In 1972 Canadians donated $15 million to build ‘Canada Park’ on destroyed Palestinian villages

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“Overlooking the fertile Ayalon Valley between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv sits Canada Park, a 7,500 acre recreational area covered with pine forests. It is bisected by a winding path the John Diefenbaker Parkway named after the former Canadian prime minister who inaugurated it. Canada Park is a source of pride for the Montreal and Toronto Jewish philanthropists who in 1972 donated more than $15 million to help build it. A brochure of the Jewish National Fund of Canada that undertook the project described it as a ‘tribute to Canada and to the Canadian Jewish community whose vision and foresight helped transform a barren stretch of land into a major recreational area.’

“But to Halifax resident Ismail Zayid, Canada Park is a travesty of justice, a blot on this country’s record, and a source of seething anger. The park hailed as a humanitarian project and supported with tax exempt donations was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of his birth, which was dynamited and leveled to the ground by Israeli forces following the Six Day War.”

“The well known Jewish writer Amos Kenan was a soldier in the Jewish army unit which demolished these three villages. In an interview with the Jewish magazine Haolem Hazeh, he gave the following account:

* “The unit commander told us that it had been decided to blow up three villages in our sector; they were Beit-Nuba, Emmaus and Yalu. This was explained by strategic, tactical and security considerations. At noon the first bulldozer arrived and pulled down the first house at the edge of the village. Within 10 minutes the house was turned to rubble. The olive trees and cypresses were all uprooted. After the destruction of three houses the first refugee column arrived from the direction of Ramallah. We told them to go to Beit Sura.

* “They told us that they were driven out everywhere, forbidden to enter any village, that they were wandering like this for four days, without food, without water, some dying on the road. They asked to return to the village, and said we’d better kill them. Some had a goat, a lamb, a donkey or a camel. A father ground wheat by hand to feed his four children. On the horizon we could see the next group arriving.

* “The children cried. Some of our soldiers started crying too. We went to fetch some water. We stopped a car with a major, two captains and a woman. We took a jerrican of water and distributed it to the refugees. We also handed out cigarettes and candy. More soldiers burst out crying. We asked the officers why are these refugees sent from one place to another and driven out of everywhere. They told us this was good for them. Let them go.

* “Moreover, said the officers, why do we care about the Arabs anyway. We drove them out. They go on wandering in the south like lost cattle. The weak die. In the evening we found out that we had been deceived, for in Beit-Sura too, bulldozers commenced destruction and they were forbidden to enter. We found out that not only in our sector was the border straightened out for security reasons but in all sectors. Our unit was outraged. At night we were ordered to guard the bulldozers, but the unit was so outraged that no soldier was willing to carry out such duties. None of us understood how Jews could behave like this. The chickens and doves were buried in the rubble. The fields were turned into wasteland in front of our eyes. The children who went on crying on the road will be Fedayeen in 19 years, in the next round. Thus have we lost on that day the victory.”

Additional information on these war crimes at “Canada Park: Canadian Complicity in War Crimes (PDF)” and “Emas Testified the Crime of the Israeli Forces”, and through the following 1991 Fifth Estate CBC documentary, which correctly describes Canada Park as a ‘Canadian cover-up to a war crime’. The resulting uproar from this documentary “led to a formal request to change the name of the park (now known officially as the Ayalon Park).”

CBC: Racist JNF’s "Canadian cover-up to a war crime" (31:08)

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