Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the opportunity last week to raise an important question about Iran's role fomenting violence on Israel's border, and the government's failure to point the finger in the right direction in light of the terrible loss of life that occurred at that border.
In my question, I referenced statements by the Palestinian ambassador to France, who acknowledged that “Iran is fully financing and pushing the Hamas demonstrations”.
While the West Bank is controlled by the Palestinian Authority, an organization certainly with problems, but which has expressed its commitment to peace and to a two-state solution, the Gaza strip is totally controlled by a violent terrorist group, Hamas, whose sole aim is the violent defeat and destruction of Israel.
Canada must work with the Palestinian people to support and build the capacity of a legitimate representative government, but this requires the isolation and defeat of Hamas. Although Israel is their target, the Palestinian people are Hamas's first victims. Hamas is shameless in its efforts to increase and use the suffering of the Palestinian people for its own cynical political ends.
How else do we explain its actions? In the midst of a humanitarian crisis, Hamas has repeatedly refused to allow Israel to send aid into the Gaza Strip. It blames the occupation, but there is no occupation in Gaza. It blames the blockade, while it refuses aid, and it repurposes aid and other forms of support as tools to attack Israel. Its charter is explicit that it will countenance no peace accords, that its goal is to attack, to annihilate Israel, and to continue to do so without any compromise whatsoever.
If we look at the record of Hamas, it has always focused its resources and its efforts into attacking Israel. It has invested in rockets, when it could have been investing in schools, opportunity, and support for Palestinian young people. It built terror tunnels to try to attack Israel, when it could have been building infrastructure, again that the Palestinian people need.
Japan sent kites for Palestinian children to use, to have some joy in flying kites. Instead, those kites were repurposed as another tool with which to attack Israel, trying to set fire to nearby towns. The so-called “Great Return March”, organized by Hamas is typical of Hamas tactics. It mixes civilians and militants together in a violent march on Israel's border, aiming to use the Palestinian people as human shields, and thus to be able to infiltrate Israel with militants who could then carry out violent attacks.
This is tragic for the Palestinian people, but the perpetrator must be clearly identified as the Hamas terrorist group. We took issue in the opposition with the fact that the Prime Minister issued a statement about violent clashes at the border that made no mention of Hamas. I would ask, what does it mean to be a friend and ally to Israel? The government professes its friendship with Israel. The government is not much of a friend if, in the midst of a violent attack on the border, Canada fails to name the attacker and instead crafts a statement which singles out Israel for responsibility.
I would ask, how would Canada respond in a similar situation? How could Canada respond if there were a violent march on our border aimed at infiltrating our territory and attacking Canadian civilians? How would Canada respond? That is my question for the parliamentary secretary. Why this one-sided statement singling out of Israel, and not mentioning—