Kinew supports Israel’s right to self-defence

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This article was published 10/10/2023 (740 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier-designate Wab Kinew says Israel has a right to defend itself, after an Israel-Palestinian war was sparked on the weekend by Hamas militants crossing the border from Gaza to Israel and killing hundreds of Israelis.

After a meeting with Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham on Tuesday, Kinew told reporters, “What we see in Israel is horrifying. … The targeting of civilians should never happen. The State of Israel has a right to exist, and it has the right to defend itself.”

Kinew said he would be attending and speaking at a rally on Tuesday organized by the local Jewish community.

“I just hope civilians can be kept safe,” he said. “I do not want to see civilians, Palestinian civilians, harmed, but Israel has a right to defend itself. So this is going to be a difficult period.”

More than 1,000 Israelis and more than 800 Palestinians have been killed so far in the conflict. Israel declared war against Hamas on the weekend and since then has launched hundreds of airstrikes and cut off its water supplies and electricity.

Meanwhile, Tami Jacoby, a University of Manitoba professor of political studies whose research includes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and terrorism and political violence, said she was scheduled to teach her students about democracy on Tuesday, but switched to what is happening in Israel after students began asking her questions about it.

“I told them it is a long story, and very nuanced,” Jacoby said, noting that since the 1990s it had devolved into a situation in which every so often Hamas commits acts of violence and Israel retaliates. But Jacoby said those were smaller acts of violence compared to what is happening now.

Jacoby said she never attempts to predict the future, and she doesn’t know how the current conflict will resolve itself, but she said she knows it won’t end now while the conflict is ongoing.

“There is no appetite for a two-state solution,” she said.

“Israel was satisfied with the status quo and putting down the flare-ups. I’m of the 1990s mindset; I still hope for a two-state solution. Israelis and Palestinians still need their own countries.

“Hamas and Israel are at loggerheads. They both have their hands on the pin of a grenade, and either one can pull it out, but they both would be killed. … There may be a solution, but there is a feeling on both sides for a one-state solution.

“So one will not exist at the end.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

— with notes from Joyanne Pursaga