Open Letter to the Assembly of First Nations

Dear Friends:

Following is a letter from Canada Palestine Association to the Assembly of First Nations regarding their recent trip to Israel. We are planning to release it Thursday 9:00 pm (PST) February 23.

We were overwhelmed by the initial response that we received so far, obviously the solidarity of all indigenous peoples is an issue that cries out for further attention. As an anti-racist organization, we will not accept any endorsement motivated by any kind of racism, be it anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, Anti-Muslim, Anti-Native or anti-Jewish racism.

After releasing the letter and submitting it to the AFN, we will still add more endorsers before posting it on our web site one week from the initial release. We will also inform the AFN of the new endorsers. If you would like to be listed as an endorser, please send your name or group's name with the city to Endorsements

We would like to thank everyone that has participated in this process and we look forward to hearing back from you.

Hanna Kawas, Canada Palestine Association

CANADA PALESTINE ASSOCIATION

Website

February 23, 2006
Open letter to the Assembly of First Nations

We are saddened, hurt and shocked by the visit of a delegation of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) to Israel, as well as the following statement attributed to AFN National Chief Phil Fontaine:

"Indigenous people in Canada have much in common with the people of Israel, including a respect of the land and their languages. This mission is an excellent opportunity for us to share our values and our traditional ways of life, in the hope of building greater understanding, awareness and respect for our similarities and differences, both at home and abroad".

Article Link

The victims of genocide at the hands of European settler colonialism cannot and should not give cover for another form of settler colonialism that has committed and continues to commit wholesale ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian people and nation. In 1948, over four hundred villages and towns were wiped off the Palestinian and world map and their cemeteries desecrated; two thirds of the Palestinian people were uprooted from their historic homeland and forced to live in reservations called refugee camps for the past fifty-eight years, most outside of their historic land. (See “All That Remains” By Prof. Walid Khalidi

Link to Article

Perhaps the chiefs, elders and leaders of the Assembly of First Nations don’t know the history of the Zionist movement. In fact, it was coined on the model of the European settler colonialist movement that preceded it four hundred years earlier and committed the genocide against the indigenous peoples. The Zionist movement was also built on the South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Algeria and other European settler colonialist models of the same era - late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Here is what the first Zionist Congress held in Basle, Switzerland (in Europe) in 1897 listed as some of the aims of the movement:

“Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a homeland in Palestine secured by public law. The congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:

1- The promotion on suitable lines of the colonization of Palestine by Jewish agricultural and industrial workers. (our emphasis)”

And Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, wrote in his book The Jewish State in 1896:

“We should there form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism. (our emphasis)”

So doesn’t this logic sound familiar? We are sure that it is painfully familiar to your ancestors and to your people who face racism on a daily basis.

We are sorry that we do not have the means to take you on similar tours to show you what is really happening in Palestine. Perhaps you should ask the hundreds of international volunteers, including Canadians, who paid their own way to go there and bear witness to the continuous Israeli brutality against the indigenous people of Palestine (See Palestine Solidarity ). We are sure your Israeli and Zionist hosts will never take you to see the remains of the four hundred villages that were systematically destroyed, nor will they show you the Apartheid wall, the refugee camps, the tens of thousands of uprooted trees nor will they tell you that over 95 per cent of the land that Israel sits on is stolen land from the indigenous Palestinian population. If Chief Fontaine thinks that Israel has respect for the land, he is either unaware or complicit in covering up the massive Israeli injustice against the indigenous people of Palestine.

We will be frank with you. In the name of the vanquished indigenous people, you are being used to justify and cover up not only the Israeli atrocities and war crimes committed against the Palestinian people but also Israeli support for racism and oppression against the peoples of Africa, Asia, central and south America.

This should not pass. The sooner you clarify your position, the sooner you will salvage your name and credibility. Already messages on the Internet are describing your collaboration with the Zionist organizations under the title: “Friends of neocolonialism meet”. We hope that you will not be remembered as friends of European settler colonialists who committed genocide against the Palestinian people and were motivated by conquest, greed and superiority, the same evil motivations that enslaved the Native people of the Americas.

It is an offence and a crime against our native brothers and sisters who are still living and to those who perished in the process of colonization, to associate with the crimes of the Israeli settler colonialist state that is committing genocide against the native people of Palestine.

Since the year 2000, over eight hundred Palestinian “Dudley Georges” were murdered every year at the hands of the neo-fascist regime in Israel.

Are these the people who you “have much in common with” and that you want to build cultural comparisons with? Are these the people you want to share your “values and … traditional ways of life” with?

If so, you are complicit in their war crimes and you should not do it in the name of the First Nations Peoples.

Indigenous peoples must never be a party to genocide against the Palestinian people nor any other oppressed people facing occupation, genocide and theft of their land and natural resources.

Endorsed by the following groups and individuals (group names listed with individuals for identification only)

Islamic Foundation of Toronto, Scarborough, Islamic Foundation of Toronto, Scarborough

ISM Vancouver

Palestine Community Center

Palestine House, Toronto

Palestine Solidarity Group

Simon Fraser University Palestinian Human Rights Committee (PHRC)

Al-Shorouq Arabic Newspaper, BC

Voice of Palestine, Vancouver

Helen Michell, spokesperson for the Bear Clan families of Maxan Lake

Sandra Joy Jones, Wilmington, De.

Splitting the Sky, Indigenous activist