Three major pro-Palestine voices in Canada are reflecting on how their lives have transformed ever since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, resulting in a full blown war between the two sides in the Gaza Strip that has captured the lives of tens of thousands of people so far.
The conflict has reverberated far beyond the battlefield with ripple effects felt in communities around the world, including Canada. Over the past year, some Canadians have faced professional consequences for speaking out on the conflict, particularly those who voiced strong opinions on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Several individuals lost their jobs or were reprimanded, especially in industries where social media presence plays a key role.
Canadians like Toronto-based journalist Pacinthe Mattar, school board trustee Sabreina Dahab and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) specialist Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui shared with Yahoo News Canada how a year of hostilities between Israel and Hamas — a war which now finds itself expanding through the region with Lebanon and Iran deeply involved — impacted their lives thousands of miles away from action here in Canada.
Discovering the ‘Palestine exception’ at work and realizing there are ‘limits to allyship’
Decolonial scholar activist Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui, who was a senior DEI advisor at Sheridan College, feels the last year taught her there were limits to the extents she could go to while advocating for the Palestinian cause at her workplace.
“One thing that has been the biggest lesson for me is that I have realized the limits of allyship and the limits of those who claim to stand in solidarity or maybe take a very critical view of the issue,” the social activist told Yahoo News Canada in a telephone interview.
“It became really obvious to me, you could be pro-justice for everything and everyone but when it comes to Palestine, it’s the exception and there are limits. I know many activists went through this during the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyd’s death.”
Pacinthe Mattar, who is a former CBC producer and a 2022 fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, shared a similar sentiment on “Palestine exception” at Canadian workplaces, revealing her tussle with self-censorship that took over following her time with CBC, years before the events of October 7.
“I left my job at CBC (in 2020) because of a story on Palestine. I basically learned to not touch it, I learned to not push too hard on it. I learned basically to fear coverage on the topic and I learned to even fear critiquing or asking questions about how we cover it,” Mattar told Yahoo News Canada.
“But October 7 meant for me pushing through that fear and that self-censorship that I really internalized and pushed a lot of that, saying yes to every single media interview request that I received in order to be able to talk about what we need to do to cover Israel and Palestine more accurately.”
Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board trustee Sabreina Dahab, who had a history of activism about Palestine before the events of October 7, was subjected to an external investigation as a result of her social media activity that followed the start of the war. However, as Dahab told Yahoo News Canada, the investigation was later dropped.
“They decided after months and months of trying to investigate that they were no longer interested in the matter and they just stopped doing it.”
What Oct. 7 did for Dahab was that it intensified her efforts to speak even louder for the cause of Palestine
“I was not going to shy away or be afraid of talking about the occupation in Palestine. I would definitely not be afraid of calling what it was – a genocide and an apartheid state. And about so many people in the West who have had to face censorship and repression because of being vocal.”
Oct. 7 reinforced my commitment to justice: Ghaffar-Siddiqui
Ghaffar-Siddiqui says the backlash to her pro-Palestine stance as the war rages on has made her more resilient and formidable in her advocacy for Palestine.
“I have taken personal risk by speaking about Palestine and I have faced very, very real backlash… I lost my job and that’s where I am right now.”
“That incident reinforced my commitment to justice that I couldn’t allow this to happen to people. It became even more clear that anti-Palestinian racism is very dangerous and silencing and removing people like me, experts, academics, people of conscience, especially professionals in leadership roles,” she said.
The DEI expert says she is no longer with Sheridan College following an internal complaint that resulted in her contract teaching role – which she was moved to from a senior DEI advisor position – not being renewed.
Oct. 7 had a similar impact on now-independent journalist Pacinthe Mattar, who found herself debating self-censorship before an all-out war broke out.
“Oct. 7 forced me to confront my own fears of self-censorship on Israel and Palestine, by having this conversation,” she said.
“Self-censorship comes from internalizing messages that we’ve been shown by leadership and by organizations. The only story of mine that didn’t air in 10 years of my work at CBC was the story on Palestine. There was no editorial conversation or debate or even ability to talk about what went wrong. But what I do know it was this interview that prevented me from enhancing and that’s why I ended up leaving. The Palestine exception is our inability to even talk about the coverage. Suddenly, it just disappears into thin air. I don’t understand to this day what specifically is the problem with that interview.”
The three women are reflecting on how their lives have changed over the last year at the same time as a group of protesters gathered at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sunday to mark the attacks and demand the release of all remaining Israelis taken hostage by Hamas.
The pro-Israel demonstrations came a day after pro-Palestine protesters marched to the same spot in solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinian people, while urging on the Canadian government to call for a ceasefire.