Morgane Oger

I worry deeply as Israel moves to seize and indefinitely occupy Gaza. On May 5, 2025, the Israeli cabinet approved this path. The Israel Defense Force is implementing it now, seemingly with tacit U.S. support.

Some see this as necessary after decades of kidnappings, hijackings, rocket fire, suicide bombings, and the horrors of October 2023.

Permanent occupation and military rule may bring respite and a degree of control, but has this ever resulted in lasting peace or safety for the occupier?

More likely, Israel is faces increased trauma, increased resistance, and increased long-term instability if control is all that its government brings home from Gaza.

Occupation, however rationalized, corrodes both the occupier and the occupied. Indignity frays at hope and nurtures resistance.

I am not personally at risk in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although I have loved ones and friends who are. Like many in Vancouver, my circles include many whose loved ones are suffering right now and I am mindful one can never fully understand how it feels to be embroiled in a conflict without direct experience of it.  I know what is happening in Israel and Palestine isn’t about the rest of us or about what we personally believe to be the right thing to do. Regardless, using our own experiences lessons to try to understand what is happening sometimes helps.

I am a Canadian and French citizen, a Canadian citizen, and an immigrant to Canada. I am not Israeli or Jewish, although my family’s stories are forever intertwined with stories of family, of friends, and loved ones who are Jewish or Israeli. Or Muslim or Palestinian. My own family’s stories were shaped by war, by occupation, and by colonization,  and they shape my views and how I navigate my own arc. All four of my great-grandfathers died in conflict. My great-grandmother was deported to Ravensbrück for resisting the Nazis. She bore her camp tattoo until she died. Her husband was murdered in Buchenwald while she was enslaved elsewhere. Both their daughters fought the occupation. On my mother’s side, a family entangled in French colonialism, another uncle survived Buchenwald. I don’t remember him.

These legacies the helped teach me how oppression and retaliation scar everyone—those who suffer it, those who impose it, and the generations that follow. The moral high ground, if it ever existed, is lost after cycles of violence and retribution. Conflict is easier to cultivate than reconciliation, yet carries a much higher cost.

I know oppression intimately. I’m a transgender mom of two, outspoken and visible, and that on its own has repeatedly made me a target. I live with threats and hatred for simply existing and speaking while Trans, and for daring to define who I am for myself.

People have taken criminal action against me too often to list. I am too familiar with fear and  managing calls for my death and the threat these bring is an ever-present part of my family’s routine. I was even expelled from the board of a terrified Canadian charity for gently calling in queer anti-Israel activists using harmful tactics.

When entire societies tolerate the idea that people like you should be erased or discarded, the ends start to justify the mesns. Almost any response can start to seem like justified self-defense.

But hatred never just fades on its own. It hides. It hardens. It corrodes the soul. Hatred’s harm lasts long after the violence ends, after the slogans are forgotten, and after the soldiers are gone.

In Canada and South Africa, we’ve seen how truth and reconciliation, rather than domination, are what tames the hatred and the resentment.

Military control cannot erase the lived experience and collective memory of Gaza’s population. Whether Hamas governs Gazans or exploits them, whether Gazans support this war or are trapped in it, the result is the same: a great many of them are dying caught up in a fight between Hamas and the IDF. Everyone deserves protection under international convention, even if armed groups use hospitals or schools for cover. Striking such sites is only justified when civilian harm is not excessive, and causing disproportionate or indiscriminate harm is a war crime.

The more so if done deliberately.

Narratives don’t vanish under barbed wire and surveillance. They ferment.

Now, Israel’s leadership appears to be preparing for mass relocation of Gazans—either beyond the Strip or into a diminished parcel adjacent to Egypt. This crosses a line. It increasingly resembles ethnic cleansing, a grave crime under international convention.

What does it mean for a nation built on resistance to exile to now force exile on others?

The founding belief behind modern Israel is Judaism, a tradition whose central story is exodus from bondage and return to safety. That narrative has sustained Jewish identity through millennia of persecution. If Israel becomes the agent of that same trauma, what remains of the moral foundation?

Will Judaism’s story still hold if it’s used to justify the opposite of its values?

Occupation and the violence it brings outlast the moment. Without civil rights, inclusive governance, and reconciliation, Gaza will remain a cauldron of trauma likely to boil over once more. Colonialism teaches this. From Canada’s Indian Act to South Africa’s apartheid, imposed rule breeds long-term harm.

Israel’s legal framework privileges Jewish citizens. The 2018 Nation-State Law enshrines Jewish identity as the foundation of state policy—omitting equality protections. Planning, citizenship, and family unification laws disproportionately harm Palestinians and non-Jewish citizens. Religious courts and community admissions committees use vague “social suitability” criteria to exclude LGBTQ+ people—especially trans people—from housing and community life.

If Gaza or the West Bank are annexed without addressing these disparities, Palestinians will become a permanent underclass. That path is unjust. It will provoke retaliation and more bloodshed.

The apartheid label risks bursting past rhetoric to become descriptive and self-destructive.

Can you name one democracy that survived while subjugating another people?

Israel may be able to dominate Gaza by force indefinitely. But strength alone cannot deliver peace or legitimacy. Only dignity, equality, and a shared vision can. That takes time, humility, and a great deal of courage. 

History is cruel to those who impose domination, and it is merciless to those trapped beneath it. Judaism’s story bears witness to that truth, and what Israel does now will define it for generations to come. There is still time to write the history, and it is possible to choose justice over vengeance. Dignity over domination. Healing over provocation.

My mother tells me her uncle, the one who survived Buchenwald, repeatedly said young people should intermarry across nations and cultures. He thought blending families across borders and cultures could help prevent nationalism and zealotry from taking hold again.

At least it’s poetic.

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Author bio: Morgane Oger is a French and Canadian citizen who spends time advocating for human rights. She is founder of the Morgane Oger Foundation and a recipient of Canada’s Meritorious Service Medal. She writes at morganeoger.ca

This article is synthesized from two pieces submitted to Israeli newspaper editorial boards.