We, the undersigned, are calling on Mount Allison University located within the territory of Mi’kma’ki, the unceded, ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq, to withdraw the honorary degree conferred on Deborah Lyons on May 15, 2023. Mrs. Lyons encouraged and supported Canadians to join a foreign (Israeli) military at a time when Canadian Law prohibits Canadians from doing so. Furthermore, as a high-ranking diplomat in Israel and in Afghanistan, Mrs. Lyons disregarded the human rights community, international human rights, humanitarian law, and the Rome Statute. Instead, she praised Israeli war criminals responsible for Palestinians' suffering, dispossession, and collective punishment, and urged collaboration with acknowledged war criminals and terrorists including the Taliban.

Mrs. Lyons acted as the ambassador of Canada to Israel (2016-2020), praised, supported, and incited non-Israeli Canadians to join a foreign army (the Israeli military). However, article 11 of the Canadian Foreign Enlistment Act reads: “Any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offense” (Government of Canada 2002).

As an ambassador, Mrs. Lyons publicly praised non-Israeli Canadians who joined the Israeli military. On January 16, 2020, Mrs. Lyons held a public event in the embassy where she “invited 78 Canadians in the IDF to the ambassador’s residence to demonstrate their appreciation” (Ahorneim 2020). She stated, “Canadian lone soldiers are a particularly special group… This is something we want to do on a yearly basis to show our support” (Engler 2020). In 2021 Rabbi David Mivasair submitted a petition to the Minister of Justice to open an investigation of Mrs. Lyons and others “who have recruited or facilitated recruiting for the Israel Defense Forces, and, if warranted, lay charges against those involved in recruiting and encouraging recruiting for the IDF” (Mivasair 2021). The petition was signed by 7769 Canadians.

While the international human rights community and organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the UN Special Rapporteur, found that Israel is guilty of apartheid (Albanese 2022; HRW 2021; Amnesty International 2022) and of settler colonialism, Mrs. Lyons continued to white-wash Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. Under her term, Israel “killed 223 Palestinians, 46 of them minors under the age of 18, and injured 8,079 with live fire” in the Gaza Strip (B’tselem 2021). The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry found “reasonable grounds to believe that individual members of the Israeli Security Forces, during their response to the demonstrations, killed and injured civilians who were neither directly participating in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat. These serious human rights and humanitarian law violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity” (OHCR 2019). In May 2018, a Canadian-Palestinian physician and an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Tarek Loubani, who was marked as a physician and who was providing medical assistance for the wounded in the Gaza Strip in Palestine, was shot twice in his two legs by an Israeli sniper (Randhawa 2018; Fife 2018). The targeting of doctors is a war crime, according to The Fourth Geneva Convention. In light of this attack on Loubani and Palestinians, Human Rights Watch charged Israel with violating the Geneva Convention and war crimes (Human Rights Watch 2018).

Mrs. Lyons should have condemned human rights violations and war crimes as a high-ranking Canadian diplomat. Instead, she chose to engage in the settler colonial erasure of the plight of Canadians and Palestinians and to white-wash Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. None of her public statements condemns such violations, and only a few days after the attack on Dr. Loubani, in June 2018, she spoke at a public event in Toronto where she praised Israel for being “magical” and “experiencing a renaissance” (Lasacris 2018).

More so, Mrs. Lyons sat down and negotiated with members of the Taliban including those who are Specially Designated Global Terrorists (such as Al Hajj Sirajuddin Haqqani). In March 2022, Mrs. Lyons argued that it was time to “engage and work with the Taliban to save civilian lives in Afghanistan and prevent an irreversible economic collapse” (UN News 2022).

As scholars, students, and human rights advocates committed to critical perspectives grounded in uplifting the dispossessed, marginalized, and repressed at home and abroad, and as scholars who are committed to decolonization, anti-racism, human rights, social justice and the self-determination of Palestinians, and Indigenous nations at home, and abroad, we demand that Mount Allison immediately rescinds its decision to grant Lyons the honorary degree at Convocation 2023. 

References

Ahorneim, Anna. 2020. “Bringing the True North to Canadian Lone Soldiers in the IDF - Israel News,” The Jerusalem Post, January 16 2020: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/bringing-the-true-north-to-canadian-lone-soldiers-in-the-idf-614348

Albanese, Francesca. 2022. “Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967.” https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine

Amnesty International. 2022. “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: A Cruel System of Domination and a Crime against Humanity.” Amnesty International. https://amnesty.ca/human-rights-news/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/

B’Tselem. 2021. “And Now for the White-washing:" May 24 2021: https://www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/20210524_whitewash_time

Government of Canada. 2002. “Consolidated Federal Laws of Canada, Foreign Enlistment Act.” Government of Canada. December 31, 2002. https://lois-laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/F-28/page-1.html

Engler, Yves. 2020. “Canada Is Celebrating the Agents of Palestinian Misery.” Canadian Dimension, February 10, 2020. https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/canada-is-celebrating-the-agents-of-palestinian-misery

 Fife, Robert. 2018. “Canadian doctor shot by Israeli sniper near Gaza border”. The Globe and the Mail, May 15 2018: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-doctor-shot-by-israeli-sniper-near-gaza-border/?utm_medium=Referrer%3A+Social+Network+%2F+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
 

Human Rights Watch. 2018. “Israel: Apparent War Crimes in Gaza.” Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/13/israel-apparent-war-crimes-gaza

 

Human Rights Watch. 2021. “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution | HRW.” https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution

 

International Criminal Court. 2011. “Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:” https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf

 

Just Peace Advocates. 2021. “No Illegal Israeli Military Recruiting in Canada:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DArL3DU1g
 

Kassam, Ashifa. “'Appalled' Trudeau calls for inquiry after Canadian doctor wounded in Gaza,” The Guardian, May 17 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/17/canadian-doctor-wounded-gaza-israel-palestinians-gaza
 

Lascaris, Dimitri, 2018. “Deborah Lyons Speech in the Beth Tzedec Synagogue in Toronto”, Facebook, June, 1 2018: https://www.facebook.com/groups/supportGPCBDS/posts/893384584166898/

 

Mivasair, David. 2021. “Petition E-3337 - Petitions.” Accessed April 2, 2023. https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-3337

 

Randhawa, Michelle. 2018. “Medical Workers Shot in Gaza Demonstrations.” Human Rights Watch (blog). June 11, 2018. https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/06/11/medical-workers-shot-gaza-demonstrations

UNAMA News. 2022. “Today's farewell meeting of UNAMA head Deborah Lyons with de facto Minister of Interior Al Hajj Sirajuddin Haqqani:” https://www.facebook.com/UNAMA.News/posts/10158967036815028/

United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. 2019. "No Justification for Israel to Shoot Protesters with Live Ammunition," February 28, 2019. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition

UN News. 2022. “To spare Afghanistan, world must engage with Taliban, Lyons tells Security Council” 2 March 2022: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113172