... i think this leads us back to last week and the issue of truth actually being different depending on the source.

I, personally, believe that it is true that Palestinians are horribly and unconscionably oppressed. However, I think that comparisons between this and the oppression of First Nations in what is now North America by European settlers is potentially problematic. It does not bother me when people make the comparison because there are certainly similarities, but there are some differences as well. The most important difference is the fact that Jews and Arabs have existed on the same land since before there were Jews and Arabs. Many of the Jewish settlers who came to Israel/Palestine after WWII were, of course, European Jews, which indeed creates a colonial dynamic. It may or may not be relevant to mention that they were fleeing oppression in Europe...I say this because many of the white people who came to North America were fleeing oppression in Europe as well. (It may also be relevant to point out ...as somewhat of an aside... that many Jews living in Israel today are not European Jews but rather Ethiopian, Indian, and Middle Eastern. )

But pointing out differences between the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere does not make what is going on in Israel/Palestine acceptable. Even if one can prove they have ancestral ties to one land or another, there is absolutely no reason that would give them the right to oppress the people who were living on that land and who, it is important to note, also have at least equally valid ancestral ties (most of whom had been living there for generations,as long as anyone could remember)

Nor, I should note, does being oppressed give anyone the right to oppress others.

As a Jewish child growing up I was given an extensive education in the oppression of my people. It is my hope in life to use this education constructively to reach out to others who are being oppressed. But I am only just learning about how I might do this.

i suppose...to summarize...

the truth really is different depending on perspective. when two people look at the same three dimensional object from different angles, then what they see will be different and if they described what they saw to each other then perhaps they would each think the other was wrong

maybe this is how truth connects to the issue of place...

i would like to get different groups of people to draw Toronto (of course if I would actually do this I would go through the ethical review policy first.) they could, physically, inhabit different parts of Toronto, and/or inhabit different parts of Toronto not necessarily in the sense of physical space but other kinds of spaces as well, aspects of the city that one person has only read about in the Toronto Star, others have lived.

i would hypothesize that different people and different groups of people would draw different pictures of the same city. we all live in and look at this city every day and yet we may very well draw pictures of it that look very different.this is dependent upon the physical space we inhabit, our group is very west-centric and also downtown-centric with the exception of york university so those areas were emphasized at the expense of other areas. Toronto drawn by people living in Regent Park or Scarborough would look very different.

This is also, of course, dependent on other kinds of space, those that are not physical. in my first entry i was talking about how all kinds of people live in the downtown west, for example, inhabiting different mental, psychological, social, spaces within the same space. they would still emphasize Toronto's downtown west but it would look different, so therefore we would be looking at not only the same city but the exact same streets and buildings but seeing them differently.

If different people and different groups of people can draw different pictures of Toronto, then surely they can draw different pictures of Israel/Palestine, and this would depend on the physical space they inhabit as well as their relationship to this space.

i can only talk about the issues coming from the space that I inhabit

but what about seeing the larger picture? important, i believe, but problematic since you can never see all of a three-dimensional object (or multi-dimensional in the instance of space that is not strictly physical) at once. but you can listen to the person standing in a slightly different position.

September 21

last night as I was sleeping I was having some discomfort with the idea of space as something other than physical space...I made the argument that physical space alters one's perception and sense of truth...then I jumped to say that anything that alters one's conception of truth is a form of space

different people walking the same streets still enter the same buildings, have different relationships to the parks, schools, stores, bars, community centres, and side-streets as well...

many people have only seen the housing co-ops in Alexandra Park either looking north from Queen St. or south from Kensington Market whereas others have only seen the various boutiques, clubs, and coffeeshops that border Alexandra Park from the outside....they inhabit similar yet not exactly the same space...so it is still an issue of space

Taiko Drumming

The identity issues surrounding the Canadian Taiko drumming group really resonated with me in terms of having the ethnic identity of 'Montreal Jew.'

'Jewish' is not an ethnic identity, really, and yet it is the closest thing I have to an ethnic identity.

'Montreal' is problematic for a lot of reasons. Firstly, it does not exist outside of a colonialist context. Not only that, but there is the issue of it having been French before it was English, one of the only parts of what is now Canada that remains French. The existence of Montreal does not make sense if the history of Canada is not taken into account, and many living in Montreal do not believe it should be a part of Canada (I don't mean in any way to undermine this viewpoint as I believe there are certainly valid reasons for it, I am just pointing out the irony of my existence as a Montreal Jew) As well, the Montreal Jews that I am associated with speak English.

But, given that there is a Montreal and that there is an English-speaking Montreal, I think most people would say that the Montreal Jews have contributed much to its culture. Leonard Cohen and Mordecai Richler are/were both Montreal Jews, and both have contributed much to the cultural, intellectual, and even political climates of Montreal, and Canada as a whole. And what are some foods associated with Montreal? Bagels, smoked meat...

The main point I am getting at is that, perhaps with a few tangents, is that, when I am asked what I identify more strongly as, Canadian or Jewish, and when I am asked if I believe a hyphen is necessary in my identity, I tend to say, that, granted the perhaps erroneous assumption that there is a such thing as "canadians" at all, I think Montreal Jews are as Canadian as any...in a very paradoxical way, as much so as if we were English or Scottish. It's not an identity that I hold without discomfort and, indeed, some degree of shame. Yet to deny it is only to normalize it.

Also, I think that since Jewish is just slightly "other" in Western European discourse, many make the assumption that it cannot be Canadian without a hyphen added. The same is true of Japanese-Canadians (albeit the latter are more than slightly "other", perhaps) and Japanese Canadians have also contributed much to the culture that is known as Canadian, without maybe Canadian society as a whole taking this fully into account.

First Nations people are sometimes considered the only true Canadians, the only ones who don't need a hyphen, and yet many of them are uncomfortable identifying with the nation that harshly oppressed them. Also, the concept of "canada" was something imposed by those coming from foreign soil.