Students bring UNB and STU professors together to understand the war on Gaza

To understand the horrific war on Gaza requires going back in history before October 7, 2023.

Laila Soliman is an Egyptian member of Students for Palestine, which co-presented a panel discussion on Palestine with professors on April 3 at the University of New Brunswick (UNB). The event was jointly organized with the Young Communist League. For Soliman, “understanding humanitarian issues is not just about awareness.” She hoped this discussion would help “better understand the complexity of the situation” being lived in Gaza.

Gül Çalışkan, a sociology professor from St. Thomas University, spoke first. Her intervention was a return to Edward Saïd’s Question of Palestine (1979), a book that, because of the current circumstances in Gaza, feels like it “was written right now.”  In the book, Saïd makes it clear that “exclusion makes up the negative portrayal of Palestinian identity,” but “a positive political consciousness has developed” from this portrayal.

As Çalışkan reminded the crowd, the invading position is not the same as that of the displaced. Zionist ideas have come to trouble the two “inexorably linked” groups but, as Saïd noted, the solution is a long-awaited discussion by the two groups. However, Saïd, even over forty years ago, criticized the Israeli state for not apologizing for its actions and connected the Palestinian struggle to that of other colonized nations.

Ten years after this book, Saïd wrote a letter to U.S.-based Jewish intellectuals denouncing the Israeli state’s “horrific acts” of 1989. Çalışkan emotionally read quotes from this letter because of its resonance with the events of the last few months.

Viqar Husain, a math professor at UNB, explored the origin of Zionism in 1895 and its continuance in 1917 during the Balfour Declaration. He reminded the public of the foundation of the Israeli State with the forced displacement of Palestinians and recommended the film, “The Law in These Parts,” a 2011 documentary on Israeli governance of Palestine.

Husain pointed out the importance of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Palestine and Canada’s refusal to fund UNRWA during the Harper years. He presented figures about the small contributions Canada has made recently to UNRWA in comparison to the huge numbers of exports to the Israeli state.

Husain discussed all the UN Resolutions on Palestine that have been historically ignored by the international community. Israel’s retaliation for UN Security Council votes in favour of UN Resolutions has historically been swift, with aid money being pulled and ambassadors removed from offending countries.

Showed maps comparing the 1967 Palestinian territories to those in the present, Husain revealed the size of the Gaza strip is 1/15 the size of PEI and it originally held as many inhabitants as all four Maritime provinces put together. Using comparative death toll figures as his example, Hussain also explained the concept of “mowing the grass” whereby more and more Palestinian are falling victim to violence. Hussain declared: “it’s not over yet.”

St. Thomas University political science professor Shawn Narine provocatively began his talk with a very racist quote from Churchill being non-apologetic about empire building. Churchill discusses Palestinians as “an inferior people,” an idea that has been a constant since then; there is a “western comfort with colonialism,” as demonstrated by Churchill’s quote.

According to Narine, “there is no good argument for [the creation] of Israel.” The need for a Jewish state after the Holocaust is a good emotional and political argument. Understanding the “fundamental reason for the conflict” is very simple, it is the occupation of others’ land. For him, the “Western world has been doing this for a very long time.”

Narine focused on the U.S. where “ideas of racial superiority underpinned” the foundation of the country, for example. Narine asked “Why is the U.S. so dedicated to Israel” ? For Narine, Israel is a “strategic liability” for the U.S.; “it complicates their relationship with the rest of the world.”

According to Narine, the war could be over with one call from Biden to Netanyahu: “Israel could not be doing what it’s doing without American weapons and support.” Why isn’t Biden doing this? For him, current U.S. politics and society is mired with the Israel lobby’s political interests.

Narine also discussed the “weaponization of anti-Semitism” since October 7. The silencing of criticism of Israel is happening in many domains, including in universities and in the cultural sector with Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the recent Oscar ceremony.

UNB political science professor Thom Workman spoke last. Workman brought with him Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem : A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), in which she calls out all the groups that were silent during the Jewish Holocaust, including some Jews. He posited that Arendt would have something to say about the current situation.

Workman remarked that the area that was known as Palestine was an area of “ethnic plurality” and acceptance. The current right-wing faction in government in Israel is not representative of all of Israeli citizens, protests are happening often and with large numbers.

Workman reminded the crowd that the “artificial carving up” of the Middle East was meant to create business opportunities for Western companies. With the end of World War 2, the U.S. effectively become the primary custodians of the world order, taking England and France’s place.

During the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, Israel was invaded by several countries including Syria and Egypt. For Workman, it was the first time that there was a real sense that Israel would not prevail, and then-President Golda Meir threatened to use nuclear power to defend the state. Happening during the Cold War, this provoked the U.S.’s financing of military aid to Israel, aid which still flows today, despite Israel’s current blocking of the humanitarian aid to Gaza.

For Workman, the razing strategies being used in Gaza have been tried and tested in other conflicts like Guatemala and Vietnam. He probed: “how do you distinguish between the so-called enemies and the others?” He also stated that we “shouldn’t lose sight” of the patriarchal origin of the violence that is being carried out.

Workman congratulated the organizers of the discussion for their courageous work in the university context which is not overly favourable to such conversations. The organizers announced that an activist training event was in the planning stages. More than 40 people attended the noon-hour event organized by Students for Palestine and the Young Communist League.

Sophie M. Lavoie is a member of the NB Media Co-op’s editorial board.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the panel organizers. It was updated on Nov. 7, 2024.