Lands of fire. Lands put to fire and sword. Lands sacred and breathed upon by an imprint of eternity. Lands exclusive and ancestral, handed down and venerated by and through generations. Lands of welcome and of gathering, of assembly and of strife. Lands celebrated, shattered, torn apart, killed.
The year 2023 took its leave against a backdrop of storm, as countless Palestinians and Israelis met with horror, lost dear friends, brushed against death, dipped their bloodied hands into the heart of a nameless fate.
What is happening there touches us here, in our classrooms, on the rainy, sorrowful sidewalks of our cities, in the hurried and wary corridors of our universities, in the darkness of our words and the noise of our silences.
How do we build civic spaces grounded in dialogue, empathy and goodwill? How do we transform hatred into an emancipating encounter? How do we see the other within ourselves? How do we take shape through the other? How do we act concretely for peace?
At the dawn of this year 2024, which asserts itself as a promise, as the wounded images of Gaza and the still-raw images of Re'im circulate on a loop, as violence can no longer contain itself but spreads brazenly, as dead bodies pile up and are stripped of their humanity, we can and we must learn to speak to one another. Wherever we are. Despite fear. Because of it.
Let us teach international humanitarian law, even to children. Let us use knowledge to communicate. Let us make that knowledge accessible in order to build ties. Let us share our truths. Let us dare to question our certainties. Let us take risks by asking the hard questions, those of the sacred, of belonging, of exclusivity, of irrevocability, of purity. Let us lay down the primary colours with double and triple brushstrokes, on a blank canvas to be filled in and discovered together. Let us leave no one behind.
I have returned to the university after five years in exile. I quickly found freedom waiting there for me, as though it had been expecting me, bare and laughing, sovereign and untameable. Freedom to think, to express, to say, to write, to keep silent. Freedom, too, and above all, to dream, to imagine, to nourish a better world through critical thought and through action. I have written a great deal about religion and law, about the almost disarming impossibility of transplanting foreign rules onto national soil without altering their content and their meaning, like one encounter giving birth to another. I have thought a great deal about identity, about its romantic and unifying character, but also about its capacity to divide and exclude. I have read a great deal about the duty of remembrance, about the will to fight forgetting, about the real or anticipated sacrifice of the nation.
With humility, I have often chosen the extraordinary force of the present and its still-unexplored narrative thread, like a lighthouse raised in the middle of the waters that can illuminate or darken, guide or abandon, depending on the function we assign it. Did the Israeli writer Amos Oz not ask: "Alongside a duty to remember, is there not also a right to forget?"
Let us imagine, then, let us even demand, a future different from the past, anchoring ourselves in a present that propels us forward and builds bridges. For that, of course, international humanitarian law will have to recover its standing.
At a time of rampant Islamophobia and antisemitism, as cameras project into our living rooms an unprecedented rupture unfolding all the way into the world's capitals, we can and we must learn to grow familiar with one another. Wherever we are. Despite difference. Because of it.
Let us use the university city to renew this encounter, to underscore what unites us, to complicate the identity-based and religious narrative, to create a shared humanity in which our many shadows discover one another through a play of light marked by courage and freedom.
Following the example of the Jewish Law Students' Association and the Muslim Law Students' Association at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, whose joint publication demonstrated exemplary leadership in this country, let us recognize that "Jewish and Muslim lives are of equal value and importance, and that every life lost is tragic and represents in itself a story and a family, drawing an entire circle of people into mourning." Let us not allow hatred to divide us.
