This letter was originally published in the Hub as a part of their commentary, There is no going back’: the Hub reacts to the one year anniversary of the October 7th attacks on Israel.
By Karen Restoule, October 7, 2024
Over the past year, we’ve seen an alarming rise in the use of words like “colonizer,” “settler,” and “decolonize” here in Canada to justify the atrocities committed by Hamas and other terrorist groups funded by Iran’s Islamic regime on October 7th and beyond.
Shockingly, anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian activists were quick to use this “oppressor vs. oppressed” narrative to defend expressions of violence and terror. They have have built a following by tapping into popular narratives of social justice warriors and Indigenous rights activists that resonate with many across university campuses and other progressive circles.
Every single week for the past year, these activists have taken to the streets in cities across Canada to openly glorify acts of terror against Israel and Jews in the diaspora.
They have disrupted university campuses by setting up encampments to symbolize what they perceive to be Palestinian justified “resistance” to Israeli oppressors. Their most recent ploy was seen on September 18th, when activists hijacked the Grassy Narrows First Nation River Run Rally and co-opted Toronto public school students ages 12 to 14 into their ideologically driven demonstration, chanting, “Turtle Island to Lebanon, Israel will be gone.”
I’ve been very clear on my position: as a First Nations woman, I fundamentally reject this politically motivated attempt by these activists to co-opt our relationship with the Crown and appropriate Indigenous identity to justify these horrors.
This January, I joined a witness mission to Israel with six other Canadians to meet with survivors of the October 7th attacks. We spoke with families who had lost loved ones, the families of hostages, and those who lived through the terror.
The most uncomfortable questions we were regularly asked was: “What is wrong with Canada?” “Why don’t Canadians see that Israel is under attack by terrorists?” Their confusion and hurt was palpable.
I was embarrassed as a Canadian.
Extremism must never be tolerated or justified in any form, at home or abroad.
Karen Restoule is a senior fellow in Indigenous Affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and vice-president of strategy at Crestview Associates. She is Ojibwe from Dokis First Nation.
