Letter to the Editor: On welcoming the stranger

By Dr. Asher Kirchner and Peter Driftmier

(Calgary) – As Canadians, we look back proudly at how our country, in recent years, opened its doors to Syrian and Ukrainian refugees. As Canadian Jews, previous generations of our own people have come to this land as refugees. But we remember Canada’s painful history of antisemitism: in the 1930’s and 40’s, when the Jews of Europe desperately sought refuge from Nazi genocide, Canada closed its borders to them: “None is too many,” a Canadian official remarked. Our religious tradition clearly teaches “welcoming the stranger” as one of its highest values. In other words, the plight of refugees weighs, or ought to weigh, heavily on us as Jewish Canadians.

Unfortunately, both our Canadian government and our mainstream Jewish institutions have abandoned the Palestinians of Gaza desperately seeking refuge in Canada. About one year ago, the federal government announced a Temporary Residency Visa (TRP) program for Gazans escaping the war. At first, they capped the number at 1,000 individuals eligible to be let in to reunite with family in Canada, then it was expanded to 5,000. So far, only a few hundred have made it.

By contrast, Canada has welcomed almost 300,000 Ukrainians. Since October 7, 2023 almost 8,000 Israelis have made it to Canada. Neither group faces the plethora of restrictions and obstacles that the Canadian government imposes on Gazans. Yet Gazans face a humanitarian disaster unimaginable to any Canadian: famine and malnutrition, a broken-down health system that sees war amputations occurring often without proper anesthetic, the vast majority of the population rendered internal refugees (and often displaced multiple times over). According to an analysis by Oxfam: “More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.”

Our hearts break for our Palestinian Canadian friends and neighbours who wait with anxiety and anguish for Canada to finally allow in their family members, and for Canada to pressure Israel and Egypt to let the refugees out.  As Jews, we have no quarrel with Palestinian civilians. Unfortunately, a rather un-Jewish us-vs.-them mentality has crept into the thinking of some Jewish institutions – as though any concern for Palestinian well-being somehow constitutes a threat to Jews. In recent decades, we thought that the “none is too many” attitude had been relegated to the dustbin of history. But now, government inaction, and the silence of our Jewish institutions, demonstrate an approach that is all too similar.

Dr. Asher Kirchner is a retired professor of linguistics living in Edmonton. Peter Driftmier is a social worker and mental health therapist working with refugee youth in Calgary. Both have spent over a decade combined on boards of local synagogues and Jewish organizations, have spent months volunteering with human rights organizations in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and are co-founders of Reform Jews for Human Rights.