Hundreds of symbolic coffins were stacked up in Queen’s Park on Friday, a piece of paper attached to each, proclaiming the name of a person that has been killed as a result of increasing violence in the Middle East.
Members of numerous religious communities gathered in a crowd of over 300 at Ontario’s legislature to call on the Canadian government to assist in putting an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Shira Taylor, a student from York University, has both Jewish and Palestinian family.
She lived in Israel last year, and witnessed events that eventually brought her to Queen’s Park on Palestinian Land Day, holding a sign saying “End the Occupation.”
“Without ending the occupation, I don’t think there is a solution. That has to be a beginning, before we can even begin to talk about anything else.”
On March 30, 1976, six Palestinian Arab Israelis were killed during protests against massive land confiscation by the Israeli government. Every year since then, Arab Israelis and Palestinians commemorate Land Day on March 30.
“Israel is occupying a country and has been doing so for thirty years. I lived there for the last year during the intifada—it’s apartheid,” said Taylor. “There’s a reason to be anti-Israel right now.
“Once the occupation ends and they dismantle that apartheid system they’ve set up, then we’ll have a lot more to think about. For now, I think we need to be critical, and I say that as a Jewish person.”
Taylor travelled back and forth from Israel to the West Bank, and was disgusted by the day-to-day violence in the area.
When asked what struck her about the environment, she remembered “the check points, having to go around checkpoints…. Being harassed by soldiers, being humiliated and seeing them humiliate other people is pretty disgusting. It builds up a lot of anger. I just think we need to do something about it. It’s horrible.”
Jewish, Muslim, Arab and Pakistani students at York are beginning to organize a voice of resistance to the occupation.
Taylor is inspired by international delegations and Israeli and Palestinian groups that are travelling to the occupied territories to take part in non-violent actions and protests. “I hope that we can learn from that and continue.”
