow elected representatives
to speak out against Israeli attacks on civilians. So by enforcing a single
narrow “Israel first-and-only” line on all public statements, you are increasingly
isolating the NDP among sister parties. Even some Democratic Party congress
reps in the U.S. have gone farther than your party’s MPs are allowed to, at
least naming the aggressor the world knows is responsible for the soaring death
toll among Palestinians in Gaza.
Your statements about the “conflict” are so detached from
reality that you don’t even name who is responsible for the deaths of Palestinian
civilians in Gaza. With the Harper government cheerleading for Israeli war crimes
and Trudeau’s Liberals singing back-up, it would be very refreshing to offer
concerned Canadian voters a real alternative. Just to be clear: your current silence
about war crimes is not an
alternative, and false “neutrality“
is not an alternative. And your repetitive mantra of “Israel’s right
to defend itself” is most definitely not an alternative, especially when you never
mention the legal responsibilities that go along with that right (i.e. the principles
of distinction, precaution and proportionality). Bombing children in a UN school
cannot ever be self-defense, under any understanding of international law. And
yet you remain silent.
When your caucus labour critic cannot stand with the Ontario
Federation of Labour and the Confédération
des syndicats nationaux in naming who is the aggressor responsible for so
many civilian deaths, the NDP falls out of step with traditional labour allies
and working Canadians generally. When your health critic cannot concur publicly
with the diagnosis expressed by MDs in the Lancet and by Médecins
sans Frontières about attacks on Palestine, then health professionals
(among many others) observe seriously worrisome symptoms within the NDP. And
when your Human Rights critic cannot take a public position in line with what
the International
Committee of the Red Cross or Human
Rights’ Watch are saying about violations of international law by Israel,
then your party loses any remaining shreds of moral credibility at home and
abroad.
Canadians need to see real leadership on this issue that names
violations of international law for what they are, and calls for the
application of the International Criminal Court to Israel. Until then we see
such leadership, I will be standing with Canadians of conscience like Voters4Gaza
– or sitting in with them, or perhaps even lying down and going limp (as my
parents taught me) if necessary. But
right now your failure to call for the application of international law in
Israel and Palestine means I cannot support the party I was born into, and the
only party I’ve ever voted for, federally or provincially.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said
recently that “No individual or state can be considered exempt, if they violate
the law.” Will you speak out today in support of the UN Human Rights
Commission’s call for an independent, international commission of inquiry to
investigate the conflict in the occupied Palestinian territories? Will you
publicly support her call for accountability, “ensuring that the cycle of human
rights violations and impunity is brought to an end.”?
Time is indeed running out.
Sincerely and persistently,
David Heap
