Canada has a racist and Islamophobic foreign policy where Palestinians are concerned

Mark Carney's government forfeits any claim to moral authority, human rights leadership, or rule of law credibility while enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza.

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Canada and its leaders have long promoted a self‑image of this nation as a principled defender of human rights, a champion of the “international rule of law,” and a nation whose foreign policy is guided by moral clarity. But as Israel’s genocide in Gaza approaches the end of its third year, that mythology has collapsed.

The Mark Carney government — like that of Justin Trudeau’s government before it — has revealed that Canada’s commitment to the “rule of law” differs depending on the race and faith of the victims.  Under both their government’s Canada’s actions have demonstrated that when the victims are white and Christian, as in the case of Ukrainians, it responds with urgency, clarity, and moral conviction. But when the victims are brown, Muslim, and Palestinian, Canada is willing to discard its professed values, diminish their suffering, and reduce their humanity to a diplomatic afterthought. In Gaza, Canada has shown that it will cushion genocide with soft language, mask injustice with polite indifference, and choose political comfort over the lives of an entire people.

The contrast between Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza is not merely a “double standard.” It is evidence of a foreign policy architecture built on racism, Islamophobia, and a willingness to abandon international law when the perpetrator is a Western ally. It is also evidence that Canada’s leaders —both Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau — have not been neutral observers but active participants in enabling mass atrocity.

This is not hyperbole. It is a conclusion drawn from Canada’s own actions, its own omissions, and its own refusal to apply the same legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian standards to Palestinians that it has applied to Ukrainians.

Moral clarity for Ukraine, evasion for Gaza

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Canada responded with immediate moral certainty, and within two months the House of Commons unanimously declared Russia’s actions genocide — even though international legal scholars and human rights organizations had not reached a conclusion. Canada did not wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or any global consensus. It acted on principle, or at least on what it claimed was principle.

But when Israel began its systematic destruction of Gaza — a campaign that global human rights organizations, UN experts, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and thousands of jurists ultimately identified as genocide—Canada refused to utter the word. In October 2023 Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal had already labelled Israeli atrocities as genocide. By December 2023 the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention — named for Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” — came to the same conclusion, that Israel was committing the crime of crimes. Even then, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau continued to hide behind neutralized language: “conflict,” “shortages,” “humanitarian crisis,” “tragic loss of life.” By the time Mark Carney became prime minister in March 2025, the global consensus on the Gaza genocide was unequivocal—with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the United Nations and other prominent legal and human rights voices declaring that Israel was committing genocide. Yet Canada still refused to call the crime by its name or acknowledge that Israel was the perpetrator responsible.

This rhetorical sanitization is not accidental, it is a deliberate political choice. It is crafted to shield Israel from accountability and to shield Canada from the legal consequences that would follow from acknowledging that genocide is taking place. Canada’s refusal to admit that Israel is committing genocide is not merely cowardice—it is a breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which requires states to prevent and punish genocide once they know it is occurring. Canada’s leaders have known this for more than two years. They have simply chosen not to act.

Penalties for Russia, protection for Israel

Canada’s material response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was sweeping: sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, trade embargoes, and billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine. Canada used every available tool to punish the aggressor and support the victim.

In Gaza, Canada has done the opposite. It has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel. It has not suspended trade. It has not applied Magnitsky sanctions to Israeli officials responsible for war crimes. It continues to sell Israel Canadian made military goods, despite a House of Commons resolution in March 2024 calling for Canada to halt military exports to Israel. Instead, Canada has offered symbolic gestures: conditional statements about Palestinian statehood, calls for “ceasefire,” and diplomatic language crafted to avoid offending Israel. These gestures are meaningless when Canada continues to arm the perpetrator.

Carney’s government even refused to force down flights carrying Benjamin Netanyahu as he passed through Canadian airspace — despite Carney’s public claim that Canada would enforce ICC arrest warrants. This is not neutrality. It is active protection of an indicted war criminal.

Canada’s actions under Carney demonstrate that its foreign policy is not guided by law but by geopolitical loyalty. Russia is an adversary, Israel is an ally. Ukrainians are white, Palestinians are not. The consequences follow accordingly.

Open doors for Ukrainian refugees, closed gates for Palestinians

Canada’s refugee response exposes the racism at the core of its foreign policy.

For Ukrainians, Canada created an uncapped emergency visa program. By April 2024 almost 300,000 Ukrainian refugees were admitted into the country with minimal restrictions. They received open work permits, study permits, and extended temporary status. Canada treated Ukrainian displacement as a humanitarian emergency requiring immediate, large‑scale action.

For Palestinians, Canada created a program that was initially capped at just 1,000 applicants — later nominally increased to 5,000—but with requirements so onerous that fewer than 1,000 have been approved since early 2024, and only a fraction have actually arrived. Applicants must prove family ties in Canada, navigate impossible security checks, and survive a bureaucratic maze designed to reject them.

This is not humanitarian action. It is discrimination, plain and simple. Canada’s refugee policy operates on a political presumption that Palestinians require extraordinary suspicion, extraordinary scrutiny, and extraordinary barriers before they can be granted even the most basic protection. The result is a system that treats Palestinian applicants as security risks to be filtered out rather than human beings fleeing mass atrocity. In contrast, Ukrainians were met with an open‑door policy that assumed urgency, innocence, and the need for immediate refuge. One group was welcomed with broad, accessible pathways; the other was confronted with narrow caps, impossible documentation requirements, and security checks so onerous they functioned as de facto exclusion. The message embedded in Canada’s policy architecture is unmistakable: some lives merit swift protection, while others are forced to prove their worthiness at every step.

Canada’s responses to the two conflicts reveal that the racism at work is not incidental or rhetorical. It is structural—built into the policies, assumptions, and institutional practices that determine whose lives are protected and whose suffering is politically expendable.

News media’s humanization for Ukraine and dehumanization for Gaza

Canadian news media coverage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine expressed unified moral outrage. They humanized Ukrainian victims, highlighted Russian atrocities, and framed the conflict in clear terms—aggressor and victim, lawbreaker and law‑abiding state.

But when it came to coverage of the Gaza genocide, Canada’s mainstream news media largely adopted narratives that sanitize Israeli violence. Independent outlets such as The Breach and The Maple have published extensive data‑driven analyses and investigative reports showing a consistent pro‑Israel bias and an anti‑Palestinian prejudice across establishment newsrooms. Civilian deaths are routinely framed as “collateral damage.” Starvation is reduced to “food shortages.” Bombed hospitals are recast as “hidden Hamas strongholds.” The pattern is not theoretical—it is documented. One major outlet, CTV News, went so far as to forbid its reporters from using the words “Palestinian” or “genocide,” while whistleblowers at CBC revealed how the public broadcaster tolerated discriminatory editorial practices around Palestinian stories and disciplined staff who challenged them. The cumulative effect is unmistakable—a media ecosystem that constrains truth, narrows public understanding, and reinforces a foreign‑policy that erases Palestinian suffering in real time.

This is not accidental. It reflects a longstanding structural bias within Canada’s mainstream news media establishment, where stories that critically examine Israeli state violence are routinely softened, sidelined, or shelved to avoid provoking politically charged—and often unfounded—accusations of “antisemitism.” The result is a media environment in which the boundaries of acceptable discourse are policed not by journalistic principle but by political fear.

Regardless of the facts on the ground, Canada’s major networks and newspapers consistently elevate narratives that minimize or obscure Israeli violations of international law while marginalizing or reframing pro‑Palestinian perspectives. This pattern has persisted for decades, shaping public understanding of the Palestinian reality and narrowing the space for honest reporting. But in the face of the Gaza genocide, the scale of this distortion has become impossible to ignore. The gap between the truth and mainstream media reporting is now so vast that it exposes the media’s role not as a neutral observer, but as an active participant in sustaining a foreign‑policy status quo that privileges Israel’s political comfort over the survival of the Palestinian people.

Canada is a “rule of law” nation in name only

Canada’s leaders claim to uphold the so called “rule of law.” But the rule of law is not a slogan, it is a practice, and Canada’s application of the rule of law, particularly in its foreign policy, is selective.

A rule‑of‑law nation does not:

• Refuse to name genocide when global human rights and legal bodies have already done so;
• Continue exporting weapons to a state committing mass atrocity;
• Shield war criminals from arrest;
• Impose sanctions on one criminal aggressor while protecting another;
• Welcome refugees from one conflict while excluding refugees from another;
• Apply international law only when the victims are white and Christian.

The fact is that Canada’s foreign policy is not principled. It is racist and Islamophobic. Additionally, as a result Canada’s actions relating to the Gaza genocide, Canada as a state and its leaders are criminally complicit in the genocidal crimes committed by Israel.

Mark Carney’s government cannot claim moral authority while enabling mass atrocity. It cannot claim to defend human rights while refusing to act against a state committing genocide. It cannot claim to uphold international law while violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Canada’s response to Gaza is not a failure. It is a choice made by its leaders—a choice to protect Israel, a choice to abandon Palestinians, a choice to prioritize geopolitics over humanity, a choice to uphold racism over justice.

Unlike its claims otherwise Canada is not a rule‑of‑law nation. It is a nation that applies international law selectively, morality conditionally, and humanity hierarchically. And until it confronts its own hypocrisy and criminality, it will remain complicit in one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Zionist racism and Palestinian dehumanization are the foundations of Israel’s moral character

Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, envisioned a racist Jewish state as a “civilizing” outpost of Europe in Palestine —  implicitly superior to the “barbaric” indigenous population.  

  

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

From its earliest formulations in late‑19th‑century Europe, Zionism imagined a political order in historic Palestine built around the supremacy of one ethnonational group—Jews. Over the decades, that vision hardened into a state structure that one Israeli human rights organization—B’Tselem—has described as a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Other groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have concluded that Israeli governance across all of historic Palestine constitutes apartheid, and in the eyes of some genocide scholars an unfolding genocidal process.

This is not a claim about Judaism or Jewish identity. It is a claim about state power, ideology, and structures of supremacy. And it is a claim increasingly made by courageous Israelis who defy the powerful interests of a state committing genocide.

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard captured this internal reckoning with painful clarity when he said, “I look at these young people who are poisoned with racism and hatred, and at some of their elders, who are their spiritual mentors and implant in them toxic notions of Jewish supremacy… How did we produce from among us the replicas of our persecutors?”

Sfard’s question is not rhetorical. It is a diagnosis of a society shaped by decades of occupation, settlement, and ethnonational fear—one in which Jewish supremacy and dehumanization of Palestinians has become normalized, even valorized.

Zionism’s racialized and fascist foundations

Zionism emerged in the same intellectual climate that produced European colonialism, racial hierarchy, and the early currents of ethnonationalism that would later culminate in fascist movements. Theodor Herzl, the movement’s founder, envisioned a racist Jewish state in Palestine as a civilizing outpost of Europe. In Der Judenstaat and Altneuland, Herzl described the future Jewish society as modern, rational, and European—implicitly superior to the “backward” native population.

Herzl’s writings repeatedly framed Palestinians not as a people with political rights, but as an obstacle to be managed, displaced, or subordinated to the Zionist agenda. His admiration for European colonial models—particularly British rule in South Africa—reveals a worldview steeped in racial hierarchy.

Critics and scholars have argued that Herzl’s political imagination contained proto‑fascist elements, including: a belief in demographic engineering; a vision of a homogenous ethnonational state; a hierarchical worldview that placed European Jews at the apex; and a willingness to subordinate or remove indigenous populations.

These elements do not make Herzl a fascist. But they place him within the intellectual family of European racial nationalism, a genealogy that later fed into the fascist ideologies that dominated Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. If one removes the Jewish identity component, Herzl’s framework shares structural similarities with other European ethnonationalist movements of his era—movements that came to dominate politics in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal.

This is not an accusation of personal malevolence but a recognition that Herzl’s political imagination was shaped by the dominant ideologies of his time, namely settler colonialism, racialized progress, and ethnonational exclusivity. These ideas later crystallized into policies within the Zionist movement that promoted Jewish demographic dominance and territorial control over Palestinian rights.

The making of a supremacist regime

The Nakba of 1948—marked by mass displacement, village destruction, and the permanent exclusion of over 750,000 Palestinian refugees—was not an aberration but a foundational moment. Laws such as the Absentee Property Law ensured that Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed could never return to their homes, while their land was transferred to Jewish ownership.

After 1967, the occupation entrenched a dual legal system, one where Israeli settlers in the West Bank lived under Israeli civil law, enjoyed full political rights, and received state protection, while Palestinians lived under military law, faced movement restrictions, home demolitions, land seizures, and arbitrary detention. B’Tselem concluded in 2021 that this constitutes “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” effectively making Israel an apartheid state.

Human Rights Watch’s A Threshold Crossed reached the same conclusion, documenting policies designed to maintain Jewish demographic and political dominance through land control, movement restrictions, and discriminatory laws.

Along with a similar report by Amnesty International in 2022, these claims of Israel being an apartheid state are not fringe interpretations. They are the assessments of leading human rights institutions, and are supported by research by human rights scholars.

Dehumanization as policy and culture

Supremacy is sustained not only through laws but through dehumanizing language. Israeli political leaders have long deployed rhetoric that erases Palestinian identity and strips Palestinians of their humanity. They rarely refer to Palestinians as “Palestinians” at all, choosing instead the generic term “Arabs,” a deliberate linguistic move that denies a people their name, their history, and their nationhood. This erasure is reinforced by explicit dehumanization. Senior officials have repeatedly used language that casts Palestinians as subhuman or inherently threatening. Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked notoriously described Palestinian children as “little snakes,” even calling for the killing of Palestinian mothers to prevent future generations. Such rhetoric is not incidental; it is part of the ideological machinery that makes domination thinkable and violence permissible.

Such language is not merely hateful—it is functional. It prepares the public to accept policies of collective punishment, siege, and large‑scale military assault.  Also, settler violence, often carried out with impunity and the support if Israeli authorities, reinforces this logic. Sfard’s comparison of extremist settlers to the Ku Klux Klan is not hyperbole but a reflection of vigilante terror used to enforce ethnic hierarchy.

This dehumanization has intensified during Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza over the years. By mid‑November 2023, Holocaust and genocide scholars—including Marion Kaplan, Omer Bartov, and Barry Trachtenberg—warned that Israel’s actions risked or constituted genocide. Their warnings were grounded in patterns familiar from other cases of forced displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass killing, and rhetoric invoking biblical annihilation narratives.

Holocaust survivors and descendants have echoed these warnings, arguing that the dehumanization of Palestinians mirrors patterns they recognize from their own histories. Their testimony cannot be dismissed as it is rooted in lived experience and scholarly expertise.

For decades, Israel enjoyed near-total impunity in the international legal system. That era is ending. Cases before the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court have forced a global reckoning with the legal and moral implications of prolonged occupation and systemic discrimination. Some Holocaust scholars who initially defended Israel’s actions in Gaza have since gone silent. Their earlier support for state violence—rather than for the universal principles of human rights—reveals a troubling willingness to subordinate anti‑racist commitments to ethnonational loyalty.

As critics have noted, this silence is a betrayal of the very lessons the field of genocide studies was created to uphold.

Parallels between Zionism and white supremacy

We must also confront the fact that Zionism, as practiced by the Israeli state, shares structural parallels with white supremacy. Both are systems of domination built on similar foundations. Each constructs a superior in‑group understood as uniquely entitled to land, sovereignty, and political power. Each justifies the dispossession of an Indigenous or subordinate population through narratives of civilizational advancement or historical destiny. Both rely on demographic engineering to secure permanent control, deploy stories of cultural or racial superiority to legitimize exclusion, and normalize segregation, unequal citizenship, and the systematic denial of rights. These are not incidental similarities. They reflect the underlying architecture of two regimes organized around maintaining the dominance of one group over another.

In the United States, “manifest destiny” justified the displacement of Indigenous peoples. In Israel, the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews worldwide while denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Academic work in Holy Land Studies and other journals describes Zionism as a racial regime that reproduces whiteness through land control and exclusion of Arabs and non‑European Jews.

A society shaped by ethnosupremacy

Haaretz has documented how Jewish supremacy has fractured Israeli society itself, empowering extremist settlers and far‑right movements that now dominate national politics.  The Oslo era did not moderate these forces, it entrenched them. Settlement expansion accelerated, Palestinian territory fragmented into disconnected enclaves, and the logic of domination became normalized. Jewish self‑determination has been transformed into a system of supremacy that denies Palestinians equivalent rights.

This is not a fringe view. It is increasingly the consensus among scholars of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnonationalism. Recognizing the supremacist structures embedded in Israeli governance does not diminish Jewish suffering or deny the trauma of antisemitism. It does not delegitimize Jewish collective identity or aspirations for safety. But it does demand a reckoning with the reality that no people can secure their freedom by denying another’s.

Ending the occupation, dismantling apartheid structures, and recognizing Palestinian political and human rights are not acts of hostility toward Jews. They are acts of fidelity to universal principles of justice.

As Sfard asked: How did we produce replicas of our persecutors? The answer lies not in Jewish identity, but in the corrosive power of Zionism, an ideology of ethnonational supremacy. The task now is to build a political order grounded not in domination, but in equality.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Ottawa judge whitewashes racist attack by Swiss man against Palestinian-Canadian woman

Justice Norman Boxall's judgment is so unjust that it undermines the promise that “everyone is equal before the law.”

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

On May 29, 2024, outside Ottawa’s EY Centre, a 21‑year‑old Palestinian‑Canadian woman in a hijab protesting a defence contractors conference was punched in the face and knocked to the ground by a Swiss man attending the CANSEC expo. When she told him he was “actively supporting genocide” by attending, he responded with his fist. That moment was brutal, racist, and unmistakably criminal—but it was not when Canada’s justice system failed her. The failure came earlier this week inside an Ottawa courtroom, when Justice Norman Boxall decided that this assault deserved no conviction, no sentence, and no meaningful consequence at all.

The facts are not in dispute. David Henschel, a 58‑year‑old Swiss national and employee of defence contractor Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Schweiz AG, encountered multiple protesters on his way to CANSEC. According to agreed facts read in court, one protester called him a racist. Henschel replied, “I’m a f---ing racist and I’m proud of it.” He then crossed the street, where the young woman told him his presence meant he was supporting genocide and said, “Shame on you, sir.” In response Henschel swung his arm and struck her in the face with a closed fist, dropping her to the ground, then forcefully shoved another protester before continuing toward the conference.

He was arrested and eventually pled guilty to assault in a 2025 court hearing. During sentencing submissions in June 2026, he tried to explain the attack away with claims of low blood sugar and PTSD, supported by a psychiatrist whose assessment relied largely on Henschel’s own self‑reporting. The Crown rightly challenged this as a thin, self‑serving narrative designed to minimize responsibility for a targeted attack on a visibly Muslim woman at a peaceful protest.

Then, on July 22, 2026, Justice Norman Boxall delivered the real blow—not to Henschel, but to the victim and to public faith in the courts. He granted an absolute discharge—a finding of guilt with no conviction, no probation, no conditions, and no sentence tied to the assault itself. The only financial consequence—a $5,000 surcharge—was imposed not for the attack, but because Henschel had failed to appear in person at an earlier sentencing date.

Boxall went further. He rejected the Crown’s argument that the assault was fuelled by racist and hateful attitudes, despite Henschel’s own declaration that he was a racist and proud of it, delivered moments before he punched a Palestinian‑Canadian woman in a hijab. He framed the assault as a “frustrated and emotional response,” a “situational” lapse, and accepted the defence’s request for no conviction.

This was not neutral judging in support of justice for the victim. It was judicial complicity in the minimization of racist violence.

When a judge watches a video showing a man openly proclaiming himself a racist, sees him striking a visibly Muslim woman in the face at a peaceful protest, hears witnesses confirm the details of the events, and reads victim impact statements describing the assault as part of a broader pattern of anti‑Palestinian and anti‑Muslim hostility—yet still concludes the attack was not motivated by racism—that judge has not made simply made an error. Rather he is declaring, through his ruling, that racism against Palestinians and Muslims does not count in his courtroom. And a judge who cannot recognize racism in a case this blatant has no business sitting on the bench or presiding over matters of justice.

The victim’s father, Bassam Hashem, captured the reality outside court when he said, “We came to this country for one reason . . . that we can express ourselves. That we are equal citizens. Today we were told, ‘No. You are second‑class citizens. You can be assaulted and that’s OK.’”

Hashem’s children no longer attend demonstrations. They no longer feel safe. That is the direct consequence of Boxall’s ruling: a chilling effect on protest, a message to racialized communities that their safety is negotiable, and a public declaration that a racist assault on a Palestinian‑Canadian woman can be washed away as a momentary emotional lapse.

The Crown has already filed a notice of appeal, calling the sentence “demonstrably unfit.” They are right. But the problem is not only the sentence—it is the judge. A justice who cannot recognize racism when a perpetrator announces it; who accepts low‑blood‑sugar excuses over the lived reality of a targeted attack; who treats a violent assault on a peaceful protester as discharge‑worthy has forfeited the moral authority required to sit on the bench.

This is not a marginal disagreement over sentencing philosophy. It is a failure of judgment so profound that it undermines the promise that “everyone is equal before the law.”

Justice Norman Boxall should not remain on the bench. At minimum, he should be subjected to serious remedial training on hate‑motivated violence, anti‑Palestinian and anti‑Muslim racism, and the rights of protesters. But the deeper truth is more disturbing. A judge who refuses to see racism in a case like this cannot be trusted to adjudicate cases involving racialized communities at all.

On May 29, 2024, a Muslim Palestinian‑Canadian woman was assaulted for daring to confront an arms dealer about genocide. On July 22, 2026, the Ontario Court of Justice told her, in effect, that her attacker’s comfort mattered more than her safety, her dignity, or her rights.

Only one of those events was unavoidable—and it wasn’t the ruling.

If Canada is serious about equal justice, this decision cannot stand. The appeal must succeed. And the judge whose reasoning turned a racist assault into a consequence‑free discharge should be held to account, not quietly shielded by the institution he has just disgraced.

Justice for the victim is not a discharge. Justice is accountability for the person who committed the crime. And on that measure, Justice Norman Boxall has failed.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Israel’s war in Lebanon is another example of the criminal impunity of a rogue, terrorist state

Israel’s actions have destabilized Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. They have inflamed regional tensions, fuelled extremism, and undermined diplomatic efforts.  

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

While the genocide in Gaza continues unabated Israeli leaders have now expanded their war crimes regime to Lebanon, where the 2026 invasion is not an aberration, not a sudden eruption of violence, and certainly not a defensive reflex. It is the latest chapter in a decades‑long pattern of criminal impunity—an extension of the same tactics, doctrines, and policies that have devastated Gaza. What is unfolding today in southern Lebanon is not merely a “spillover” from Gaza or a confrontation with Hezbollah. It is the exportation of the Gaza model of military aggression—the systematic destruction, mass displacement, territorial engineering, and steady normalization of Israel’s annexationist ambitions that have animated its leaders’ strategic thinking for decades.

Since the beginning of the Israeli invasion Lebanese authorities have reported more than 4,300 killed and over 12,000 wounded, with over one million displaced—roughly one‑fifth of the country forced from their homes. Israel has conducted thousands of airstrikes, bulldozed entire villages, bombed the suburbs of Beirut, and expanded operations far beyond its self‑declared “Yellow Line,” pushing up to ten kilometers into Lebanese territory. These are not temporary incursions, and this has been confirmed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in conversations with Israeli soldiers. They are in effect the creation of “facts on the ground,” the same methodical approach Israel has used for decades in the West Bank to transform an illegal occupation into a permanent presence.

The Gaza model exported

Israel’s military leaders have openly described their Lebanon campaign as a replication of tactics used in the Gaza genocide. Defence Minister Israel Katz referenced the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model,” promising to demolish homes, flatten neighborhoods, and prevent civilian returns until Israel’s objectives are met. Soldiers have told reporters they are “operating exactly as we do in Gaza,” with daily destruction quotas and target lists.

Satellite imagery confirms the scale of devastation. Villages such as Bint Jbeil, Ayta al‑Shaab, and Khiam have been razed through controlled demolitions and bulldozing of buildings, mirroring Gaza’s obliterated districts. Additionally, Israel has struck civilian infrastructure—bridges over the Litani River, water facilities near the Qaraoun Dam, hospitals, schools, mosques, and farmland—all considered war crimes under international law. Furthermore, reported use of white phosphorus against civilian targets—already documented extensively in Gaza—have emerged again in Lebanon.  Another instance of Israel committing a war crime.

These actions are neither counterterrorism nor acts of self-defence. They are collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and territorial reconfiguration intended to support long-term occupation. It is the Gaza doctrine applied against a sovereign state.

A historical pattern of territorial ambition

While Israel’s defenders insist that these operations are purely defensive, aimed at neutralizing Hezbollah, the scale, the systematic razing of villages, the infrastructure destruction, and the establishment of a de facto occupied buffer zone suggest something far more ambitious, demographic engineering with the intent of effectively annexing territory.

This ambition is not new. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, again in 1982, and occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. It launched a massive war in 2006, destroying swaths of the country. Each time, Israeli leaders spoke of “security zones,” “buffer areas,” and “temporary measures.” Each time, those measures hardened into long‑term territorial claims.

These actions align with a broader ideological project often referred to as “Greater Israel”— a maximalist vision proposed by Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, rooted in biblical nationalism and embraced by elements of Israel’s political and religious right. This project imagines Israeli control stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, and from Turkey to northern Saudi Arabia. While not official state policy, its influence is unmistakable in settlement expansion, annexation rhetoric, and repeated military incursions into neighboring states.

Lebanon, characterized by political fragmentation, deep economic crisis, a weak military and the overwhelming impact of incessant and highly destructive attacks by Israel, is uniquely vulnerable to such ambitions. Israel’s current operations—creating cleared zones, establishing military outposts, and preventing civilians from returning to their homes and properties—mirror the early stages of territorial absorption seen in the West Bank. The logic is clear. Israel weakens the state, depopulates strategic areas, and normalizes Israeli presence, all in violation of international law.

Crimes under international law

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment, the destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, and the forcible transfer of populations—precisely the kinds of actions Israel has carried out in Lebanon. The Rome Statute defines war crimes as intentional attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and crimes against humanity as widespread or systematic assaults on civilian populations. Israel’s conduct in Lebanon falls squarely within these prohibitions.

The mass displacement of over one million people, the razing of villages, the destruction of essential infrastructure, and the establishment of a de facto occupation zone constitute grave breaches of international law. Additionally, UN experts and human rights organizations have warned of ethnic cleansing and potential crimes against humanity.  These warnings echo those issued during Israel’s Gaza campaign, where the International Court of Justice found a “plausible risk of genocide” and ordered provisional measures to prevent further atrocities. Enabled by its Western allies, the US in particular, Israel ignored them.

US backing fuels Israeli impunity

Israel’s ability to commit these crimes repeatedly—and expand them into new theaters—rests on one foundation: unconditional US support.

The United States provides billions in military aid annually, vetoes UN resolutions calling for ceasefires or accountability, and shields Israel from sanctions or international prosecution. This support persists regardless of the severity of Israeli crimes. It persisted through the flattening of Gaza, the mass murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps, and it now continues with Israeli crimes in Lebanon.

The contrast with Western responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is staggering. Russia’s aggression triggered sweeping sanctions, diplomatic isolation, ICC arrest warrants, and massive military support for Ukraine. Israel’s aggression in Gaza triggered statements of “concern” and “alarm” followed by expedited weapons shipments. This double standard is not merely hypocrisy—it is blatant complicity. Under international law, states that knowingly provide material support enabling war crimes share responsibility for those crimes.

Israel as the region’s most destabilizing force

Israel’s defenders claim that as the only “democracy” in the Middle-East it is a stabilizing force in a volatile region. However, decades of evidence suggests the opposite.

Israel has launched major wars or invasions against Lebanon (1978, 1982, 1996, 2006, 2026), Gaza (2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023–26), and repeatedly escalated tensions with Syria and Iran. It maintains an apartheid system in the West Bank, enforces a siege on Gaza, and conducts regular strikes across the region.  No other Middle Eastern state has initiated as many cross‑border conflicts, displaced as many civilians, or destroyed as much infrastructure in neighboring countries. No other state has repeatedly violated international law with such impunity, and yet the world has done nothing to stop them.

Israel’s actions have destabilized Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. They have inflamed regional tensions, fuelled extremism, and undermined diplomatic efforts. And because Israel can influence US military policy—through lobbying, intelligence partnerships, and political pressure—it can and has dragged the world’s most powerful military into regional escalations.

A state that repeatedly violates international law, destabilizes its neighbors, and wields disproportionate influence over US foreign policy is not merely a regional threat. It is a potential threat to world peace.

The biker gang analogy

If a biker gang rolled into a town, torched buildings, murdered residents, and declared parts of the territory off‑limits, the full weight of law enforcement would descend. No appeals to “self‑defence” against adversaries would excuse systematic destruction.

Yet when Israel does the same—flattening villages, displacing millions, occupying foreign soil—the international response has been muted, and there has been no effort to hold its leaders accountable. This selective enforcement of law reveals the moral bankruptcy of the so‑called international “rules‑based order” which Western nations so often invoke against their adversaries

Israel’s war in Lebanon is not an isolated conflict. It is part of a decades‑long pattern of aggression, territorial ambition, and criminal impunity. Without accountability—through sanctions, arms embargoes, ICC prosecutions, and diplomatic pressure—the cycle is bound to continue.

The world cannot remain passive in the face of Israeli exceptionalism. The credibility of international law, the stability of the Middle East, and even the prospects for global peace depend on ending this impunity and holding Israel’s leaders fully accountable.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.   

Defending human rights is a moral imperative that Western governments are abandoning

The preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative—a  commitment rooted in the understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral decay, and barbarism.  

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Before the modern human rights system emerged from the ruins of the Second World War, humanity lived in a world where rights were not inherent but conditional—granted or withdrawn at the whim of empires, monarchies, political systems, racial hierarchies, and economic elites. Across continents, people were governed by systems of domination rather than universal principles, where elites saw certain groups as inferior and unequal based on race, skin colour, ethnicity, faith, sexual identity or other defining characteristic. Colonial powers carved up territories and categorized peoples in terms of resources to be exploited without regard to any inherent rights.

In the America’s, Africa and Australia indigenous peoples were dispossessed and annihilated, to the point that in North America (present day Canada, Mexico and the United States), their populations declined to 5% of their pre-Columbian levels by the 1890s—a death toll of more than 95 million. Enslavement, segregation, caste oppression, and patriarchal subjugation were woven into the fabric of societies and were part and parcel of political governance. Workers laboured under conditions that amounted to economic bondage, and dissent was criminalized, while entire populations lived under the constant threat of violence by the state or economic elites who were only too willing to violently exploit workers.

This was the 19th Century world that shaped the views of American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” It was the world of the Jim Crow era US south that Rosa Parks confronted when she refused to surrender her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama—a simple act that exposed the absurdity and cruelty of the system of racial hierarchy that affected the lives of millions of Black Americans. It was the world B.R. Ambedkar, who fought to transform colonial India, arguing that democracy without social justice is merely a new form of tyranny. And it was the world that 18th century French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges challenged when she demanded equality for women, knowing full well that such demands were a threat to her own life.

Human rights, before 1945, were not universal—they were fragile aspirations, and often violently denied by political, economic and social elites.

The shock that forced a reckoning

The Second World War shattered any illusion that humanity could survive without a universal moral framework. The Holocaust, the mechanized extermination of millions, the mass slaughter of civilians in Europe and the Far East, and the global devastation of total war forced the world to confront the consequences of unrestrained state power. The scale of atrocity was so vast, so systematic—between 60 and 70 million killed—tthat it demanded a new global rights infrastructure.

The architects of the post‑war order understood that without binding principles, humanity would again descend into a barbarism that could engulf the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, insisted that the new system must reflect the dignity of all people, not merely the interests of powerful states. Her work, alongside French jurist René Cassin, Lebanese politician and diplomat Charles Malik, Chinese academic and diplomat Peng Chun Chang, and Canadian diplomat and human rights activist John Humphrey, produced a document intended as a “common standard of achievement”—a moral compass for a world emerging from darkness.

The UN Charter (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), and eventually the International Court of Justice were built on the ashes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Nanjing, and Hiroshima. They were designed to ensure that no state could again commit mass atrocities with impunity.

Elie Wiesel, speaking from the experience of genocide, warned that silence in the face of atrocity is itself a crime. His words became the ethical foundation of the post‑war human rights system—a reminder that neutrality is never neutral when human beings are being systematically annihilated.

The promise and the slow betrayal

For several decades after the war, the human rights architecture held—unevenly, imperfectly, but with enough force to restrain the worst impulses of states. Anti‑colonial movements invoked human rights to dismantle Europe’s empires. Civil rights leaders used its language to challenge segregation in the US. Feminist, Indigenous, labour, and LGBTQ movements drew strength from its universal principles. Nelson Mandela argued that denying human rights was an assault on human dignity itself. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught that moral courage requires confronting injustice even when the majority remains silent. And South African Anglican Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu reminded the world that neutrality in the face of oppression was a form of complicity.

However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 appeared to mark a turning point. With the collapse of the global bipolar power structure, the international human rights order built after World War II began to fray. Its erosion was visible in the Bosnian Genocide (1992–1995), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), and the sanctions and embargo regime imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, which led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children—a toll that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously said was “worth it” in a 1996 interview. As the United States emerged as the world’s lone superpower, it increasingly treated its international legal obligations not as binding commitments but as optional constraints it could disregard when convenient.

Israel—shielded by unwavering Western diplomatic and military backing, above all from the United States—has been able to violate Palestinian human rights repeatedly and with complete impunity for decades. No meaningful accountability has ever followed. Russia carried out atrocities in Chechnya and later in Ukraine, beginning with its 2014 annexation of Crimea. China constructed a surveillance‑driven authoritarian system and imprisoned millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps, abducting Uyghur children and placing them in indoctrination facilities—acts that meet the Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide. Both Moscow and Beijing were condemned for their crimes.

By comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and other European Union states supported US wars that violated international law, yet none faced consequences. The pattern became unmistakable—powerful states could break the rules without penalty, while weaker states were punished for far less. Observing this double standard, governments around the world logically concluded that it was power—not principle—that determined what was permissible in the realm of human rights.

The post‑Cold War era saw the rise of a global double standard where Human rights were invoked when convenient and ignored when politically expedient. The international system expanded in scope, but enforcement weakened, with serious violations increasingly going unpunished. In the process, the moral authority of the post‑war human rights order began to collapse, with genocides taking place in Darfur, Sudan (2003–present); Myanmar (2016–present); Xinjiang, China (2017–present); and Tigray, Ethiopia (2020–2022), with the erosion ultimately culminating in the current genocide in Gaza.

The collapse of global moral authority

The Israeli‑Palestinian conflict has deep historical roots, shaped by colonial legacies, competing nationalisms, and decades of conflict. But the events that have occurred since 2023 marked a moral rupture unprecedented in the modern era. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza have been leveled, while hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed. Civilians were intentionally targeted, starved, displaced, and massacred. International law was shredded in full view of the world, and Western humanity was shown to be a charade.  Additionally, the major Western powers did not merely fail to stop Israel’s genocidal crimes, they enabled it, particularly the US, by selling weapons to Israel which were used in their military assault on Gaza.

The United States served as Israel’s primary arms supplier, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and others close behind—and Washington defended Israel’s actions diplomatically at every turn. Canada wavered between muted criticism and active complicity, continuing to provide military components even as the scale of Israel’s violence became undeniable. The European Union voiced rhetorical concern, but offered no meaningful action capable of halting the atrocities. In Gaza, the international legal order—created precisely to prevent the kind of heinous, genocidal crimes Israel carried out and continues to carry out—was not merely ineffective, it was immobilized by the geopolitical interests of the very states entrusted with upholding it.

The betrayal of Palestinians can be summed up in the following statement: We must refuse to compromise our humanity and never back down from speaking the inconvenient truth to power, for people whose very humanity is under attack.

This is the moral crisis of our time. The very states that built the human rights system have chosen to abandoned it, and leave innocent people to be slaughtered, unless intervening advantages a higher political purpose. Which, in the case of Palestinians, doesn’t seem to be the case.

The voices that still guide us

In this moment of collapse, the wisdom of human rights icons becomes not historical reflection but urgent instruction.

South African anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko taught that oppression thrives when people internalize silence. Kenyan social and political activist Wangari Maathai showed that human rights include the right to a livable planet. South African musician and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba used her voice to expose apartheid’s brutality. American labour unionist Cesar Chavez demonstrated that economic justice is inseparable from human dignity. Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero died defending the poor against state violence, while Malcolm X insisted that dignity requires refusing subjugation in all its forms and speaking truth with uncompromising clarity.

Along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., these voices form a chorus across continents and centuries, united by one truth—that human rights are not granted by states—they are won with the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people.

The moral imperative today

We now live in a world where the major powers—the US, the UK, Russia, China and others—have abandoned the very international order they once claimed to uphold. They have returned to the logic of empire where power takes priority over principle and geopolitical agendas over human rights.

This is what political barbarism looks like. And the only force capable of stopping it is the collective moral courage of ordinary people, human rights organizations, activists, scholars, journalists, and anyone with even a modicum of economic or political influence that still possess a moral compass.

It’s clear from history that human rights don’t come about naturally.  They only exist if they are protected and defended.

To maintain human rights as part of our society and culture we have to live by the adage that when those in power are telling you to move as you stand for principle, you need to plant yourself like a tree and say, “No, you move.”

This is the ethos the world needs now.

The preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative. Not a slogan. Not a diplomatic talking point. A commitment rooted in the understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral decay and barbarism.

Human rights organizations must refuse to be cowed by political pressure, and activists must continue to speak truth to power even when power threatens them. Scholars must expose injustice with uncompromising clarity, journalists must refuse to sanitize atrocity, and citizens must demand accountability from their governments.

As before, the future will be shaped not by presidents or prime ministers but by social movements built by ordinary people—by those who refuse to accept a world where genocide is normalized, where oppression is rationalized, and where human dignity is treated as negotiable. American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead captured this truth with unmistakable force when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only

thing that ever has.”

The post–World War II human rights system was created because those who witnessed the horrors of that war understood that nothing less than a new moral architecture was required to prevent such crimes from happening again. If the system we rely on to defend human rights is to survive—let alone be renewed—it will be because ordinary people insisted on defending it when governments would not.

The world stands at a crossroads. One path leads back to barbarism, where human life is expendable. The other leads toward justice. It is up to us, collectively, to decide which path humanity will take.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.