As many as 200 people protested outside the Munk Debates in Toronto on Wednesday, where a panel of all-Israeli speakers discussed whether a two-state solution is in the best interest of Israel.
Protesters held signs and Palestinian flags as they chanted before the demonstration was broken up by police. One of the protesters, Trevor Miller, called the event “unacceptable.”
“We are here to speak out for the people of Palestine, everyone who suffers under imperialism,” he said.
According to the Munk Debates website, the focus of the discussion was: “Be it Resolved, it is in Israel’s national interest to support a two-state solution.”
Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister, finance minister, and mayor of Jerusalem and Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former justice and foreign minister, argued in favour of the prompt.
Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and former deputy minister during Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term, and Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s former justice minister and minister of the interior, argued against.
No Palestinian voices were included in Wednesday’s debate.
“It’s indefensible for them to have all of these voices and to have no one representing the people who are genuinely suffering,” Miller said.
Organizers defend debate panel
Rudyard Griffiths, chair and moderator of the Munk Debates, defended the decision in an interview with CBC Radio’s Metro Morning on Wednesday.
“As we do with every Munk Debate, we try to really assemble people who have hard-won insights, in-depth experience that they can bring to the topic,” he said. “I think these four panelists will do this.”
He said Wednesday’s conversation was just one part of a much larger, ongoing conversation.
Griffiths said the debate around Palestinian statehood has led to “deep fractures” in Israeli society, which he said makes it an important conversation to have.
The majority of the members of the United Nations have recognized Palestine as a state, including Canada. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the announcements of recognition and continues to reject a two-state solution.
When asked if the Munk Debates would be open to future debate including Palestinian voices on the same topic, Griffiths said he would “welcome somebody organizing that debate.”
He went on to say the Munk Debates are a private organization.
“If you don’t like the debate and you don’t like the panelists and you don’t like the topic, rest be assured your tax dollars are not going towards this debate,” he said. “And we hope, we wish, we welcome other people organizing other debates on other topics.”
Allegations of war crimes
Henry Off, an international human rights lawyer with Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR), said the event was “unacceptable.”
On Wednesday, CLAIHR sent a 24-page document to RCMP and the war crimes sector of the Canadian Department of Justice, calling for the arrest of and investigation into two of the speakers, Olmert and Livni.
CBC Toronto has reached out to RCMP and the Department of Justice for comment. This story will be updated if a response is received.
The document notes the two former officials held high-ranking positions during a conflict in Gaza in 2008 to 2009, where Israel is accused of committing multiple war crimes, according to the 2009 Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.
“From the facts gathered, the Mission found that the following grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention were committed by the Israeli armed forces in Gaza” the UN report reads. It goes on to list the alleged breaches, including wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment and extensive, unlawful destruction of property, not justified by military necessity.
Off said Olmert and Livni could have reasonably known about the alleged crimes due to their positions and should be investigated.
Humanitarian groups are warning that the amount of aid getting into Gaza is nowhere near what was promised under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel, and rains have left many with damaged shelters or no place to live as the weather cools.
“Canada needs to uphold the rule of law and that means playing its part in investigating and prosecuting international crimes,” Off said.
The document from the group of lawyers says Canada has an obligation to “‘‘seek out and prosecute’ those reasonably suspected of grave breaches who set foot in Canada,” under an article in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
“Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts,” the Geneva Convention reads.
“Given the plethora of information about their role in the commission of international crimes, it would be really unreasonable to just let them in and out of Canada without even questioning them,” said Off.
The same UN report cited by CLAIHR also said actions by Palestinian armed groups, like launching rockets and mortars into civilian areas “would constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.”
On its website, RCMP has said that in early 2024, it initiated a “structural investigation into the Israel-Hamas conflict,” meant to collect and assess information “potentially relevant under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.”
The RCMP has said that investigation is not a criminal one, but it could initiate a criminal investigation against a perpetrator with “the appropriate nexus to Canada.”
