Nov 02

IWC-CTI stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people

The Immigrant Workers Centre stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people

The Immigrant Workers Center strongly condemns the war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza, including the unscrupulous murder of thousands of civilians and the massive deportation pressure that has caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. We recall that the root source of the violence lies in the apartheid and illegal occupation imposed by Israel on the Palestinian people. The Zionist regime has been denounced for several years by international NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, for its apartheid practices.

We deplore the unprecedented lack of nuance in the reactions of the Canadian and Quebec political classes, which amounts to implicit endorsement of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Let’s not forget that the Canadian government remains a major geopolitical ally of Israel, notably through the sale of arms and military equipment, which totaled $18 million in 2020 alone. Clearly, the Canadian government, in collusion with the United Kingdom and the United States, is working above all for its own geopolitical interests, ignoring the devastating humanitarian consequences of its actions.

At the same time, Canada is profiting from the destabilization of Third World countries through its own migration policies. The various so-called “temporary” immigration programs, including the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, enroll hundreds of thousands of migrants forced to leave their homelands because of the miserable living conditions caused, among other things, by the international policies of Canada and other imperialist powers. These same migrants, victims of colonial and imperialist oppression in their own countries, find themselves domestically exploited in programs that curtail their right to mobility, make their status more precarious, and promote their exploitation below normal market conditions. Thousands of asylum seekers, too, find themselves caught up in endless bureaucratic processes with no guarantee of stability, and exploited in jobs at the bottom of the ladder for which they are massively overqualified.

Community and trade union organizations, academics and opposition parties have a duty today to denounce this unacceptable blunder by our government. While billionaires, oligopolies and Western governments have been almost unanimous in their support for Israel, the peoples of the world are with Palestine.

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