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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">Pro-Israel blogger attacks Canada
First Nation chief, but Palestinians express solidarity with Idle No
More</h1>
<div class="submitted"> <span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2013-01-09T17:02:08+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username" xml:lang=""
about="/users/asa-winstanley" typeof="sioc:UserAccount"
property="foaf:name">Asa Winstanley</span> on Wed, 01/09/2013 - 17:02<br>
<small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/pro-israel-blogger-attacks-canada-first-nation-chief-palestinians-express">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/pro-israel-blogger-attacks-canada-first-nation-chief-palestinians-express</a></small></small><br>
</span> </div>
<div class="field-body">
<p>Liberal website The Huffington Post last week published an attack on
an indigenous rights activist who is on hunger strike in <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/canada">Canada</a>, labeling
her “the hungry chief mugging for the cameras on an island in the
Ottawa River.”</p>
<p>Writing on the Canadian edition of the site, anti-Palestinian
blogger Yoni Goldstein <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yoni-goldstein/theresa-spence-hunger-strike_b_2406802.html">openly
attacked Theresa Spence</a> as a “problem” responsible for indigenous
people’s woes in Canada and said he had “no sympathy” for her.</p>
<p>Goldstein once <a
href="http://www.the-boondocks.org/forum/index.php?t=tree&goto=108625&#page_top">wrote
an article</a> in right-wing Canadian paper <em>National Post</em>
lauding the work of <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/alan-dershowitz">Alan
Dershowitz</a>, the notorious anti-Palestinian lawyer and defender of
Israeli war crimes, as “valuable and significant.” He’s also written
for Israeli newspapers <em>Haaretz</em> and <em>The Jerusalem Post</em>.</p>
<p>More recently, he claimed former US presidential candidate <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mitt-romney">Mitt Romney</a> “<a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yoni-goldstein/palestine-israel_b_1736024.html">got
the Palestinians right</a>” in racist comments <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/mitt-romney-palestinian-culture-and-white-supremacism-responses-worth-reading">against
Palestinian culture</a> that Romney made during last year’s election
campaign.</p>
<p>In the disgustingly racist blog post on The Huffington Post Canada
last year, Goldstein wrote that even should all the problems created by
Israeli occupation be removed “the Palestinians [would] still have to
deal with [the problem of] their own culture, the very thing Romney was
alluding to.”</p>
<p>In <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yoni-goldstein/israel-africans_b_1598883.html">another
article</a>, he used the racist terminology of the “Palestinian <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/demographic-threat">demographic
problem</a> [which] poses immediate difficulties” (i.e. the specter of
too many Palestinian babies being born on territory controlled by
Israel).</p>
<h2>Chief Spence and Idle No More</h2>
<p>Chief of the <a href="http://www.attawapiskat.org">Attawapiskat
First Nation</a> in northern Ontario, Theresa Spence launched a hunger
strike last month in solidarity with <a href="http://idlenomore.ca">Idle
No More</a>, an indigenous rights movement that has swept Canada since
it was launched by four women in November.</p>
<p>The grassroots movement has been organizing teach-ins, flash mobs,
demonstrations and <a
href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/05-1">blockades</a>
to draw attention to its demands. At the center of these is the call to
revoke C-45, a new law <a
href="http://idlenomore.ca/index.php/about-us">activists say</a> is “a
legislative attack on First Nation people and the lands and waters
across the country.”</p>
<p>Spence is demanding a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/stephen-harper">Stephen Harper</a>,
and has vowed to continue hunger striking to draw attention to C-45 and
other items of legislation that threaten indigenous sovereignty and
degrade environmental protection.</p>
<h2>Blaming the victim</h2>
<p>While expressing a few empty words ostensibly in favor of Idle No
More, Goldstein lays blame on Spence and other First Nations Chiefs,
rather than the Canadian federal government: “She and other native
leaders are the biggest reason why native reserves are mostly
hellholes, filled with poverty, addiction, lack of education and
general misery.”</p>
<p>This hostile attitude puts him at odds with the Idle No More
movement. While <a
href="http://idlenomore.ca/index.php/item/74-face-and-leaders-of-idle-no-more-is-the-grassroots-people">a
statement on its web site</a> calls for caution on the Canadian media’s
focus on Spence, and that the leader of the movement is “the grassroots
people,” it also emphasizes that activists are “very grateful for
Theresa Spence’s honorable and courageous support.” Many demonstrators
have have adopted Spence’s demand for a meeting with Harper as one of
their own.</p>
<p>One of the movement’s founders warned on Tuesday that mainstream
media outlets were trying to create divisions within the movement and
expressed support for Spence: “We don’t have a separation between the
grassroots and chiefs… I’d like to shift the conversation back to our
federal government,” Sheelah McLean <a
href="http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Attawapiskat+audit+distraction+says+Idle+More+founder/7791974/story.html">told
a local Saskatchewan newspaper</a>.</p>
<p>Goldstein’s attempt to sow divisions within the movement would seem
to fall within this category.</p>
<h2>Palestinian solidarity with Idle No More</h2>
<p>In a short time, Idle No More seems to have inspired expressions of
solidarity from indigenous peoples <a
href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/idle-no-more-movement-goes-global-1.1101386">around
the world</a> – including Palestinians.</p>
<p>Palestinian and solidarity groups have signed a <a
href="http://uspcn.org/2012/12/23/palestinians-in-solidarity-with-idle-no-more-and-indigenous-rights/">statement
of solidarity</a>. Signatories include resistance icon <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/leila-khaled">Leila Khaled</a>,
and Iltezam Morrar, the popular resistance leader who helped lead her
village <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/budrus">Budrus</a>
against the wall being built on its land (as documented in the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/story-peoples-resistance-told-budrus/3590">film
of the same name</a>).</p>
<p>The statement reads:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As Palestinians, who struggle against settler colonialism,
occupation and apartheid in our homeland and for the right of
Palestinian refugees – the majority of our people – to return to our
homeland, we stand in solidarity with the Idle No More movement of
Indigenous peoples and its call for justice, dignity, decolonization
and protection of the land, waters and resources.</p>
<p>We recognize the deep connections and similarities between the
experiences of our peoples – settler colonialism, destruction and
exploitation of our land and resources, denial of our identity and
rights, genocide and attempted genocide</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It continues:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Canadian government, reflecting its own settler colonial
nature, was one of the earliest and strongest supporters of the
establishment of Israel as a settler colony on Palestinian land and has
since that time been a steadfast backer of Israeli wars, occupation,
colonization, and oppression against our people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Canadian establishment’s pro-Zionist stance only seem to have <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/canadas-tax-dollars-aid-israels-divide-and-rule-tactics/12003">increased
in recent years</a>, especially under the Conservative Harper
government.</p>
<p>That colonial entities should express mutual support for each other
will come as no surprise to indigenous peoples.</p>
<p>Learn more about Idle No More and Theresa Spence on the website, in <a
href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/172038/idle-no-mores-hunger-justice">this
report</a> on <em>The Nation</em> and in <a
href="http://fsrn.org/audio/canadian-protest-idle-no-more-pushes-indigenous-rights-political-change/11387">this
Free Speech Radio News report</a> from Montreal.</p>
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