In these difficult times, my memory inevitably takes me back to Madrid on March 11, 2004. At that time, I witnessed the deadliest attack my homeland had ever experienced in a democratic era. One hundred and ninety-three people lost their lives, and two thousand and fifty were injured to varying degrees.

Spain, then governed by José María Aznar, leader of the Popular Party, had decided to join the war and the occupation of Iraq alongside George Bush and Tony Blair. Millions of people around the world were demonstrating against the war and against the occupation of a country that, located thousands of kilometers away from our daily reality, had suddenly been portrayed by the media as a base for the production of weapons of mass destruction that supposedly endangered the entire global population.

This war led to attacks in Madrid, London, Paris, and other European cities. And those of us who understood that this war was not our war, but the war of those who wanted to steal Iraqi oil, faced the wrath of those who sought revenge. In those moments, we stood against the war. We stood in solidarity with the Iraqi people and with our victims.

In the days that followed, general elections took place, and the government of the Popular Party lost to the Socialist Party, which, upon taking office, immediately withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq.

Here in Canada, we have just observed the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This day is an occasion to honor the children who never returned home, the survivors of residential schools, and their families and communities. A day that ultimately acknowledges a period of conquest, plunder, cultural domination, and genocide.

Faced with this recognition of past crimes, another compels itself upon us—or rather, its absence. We are now witnessing yet another genocide, in Palestine, broadcast live on our screens. The bias, the incomprehensible justification and support for Israel’s actions, the disinformation fed to citizens about international law and the many conventions violated by the State of Israel in its offensive against the Palestinians of Gaza and now Lebanon, have left abandoned those who had hoped to see their pain reflected in the news. Canadians of diverse origins are suffering for their families and friends in that part of the world.

It is difficult to live in this contradictory country which, on the one hand, acknowledges its past wrongs, and on the other, permits and tolerates—if not outright encourages, under the false pretext that “Israel has the right to defend itself”—crimes similar to those perpetrated by the French and Anglo-Saxons against this land’s First Nations.

It is painful to see how friends of mine have continued for decades to live in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, still hoping one day to return to their homeland. Good people, devoted to others, who carry out immense humanitarian work with the most minimal resources to provide support for those who have nothing. It is intolerable, from a human standpoint, to witness the passivity—nurtured by the media and political class, which survives on the delegation of citizens—in the face of what is happening in the Middle East.

The dehumanization of Arab societies is inconceivable if one truly seeks a world of peace based on universal norms and just relations. Swallowing the narratives of those who justify Israel’s so-called right to defend itself is to legitimize the destruction of Gaza and the death of thousands of Palestinian—and now Lebanese—civilians. To accept this is to admit that any one of us, ordinary mortals in turbulent times, may be sacrificed at any moment for geopolitical interests, just as Canada’s First Nations were when settlers decided their future on lands they had never ceded.

If we in Canada know that what was done to the First Nations constitutes one of the darkest chapters of our history, why then do the Canadian government and the government of Quebec unconditionally support the colonization of Palestine and the extermination of its First Nations?

When ethics and political humanity are lost, monsters are born. The monsters of our time, driven by different motives, have names and surnames—but they do not exist alone. They could not act without the complicity of those who provide them with political, economic, and media cover.

Today, war in the Middle East is more imminent than ever. Each person must now conduct their own examination of conscience: what have we done, on which side did we stand, what has been carried out in our name against families unknown to us, who—like our own—are made up of fathers, mothers, daughters, and brothers.

Kicking the hornet’s nest under the pretext of making the world safer is an illusion no one can believe. Governments have the tools to guarantee peace. Failing to use them means allowing impunity to prevail, and thus opening space for those who live in despair—those stripped of everything, including their right to be reflected fairly and humanely in the media—to find other ways of making us understand that they, too, have a right to life and recognition.

Manuel Tapial, member of Palestine Vivra