July 24^th, 2014

The TSSU affirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people. We condemn the recent aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli military, and we call upon Israel to end its rocket fire and colonial occupation of all Palestinian territories. We join with Palestinian academics and anti-occupation activists in calling for an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, an ongoing act of war, as a condition of ceasefire[1].

The invasion of Gaza and the preceding air strikes breach the laws of war. As Human Rights Watch notes in their July 16^th, 2014 report, “Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes Kill Civilians”, the aerial salvoes—the bombing of homes, hospitals, and universities in Gaza—unlawfully target civilian structures, according to international humanitarian law. Likewise, the civilian population in Gaza has suffered disproportionately. The United Nations cites civilians as the majority of those killed; among those killed pre-invasion, as many as 77% of the dead were civilians.

Civilians are dying because nowhere in Gaza is safe. No Palestinian can reasonably expect to escape as their open-air prison home is bombarded because Israeli border controls and checkpoints hold them vulnerable. As Israel treats every Palestinian indiscriminately as an enemy combatant, the TSSU supports every Palestinian’s right to resist Israeli occupation and war.

TSSU is a union of university teachers who work on the unceded and occupied territories of the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, Squamish, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen nations in southwestern British Columbia. We support Indigenous sovereignty on these territories, as we support Palestinian self-determination against Israeli colonialism. We consider these struggles aligned.

In January, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the Israeli Knesset, celebrated the free trade agreement between Israel and Canada while Gaza remains under Israeli trade blockade, and cited a “moral imperative” and the “strategic importance” of Canada’s “unequivocal” support of Israel’s existence “as a Jewish state.”[2] Canada’s blank cheque to Israeli apartheid and colonial occupation is an extension of the logic of Canada’s colonial policies at home. For example, on the ground, the ongoing expansion of Canada’s resource economy on stolen Indigenous land violates Indigenous peoples’ right to free and prior informed consent of uses of their lands, as guaranteed by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Canada is a signatory.[3]

The TSSU urges the government of Canada to end its policy of staunch, unmitigated support for Israeli apartheid as part of ending colonialism in Palestine and on Turtle Island, and to call for an immediate ceasefire including ending the criminal blockade of Gaza.

In Solidarity,

Chair of the TSSU Social Justice Committee; signing in behalf of the TSSU membership