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The Rojava Revolution Has Lessons for Western Feminism

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There’s no one size fits all feminism.

Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Naomi Klein, and Tarana Burke, who started the #MeToo movement back in 2006, et al. have done a condemnable job analyzing and criticizing the effects the remains of Western patriarchal society have on women not having equal participation and more importantly access to, opportunities men take for granted. Even Simone de Beauvoir, credited with paving the way for modern feminism, book “The Second Sex” (1949) was finger-pointing without offering solutions. Western feminism has never had a solid mandate and therefore continues to be rudderless.

Then there’s Kurdish feminism which I first encountered when I met Halime Aktürk, a former Turkish journalist. I know several self-proclaiming “feminists.” However, I’ve never known, nor do I believe I ever will, a self-identifying feminist who has the conviction Halime has. Halime knows her terms and projects a strong sense of “self,” which earned my utmost respect.

My truth: Most of my ‘life guidance’ and ‘life lessons’ have been from women. This is likely why I have a romantic view of the human condition.

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Having read western feminists’ writings, and Norman Mailer for the “other side” perspective, I know feminist activists have clarified many questions for women. However, as Halime pointed out to me, simply asking questions isn’t enough for Kurdish women—they’re in a crisis.

 

The Ottoman Empire collapse created a crisis for Kurdish women.

History, like all stories handed down, is a complicated bargain.

The crises Kurdish women are experiencing today began with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. The downfall divided the Kurds’ territory among three newly established countries: Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Since then, each country has been attempting to impose its dominant ethnic identity as the respective country’s “national identity” and, therefore, eliminate any Kurdish identity. This has resulted in a Kurdish narrative that challenges Iraq, Syria and Turkey’s respective assimilation policy of imposing one identity over their territories’ ethnically and culturally different inhabitants.

On July 24, 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed. The treaty led to the international recognition of the sovereignty of the new Republic of Turkey as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire and gave Kurdistan back to Turkey while failing to recognize Kurds existed. That same year some 65 laws aimed at destroying Kurdish identity by renaming them “Mountain Turks,” outlawing the use of the Kurdish language, making Kurdish celebrations illegal, changing Kurdish names of streets, villages, businesses, etc. to “proper Turkish names,” confiscating huge tracts of Kurdish communal lands and eliminating all Kurdish or Kurd-sympathetic organizations or political parties.

Holistically the entire epic of the Kurdish people is their struggle to liberate themselves to create their own society. Kurds, especially those who live in Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”), a loosely defined area bordering Iran, Syria and Turkey, carry the hope of one day becoming emancipated slaves.

Today, roughly 32 million Kurds are spread across Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurds, caught up in bad faith geopolitics that has oppressed them for generations, constitute the world’s largest stateless nation. Using intersectional lens clarifies that Kurdish women are subjected to a “dual oppression” based on ethnicity and gender; thus, being the ideology architect for Kurdish feminism. Halime’s strong feminist convictions (Only the hard and strong can call themselves a Kurdish feminist.) are the by-product of her experiences being Kurdish in Turkey, where along with Kurdish cultural oppression, patriarchal cultural hands are constantly present to keep women in their place.

 

Something extraordinary is happening in Rojava.

There’s a revolution in northern Syria, led by Kurdish feminism (aka. Jineology), that challenges everything the West has bought into about economics, government, society, and above all freedom.

The revolution is a fight to experiment with unconditional democracy—to create a way of life that values feminism, direct democracy, ecological stewardship, ethnic, linguistic, and religious pluralism. The structures of oppression, rooted in the state, nationalism, capitalism, cultural conventions, and patriarchy—disguised as “assimilation policies”—are what the “Rojava Revolution,” which began on July 19, 2012, is seeking to surmount.

Rojava, the Kurdish name for western Kurdistan, is an autonomous region in northeastern Syria that has exercised autonomy since the breakout of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. Cradled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Rojava is considered the breadbasket of Syria. It’s a little-known story that defies the usual depictions that find their way to the west regarding Syria or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Rojava, home to approximately 2.5 million people, is divided into three districts (Afrin, Jazira, and Kobanî). It’s governed by a coalition of six political parties called the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM), headed by the Democratic Union Party (PYD). They practice a governance model called Democratic Confederalism (democracy without a state), a kind of libertarian socialism theorized by imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan. This “governance model” began an extraordinary project of self-government and equality for all races, religions, women, and men. This project has led to the Rojava Revolution, which by default challenges domination by Western colonial powers and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

In 2011 the civil uprising in Syria, known as the Arab Spring, escalated into the Syrian Civil War. The Syrian state withdrew from northeastern Syria, and the Kurdish liberation movement saw their window of opportunity. Less than three years later, the Kurdish movement had transformed their revolutionary vision into a revolutionary society by liberating Rojava’s three districts: Cizîre, Kobanî, and Afrîn. In January 2014, the regions united to issue a declaration of democratic autonomy manifesting their unique political ideology, grounded in Öcalan’s writings and ideas.

People fighting to experiment with their own path to all-inclusive democracy makes the Rojava Revolution an interesting Middle East phenomenon—the political character doesn’t fit familiar pigeonholes. The revolution isn’t a nationalist Kurdish initiative for an independent state, doesn’t evangelize socialism, nor is fueled by religious or ethnic motives. Instead, it attempts to establish an autonomous society based on democratic autonomy, environmentalism, feminism, and gender equality principles. In 2021 attempting, at the feet of oppressors, to create a democratic society, which incorporates all differences and gives women an equal place, is seen by many as naive.

Here in the west, we’ve become cynical to the idea that anything can really change. So, conducting an experiment in unconditional freedom in one of the most dangerous parts of the world against enemies who are absurdly repressive and violent would appear to be a Hollywood invention.

Besides aiming to create a genuinely all-inclusive democracy, the Rojava Revolution is unique because women and feminist teachings have a crucial role in the territorial, political, cultural, and ideological liberation of Rojava. Women often lead the fight on the front lines, sacrificing their lives against the most archaic and anti-woman enemy: ISIS. This display of female martyrdom makes, in my opinion, the Rojava Revolution the most defining feminist activism the world has ever witnessed. Unfortunately, other than occasionally portraying Kurdish women as fierce fighters combating ISIS oppression, the revolution is hardly ever brought to light in the west.

An important aspect of women’s liberation in Rojava has been the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), founded on April 3, 2013, as an all-women brigade of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). When they shoot at ISIS fighters YPJ fighters often make a high-pitched hollering sound to make them aware they’re being attacked by women. In Islam, it’s believed if you’re killed by a woman, you’ll not get into paradise.

Since the nineteenth century, and before that, in the broader Middle East, the female body has been one of the most crucial symbolic battlegrounds between modernizers and reactionaries.

On a side note, much of the Middle East’s hatred against Israel stems from the freedom it gives women to be equal to men, recognizing the LGBQT community, and allowing gay marriage. (Israel is the only country in the Middle East to do so.)

The Rojava model is based on two main pillars. The first pillar is direct democracy as the basis of a communalist system—citizens actively participate in decision-making and manage their neighbourhood and city, and government. (READ: self-government) The second pillar is the denial of the nation-state structure and viewpoint. In Rojava, many different religious and ethnic groups—Arabs, Armenians, Chechens, Christians, Turkmens, Yezidis—live together with the Kurdish majority. By officially and insistently denying the nation-state and creating administrative structures that incorporate these different citizens, the Rojava model gives minorities a participatory role unprecedented in the Middle East—a role as equals in managing their community.

Could this attempt to effectively integrate the different ethnic groups and religions in one participative democratic system that respects people and the environment ever succeed in reality?

History has shown that many such attempts either faded ingloriously or ended in carnage. The Spanish Civil War would be equivalent to Rojava’s current situation (July 17, 1936 – April 1, 1939), when the Democrats tried to set up something different. While many disagree, there are many parallels between the Kurdish women fighters today and those who were ‘Mujeres Libres.’ (Spanish women fighters)

Unfortunately, the Spanish revolution bathed Spain in blood, and the country entered a dark period that lasted almost forty years. Many other examples throughout history would suggest that sooner or later, all this goodwill and this willingness of the people in Rojava will fail. Reasons range from human nature, leftist dogmatism being unpalatable to the pointlessness of war and the number of fatalities becoming overwhelming.

 

Jineology fuels the Rojava Revolution.

Everything in Rojava seems to be in a grey area, somewhere between the old Syria and something new that has yet to take shape. The dichotomies created are between tradition and modernity, gradual change and revolutionary overthrow, and war and peace. Rojava is comparable to a living laboratory where everything is on a long road towards being violently created.

As mentioned earlier, the Rojava Revolution isn’t defending a political ideology or seeking to create a nation-state. It’s a struggle for gender equality and bringing to fruition a just society. The fuel for this ongoing struggle is jineology, a women’s science created by the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement. Jineology, developed in 2008, places women at the center of a battle against patriarchy, cultural legacies, capitalism, and the state.

For those of you hearing about jineology for the first time, jineology, composed of two words: jin, the Kurdish word for “woman,” and logos, Greek for “word” or “reason,” is both an outcome and a beginning. It is the outcome of the dialectical progress of the Kurdish women’s movement and a start to respond to the contradictions and problems of modern society, economics, health, education, ecology, ethics, and aesthetics. Arguably jineology is a form of feminism suited to the region it was developed in and may not easily transition to the west, even as an appendage to Western feminism.

While Western feminism has questioned the issues jineology is trying to address, they remain influenced by the reigning social arching conventions heavily influenced by the many agendas western capitalism requires. As a result, Western feminists have distorted the problems at hand, particularly the relationship between men and women. Jineology proposes a new analysis of these fields, starting with women not being viewed as isolated beings, that socialization begins with women.

In staying true to jineology, the Kurdish movement has set up 40% women quotas in their organizations. In addition, they’ve created women-only organizations parallel to mixed-gender ones and women’s neighbourhood assemblies, academies, and cooperatives and introduced a co-leadership system with one woman and one man at the head of any administrative body including in municipalities under the control of pro-Kurdish parties.

The dilemma with other women’s movements.

When a different paradigm, or to think from a different perspective, is proposed, Western feminists feel their feminism is being replaced. This isn’t the case. Differing perspectives and divisive opinions are seen in Western feminism, like when black feminists criticize white feminists for taking only one—middle-class white—perspective and trying to solve all the problems women face worldwide with the same methodology. One method of advocacy won’t apply to many of the issues women face within their respective region. A queer feminist theory may be listened to or even adopted in Europe but forbidden in Egypt, Iraq, or Nigeria.

The women risking their lives in Rojava are fighting to create a stateless society based on ideals of freedom and equality as they resist fanatic butchers seeking to kill every one of them. For the YPJ/YPG women fighters, the Rojava Revolution is a zero-sum game. Western feminists question the gender inequality of our social norms and is slowly eroding them, which is to be applauded. However, they’re not fighting a diehard enemy and therefore never had to approach their “activism” as a zero-sum game, which makes me wonder if they shouldn’t.

Halime showed me a different way of thinking, and everything in my life began to change. Maybe if Western feminists adopted a different way of thinking (I’m not saying jineology is the answer.), the equality that Western feminists have been seeking for well over 100 years would be our social norms today.

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Nick Kossovan, a self-described connoisseur of human psychology, writes about what’s on his mind from Toronto. You can follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram @NKossovan.

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Ukraine news: Canadian commander of volunteer group dies – CTV News

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A Canadian-born commander of the so-called Norman Brigade – a volunteer fighting group in Ukraine – has died.

The news was first circulated through online chatrooms and social media posts and later shared by Russian state-owned outlet Sputnik.

Jean-Francois Ratelle, 36, was also known by the call sign “Hrulf.”

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Global Affairs Canada said it is aware that a Canadian has died in Ukraine, but would not provide his name, nor the cause of death.

“Our hearts go out to his family and loved ones at this very difficult time,” wrote spokesperson Grantly Franklin. “Consular officials are in contact with local authorities for further information and are providing consular assistance to the family.”

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Brian Mulroney's sons thank Canadians, politicians for outpouring of support – CBC.ca

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Former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s three sons thanked Canadians and federal political leaders for the outpouring of support they’ve received since their father’s death late last month.

Ben, Mark and Nicholas Mulroney spoke briefly to reporters after the House of Commons officially commemorated the life and legacy of the late Conservative stalwart. Their sister Caroline and mother Mila joined them in the gallery for the speeches that paid tribute to the man Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called “one of the lions of Canadian politics” 

Mark said listening in reminded them of what their father loved about politics.

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“And for us sitting up in the gallery, hearing everybody speak so positively — probably not what he was used to — but he would have loved it and we did as well,” he said with a laugh.

“He enjoyed every minute of the back and forth parliamentary process, the debate. And seeing it today, seeing how it was, we obviously understand what drew him here, but what also he loved about it.”

WATCH | Brian Mulroney’s sons react to MPs’ tributes to their father 

Brian Mulroney’s sons react to MPs’ tributes to their father

2 hours ago

Duration 1:34

Ben, Mark and Nicolas Mulroney say they are thankful for the tributes to their father in the House of Commons. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and Bloc Québécois MP Louis Plamondon all honoured former prime minister Brian Mulroney with speeches on Monday.

Nicholas Mulroney, who was born during his father’s time at 24 Sussex, said it was “incredibly humbling” to hear from friends and former foes.

“Being the youngest member of the family, this is certainly not something I grew up used to and especially for the grandkids, they get to see and experience something so special,” he said.

“We’re truly honoured from people across the country and internationally that have taken the time to reach out to say nice things and words of support. I just want to thank everybody on behalf of the family.”

The family was in Ottawa for the start of a week of remembrance, culminating in the state funeral in Montreal on Saturday. 

When Mulroney died on Feb. 29 at the age of 84, the House of Commons suspended operations before going on a pre-planned two-week break.

MPs returned Monday on a sombre note as leaders and MPs rose to pay tribute to Canada’s 18th prime minister.

Trudeau reminisced about one of his last encounters with Mulroney at his alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University, when they toured Mulroney Hall last year.

WATCH | Party leaders pay tribute to Brian Mulroney 

Party leaders pay tribute to Brian Mulroney

2 hours ago

Duration 3:49

Federal party leaders stood in the House of Commons Monday to honour the legacy of former prime minister Brian Mulroney ahead of the state funeral, to be held on Saturday.

Trudeau said that as they walked together through a replica of the prime minister’s Centre Block office, they reflected on the “wisdom that he and my dad both shared, that leadership, fundamentally, is about getting the big things right, no matter what your political stripe or your style.”

“He wouldn’t let himself succumb to temporary pressure. He was motivated by service. And those things, those big things, have stood the test of history four decades and counting,” he said.

Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives governed Canada from 1984 to 1993. He won two majority governments and steered Canada through several consequential policy decision points, including free trade with the United States, the end of the Cold War and the introduction of the GST.

“He had the wisdom to understand that the best way to fight back was to embrace our friends,” said Trudeau, who leaned on Mulroney when free trade negotiations were reopened with the Donald Trump administration.

“Brian Mulroney’s principles helped shape this nation, and the world, for the better, and we will all continue that work.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre opened his remarks by describing Mulroney’s humble origin as the son of a paper mill electrician in the forestry town of Baie-Comeau, Que.

“I was just becoming aware there was such a thing as prime minister when he had that job. And like millions of young people from similar backgrounds, we looked to him and said — if the Irish son of a working-class electrician from a mill town can rise to become prime minister, then in this country, anyone from anywhere can do anything,” Poilievre said to general applause.

Mulroney family members take part in a moment of silence prior to tributes to the late prime minister Brian Mulroney in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, March 18, 2024.
Mulroney family members take part in a moment of silence prior to tributes to the late prime minister Brian Mulroney in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, March 18, 2024. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

He also spoke of Mulroney’s famous personal touch, telling a story about meeting a mechanic in Ottawa whose father was a miner with the Iron Ore Company of Canada, when Mulroney served as its president.

Poilievre said that decades later, when the mechanic’s father died, Mulroney called the family, 

“That is kindness. That is humility,” he said

Poilievre said Mulroney elevated phone conversations to “an art form.”

“Using the telephone the way Michelangelo may have used a chisel or a brush, he would do it to make business deals, charm foreign leaders, and more importantly to comfort grieving or suffering friends,” said Poilievre.

“He would console, joke, or even throw in the odd curse about the unfairness of it all and his friends’ turmoil melted into the astonishment that one of the country’s greatest prime ministers had offered love and laughter.”

‘He can charm the birds out of the trees’: May

One of the people who received one of those phone calls was Elizabeth May, who worked as a policy adviser to Mulroney’s environment minister before becoming leader of the federal Green Party.

“I’d love to tell you what he said … he’s so darn funny, but I really can’t repeat it,” she told the House.

“There’s no real way to explain how he can charm the birds out of the trees. He sure as heck could.”

She praised the former prime minister for ushering in one of the world’s most successful environmental treaties, the Montreal Protocol.

“Brian Mulroney quite literally saved all life on earth when Canada stood up and launched the Montreal Protocol and saved the ozone layer,” she said.

“Let us continue to try to meet that example of a good-hearted, kind-spirited, generous and brilliant Canadian.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also applauded the former Progressive Conservative leader’s environmental record, his campaign against racial apartheid in South Africa and his respect for the role of journalists.

“Prime Minister Mulroney will be remembered as someone who took big chances while he was in office,” he said. “While there are great many issues, of course, he and I would not agree on, I want to acknowledge the legacy he leaves behind after a long career of dedicated public service.

“At a time of more heightened divisions, where some political leaders try to score points by pitting one group of people against another, Mr. Mulroney will be remembered as someone who tried to build unity.”

Bloc Quebecois MP Louis Plamondon, who was elected as an MP in Mulroney’s party the year he became prime minister, said he will be remembered as a great Canadian and a great Quebecer.

“He loved Mila, his wife and lifelong companion. He was so proud of his children and he cherished his role as a grandfather,” he said in French.

State funeral this Saturday 

Mulroney will lie in state on Tuesday and Wednesday in Ottawa near Parliament Hill. Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and Trudeau are set to offer condolences to the Mulroney family Tuesday morning.

His casket will then travel to Montreal ahead of the state funeral at St. Patrick’s Basilica on Saturday. 

His daughter Caroline, longtime friend and colleague Jean Charest and hockey star Wayne Gretzky will deliver the eulogies.

The funeral ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. ET and is expected to last two hours.

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An NDP motion puts a big question to the test: Will Canada recognize Palestinian statehood?

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An opposition day motion brought forward by the NDP’s foreign affairs critic Monday could set the cat among the pigeons in the federal Liberal caucus.

The non-binding motion calls on the government to take a number of actions in response to the war in the Middle East, including that it should “officially recognize the State of Palestine.”

The motion was sponsored by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh with the party’s foreign affairs critic, Heather McPherson, acting as the point person.

“We wrote this in a way that it’s not supposed to be a ‘gotcha’ motion,” she said.

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“This was supposed to be a motion that aligned with international law, aligns with Canadian policy. So we’re hopeful that we will have some support from the Liberals and we’re certainly seeing more movement from them over the last few days.”

‘I expect there will be a split:’ Liberal MP

But the motion is also expected to divide the government caucus.

“It’s not the perfect motion by any means, and no motion is. But when you look at the broad strokes of it, this is a push to support human rights,” said Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, who told CBC News that he will back it despite reservations.

“And I think it emphasizes Canada’s role in this, which is to focus on and preserve human rights and peace.”

A politician holding a piece of paper.
NDP Member of Parliament for Edmonton—Strathcona Heather McPherson is shown in the House of Commons on April 27, 2022. She is acting as point person on the opposition day motion. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Erskine-Smith, MP for the Toronto riding of Beaches—East York, says he has heard a wide range of views from his constituents on the topic, but “my inbox is full of people saying, ‘We want the violence to end, we want civilians to be protected, we don’t want to see more casualties. We don’t want to see more kids die. And Canada has to do more to end the violence.'”

Erskine-Smith also knows that his view is not shared by everyone in his party.

“I expect there will be a split,” he said. “I think the government position will obviously matter a great deal to my colleagues.”

‘A huge slap in the face:’ Housefather

One Liberal who definitely intends to oppose the motion is Montreal’s Anthony Housefather.

“It’s incredibly meaningful in the sense that this would be a huge slap in the face to the vast majority of Canada’s Jewish community,” he told CBC News.

Housefather, MP for Mount Royal, says he objects to clauses in the motion that call for an immediate ceasefire, and for the suspension of all sales of military equipment to Israel.

He called it an “anti-Israel motion.”

“Because it’s a motion that essentially rewards Hamas for attacking Israel,” Housefather said.

“It changes 50 years of consecutive Liberal and Conservative governments positions on the recognition of a Palestinian state to move away from the fact that it’s something that would have to be negotiated by the parties where they agree on a territory and normally do recognize the state.”

A man wearing a suit speaks in front of microphones.
Liberal Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather talks to reporters as he arrives to a caucus meeting in Ottawa on Nov. 8. He has hinted that he may leave the Liberal caucus if cabinet members back Palestinian statehood. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Housefather pointed out that no G7 country has yet recognized Palestinian statehood; Canada would be the first.

Indeed, a map of the world shows a stark North-South and East-West split on recognition. Of the UN’s 193 member states, 139 have recognized Palestine, including almost every country in South and Central America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe (mostly from their time in the Soviet Bloc).

Trudeau’s eight years in office have produced a more uniformly anti-Palestinian UN voting record than even his famously pro-Israel predecessor Stephen Harper, but there have been some recent adjustments.

Starting in 2019, the Trudeau government began to vote in favour of an annual motion supporting Palestinian self-determination, although the prime minister has played down the significance of the change in comments to the Jewish community.

The Trudeau government has also sought to prevent Palestine from advancing its case for statehood through the courts.

Three different Liberal foreign ministers have written to the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court asking it to refuse to hear Palestinian cases, partly on the grounds that Israel does not recognize the court.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has personally written to Trudeau to ask for those Canadian interventions on behalf of Israel.

When the International Court of Justice met last month to consider the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” the Trudeau government’s submission again asked it to refuse to hear the case on the grounds that Israel did not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, and that those matters were best left to negotiations between the parties.

The argument is not if, but when

McPherson says that Canada’s official position that there should not be movement toward recognition until after final-status talks between the two parties is “an excuse.”

“This is a moment in time where we need to come up with a better solution for peace in the Middle East,” she said.

Housefather says he agrees that “the two-state solution is absolutely necessary.”

But “this is not the time to recognize a Palestinian state suddenly in contradiction to what our policy has been for decades. Because what this would do is say the policy has changed,” he said.

“Why has the policy changed? Because Hamas started a war. And so I would be aghast, aghast if Canada changed its position as a result.”

McPherson disagrees.

“I don’t believe that stopping killing children, the end of the bloodshed, the end of starvation, getting humanitarian aid to innocent people, getting the conflict to stop so that we are, we are able to move toward something that’s more peaceful and just for Israelis and Palestinians, I don’t think that’s rewarding Hamas,” she said.

US, UK, France all inch toward recognition

Canada is not the only country where the idea of unilateral recognition of Palestine, without waiting for Israel, has gained ground since the war in Gaza began.

The Biden administration, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron and French President Emmanuel Macron have all sent signals that they are moving in that direction.

Last month the Biden official leaked the news that it was not just thinking about recognition, but actively drawing up plans for recognition to go into effect once the war in Gaza ends.

That came just days after Cameron, a former prime minister, said British recognition of Palestine “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process.”

Last month France’s Emmanuel Macron said his country had come to the same conclusion.

“Recognizing a Palestinian state is not a taboo for France,” Macron said after meeting in Paris with Jordan’s King Abdullah.

“We owe it to Palestinians, whose aspirations have been trampled on for too long. We owe it to Israelis, who lived through the worst antisemitic massacre of our time.”

Warnings of red lines

Some of the measures the motion calls for have already happened. For example, it calls on the government to “immediately reinstate funding and ensure long-term continued funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and support the independent investigation.”

Canada restored funding to UNRWA on March 8, and has said it will support the investigations by both the UN’s investigative office and by former French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.

The motion also calls on the government to “support the work of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court,” which the government has said it will do.

Housefather says he knows some of his caucus colleagues will support Monday’s motion, but he’s less concerned with how backbenchers vote than members of cabinet.

“I will be actively watching what the government position is on Monday, how the vote goes. And I will obviously, as I continue to do, speak out in terms of what I believe is right,” he said.

Housefather hinted that he might not remain in caucus if cabinet members backed recognition.

McPherson says she is hoping for a win but knows the vote faces an uphill climb.

“We’re working as hard as we can to convince folks that this is the right path forward, that this is a fundamental shift in our foreign policy in the right direction,” she said.

It’s not clear which way the Bloc Québécois will go, although the party has sent signals of openness to the motion

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