Regina Leader-Post
A group of nearly 100 Regina residents gathered at the Scarth Street pedestrian mall on Saturday, to honour the lives lost in Gaza in the ongoing war with Israel by reading the biographies of some of the civilians who have been killed.
“I think that it takes on more meaning if we know who these people were,” Sally Mahood said in an interview Saturday, after reading about a woman named Viola Amash. “They weren’t just nameless victims of war thousands of miles away.”
Although Mahood didn’t know Amash personally, she wanted her story to be heard. She said Amash was killed when her church was bombed.
“She was active in her church, and was providing solace and comfort and as much food you could find to people who had been displaced and were in the church,” she said.
“Very rarely do we hear the personal stories of the Palestinian victims of whom there are so many thousands, so that’s why I read out her story.”
Mahood said she wants to see a humanitarian ceasefire and for the federal government to stop funding the Israeli military.
“I was a family doctor in Regina for 40 years. I can’t believe that hospitals are being bombed, ambulances are being bombed, journalists are being killed, children are dying in the rubble, and I want my government to speak up against that.”
The offensive has killed more than 18,700 Palestinians, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said earlier this week. Thousands more are missing and feared dead beneath the rubble. The death toll has not been independently verified.
Batoul Abouelela helped organize the event as well as some of the other pro-Palestinian events in Regina over the past two months.
“It’s really important to me, I’ve been doing this for a while and I won’t stop doing it until all of this is over,” she said. “It’s not an issue that only interests people that live there or have family that live there, because it’s a humanitarian crisis.”
Abouelela said while the federal government did vote in favour of the United Nation’s resolution for a ceasefire, “it was a very small step” taken too late.
“We do believe that a big part of that was the number of Canadians that actually have shown opposition as well as the movements that we’ve been doing here in Regina,” she said.
“We still know that many of our political parties, both federally and provincially, support Israel and have a very tight allyship with them, and provide military equipment to them as well, so we’d like that to stop.”
Postcards that read “This Christmas I Want Peace in Gaza” and were addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were available at the gathering for people to sign.
–with files from Associated Press
