How the Israel-Hamas conflict has changed lives in Vancouver's diasporas, 6 months in
Residents with Israeli and Palestinian roots describe how war has spurred them to act
As the Israel-Hamas war enters its seventh month, Vancouverites with ties to the region say they continue to acutely feel the pain and tension associated with the conflict.
There are more than 2,200 people of Palestinian origin and about 2,000 people of Israeli origin living in Greater Vancouver, according to Statistics Canada 2021 census data.
For many, if not all, their lives have changed since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas initiated a series of deadly attacks within Israel, leading to Israeli retaliation on Gaza.
CBC News profiled several people in Vancouver who consider themselves part of these diasporas to learn how things have changed, and how they are each working to create a sense of hope and solidarity within their communities.
Finding community in food
Sobhi Al-Zobaidi, 63, owns a Palestinian restaurant in East Vancouver with his wife, Tamam Zobaidi. He spent his childhood in the Al-Jalazon refugee camp north of Ramallah in the West Bank.
He and Tamam opened the restaurant more than a decade ago to create a footprint of Palestinian culture within the city. Now, it's a community hub for people who support Palestinians and oppose the war, according to Al-Zobaidi.
He says he and his wife have raised more than $76,000 from a series of fundraisers held at the restaurant since Oct. 7 in order to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Al-Zobaidi calls it "one of the most important things that we've done since we opened this restaurant 11 years ago — that we are able to offer the community this chance to get together."
Lobbying for two-state solution
When Maytal Kowalski moved to Toronto to attend university in 2002, she expected to see less polarization than in Israel, where she spent her formative years.
"You would think that there is a lot of polarization in Israel-Palestine because it is affecting the people on the ground the most, and that the further you move outside of that the less polarized it is. And it's the opposite. And that really struck me."
Kowalski, 40, was born in Winnipeg and moved to a kibbutz in Israel when she was 11 years old. There, her mother, who is Jewish, fell in love with a Christian Arab Israeli from Nazareth.
She credits her unique upbringing for instilling in her a conviction that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to self-determination, which is why she supports a two-state solution.
Now living in Vancouver, Kowalski, who identifies as a progressive Zionist, serves as interim chair of JSpaceCanada, a group that aims to galvanize Canadian Jewish communities to lobby Israel and Canada for a peaceful resolution to the current conflict.
Solidarity among parents
Mia Amir who was born in Israel, founded the group Parents for Palestine alongside Sama Ghnaim, a Palestinian.
Ghnaim, 39, said the group formed "in response to the war that's being carried out against Gaza."
"As parents, I feel like we have the most difficult job watching this happen and tucking our children in bed at night. So we really had to do something about it."
The grassroots advocacy group holds events in Vancouver for families who want to express solidarity with Palestinians in a child-friendly environment.
Amir, 41, who describes herself as a Jewish anti-Zionist, said she chose to include her own child in advocacy efforts out of a sense of moral responsibility.
Self-defence for the community
Assaf Yogev was born and raised in Israel and served in the Israeli army. He has leaned on those experiences in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
In the wake of the attacks, Yogev, 38, noticed urgency within his community to connect.
"We really felt the need to come together even closer, because we've never seen anything like this before," he said.
That drive to find a renewed sense of safety led Yogev to form a grassroots group called the United Jewish Shield. The group provided immediate support to the Jewish and Israeli community by teaching self-defence and establishing an informal neighbourhood-watch network in Vancouver.
"The Jewish community, and even more so the Israeli community, is a very small community. It's very easy to paint a target on a small number of people … and try to make us feel scared," he said.
Connecting experiences, not comparing
Nawal Musleh-Motut drew inspiration for her project from her own life. She's Palestinian and the daughter of a survivor of the Nakba — the "catastrophe" — the term for displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
"But I was also raised and educated in Canada, and so I learned about the Holocaust, its enormity — and also had, obviously, a great deal of respect for the uniqueness of Jewish suffering," Musleh-Motut told CBC News.
In August 2023, the postdoctoral fellow in social justice and decolonization at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University published a book after bringing together Israelis and Palestinians to listen to each other's stories, look at each other's photographs and acknowledge each other's memories.
She said the purpose of Connecting the Holocaust and the Nakba Through Photograph-based Storytelling: Willing the Impossible is to open up a space to connect people's experiences rather than compare them — a need that persists, she said, since the events of Oct. 7.
"This is an invitation for people to come together and change things. We have the ability. It's not going to come from government. It's not going to come from institutions. It's going to come from the people on the ground who recognize each other's humanities, [and] act on it," Musleh-Motut said.
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