Meanwhile in Gaza

I just wrote another blog about the politics of Québec.  Less than a week before our provincial elections, I'm humbly trying to contribute to the betterment of a society that I truly consider to have much potential (there are so many resources laying around here!!).  I'm hoping to bring up not one, but several coherent - and inspiring - perspectives, that would account for the complexities of our situation, all the while offering both rational and emotional grounds. (Trying to be integral?)  I am calling for an urgent move that brings us beyond the politics of fear, hate, and war.

I am dreaming of autonomy and intelligent self-management, while... in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian children are being tortured, every single day and unabashedly.  We might be in denial once again, because a nation is being occupied and the world ''community'' (always a good word to ponder) says absolutely nothing.  Well some people are speaking up and denouncing the violent apartheid system that's taking place in Israel.  Palestinian villages have been displaced.  Houses were demolished or taken over, and the people that lived on those lands - up until 1948 - are now waiting inside shrinking territories.
The Wall is built and it keeps eating up Palestinian gardens: Israeli settlements are spilling over.  The army is everywhere: check points and fences sprout like aggressive weeds, and military planes fly intermittently over the heads of these people effectively reminding them: : we got you.

Sorry to bring this onto you. It's just that it needs to be talked about.

Last night my roommates and I watched a documentary, called ''Le rire contre les larmes'' (Laughter against Tears), which followed a French troupe of Clowns Without Borders during their mission in Gaza.
(The following video is a different one... but :D )

My roommate M. was in Palestine last Spring, and she feels very strongly about the Israeli occupation. She told us that there is currently a boycott against Cirque du Soleil to protest against against their going to Tel Aviv. ''You can't put the people of Israel and their government in the same boat, '' I said, trying to defuse her anger.  (I thought of my dear Jewish and Israeli friends, and I didn't like M. pointing her finger at them!) And so a passionate debate ensued, and M. refreshed our memory about the history of the past 60 years and the fact that it is getting worst everyday.  I studied this shit in college and I know it is real: a whole nation, a whole culture is being slowly exterminated.  Genocide. We exchanged points of view to try and lay out the fullest picture, only to settle on the eternal conclusion that it is and will eternally be complex.  Of course, the youth of Israel is also victim of the situation.  Personally, I dare hoping that the mandatory draft is debated, and that few are those who go through it without realizing what is at stake.  Yet it takes superhuman powers to muster the courage and defy one's culture, to stand against the draft and face years of imprisonment. Everyone's fucked. We agreed on that. So M. said, ''I just can't deal with people who go on denying what is happening.'' And I wish I could do something.  I wish I could do something for indigenous people everywhere, in Québec, Brazil, Tibet, Kurdistan, Palestine, etc.  I wish I could learn some good tricks on the diabolo, and muster the courage to join Clowns Without Borders.  I wish I could tell everyone: ''We are with you.  We don't know how to go about it, but with all our hearts we see your humanness, your resilience, and your beauty.''

You can visit Clowns Without Borders' website, by clicking here.  You know this is deep healing work. One way to call for the end Apartheid in Israel is to join the Boycott and Divestment Campaign.  Learn more about this international movement here, or on the BDS website,  here.


As always, I welcome any respectful comment and questions about this post... We all feel passionately about those things that we identify with; let us all learn to notice this phenomenon so as to engage in functional debates in which we may all learn and broaden our horizons and our capacity to love.