Please add your name to the letter below. Names will only be published after at least 100 people have signed. Names of active national team athletes will be kept confidential until we receive enough names and have one-on-one discussions with active national team athletes who have signed.
To get involved with organizing Canadian athletes and coaches, please email canadiansportforpalestine@gmail.com. Follow @canadiansportforpalestine on instagram for more info.
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In response to the horrific atrocities that have been occurring in Palestine for the last 8 months, more and more athletes around the world have shown their support for Palestinian liberation and are advocating for an end to Israel’s decades-long violent occupation of Palestine. These efforts include “Irish Sport For Palestine” in Ireland, and “AthletesForCeasefire” in the United States, among others.
We have come together as members of the Canadian sporting community to voice our opposition to the enabling role that the Government of Canada is playing while Israel commits unconscionable acts of violence against the Palestinian people. Numerous academics, governments, NGO’s, and UN special rapporteurs have said that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has, on three occasions, issued orders that direct Israel to stop all genocidal acts (January 26, March 28, May 24). Israel has acted in blatant defiance of each of these ICJ rulings soon after they were issued. In the ICJ’s latest ruling on May 24th, Israel was ordered to immediately halt its offensive in Rafah, the southernmost part of the Gaza strip. Israel first forced over one million Palestinian refugees to evacuate to Rafah and subsequently began to bomb the area. It continues to do so.
The Government of Canada is maintaining its support for Israel even as Israel murders and starves Palestinians en masse. Canada is part of a small international minority that votes with Israel against UN General Assembly resolutions seeking to uphold the rights of Palestinian people. Canada also exports and imports millions of dollars in weapons and military goods to and from Israel every year, and has continued to do so even following Israel’s most recent military campaign that began in October. This must stop if Palestinian lives are to be saved.
As Canadians, we cannot advocate for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine without also advocating for an end to our government’s own violent occupation of Indigenous lands here. As stated in the opening of the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, “For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, and religious, and racial entities in Canada.” After 8 years, only 13 of the 94 calls to action outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been fulfilled.
The unwillingness of the Government of Canada to repair the ongoing harm it causes Indigenous peoples here has been on display recently through violent raids conducted by government agencies to force oil and gas pipelines through Indigenous territories – namely the Trans Mountain pipeline through Secwepemc territory and the Coastal GasLink pipeline through Wet’suwet’en territory. These same government agencies have been used to police protests that advocate for an end to Canada’s complicity in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The Canadian Government has demonstrated that it is not committed to reconciliation or international peace. As members of the Canadian sporting community, we cannot in good conscience represent this country on the international stage while its Government refuses to atone for the violence on which this country was founded and enables violence elsewhere. We will work to continue the legacy of athletes who have used their platforms to speak up for the human rights of all people, including John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Muhammad Ali, and more recently Colin Kaepernick and Raven Saunders. We pledge to cover the Canadian flag or logo on our national team competition uniforms until the the following calls to action are completed:
We call on the Government of Canada to support an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
We call on the Government of Canada to enact a two way arms embargo with the state of Israel by:
Suspending all future and previously approved exports of weapons and military goods to Israel.
Suspending all future and previously approved imports of weapons and military goods from Israel.
Banning exports of weapons and military goods that go to Israel via the United States.
We call on the Government of Canada to end its own occupation of Indigenous lands and to account for the harm that Canada continues to inflict on Indigenous communities by:
