Pints for Peace with Shai DeLuca-Tamasi was held at the Lieutenant’s Pump pub on March 15, to talk about engaging in peaceful discussions about the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The event was hosted by the Israel Awareness Committee (IAC) in partnership with Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
The host, DeLuca-Tamasi, was formerly part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a combat engineer and now works in Toronto as an interior designer.
DeLuca-Tamasi started off his speech by commenting on the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa’s recent vote, which rejected the passing of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion against Israel.
“Congratulations to the University of Ottawa for yesterday’s vote,” he said to a cheering audience before beginning his speech.
In an interview with the Charlatan, DeLuca-Tamasi said he decided to speak for CAMERA, because of the rising anti-Semitism in the political climate.
“It’s kind of scary for me to say, but you know my grandfather use to say that the political climate and kind of what he sees happening is very similar to what happened in Europe in the 1930s,” he said.
He said he’s happy to talk with people that disagree with him, as long as they are willing to listen.
“I’m not here to try to fill your mind with anything,” he said. “I’m here to speak about my life, my personal story, my experience, and answer your questions openly and honestly.”
From 1995 to 1998, DeLuca-Tamasi served in the IDF. Although he is now openly gay, he said this was not the norm about 20 years ago, and he was worried about how people would react when they found out.
“It never meant anything, it never affected anything, what was important was our brotherhood, and what was important was that we each had each others’ back,” he said.
Austin Pellizzer, IAC’s vice-president (logistics), said the night was important for getting different perspectives on the conflict.
“Not only does it show a side of a pro-Israel movement that we don’t get to see very much, but you kind of get to see a minority within a minority,” he said.
DeLuca-Tamasi said there’s a lack of education on what happens in Israel, and what happens on the ground is often skewed by the time it reaches other parts of the world.
For instance, he said there’s a misunderstanding of the term Zionism, which is not about Jews promoting themselves over other groups.
“The Jews, like every other ethnic group in the entire world, have the right to self determination,” he said. “Everyone should have that right.”
DeLuca-Tamasi said his perspective on life and Israel changed when he had his first real encounter with terrorism.
He explained that he had just joined the IDF and was running to catch the bus one morning for basic training. He missed the bus, and a little while and “several curses later,” he got on the next bus.
“So, I get on the next bus and were, I don’t know, probably 500 metres behind, and the bus that I just missed explodes,” he said. “I can still remember the noise, I can still remember the ringing, I can still remember the smell, I can still remember the screams, and I can still remember the glass shards.”
He emphasized that there is never an excuse for a human being to strap a bomb to their chest and blow up civilians.
He also said he thinks it’s hard for Israeli students to speak out, especially at universities like Carleton where the Israel-Palestine conflict is a heated subject of debate. He added that an environment like this would affect his studies and would make him feel unsafe.
“I feel badly for the students,” he said. “It’s more volatile here than it is [in Israel].”
But, Pellizzer said he feels like he has free speech on campus.
“Obviously, there’s a bigger push for, like, the left-leaning ideologies,” he said.
DeLuca-Tamasi encouraged those in attendance to start conversations in a small group setting to get a dialogue going.
“It’s a very difficult situation that we live in in Israel, and it’s not a situation that over a couple of beers it’ll ever get solved, but it’s that starting the conversation,” he said. “If we could just be a little bit more open to one another, I think that that would solve a lot of it.”
Provided photo
