Jewish and Palestinian Montrealers talk peace, war and bringing the violence to an end

It was Friday Shabbat, the time of rest when adherents of the Jewish faith traditionally share a meal to celebrate the creation of heaven and earth. Earlier this month, people of different faiths gathered over challah, pita and hummus in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal.

But it wasn't your ordinary Shabbat dinner. It was "Shabbat for Gaza." People made placards with their children — hearts in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

They called for a ceasefire, an end to the blockade on Gaza and for Hamas to release its Israeli hostages. 

Corey Balsam, the national co-ordinator of Independent Jewish Voices, an organization that advocates for the rights of Palestinians, helped organize the event. His grandfather survived the Holocaust but much of his family was killed in the Nazi genocide. 

Balsam feels "crushed" by the violence Hamas inflicted upon civilians in Israel on Oct. 7. As a father, he says he understands the fear that Montreal's Jewish community is feeling after a synagogue and two Jewish schools were attacked in recent weeks. 

At the same time, Balsam, who has lived in the West Bank and has family in Israel, is "heart-broken" by the thousands of civilians — many children — killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza.

"This idea that there can be a military resolution to this issue is rather incomprehensible," he said. The pause in fighting gives him hope, he says, but he wishes Canada would do more to push for a long-term ceasefire. 

Israelis and Palestinians need to find a way to live side by side — whether it's a two-state, one-state or other form of solution — without trying to subjugate each other, Balsam said.

Although the conflict is thousands of kilometres away, the streets of Montreal have become host to a debate in which narratives, dreams of statehood and even the interpretation of slogans clash. 

Amid a surge of hate crimes in the city, Jewish Montrealers like Balsam are extending a hand to Palestinians to find common ground.

But how peace is achieved — and what that peace looks like —  reflects a diversity of views within his community. Meanwhile, others in the Palestinian diaspora are looking for common cause with their Jewish neighbours to bring the bloodshed to an end. 

Every day Ayman Oweida tries to call his aunts and uncles in Gaza. He says he finds himself acting like their therapist, though he is having trouble coping himself. Gaza is where his parents — now living in Montreal — were born.

In 1948, the year Israel was founded, his grandparents were forced to flee their homes. He says his family there, like other Gaza residents, is the victim of "collective punishment."

As a medical researcher at the Université de Sherbrooke, Oweida spends his days trying to add six months or a year to the lives of cancer patients. He says it pains him to see a lack of collective action in preventing such massive death and destruction in Gaza.