Rabbi David Mivasair is a member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada and a long-time active member of the New Democratic Party (NDP). Resident of Hamilton, ON Mivasair worked at Vancouver’s Ahavat Olam progressive synagogue and First United Church homeless shelter.
On February 6, 2022, Sabrina Fuqhaa interviewed David Mivasair for CanArTVLive. Here are excepts from David Mivasair’s statements:
Something like 80% of the people living in Gaza are refugees and descendants of refugees. To say refugees means, in 1948 they were driven out of their homes by armed gangs of Jews. They destroyed their homes. They killed people. So, 80% of the people in Gaza; they don’t belong in Gaza. They belong at home in the rest of Palestine… I’m not anti-Zionist. I just think Israel has become a criminal enterprise, and actually, it started that way. Israel was born by expelling the people who lived there, right? That’s horrible. I can say that, and I can still think, wait a minute, I’m actually not an anti-Zionist… Honestly, I would send that message to my fellow Jews around the world, particularly, living in Israel, and the message would be, honestly, I want to say: Try to open your heart, try to get over your fears. You know, your fear is literally from centuries and centuries of powerlessness, victimization, Jews being oppressed. All that’s true, but that doesn’t have to be the way it is now. And I think so much of what we’re doing is reinforcing a cycle of violence and Injustice, and we can change that. We have partners [Palestinians]. We have human people, normal people just like us, and we can connect with them, we can live with them, we don’t need to be afraid of them, and it’s up us to make that change.
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