Please take 3 minutes to email and call (samples below) to reunite two Gazan families that Canada forcibly separated at their evacuation point 6 months ago. The Canadian government is telling mothers: if you want your kids to live, you must stay behind, using the rationale that they have not completed a visa application step that Canada’s own website says they do not have to fulfill until AFTER they leave Gaza. We’ve all seen the horrific images continuing to emerge since then. The children see them too and wonder if they will ever see their moms again. With your help, they will. 

How you can help:

Write a letter:

Please cut and paste the letter below (and edit as you see fit to personalize the letter and subject matter, and add your MP’s email in the CC section)  

For Subject Line:  Urgently Evacuate Doaa Nashwan, Nariman Abu Amra and all eligible to come to Canada from Gaza

To: gary.anand@parl.gc.ca, lenametlege.diab@parl.gc.ca, Anita.Anand@parl.gc.ca

CC: Mark.carney@parl.gc.ca; ziad.aboultaif@parl.gc.ca; David.angell@pco-bcp.gc.ca; Nisara.Jiwani@pco-bcp.gc.ca; ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@canada.ca; tasc@web.ca; IRCC.Minister-Ministre.IRCC@cic.gc.ca; Minister@cic.gc.ca; Scott.Harris@cic.gc.ca; Harpreet.Kochhar@cic.gc.ca; pm@pm.gc.ca; Tricia.Geddes@ps-sp.gc.ca; minister@ps-sp.gc.ca; Daniel.Mills@ps-sp.gc.ca; Salma.Zahid@parl.gc.ca; Jenna.Sudds@parl.gc.ca; Iqra.Khalid@parl.gc.ca; nathaniel.erskine-smith@parl.gc.ca

Dear Ministers Diab, Anand, and Anandasangaree,

Canada must stop playing Russian Roulette with the lives of Palestinians eligible to come to Canada and immediately evacuate Doaa Nashwan, Nariman Abu Amra (and her three children, Mohammed, Manar, and Ahmed), as well as other families who have been cruelly separated as Israeli imposed bombs and starvation face them down in Gaza. 

It is hard to imagine the horror endured by these families since they were separated exactly six months ago today.

These two families were forcibly separated at the Karem Abu Salem evacuation point in early April because of a heartless paperwork technicality that violates Canada’s own Gaza Temporary Residence Visa program. As you know, that program does NOT require that biometrics (fingerprints and photo) be completed as a condition of leaving Gaza to come to Canada. It even says so on the program website. And yet this excuse that Canada is now using to not submit their names for evacuation – lack of biometrics – means that they had the impossible Sophie’s Choice of making last minute decisions about who will live and who will face further risk of immediate or slightly longer death under conditions the International Court of Justice has called a plausible case of genocide. Countless other families face the same impossible choice.

Canada is condemning to death people like Doaa, Nariman, and Mohammed, Manar and Ahmed, who are unable to provide what the government has already acknowledged since day one was something they could not provide from within Gaza. When Canada keeps moving the goalposts, what are families seeking to escape a genocide to do?  

Why is Canada not waiving the wrongfully imposed biometrics requirement here like it did with the Afghanistan and Ukraine programs? 

I am calling on you to immediately place these names on the evacuation lists and ensure they are reunited with their loved ones in Canada as soon as possible. 

In addition, Canada must end its lethally slow pace for processing Palestinian applications. This means immediate issuance of visas to all remaining 3,700 still in Gaza after 21 months of waiting, and also approve visas for the 2,500 stranded applicants in Egypt, also waiting upwards of 21 months.

Other countries have evacuated the loved ones of their nationals. Indeed, over 5,000 have been reportedly evacuated by other countries this year alone. Why not Canada? In the first year of the Ukraine program, Canada processed 1,400 applications a day and welcomed 130,000 people. In the Gaza program, your government has only done on average 2 applications per day, and hundreds have been killed waiting for approval, as fewer than 900 have made it here in aomost two years, almost all of them because they escaped on their own before May 2024. During that same time period, Canada approved over 8,000 visa for Israeli citizens. 

I am tired of hearing our government say the problem lies elsewhere when as recently as mid-September, the Israeli border authority publicly declared: "We would like to clarify: many embassies around the world are reaching out on your behalf, requesting to receive you in their countries. We are not restricting departures, and we will continue coordinating additional departures based on requests from embassies. Departures will be carried out only upon receiving an official request from the receiving country’s embassy.” 

Canada has a history of such life-threatening discriminatory behaviour during a genocide. A shameful chapter of our history is called None is Too Many, when Jews were denied entry for many of the same xenophobic reasons that Palestinians face today. 

As one of over 10,000 people who’ve signed a petition in support of these families, I call on you to immediately reunite these families and devote the resources needed to immediately process all remaining applications and evacuate everyone with loved ones in Canada. 

Thank you

NAME

CITY/TOWN

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CALL INSTRUCTIONS: 

Minister of Immigration Lena Metlege Diab: 613-996-3085

Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand: 613-995-4014

Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree: 613-992-1351

Please call using this text as a guideline and leave a message if you do not speak directly with a person. PLEASE be polite, as any negative interactions will harm the families. If they say this is the wrong office, politely tell them this IS the office where feedback needs to be heard and ask them to pass it on.

Hi, my name is XXX and I’m calling from XXX. Like many people I am incredibly upset about the horrors being inflicted on the Palestinian people and the failure of Canada to help people from Gaza escape. I object to Canada’s forcible separation of families at the evacuation point. Specifically, I am calling on you to immediately approve for exit mothers Doaa Nashwan as well as Nariman Abu Amra and her three children. Too many people have been killed waiting for their Canadian visas to be processed. You also need to immediately issues visas to and evacuate all 3,700 applicants still stuck in Gaza after 21 months and approve the visas for 2,500 people stranded in Egypt.  It’s an emergency program and needs to be operated on an urgent, emergency basis. Thank you