I was chatting with a friend recently. No sooner had I asked about his relationship—which was still in its infancy when we last spoke—than he cut me off: “If you’d heard what she had to say about Palestine…” I was taken aback and frowned. “That was the last nail in the coffin. She corrected me when I mentioned genocide. For her, it’s a ‘just war.’ I don’t care if she calls me an extremist. I could never start a family with someone who thinks it’s ‘just’ to starve children in Gaza.”
As a young worker who only reads the news in bits and pieces, my friend is not an activist. He has never taken part in the slightest demonstration and, frankly, views anything to do with politics with suspicion. However, support for Israel, even coming from his better half, seems a step too far: “It’s inhuman, for fuck’s sake.”
Admittedly, in Canada, the pro-Palestine movement is struggling to mobilize the crowds it used to. But this should not lead us to conclude that ordinary people are wallowing in prostration, oblivious to the mass graves that abound in the shadows of artillery shells. Behind this temporary stability lie deep fault lines, even among those who might be thought less inclined to indignation. If even a supposedly “apolitical” man is prepared to break up with his girlfriend in the name of the children massacred in the Middle East, then it’s only a matter of time before more serious splits appear in society.
– Arthur L., Lévis
