The Palestine vote in Canada's parliament – it's no victory
Image of Canada’s House of Commons, where the much vaunted NDP motion on Palestine was voted on. Image source: Charlie Angus (@CharlieAngusNDP)/Twitter
Written by: Aidan Jonah & Jack Dempster
Meltdowns and words aplenty came around a March 18 Palestine vote in Canada's parliament. But this non-binding vote and the final product which was voted on, is much more hype than a real victory.
The vote occurring is a credit to the Canadian movement in support of Palestinian liberation. The credit comes in scaring Canada's coalition government into feeling it needed to create the appearance of standing with Palestine in a substantive manner. But appearances don't always match the reality.
A vote in Canada’s parliament
A non-binding motion was first proposed by NDP MP Heather McPherson and three other NDP MP’s on February 27, 2024. The motion called for the Liberal government to:
Demand an immediate ceasefire
Cut all trade in military goods and technology
Immediately re-instate funds to UNRWA
Support the ICJ and ICC
Ban extremist Israeli settlers and;
Recognize a Palestinian state
While Palestine advocates jumped for joy, a more sober analysis even of the initial motion is needed. The motion is filled with apologia for Israel and disdain for the Palestinian resistance.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, an operation by the Palestinian resistance, whose right to resist is enshrined under international law, is referred to as “the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023”. The motion called for a maintenance of “Canada’s recognition of Israel’s right to exist”, a blunt indication of support for the colonial Zionist state’s continued existence. The motion calls for the maintenance of sanctions on leaders of the Palestinian resistance group, Hamas, while also as it calls to cut certain trade with Israel, simultaneously choosing to speak about increasing “efforts to stop the illegal trade of arms, including to Hamas”.
The motion outright attacks the Palestinian resistance by stating that “Israelis are still at risk of attacks by Iran-backed terrorist groups including Hamas and Hezbollah”. Attacking Hezbollah, the political force which led the liberation of southern Lebanon from a 22-year Israeli occupation, is an especially cowardly move when the motion isn’t about Lebanon at all. Furthermore, the broader Axis of Resistance, including Iran, have been critical supporters of the Palestinian resistance – the same Palestinian resistance that ensures Israel can’t swallow up the whole of Palestine as part of its’ colonial Greater Israel dream. To pretend to support the existence of a Palestinian state, even if one is so gutless as to support the existence of an Israeli state, while denouncing the Palestinian resistance, is an outright incoherent position.
The motion seeks to both-sides the situation, speaking of poor Israelis and poor Palestinians. While it urges that some good political steps be taken on Palestine, the imperial narratives are still fully backed by NDP MP McPherson’s motion.
The motion was confirmed to come up for a vote on March 18, 2024.
Running up to Monday’s debate, the reformist left and public-sector labour union leaders hailed the left-Zionist motion, initiating a liberal campaign to pressure Canadian MPs into voting for the motion.
The vote day
Before the vote, Liberal MP Salma Zahid had already confirmed that she’d vote in favour of the Palestine motion.
Some sections of the liberal wing of the Canadian bourgeoisie believe that Palestinian civilians, somehow artificially separated from the “Hamas terrorists,” should receive some humanitarian aid and security guarantees on the long road to an eventual two-state solution – but if they pick up the gun against Israel, they must be blown away. This faction of the bourgeoisie is worried that the Israeli genocide in Gaza is damaging Canadian imperialism’s image as a supposed protector of human rights abroad.
With Zahid's statement, the stage was set for a supposedly momentous day.
Early in the debate, the political lines became clear, as the NDP, Bloc Quebecois, Greens and some Liberals indicated their support to the original motion. Other MPs, mainly conservatives and others such as open Zionist, Anthony Housefather, and opportunist anti-communist Kevin Vuong, confirmed their opposition to the motion and spread Zionist lies against the Palestinian resistance.
The Conservative wing of Canadian imperialism opposed the motion outright. Melissa Lantsman, Thornhill’s MP, rose to give a racist screed in defense of the Israeli regime. Wearing an IOF dog-tag, she ranted that the motion was “about rewarding Hamas for their massacre,” painting the Hamas organization as nothing but a gang of bloody-thirsty rapists and torturers. Animated by a feeling of European supremacism over the Arab nation, Lantsman justified the Israeli occupation by attacking “those who seek to undermine democracy, freedom, the rule of law in the Middle East and in the Western World... discussing this motion today flies in the face of civilization.” She also claimed that Palestinians have cooked babies in ovens.
But the debate was almost for naught, as a last-minute Liberal-NDP deal saw 14 amendments to the motion. When this newly formed motion came up for the final vote, it passed with 204 votes in favour and 117 against. But what exactly were MP’s voting on, given all the amendments to the original motion?
Changes, changes and more changes
These were not 14 minor amendments to the Palestine motion. They took an already deeply problematic motion and made it a running joke.
The changes made include:
Emphasizing that Hamas is a listed terrorist organization in Canada
After the point on the ICJ genocide case, immediately emphasizing that Israel has the right to defend itself
Weakening the language about the situation for Palestinians in the collaborationist Palestinian Authority-run West Bank. The language went from “forcible transfer and violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank have significantly increased in recent months”, to “increase in extremist settler violence and reports of Palestinian communities being forcibly removed from their lands in the west bank”.
Calling for Hamas, a Palestinian resistance group, to lay down its arms
Removing a point which called for sanctions on “Israeli officials who incite genocide”
Removing language speaking about “decades long-occupation”, even if this was liberal language about “Palestinian territories” versus the entirety of Palestine
Again emphasizing Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security with its neighbours”
Only demanding that the government work “towards the establishment of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution”. This ensures that Israel can ensure Canada doesn’t support a Palestinian state, by blocking a two-state solution. Israeli government ministers say that Israel won’t support the existence of a Palestinian state, while Israeli Minister of Settlement and National Missions Orit Strook said “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people” and Israeli PM Netanyahu said back in January that there’s ‘no space’ for a State of Palestine. The further reality is that 63 per cent of Jewish Israelis oppose the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state. The watered down motion’s wording allows Canada’s government to ‘blame’ Israel for not moving to support a Palestinian state, nor act in good faith in negotiations around a supposed two-state solution, while also giving them the grounds to not recognize a Palestinian state long-term.
In short, the changes made this already dubious motion a complete ineffectual joke. Even the arms sales point in the final motion is over-hyped, as it doesn’t apply to already-existing GAC approved arms exports to Israel, only hypothetical future ones, which had already been paused under pressure of pro-Palestine protests.
Hysterical Zionists, such as MP Anthony Housefather, are now considering their future in relation to the Liberal Party because of their support for the NDP motion.The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs issued a rant, complaining that the motion is “misguided and disingenuous...it will not liberate Gazans from the tyrannical rule of the Iranian proxy, Hamas.” This hysterical reaction comes because of their lack of critical thinking skills, rather than a change that tangibly hurts the apartheid state they hold so dear.
The simple reality is this: the victory is that the Canadian elite feels gestures towards pro-Palestine sentiment need to be changed, rather than this non-binding motion producing major policy change. NDP rhetoric about forcing the government to do anything is misleading to the working class, since the motion is non-binding. Endorsing this rhetoric assists the pushing of the misleading claim that pressuring the NDP is a tactic worth investing significant amounts time into, for supporting Palestinian liberation.
Reformist Left Hails Left-Zionist Motion
Reactions to the passage of the motion on the left have been mixed, with some reformist tendencies glorifying the motion as some sort of step forward for the Palestinian liberation movement.
In a complete capitulation to Canadian liberal imperialism, Spring Magazine has called the passed motion “a big step forward for the Palestine solidarity movement.” Hailing the mass liberal campaign to pressure MP’s to support the left-zionist motion, Spring declares that the movement “brought the pressure of the Palestine solidarity movement deeper into the realm of electoral politics.”
Spring argues that “we need to understand the fight in strategic terms, not simply moral ones.” By this coded language Spring means that the worker's movement must abandon independent class principles and instead beg and plead the Canadian imperialists to act for peace and love in the Middle East.
Through their statement, Spring paints a fantastic world wherein workers can pressure the NDP to move left, whereupon the NDP can pressure the liberal wing of Canadian imperialism to move left as well. In their own words:
“The most significant consequence of this concerted effort was to shift the political terrain beneath our feet–as we were organizing on it. The original NDP motion was primarily a symbolic initiative intended to expose Liberal (and Conservative) support for Israel’s war on Gaza. But what started as an electoral gesture with no hope of passing was suddenly pushing almost a third of the Liberal Caucus to support it–raising the possibility that it could actually pass.
It was only in the days leading up to the vote that this possibility became more real, with senior Liberals approaching the NDP to negotiate a motion that their party would support, an attempt to hide the deepening split inside the Liberal Caucus.
As the terrain continued to shift, the NDP’s tactic to discredit other political parties became a more momentous opportunity to push a G7 country onto the world stage by formally adopting a motion that takes up most of the key demands from the last five months of organizing.”
Spring Magazine glosses over the Zionist content of the motion and whitewashes the new amendments as “unfavourable” while hailing the “call for an immediate ceasefire” and the call for recognizing “the role and place of the International Criminal Court.” Of course, none of these demands would have made it past the Liberal party unless they were completely within the range of bourgeois liberalism.
Spring argues that a defeat for the left-zionist motion “would have been widely understood as a victory for Zionists and for the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre….The Liberals who broke ranks to oppose their own government would have been more isolated, and the movement would have felt less confidence to fight.”
After spending paragraphs treating the bourgeois Liberal Party as some sort of organization which could be split along class lines, Spring finally mentions something in passing about the unions, praising “large institutional organizations, especially in the labour movement and among faith organizations.”
They also say that “we still have a lot of work to do on this front, but the elevation of Palestine to a central concern in federal politics will help build the ongoing fight against workplace reprisals and the defense of civil liberties.”
The harsh truth is that Spring Magazine, like others on the left, are providing a left screen for Canadian imperialism. The Palestinians are waging a national liberation struggle. Any position other than clear support to the Resistance can only be regarded as a liberal normalization of Zionism and imperialism.
This vote is no victory
The misleading idea being spread, of even the initial motion being a victory for Palestine liberation advocates, is a mistaken one. Israel is actively preparing a Final Solution in Rafah, and even US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, admitted that 100 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza are at “severe levels of acute food insecurity”. The Canadian parliament drama around Palestine allows Canada’s political elites to follow in the US’ political theatre of appearing critical of Israel, while seeking to buy it time to complete its final solution against occupied Palestine. It will be the Axis of Resistance and the Palestinian Resistance that determine if Palestine survives to fight for full liberation, not mealy-mouthed social democratic non-binding motions.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Jack Dempster is a socialist trade unionist and writer based in Toronto, Ontario.
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