Ilan Pappe wrote a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine in which he goes through the creation of the state of Israel, one bloody step at a time. When people talked about the theft of Palestine, I never really understood the metaphor until I read this book--then realised that "theft" isn't even an adequate word. The OED defines "pillage" as "The action of plundering or taking as spoil; spoliation, plunder: chiefly that practised in war; but also in extended sense, extensive or wholesale robbery or extortion", and that's exactly what happened in Palestine.

The fact that Israel continues this brutal campaign of violence against Palestine today makes what happened fifty years ago all the more reprehensible. In '48 the UN clearly defined Genocide according to UN Resolution 260:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

And yet, even though what's happening in Palestine is clearly genocide, by the UN's own definition, what is being done about it? Cumol, this Canadian stands in solidarity with you and your Palestinian brothers and sisters. If I could help, I would.