A group of Sudburians came together downtown Feb. 14 to call for an end to hostilities in the Gaza Strip in Israel.
Gathering in front of Sudbury MP Viviane Lapointe’s Cedar Street office, approximately 20 rally participants held signs and called out “Free Palestine.”
Ongoing since Oct. 7, the overall Palestinian death toll from the war in Gaza has surpassed 28,000 people, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. The Associated Press is reporting that a quarter of Gaza's residents are starving.
A raid took place on Feb. 12 in Rafah, a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled to escape fighting elsewhere in the Israel-Hamas war. Women and children were among those killed in the airstrikes, Palestinian officials said.
It is news like this, all of it shown on screens around the world, that drew participants to rally in front of the federal politicians office, organizers said.
One organizer, community activist Laurie McGauley, told Sudbury.com it was sheer desperation that led the group to organize.
“The reality is that we're just desperate at this point, so we are desperately trying to get our MP, the closest we've got to any kind of power around here right now, to actually do something and to condemn what's going on right now,” she said.
An information sheet with their demands was circulated.
It begins with “Free Palestine.”
“We are a group of Sudburians who are appalled at Canada’s complicity with Israel’s genocide of Palestinians,” it reads. “We are asking people to send emergency messages to demand immediate action to stop the slaughter of innocents.”
Their demands of the Canadian government include:
- Call for an immediate end to Israel’s military assault on Gaza
- Immediately restore Canada’s funding for UNRWA to provide critical essential aid to Gaza
- Immediately suspend all military and other aid to Israel
McGauley said she finds it “appalling” that most civilians simply watching a genocide occur on television.
“It's actually appalling how disorganized we are in the face of this,” she said. “It's been going on since October.”
She said many members of a local Palestine Solidarity group on Facebook, some of whom co-organized the rally, are Palestinian, but McGauley feels it is an unfair burden to add activism to their grief, and that is why there is the need for more support.
McGauley feels the Canadian government will wrongly, but steadfastly, follow the lead of the American government on this issue.
“Canada wasn't always like this. Canada used to take some stance around these kinds of things,” she said. “We're just hoping to put some pressure on the federal government, because that's the least we can do at this point.”
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter at Sudbury.com.
