Canadian Elections and Palestinian Solidarity

Details: Published on Wednesday, 02 October 2019 02:02; Written by editor

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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1900 ... October 2, 2019
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Canadian Elections and Palestinian Solidarity

Voting in elections in liberal democracies even at the best of times has always been the most limited of the many forms of political engagement and struggle. In matters of foreign policy, the ballot is even more gestural in that the political hegemony of the dominant classes is critically fused and enforced by a political consensus that stretches from the conservative right through liberalism to the mainstream social democratic left over inter-state relations and international alliances. Nowhere is this consensus more confined and policed by the parliamentary and ideological apparatuses of the state, elite networks, and the capitalist media than with respect to the Middle East and particularly the politics of Israel and the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. This has been the importance for the international solidarity movement with Palestine of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign. It has widened the space in Canada and other states for discussion of the continued Israeli occupation, house demolitions, apartheid practices, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Still, the federal election... in Canada allows Palestine solidarity activists to engage in the election around the Israeli occupation and human rights violations and the complicity of the Canadian state, and use the vote as best they can. While having our differences with some of these assessments (and of these assessments as a whole as a form of engagement and political struggle), we present here the recent calls and appraisals from an array of Palestinian groups on the vote in the current Canadian election.

#IVotePalestine: For Freedom, Justice and Equality

In the upcoming Canadian general election scheduled for October 21, 2019, we commit to vote for candidates and parties that:

Support Palestinian human and national rights including the inalienable right to self-determination.
Oppose Israeli ethnic cleansing, war crimes and apartheid.
Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
Support ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.
Oppose Canadian tax-deductible status for the Jewish National Fund JNF, HESEG Foundation and all Zionist organizations that are disguised as charities while supporting the Israeli military and settlements.
Recognize the rights of Canadians to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions BDS movement as a non-violent strategy to force Israel to abide by UN resolutions and all international humanitarian laws, and
Oppose condemning or criminalizing people or organizations who support the BDS Movement.