Honourable senators, I arrived in Canada in 1979 to attend an international school named after Lester Pearson. One of my roommates was Karim from Egypt. He taught me the only Arabic words I know, ya habibi, which means “my love.” He used it as an affectionate term for his roomies — and his girlfriends.

I also met Anees and Nasir, two of the first Palestinian-Arab refugees who received scholarships to study in Canada. Their families had been displaced by the Nakba or the “catastrophe” of 1948.

I vividly remember having passionate discussions with them and with fellow students from Israel on the question of Palestinian statehood. It seemed to me at the time the establishment of a Palestinian state was both just and inevitable, and very likely something I would see in my lifetime.

Forty-four years on, not only do we not have a Palestinian state, but we are witnessing before our very eyes the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and the forced relocation of civilians from their places of residence, presumably to make way for Israeli settlements — in effect, a continuation of Nakba.

You may already know the official figures: more than 43,000 killed, including upwards of 17,000 children. What you perhaps don’t know is that a July 2024 paper in The Lancet estimates that 186,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone since October 7 either from direct military action or from starvation, malnutrition, disease, exposure and lack of access to medical facilities. This much larger number of casualties is an account of Israel’s policy of restricting humanitarian aid such that essential medicines and food are not getting to civilians in Gaza.

For the record, the Government of Canada’s position as articulated by its representative in the Senate, and cheered on by the Conservatives, is that civilian casualties in war are unfortunate, humanitarian aid to Gaza is not being impeded and it is all the fault of Hamas anyway.

In December 2023, the government launched a temporary residence visa program for Gazans with Canadian family ties. It is unclear whether the program has facilitated the exit of any Palestinians from Gaza.

The Canadian government has the capacity and ability to expedite approvals for the immediate exits of Palestinians from Gaza, as they did rightly with Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. But the government, instead, is choosing to abandon Palestinians in Gaza including Canadians who have Palestinian families. Here is what over 40 civil society groups have said about the program, “Anti-Arab, and specifically anti-Palestinian racism, saturates every aspect of the Special Measures program.”

The world is looking with horror at the situation in Gaza. We have had multiple UN General Assembly resolutions in support of Palestine. Canada has been on the wrong side of most of these votes, but I would note that on November 20, Canada supported a resolution to condemn illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. That we would vote to condemn illegal settlements should be a no-brainer, but we have failed to do so on the same motion for 13 years.

For all our rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution, our actions suggest we are offering lip service and often working at cross purposes.

Last month, the Canadian government refused to meet Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestine when she was in Ottawa. The official excuse is that she is anti-Semitic, a claim that has been rejected by many Jewish leaders and anti-Semitism experts.

I suspect the real reason is that our political leaders cannot bear to listen to the fact of war crimes in Gaza that expose the hypocrisy, duplicity and, dare I say, the complicity of Canadian foreign policy in violations of international humanitarian law.

It is not just that Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon are suffering at the hands of the Israelis. Arab Canadians, especially Palestinian Canadians, are also being shunned in silence for expressing their views on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, and the weapon of choice increasingly is the charge of anti-Semitism.

I do not dispute that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic acts across Canada, and I reject all forms of hatred towards Jews as individuals, groups or as a collective. But it is not anti-Semitic to argue that Germans and Italians should be at the forefront of the opposition to the assault on Gaza or that our collective obliviousness to what led 100 years ago to the Third Reich’s genocide of people not in conformity with the “pure race” is leading to the commission of yet another genocide.

I am paraphrasing Special Rapporteur Albanese’s remarks, but these are the ideas that our government has labelled as anti‑Semitic and used as the reason for not meeting with her when she was in Ottawa.

The so-called working definition of anti-Semitism that has been endorsed by the government means that Palestinians, indeed all Canadians, including Jewish Canadians, who make deep criticisms of Zionism in Israel can be accused of anti-Semitism. For example, calling for boycotts, divestment and sanctions directed at Israel or at supporters of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the West Bank could be labelled anti-Semitic.

This weaponization of language represents an assault on free speech, legitimate political debate and political activism. It suppresses the views and rights of a minority — especially Palestinian Arabs — who have a particular stake in that debate. It is, colleagues, the antithesis of celebrating Arab heritage.

Take the recent uproar over the singing of an Arabic song during a Remembrance Day ceremony at an Ontario high school. Provincial and federal politicians, including members of Parliament who voted in support of this bill, expressed outrage over the use of Arabic during the ceremony. Imagine that — the use of Arabic in a Canadian school! Well, honourable colleagues, if we truly respect and celebrate Arab heritage, we can surely welcome an Arabic song at a ceremony to remember Canadian veterans whose ranks, of course, include Arab Canadians.

After all, we have welcomed expressions of Ukrainian culture at recent Remembrance Day ceremonies, and in my hometown of Vancouver, there is always a special Remembrance Day ceremony in Chinatown for Chinese-Canadian veterans. For the record, the song “Haza Salam” is a lament for peace. If there was any potential harm to students from this incident, it is in the graffiti that appeared outside the school labelling it as “Hamas High.” Where is the outrage against the threat to Canadian students of Palestinian and Arab ancestry?

Here we are, colleagues, on the cusp of passing a bill to mark April as the month to celebrate Arab heritage seemingly oblivious to the fact that the single biggest threat to Arab heritage is the callousness with which we regard Arab lives in the Israeli war on Palestine and Lebanon as well as the suppression of Palestinian views on Gaza right here in Canada. Are we seriously thinking of passing a bill to celebrate Arab heritage without any reflection of how Canadian policy is aiding and abetting the slaughter of Arabs in the Middle East?

Doing so would make April, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “the cruellest month.” In the aftermath of World War I, Eliot cast April not in its usual role as a harbinger of better times but as a moment of bitterness and painful memories. The title of his poem is The Waste Land, which pretty much sums up the way Israel has rendered Gaza since its response to the reprehensible Hamas attack of October 7.

To be clear, I take no issue with the examples of Arab-Canadian accomplishment in Canada that have been highlighted by colleagues in this chamber and in the other place. There is much to celebrate about the Arab presence in Canada, which dates to the late 19th century.

The first Lebanese migrants to British Columbia, brothers Abraham and Farris Ray, arrived in 1888. They worked as itinerant peddlers in Victoria. Many early Lebanese immigrants also worked in Vancouver Island’s forestry industry. In 2023, the Lebanese Emigration Plaza was inaugurated at Centennial Park on the southern shore of Victoria Harbour. I had a chance to visit the plaza earlier this year and view The Lebanese Emigrant statue, which is a replica of statues in Halifax and several other cities that have prominent, historical connections to the Lebanese diaspora.

We should indeed celebrate Arab-Canadian heritage and the contributions of Arab Canadians to this country in April and every other month. But let’s not do Arabs the dishonour of passing a bill in haste that wilfully ignores the suffering of Arabs in Palestine and Lebanon and the silencing of Arab Canadians because of their views on the situation in Palestine.

I hope other honourable colleagues will join the debate and that we will take the time to reflect on what it means to celebrate Arab heritage in the face of Canada’s stance towards Palestinian Arabs and the blatant anti-Palestinian racism that pervades society.

We can start by observing International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People this Friday, an observance that was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1977. Canada, by the way, voted against that resolution. It was, of course, November 29, 1947, that the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine.

When the time comes for us to call the question, I will vote in favour of the bill not just to celebrate and honour Arab heritage, but to protest our collective complacency about genocide and crimes against humanity in Palestine and to express the lament for peace that is captured in “Haza Salam” — that ya habibi is what it should mean to declare April as Arab heritage month. Not as in The Waste Land of T.S. Eliot, but The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote:

When in April the sweet showers fall

That pierce March’s drought to the root and all

And bathed every vein in liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower . . .

Thank you for your attention.