Essay: Children of Caana

Children of Caana, a poetic essay by local Green contributor and former Green Party of Canada candidate Shane Philips.

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Wake up, world. The trials are spoken in marble halls at The Hague, but justice does not echo there. Words are carved and signed, and yet nothing moves. The poison of indifference flows quietly, like a serpent in your veins. You hear the sound of crickets — the song of silence — and mistake it for peace.

You say, "It’s far away," as if the cries of the earth do not travel. You say, "It’s complicated," as if truth needs permission to be felt. But while you wait, your cities rot from within. North America trembles not from enemies, but from the coldness of its own heart.

You wake only when the pain touches your own reflection. When the fire burns your house, your borders, your kin — then you say, "Now!" But when others bleed, you shrug and say nothing. You have forgotten that to be human is to be one body. The wound of one is the sickness of all. And yet today, you put on your orange shirt, you bow your head, and you call it Reconciliation Day. You whisper, "Every child matters," while the bones of other children turn to dust in Gaza, in Sudan, in Haiti. You gather to remember your colonial crimes, but still walk the streets on stolen land. You pray for healing, but will not give anything back. You say, "We are learning," but refuse to see the lesson — that no one is free until all are free, and no land can be sacred if it is built on colonial denial.

What colour will you wear for the children of Palestine? What song will you sing for the ones who sleep beneath rubble? Is there a ribbon for the babies buried without names? Red for the blood of Africa? Green for the olives of Caana? Or will you wear nothing, because you do not even know the hue of another people’s tears? I wear nothing because I refuse to play your games.

I know people who say no olives grew in Palestine before 1948. Shame on them, for they speak from the cracked well of forgetting. They call the land empty so they can fill it with their own story. Truth is older than empires, older than books or even flags.

Before there was Israel, before there was Palestine, there was Caana — the mother land, the sacred breath between rivers and sea. My ancestors walked there beneath the same sun that warms all of our skin. They were farmers and poets, shepherds and singers, children of the soil who spoke to the stars. From them came the Hebrews, from them came the Philistines, from them came the people who would one day be called Palestinians.

Do you see? We are all descendants of the same earth, the same dust, the same divine breath that whispered: "be like you and me"

The people of Caana did not build walls — they built altars. They did not worship power — they honored life. They knew the sacred truth: that land is not property, but covenant; that home is not conquered, but remembered. And when war came, when kingdoms fell, my people carried their knowing across the deserts and seas. We became wanderers, storytellers and keepers of a truth too ancient for flags.

You speak of "land back," know this — the first land belongs to no one. The first land belongs to all. The rivers remember no border, and the olive tree grows wherever light touches it.

So as you walk through Toronto, counting orange shirts and holding your paper signs, ask yourself: would you give your house? Your garden? Your comfort? Your silence?

The people of Caana left their homeland to save life, not to claim it. They were the original children of the promise — Semitic and African, brown and sun-warmed, rooted in the first language of love. They knew that the divine shines not in stone temples, but in the beating heart. They knew that people are more precious than gold, and breath is worth more than soil.

What peace can there be for a child in Toronto if there is no peace for a child in Rafah?

What peace can there be in classrooms painted orange if the air of Gaza smells of dust and ash?

What peace can there be for the descendants of survivors if they cannot weep for the living dead?

Remember the children of Caana — your ancestors and mine.

Remember the olive branch that grew before nations.

Remember the unbeliever and the one that believes — all that came from the same clay - all from the work of my hand.