Readers write: February 18, 2019 issue

February 13, 2019 | Opinion | Volume 23 Issue 4
Various Contributors |

 

Colombian reader moved by CM feature article

Re:Holding hands with the FARC,” Jan. 7, page 4.

I read this story with tears and with profound sentiments. I’m part of a Colombian generation that has lived a life tormented by a not-recognized civil war. My whole life was often crossed by news or sadness because a friend, social justice leader or human rights activist was killed. I lost hundreds of friends from the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica) during the genocide against this civil opposition movement. Today, reading this article, I feel compelled more than ever to support the peace in Colombia . . . and everywhere! Thanks to Robert Suderman and to Canadian Mennonite.

—Luis Alberto Mata (online comment)

 

Canada should have censured Israel at UN Assembly

I am ashamed that on Nov. 29, 2018—on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People—when the UN Assembly overwhelmingly passed six motions that censured the State of Israel for its treatment of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories, Canada voted against all six of them!

On Dec. 5, Israeli soldiers came to the South Hebron Hills village of A-Simiya and demolished the local elementary school and confiscated the equipment. The school was to have opened on Dec. 9 and would have served 55 children.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau travels the world championing human rights. How can he instruct our UN representatives not to censure an ally of ours, the State of Israel, when it flaunts the Geneva Conventions to which Canada is a signatory? He sets up a future prime minister to apologize to the Palestinian people, just as he was forced to apologize to the Jewish people because Canada had sent a boatload of people back to the Nazi death camps during the Second World War.

Is Canada not glaringly hypocritical?

—Gerhard Neufeld, Winnipeg

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