(The following article is from the June 16-30, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

     The Canada Palestine Association has expressed "profound dismay" at a recent statement issued by the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Association (CPPA), composed of MPs who have expressed support for Palestinian rights. Marking the 60 years of Israel's statehood, the CPPA statement calls on the Canadian government and Parliamentarians to play a positive role in resolving the "60 years old Israeli/Palestinian conflict."

     "This statement totally ignored the Palestinian point of view, and it ignored the historic characterization of what happened in 1948, the Nakba," says the Canada Palestine Association. "In Palestine in 1948 a European settler colonialist movement, supported by imperial powers including Canada, uprooted two thirds of the Palestinian people from over one thousand cities, towns and villages and destroyed over four hundred and fifty towns and villages, wiping them off the face of the earth. In short these Zionist supremacist paramilitary forces ethnically cleansed Palestine from its people, and attempted to destroy a whole nation, their homes, their identity."

     Calling this a "conflict", says the Association, "ignore(s) the Palestinian narrative and conveniently forget(s) that in Canada, from coast to coast, and all over the world, millions of Palestinians and their genuine supporters commemorated the Nakba (catastrophe). In the entire CPPA statement the Nakba was not mentioned at all, as if our parliamentarians were implementing the Israeli wish that no one... should be allowed to use the word Nakba.

     "The CPPA statement also totally ignores the Palestinian Right of Return and UN resolution 194; it equates the occupier with the occupied, it equates the oppressor with the oppressed and finally it equates a dispossessed people with the fourth strongest military power on earth which possesses from 200-400 nuclear weapons.

     "Furthermore, the stated principles of the CPPA have shifted dramatically, even from their own pubic statement of Feb. 6, 2008 (which was already showing a change in priorities). No longer are they interested in a `viable and sovereign Palestinian state' or promoting `the best interests of the Palestinian people'...

     "In their Feb. 6 statement CPPA expressed their deep concern about the humanitarian `crisis' in Gaza and called on the Israeli Government to `ease' these severe conditions. In the same statement they condemned `rocket attacks on Israeli villages by Hamas where Israeli civilians are subjected to serious threats' but voiced no condemnation of any Israeli military activity including extra-judicial assassinations, the murder of Palestinian civilians and children by Israeli bombardment and the razing of agricultural land and livelihood.

     "When the CPPA was formed in April 2007, there was hope that after 60 years, there would finally be a courageous voice in the Canadian parliament that would speak out for the inalienable national and human rights of the Palestinians. Sadly, the CPPA has failed us and all peace-loving Canadians. Rebranding has been successful; their name Canada Palestine Parliamentary Association is an affront to all those who have sacrificed in so many ways to bring genuine peace with justice to the Middle East and who dream of a dignified and independent future for the Palestinian people."