Fact check: Inaccurate, misleading, incomplete statements on Gaza war by members of Tantramar council

Note from the author: Tantramar Town Council once again rejected a call last week to write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau asking Canada to press for a stop to the massacre in occupied Gaza. Warktimes reported what members of council had to say and published a word-for-word transcript of their remarks. Given the scale of what the International Court of Justice found to be a plausible genocide, I’m publishing a “fact check” calling attention to inaccurate, incomplete or misleading statements from some members of council. 

Background

In nearly six months of fighting, 32,600 people have been killed in Gaza, including 14,000 children. More than 75,000 have been injured, with thousands more buried under rubble and increasing numbers dying of malnutrition, dehydration and disease.

“It is without precedent in modern times,” says famine expert Alex de Waal, “and I can’t emphasize that enough. If we look at Gaza in comparative historical perspective, it is the worst and it is entirely man made.”

Waal, who is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, was interviewed last week on CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine. He is the author of Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine.

In an earlier interview on Al Jazeera, he said: “Nothing is comparable in terms of the speed and concentrated effort devoted to destroying what is essential to sustain the life of people. Nothing compares to Gaza.”

‘How would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?’

Speaking from the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday, James Elder of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) pointed to Israel’s refusal to let humanitarian aid into Gaza.

“There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks, you know, five miles from where I am now. You could get hundreds and hundreds of trucks within 10 minutes, if that border crossing was open in the north, to those people who are cut off. That’s an important thing to remember,” Elder said.

“When I’m on the street [in the north], every person, the first thing they want to tell me, in English or Arabic, is, ‘We need food. We need food,’” he added.

“They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew?”

Council fact check

Debbie Wiggins-Colwell was the only member of council who spoke in favour of sending a letter to Trudeau. “At least it’s a little bit that we could do to show our support.”

The four others who spoke agreed that, as Mayor Black put it, “this really is not within our jurisdictional responsibility to do.”

Yet many municipal councils in both the U.S. and Canada have done just that. While it’s clear municipal councils do not set foreign policy, their members are always free to speak out, individually or collectively, on matters of concern to their local constituents. (See also the municipal list compiled by the National Council of Canadian Muslims.)

Ceasefire confusion

Councillor Michael Tower argued that “the federal government has already said they want a permanent ceasefire.” But in fact, Trudeau and his ministers have carefully avoided the word “permanent,” preferring the term “sustainable” instead. Meantime, Israel has vowed from the beginning to fight as long as it takes to destroy Hamas and achieve “total victory.”

On December 12, Canada voted in favour of a UN resolution calling for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” which is not the same as the “permanent ceasefire” that Tantramar council was asked to push the prime minister for. Global Affairs Canada issued this statement on the UN resolution, which referred to an earlier four-day “humanitarian pause” in November:

“The recent pause in hostilities saw the release of more than 100 hostages and allowed for greater humanitarian access to affected Palestinian civilians. Canada regrets that this pause could not be extended and continues to call for much-needed fuel, water and other humanitarian aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza.” [Emphasis added]

Arms to Israel 

Councillor Tower also stated that the federal government has “already said they’re going to not sell any more weapons to Israel.”

Yet arms experts explain it’s not that simple. The Reuters news agency cites a letter from Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly acknowledging that Canadian companies can continue their military exports to Israel as long as they have existing military export permits (see report in Defense News. written by longtime journalist David Pugliese).

Furthermore, Project Ploughshares–the independent peace and disarmament group sponsored by the Canadian Council of Churches–expressed disappointment at this “significant weakening” of Canada’s promise to stop arms exports to Israel. It also noted that in the two-month period “following the onset of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Global Affairs Canada approved more than $28 million in military exports to Israel” — a figure about equal to “the total annual value of Canada’s arms exports to Israel at their peak in 1987 at $28.7 million, followed closely by $27.8 million in 2021.”

Councillor Tower also claimed that the war is unpopular in Israel and that the Israeli people do not want war. The day after Tower’s comments, however, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a column by veteran journalist Gideon Levy that began with this bitter observation:

Israel wants war. More and more war, as much as possible, and perhaps even more…Israel wants war. Now it is being said explicitly, without pretense and without whitewashing. As much war as possible in the government’s words, as much war as possible in the opposition’s words. More of this war even from the mouths of the protesters in the squares, who are certainly not crying out for the opposite. They only want a halt in the war to release the hostages and kick Benjamin Netanyahu out, and then as far as they’re concerned we can return to the killing fields forever…One can argue that if we don’t destroy Hamas, the war will continue forever, and anyway it’s a war for peace. But one cannot buy this when there’s no strategic plan behind the lust for war. So what remains is the bare truth: Israel simply wants war. Left and right and center too. Everyone.

Hamas is to blame

Councillor Bruce Phinney admitted that: “We don’t know exactly what’s been going on in that area for however long it’s been going on,” but then added that moving a motion to write a letter to Trudeau would be taking sides and blaming Israel, not Gaza.

“Hamas was the one that started it on October 7th,” Phinney said referring to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in which 1,139 people were massacred in Israel. The dead included 695 Israeli civilians (36 of them children), 71 foreign nationals and 373 members of the Israeli security forces. About 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were taken hostage.

Yet the Israel-Palestine conflict did not start on Oct. 7.  According to Amnesty International, “Since the [Israeli] occupation began in June 1967, Israel’s ruthless policies of land confiscation, illegal settlement and dispossession, coupled with rampant discrimination, have inflicted immense suffering on Palestinians, depriving them of their basic rights.” Most of the world’s countries, including Canada, agree the continued occupation is illegal under international law and call for a homeland for the Palestinians, the so-called two-state solution that Israel now says it will never support.

Israel and Egypt have imposed an economic blockade on the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip since Hamas took over in 2007. Many, including Human Rights Watch, describe Gaza as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”

How could it happen?

Councillor Allison Butcher appeared torn between her expressed belief that municipalities have no role to play in foreign affairs and her concern about “standing up for ceasefires, for releases of hostages, for humanitarian aid to get through.”

She mentioned restrictions on the emigration of Jews fleeing Nazi death camps during World War Two, a possible reference to Canada’s refusal to accept Jewish refugees as well as its decision to deny entry to 907 of them aboard the ship MS St. Louis, which was also turned away by Cuba and the U.S. After the ship returned to Europe, 254 of its passengers died in the Holocaust.

“When you hear about that [restrictions on Jews], at this point, and you look back and you think, ‘Gosh, how could people have allowed that to happen?’” Butcher said.

“I think to send a letter to our federal government to say, we as a municipality believe that the horrors that are happening there should be stopped, without us even having any idea about how to fix it, is still something that we should consider.”

But later, she told CHMA’s Erica Butler that she would not be moving a motion to send a letter to the prime minister calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Bruce Wark worked in broadcasting and journalism education for more than 35 years. He was at CBC Radio for nearly 20 years as senior editor of network programs such as The World at Six and World Report. He currently writes for The New Wark Times, where this story first appeared on March 31, 2024.