How do we live with this? One man’s lament about the Gaza genocide

As a human rights activist living safely in Canada, I ask: How can Western leaders live with the knowledge of Israeli atrocities? What is so broken in them that they don’t act to stop genocide?

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

I live 8,965 kilometres from Gaza, in a country that claims to be a defender of human rights and international law, and professes to be a moral leader on the world stage. Yet every day for more than two and a half years, I have seen images and read stories coming out of Gaza that have hollowed out something inside me. I have seen bloodied bodies, children with limbs torn away, parents carrying what remains of their babies in small plastic bags because an Israeli missile or bomb left nothing else to bury. The people of Gaza are not soldiers or combatants. They are Palestinian civilians—families—targeted by the military of a fascist, genocidal state that has long ceased to see them as human beings, a people who have been abandoned by Canada and other nations that claim to champion human rights, but refuse to intervene when the crime of crimes—genocide—is being committed by Israel in front of our eyes.

Despite all I’ve seen and read, despite my knowledge of the cruelty inflicted by Israel on Palestinians for decades, nothing prepared me for the story of the Palestinian father trapped beneath the rubble of a building bombed by and Israeli fighter jet.

I first saw the image last night on social media, of a man with only his head sticking out of the rubble, and read the short description that went with it.  In the quiet of the night, I read about rescuers digging frantically through the debris trying to save him. Above a small gap in the rubble was a look of agony and terror on the father’s face.  His body was pinned beneath the ruins of what had once been his home. His daughters were deeper below, their small hands still clinging to his fingers in the darkness. He could hear their fading breaths and their grip weakening. When the rescuers began to dig away at the rubble around him he looked at them with a gaze so full of exhaustion and horror that it pierced through the screen and lodged itself in my chest.

“Leave me,” he told the rescuers.  He told them his daughters were also under the rubble, holding his fingers, and that he didn’t want to leave them alone.

These words haunt me. They echo in my mind and when I tried to sleep last night I couldn’t. So I decided to write about this Palestinian father, the nameless man in the social media post, whose face is now imprinted on my brain.

By the time you read this, and hopefully share it on social media, I will be trying to live a normal life again, as I have so many times since the Gaza genocide began, as I’ve heard or read a particularly horrific story.  But what is considered normal in such a scenario? I wonder, what parent—what human being—could bear to survive while his children die beneath him? What words can capture the agony of someone who feels the life draining from the small hands they once held while crossing the street, while tucking them into bed, while promising them safety?

And as I sat with the weight of his plea to the rescuers—to be left under the rubble so he could die beside his daughters—I found myself thinking of the tens of thousands of Palestinian parents who have endured this same nightmare. Not only during the current genocide, but in the years before, every time Israel sent its warplanes to bomb homes, apartment blocks, and refugee camps. I thought of the parents who have carried the limp bodies of their children through the streets, their faces frozen in shock. I thought of the children who have clawed through rubble with their bare hands, screaming the names of their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. I thought of the Palestinians who have found only fragments of their loved ones—pieces so small they could fit into a shopping bag. And I thought of the fathers and mothers who have buried entire families in mass graves, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice, because even in death, they could not risk gathering for a proper funeral without fearing another Israel bomb or missile would land on them.

This is not an isolated tragedy. It is a pattern, a system, a deliberate and calculated destruction of a people, in full view of the world.

As a human rights activist living in the safety of Canada, I ask myself: How can Western leaders live with this knowledge? What is so broken in them that they can’t take action to stop the non-stop carnage committed by Israel? They receive daily briefings. They see the same images the public sees. They know that the vast majority of those killed in Gaza are civilians. They know international human rights organizations have documented war crimes and crimes against humanity, and have declared Israel’s actions as a genocide. They know that Israeli soldiers themselves have admitted in recordings posted to social media that they “felt like Nazis” while carrying out operations in Gaza. They know all of this and yet they do nothing.

How do they sit in their offices, smile as they shake hands at political events, hold press conferences, and speak of democracy and human rights, while Palestinian children are deliberately shot, and babies suffocate under the rubble of a bombed out building?  And how can we, living safely in Canada, go about our days as though nothing is happening? How do can we casually sip our coffee, scroll through our phones, and laugh at trivial things, while a father in Gaza begs rescuers to let him die so he will not abandon his daughters in their final moments?

I don’t ask this with without judgment. I ask it with grief, with bewilderment, with a sense of moral disruption that has become impossible to shake.

Because all of us who fight to uphold and defend human rights cannot live normal lives anymore. We carry the weight of every image and video we’ve seen, every scream and cry of grief we’ve heard, every story we’ve read. We carry the trauma of being witnesses to genocide in real time, played out on the screens of our devices. We carry the depression and anger that comes from shouting into a void where leaders pretend not to hear what we’re saying. We carry the despair of knowing that morality—once claimed as a Western virtue—is a lie and has been traded for political convenience and military alliances.

For the past two and a half years we have marched, we have written to our political leaders, penned op-eds, held media conferences, commented on social media, protested, pleaded for our leaders to find their humanity and take action. Yet still, those who lead our governments refuse to listen or act.

If this is now the norm—if this is how the world responds to a fascist state committing genocide—then what hope is there for how nations will respond to other conflicts where the innocent are slaughtered? What hope is there for humanity when the most powerful nations on earth, who have the power to stop Israel’s crimes, watch and do nothing as children, women and men are murdered simply for who they are? What hope is there when museums dedicated to human rights, like the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, face pressure to silence Palestinian history because the stories of Palestinians are deemed too “controversial” by Zionist groups who cannot tolerate the true story of their suffering and subjugation, or being portrayed as human beings?  What hope is there when even our grief and the truth about history is policed?

The father under the rubble will haunt me for a long time because he represents more than one man’s tragedy. He represents the collapse of the world’s moral order and the degradation of international law. He represents the unbearable truth that Palestinian suffering has been normalized, minimized, and dismissed for generations, but especially now. He represents the question that should shake every conscience on this planet:

How much more Palestinian pain must the world witness, how many more bodies must be buried under Gaza’s rubble, before it hears the cry of the Palestinians who live there?

As a Canadian, I am both angry at and ashamed of my government’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal crimes. As a human rights activist, I am exhausted by the endless fight to make the people in power care. As a human being, I am shattered by the knowledge that Palestinians are still dying, despite a so-called ceasefire which Israel has violated thousands of times since last October, while the world debates their worth.

But as someone who refuses to give up, I say this. To Palestinians suffering under the longest and most brutal occupation of modern history—you are not forgotten. You are loved. You are never alone, and your courage in the face of ultimate evil will go down in history. There are millions around the world who stand with you, who carry your grief in their hearts, who refuse to let your stories be erased. Your suffering is not invisible. Your resistance is not in vain. And your humanity shines brighter than the darkness that seeks to destroy you.

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

As Canada Day approaches should Canadians celebrate a nation complicit in Gaza’s genocide?

To celebrate Canada's birthday as usual would be to ignore the cries of Palestinian children, the destruction of an entire society, and the blood of the innocent that stains Canada’s moral fabric.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

As Canada Day approaches, the question of whether this country deserves celebration becomes impossible to ignore. Those who speak out against Canada’s role in Israel’s genocide—whether Palestinian, Jewish, or otherwise—are routinely met with smears, professional retaliation, and accusations of being antisemitic simply for opposing state violence. The cost of dissent has grown steep, with pro-Palestinian supporters being harassed, doxed, vilified and fired from their jobs, revealing a political culture increasingly hostile to those who still express moral clarity. This climate is especially chilling for racialized Canadians, particularly Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, who have been villified by politicians and right‑wing commentators as threats to “Canadian values.” Their calls for justice are dismissed, their identities scrutinized, and their loyalties questioned. It is difficult to celebrate a nation that punishes those who demand accountability for mass atrocities.

This repression is not an aberration but part of a long and troubling continuity. Canada’s foundations rest on the dispossession and genocide of Indigenous people. Residential schools, the Indian Act, forced relocations, and systemic discrimination were not unfortunate side notes—they were central pillars of Canadian government policy. It was and is all part of an ugly history shaped by policies rooted in white supremacy, and sustained by institutions and systems built on racist foundations that continue to oppress and marginalize racialized communities across Canada.

The same colonial logic that justified the destruction of Indigenous societies at home now echoes in Canada’s support for the destruction of an Indigenous people abroad. The parallels are stark. A nation built on colonial violence and genocide now enables colonial violence and genocide in the Middle East. In such a context, the idea of celebrating Canada Day becomes morally troubling.

This also raises an unavoidable question. How can a nation claim pride in its commitment to human rights and international law while ignoring the human rights of Palestinians facing genocide, selling weapons to the perpetrators, and disregarding the very treaties it is obligated to uphold? The contradiction is too glaring to be papered over with fireworks and patriotic speeches.

Canada’s response to what is happening in Gaza—a place that has been described as a “concentration camp” by many respected human rights voices—cannot be dismissed as a foreign policy miscalculation. It reflects a deeper erosion of the values Canadians are told to celebrate on July 1st. The ideals of justice, equality, and compassion—values often wrapped in the symbolism of the maple leaf—ring hollow when that same symbol is implicated in the suffering of an entire people. Domestic achievements such as universal healthcare or multiculturalism cannot absolve a nation of its role in enabling mass atrocities. A country cannot claim moral leadership abroad while facilitating a genocide.

History offers no refuge from this reckoning. After the Holocaust, many Germans claimed that they did not know the extent of the horrors unfolding around them. Today, such claims would not be believed because the genocide in Gaza has been visible to the world every single day for almost a thousand days. The evidence of genocidal crimes committed by Israel is overwhelming, the suffering undeniable. Conservative estimates place the Palestinian death toll near 100,000, including tens of thousands of children. Entire neighbourhoods have been reduced to rubble, entire family lines erased, and an entire society pushed to the edge of annihilation.

These atrocities have unfolded in real time, documented by journalists, human rights organizations, Palestinians themselves, and even Israeli soldiers. The world has watched the destruction livestreamed to their devices. And yet Canada—despite its constant declarations of commitment to human rights and international law—has chosen a path of political cowardice and moral abdication. It continues to sell weapons and support the state responsible for these crimes while offering only empty rhetoric about peace and restraint. In such a context, silence is not neutrality, it is complicity. And complicity should not be something to be celebrated on July 1st.

When this genocide ends—and it will end—there will be those eager to insist they opposed it from the beginning. But history will not be fooled. It will remember who spoke, who acted, and who chose complicity over conscience. The Canadian government’s continued arms sales to Israel, its refusal to impose broad sanctions, its failure to uphold its legal obligations under the Genocide Convention, and its unwillingness to back international legal efforts such as South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—all of these decisions implicate this country and its leaders. And it also stains those who choose to celebrate Canada Day as though these realities do not exist.

As July 1st approaches, Canadians who believe in human rights face a profound moral dilemma. To celebrate as usual would be to ignore the cries of Palestinian children, the destruction of an entire society, and the blood of the innocent that stains Canada’s moral fabric. The threats facing Canada from Donald Trump pale in comparison to the ethical crisis unfolding within its own borders. A nation that enables genocide cannot credibly celebrate itself as a force for good.

However, there is beauty in Canada—its landscapes, its diversity, its potential for justice. But potential is not achievement, and celebration is not owed, it is earned. A nation complicit in genocide celebrating while that genocide continues is a perversity that should be called out. To mark Canada Day with pride under these circumstances would be to participate in a collective act of denial.

This July 1st should not be a day of fireworks and flag‑waving. It should be a day of reckoning—a moment to confront Canada’s role in Israel’s crimes, to demand an end to the policies that enable them, and to insist that this country finally honour the international conventions and laws it claims to uphold. Only then can Canada begin the long process of restoring its moral integrity. Only then can it aspire to be a nation worthy of pride.

Until that day arrives, Canada Day is not a day to celebrate. It is a reminder of the work that remains to be done to fulfill the potential of this nation.

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

“Anti Palestinianism” – A systemic racism equal in gravity to antisemitism (or maybe worse)

Anti‑Palestinianism is a system that devalues Palestinian life, suppresses Palestinian history, criminalizes Palestinian resistance, and punishes those who support Palestinian rights and refuse to look away.

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

You’ve probably never heard the expression “anti‑Palestinianism.”  It is a term that has become synonymous with the more commonly used term “anti-Palestinian racism” or its acronym “APR.”  Anti-Palestinianism is defined as the systematic erasure, silencing, defamation, and punishment of Palestinians and those who stand with them, and it has become one of the most pervasive and least acknowledged forms of racism and hate in the Western world. It is not merely a matter of interpersonal prejudice, but rather a structural system that operates across governments, news media, universities, policing, and public discourse.

In Canada, the most detailed data available about this racism shows a dramatic escalation of APR or anti-Palestinianism since October 7, 2023. A national report documented a 600% increase of this type of hate in the eight months following October 2023, far above the 506 incidents recorded in 2022. These incidents include defamation, harassment, employment retaliation, censorship, and political vilification. The overwhelming majority—77%—involved defamatory slander portraying Palestinians or their supporters as “terrorist sympathizers” or inherently antisemitic. This was in addition to a reported 1800% increase in incidents of Islamophobia in the year following October 7th, as reported by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).

These are not accidental spikes. They are the visible surface of a deeper structure that mirrors, in its logic and effects, the long history of antisemitism in Europe and Western nations.

The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) defines anti‑Palestinian racism as a form of racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives, including by denying the Nakba (ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine), justifying violence against Palestinians, erasing their human rights, and defaming them and their allies as inherently antisemitic or terrorist. This definition is not abstract. It is borne out in the way governments, police, universities, corporations, and news media in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia have responded to Palestinian life, Palestinian grief, and resistance to Israeli oppression and occupation —not just since October 2023, but for almost eight decades since indigenous Palestinians were pushed off their land in historic Palestine.

The parallels between antisemitism and anti‑Palestinianism become unmistakable when we examine how each system constructs a racialized “other.” Antisemitism historically cast Jews as conspiratorial, disloyal, and inherently dangerous, and anti‑Palestinianism reproduces this same logic today by depicting Palestinians as violent, irrational, or terroristic regardless of their actual actions or political views. This pattern is starkly reflected in the 2023 Anti‑Palestinian Racism report by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), which found that 585 documented incidents—nearly 60 percent of the total—involved slander portraying Palestinians as “terrorist sympathizers,” a trope relentlessly circulated in Canadian media and political discourse. Right‑wing news outlets in Canada, the United States, and Europe amplified this narrative by branding peaceful, multifaith, pro‑ceasefire demonstrations as “pro‑Hamas rallies” or “terrorist‑supporting mobs,” even when the protests were explicitly framed around human rights and opposition to genocide. In doing so, these media ecosystems played a central role in dehumanizing Palestinians and their supporters, recasting anti‑genocide campaigns as threats to national security and democratic stability rather than legitimate expressions of conscience.

This racialization is not confined to Canada. Analyses of anti‑Palestinian racism in the US shows how Palestinians and their supporters are routinely framed as extremists or potential terrorists in American media and political rhetoric, especially when they criticize Israeli policy or use language of decolonization. In Europe, similar patterns appear when governments and media describe large pro‑Palestinian marches in London, Paris, or Berlin as “hate marches” or “pro‑terror” gatherings, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful character of these demonstrations. The effect is to mark Palestinian identity and solidarity as inherently suspect, just as antisemitic discourse once marked Jewish identity as inherently dangerous.

Suppression of Palestinian identity and history is another core feature of anti‑Palestinianism. It amplifies anti‑Palestinian bias and prejudice by denying the Nakba, erasing Palestinian indigeneity, and suppressing acknowledgment of decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing, brutalization, and Israeli state violence. The ACLA description, summarized in multiple Canadian and international reports, explicitly identifies “denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians” and “failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine” as core manifestations of APR. In Canadian public discourse, 1948 is still overwhelmingly narrated as the year Israel came into being, with little or no acknowledgment of the mass expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians, and the erasure of more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages, bulldozed or having forests planted where they once existed. This erasure extends into education and media. School curricula often omit the Nakba entirely, and mainstream media coverage of Gaza and the West Bank frequently strips events of historical context, presenting Israeli violence as isolated “responses” rather than part of a long continuum of occupation and settlement.

Criminalization of Palestinian political expression is another defining feature of anti‑Palestinianism. A national study of protest policing in Canada between 2021 and 2025 found that pro‑Palestinian protests accounted for only 10.1 percent of all demonstrations, yet they made up 37 percent of all police interventions. The CJPME study found that in 2024, nearly two‑thirds of all protest policing in Canada targeted pro‑Palestinian activity, despite the fact that more than 96% of these events were entirely peaceful. The report describes a coordinated architecture involving federal intelligence bodies and local police, treating a human‑rights movement as a security threat and using surveillance, bail conditions, intimidation and legal overreach to suppress speech. In several Canadian cities, police deployed riot squads and made mass arrests at peaceful sit‑ins and marches calling for a ceasefire, and imposed restrictive bail conditions that barred activists from attending future protests or using social media to express pro‑Palestinian views.

Across the Atlantic, European governments have gone even further. France issued blanket bans on pro‑Palestinian demonstrations, with the Interior Minister ordering police to disperse any such gatherings and arrest organizers. Germany banned or severely restricted many pro‑Palestinian protests in Berlin and other cities, often on the grounds of preventing “antisemitic incitement,” and has moved to outlaw organizations such as Samidoun—a Palestinian prisoner support network—under counter‑extremism laws. In the United Kingdom, senior officials described large pro‑Palestinian marches in London as “hate marches,” and then–Home Secretary Suella Braverman publicly labeled the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” a “hate slogan,” encouraging police to treat its use as potential criminality. In the United States, campus encampments and city‑center protests have been met with aggressive policing. At Columbia University and other campuses in spring 2024, police in riot gear dismantled pro‑Palestinian encampments, arresting hundreds of students and faculty on charges such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, even when the protests were nonviolent.

Punishment of allies is another hallmark of anti‑Palestinianism. Antisemitism historically targeted non‑Jews who stood with Jewish communities against persecution. Anti‑Palestinianism similarly punishes Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular supporters of Palestinian rights, branding them “antisemitic,” “extremist,” or terrorist‑adjacent for advocating equality. The “Palestine exception” documented by the Islamophobia Research Hub at York University shows how institutions that celebrate diversity and human rights routinely suspend those commitments when Palestine is involved, targeting not only Palestinians but also their allies. In Canada, the Palestine Exception report and related surveys document numerous cases in which students, academics, and professionals faced retaliation for supporting Palestinian rights. Jewish and non‑Jewish signatories to ceasefire letters have been subjected to internal investigations, contract cancellations, and public smearing. Some university instructors have even had their courses scrutinized or their professional appointments delayed after they spoke out against Israeli apartheid or about the Nakba, while student groups have faced official derecognition or funding cuts for organizing Palestine solidarity events.

This pattern is visible across the Western world. In the United States, high‑profile “doxxing trucks” have driven around elite campuses displaying the names and photos of students—many of them Jewish—who signed statements supporting Palestinian rights, labelling them “antisemites” or “terrorist supporters” and inviting employers to blacklist them. Journalists have been fired or pushed out of newsrooms for using terms like “Palestine,” “occupation,” or “genocide” in their reporting or social media posts. Clergy and lay leaders in European Christian churches who have spoken out for Palestinian rights have been denounced as antisemitic and, in some cases, removed from positions or had their events cancelled. These are not random overreactions; they are the enforcement mechanisms of anti‑Palestinianism as a system that seeks to isolate Palestinians by making solidarity socially and professionally dangerous.

Anti‑Palestinianism is also inseparable from the material system of domination under which Palestinians live. In the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, Palestinians endure military occupation, siege, settlement expansion, home demolitions, and mass incarceration. Repeated large‑scale assaults on Gaza—in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and the ongoing Gaza genocide since 2023—have killed tens of thousands of civilians, including children, journalists, medics, and elders, with two independent studies estimating the cumulative death toll at 377,000 and more than 680,000. Yet anti‑Palestinian discourse routinely inverts this reality, portraying Palestinians as the primary source of violence while erasing or rationalizing the structural violence imposed on them by Israel. As the systemic APR study notes, justifying violence against Palestinians and denying them equal dignity and worth are defining features of anti‑Palestinianism. In Canadian media and politics, this manifests in the reflexive framing of Israeli military actions as “self‑defence,” while Palestinian resistance—whether armed, unarmed, or purely symbolic—is cast as terrorism. This dynamic is reinforced by the stark imbalance in political and media access, where pro‑Palestinian advocates are granted far less face time with elected officials and far less airtime or column space in mainstream news than pro‑Israel or Zionist voices, further entrenching a narrative that marginalizes Palestinian humanity and perspectives.

These dynamics become even more stark when viewed through the lens of the Mark Carney government’s posture toward the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. Even as international courts, UN agencies, genocide and Holocaust scholars, and prominent human rights organizations have declared that genocidal crimes are taking place as defined under the Genocide Convention, the Carney government has refused to use the word at all, choosing instead a vocabulary of euphemisms—“crisis,” “conflict,” “tragedy”—that obscures the deliberate, systematic destruction of an entire people. This refusal is not semantic, it is political. To name genocide would be to acknowledge legal obligations under the Genocide Convention, including the duty to prevent, the duty to punish, and the duty to cease all forms of complicity. By declining to name the crime, the Carney shields himself and his government from these obligations and reinforces the broader architecture of anti‑Palestinianism that treats Palestinian life as less grievable, less visible, and less worthy of protection.

The Canadian government’s decision to continue authorizing weapons exports to Israel even as the official death toll in Gaza approached 80,000, even as entire neighborhoods were flattened, even as UN experts warned of famine engineered through the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, reflects the same logic. The government’s insistence that these exports were “non‑lethal” or “not directly linked” to the assault mirrors the logic of anti‑Palestinianism—a logic that minimizes Palestinian suffering, abstracts Palestinian death into technicalities, and treats Palestinian bodies as collateral rather than as human beings entitled to the full protection of international law. The government’s refusal to sanction Israeli political and military leaders—despite their explicit calls for the destruction of Gaza, despite their public statements advocating the genocide of Palestinians, despite their command responsibility for mass killing—reveals a deeper moral failure. When Israeli leaders openly invoke the biblical language of extermination, when they describe Palestinians as “human animals,” when they call for Gaza to be destroyed or completely “erased,” these are not ambiguous statements. They are incitement to genocide. Yet the Canadian government has declined to impose sanctions, declined to restrict diplomatic engagement, and declined to hold any Israeli official accountable.

When antisemitism and anti‑Palestinianism are placed side by side, the parallels between them come sharply into focus. Both operate by constructing an entire people as inherently dangerous or undeserving of rights, and both depend on erasing or denying the group’s history, trauma, and claims to justice. Each system suppresses political expression, punishes those who stand in solidarity, and provides ideological cover for state violence. However, one difference is that Western societies have come to terms with their historic treatment of Jews and made amends, while anti-Palestinianism is embedded within institutions that profess universal human‑rights commitments while simultaneously carving out exceptions when the victims are Palestinians. It is within this broader architecture that the Carney government’s refusal to recognize the genocide in Gaza, its continued authorization of weapons exports to Israel, and its unwillingness to sanction Israeli leaders must be understood. These are not isolated policy missteps or bureaucratic oversights; they are manifestations of a deeper, systemic prejudice that devalues Palestinian life and shields those responsible for Palestinian suffering from accountability.

Recognizing anti‑Palestinianism as a form of racism equal in gravity to antisemitism does not diminish the specificity of Jewish historical trauma, nor does it collapse distinct experiences into a single narrative. Instead, it insists that the tools we have developed to understand and combat antisemitism—attention to dehumanizing stereotypes, to structural exclusion, to the criminalization of identity, and to the role of state power—must also be applied to the treatment of Palestinians and those who stand with them. The CJPME reports and the ACLA study make clear that anti‑Palestinian racism is systemic in Canada, operating across media, politics, education, and law. Analyses from scholars and journalists show that similar dynamics are at work in the United States and Europe, where Palestinians and their supporters face erasure, defamation, repression and persecution.

If antisemitism is rightly understood as a profound moral and political danger that corrodes democratic life and paves the way for atrocity, then anti‑Palestinianism must be understood in the same register. It is a system that devalues Palestinian life, suppresses Palestinian history, criminalizes Palestinian resistance, and punishes those who refuse to look away. It is also a system that enables governments like Carney’s to continue supplying weapons to a state accused of genocide, to refuse to name the crime unfolding before the world, and to ignore the deliberate starvation of an entire population through the blocking of humanitarian aid. To confront anti‑Palestinianism is not to undermine the struggle against antisemitism; it is to extend the same ethical standard to another people whose humanity has been systematically denied. It is to insist that the universal principles invoked in defense of Jewish life must also be invoked in defense of Palestinian life. And it is to recognize that a government that refuses to name genocide, refuses to halt its material support for it, and refuses to hold its perpetrators accountable is not neutral—it is complicit.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Canada’s moral collapse on Gaza, and the dangerous rise of anti-Palestinian racism in Canada

Canada’s refusal to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel is a diplomatic misstep, a profound moral failure, and a breach of Canada’s legal obligation under the Genocide Convention.

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

In late April and early May 2026, more than a dozen Canadian human rights activists — including Ko Tinmaung and Marie Tota — were abducted in international waters by Israeli forces while participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, a civilian mission carrying desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza. Their boats, which were part of a 40 boat fleet crewed by over 400 activists, were intercepted more than 250 nautical miles from Gaza’s shores, far outside Israeli territorial waters, in what international law experts have described as an act of state piracy and a blatant violation of international law.

The Canadians were unarmed and posed no threat. Yet they were beaten, humiliated, sexually assaulted, and tortured. Their accounts mirror the testimony of scores of other flotilla participants and align with decades of documentation by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN Special Rapporteurs, and Israeli human rights organizations.

Despite repeated requests from Canadian flotilla participants for meetings with Prime Minister Mark Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand — to speak directly about the torture they endured in Israeli custody and the mistreatment Tinmaung and Tota faced at Pearson International Airport upon their return — the government has shown a consistent unwillingness to meet with these brave Canadians.

Carney and Anand did condemn a grotesque video posted by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, in which he taunted abducted flotilla activists in custody. But beyond those social media statements — beyond the PR — the government has taken no action in response to the allegations of torture. No formal protest. No demand for accountability. No sanctions. No consular investigation. No meeting with the survivors or their families. No justice.

Thirteen Canadians were abducted and tortured by a foreign state, and one was left to drown in the Mediterranean in a boat severely damaged by Israeli military personnel, and yet Canada has done nothing.

This is not a diplomatic oversight. It is a moral failure — and a political choice.

We must ask why the Canadian government is refusing to meet survivors of Israeli torture.

The answer lies in Canada’s long‑standing political alignment with Israel. For decades, Canadian governments — Liberal and Conservative alike — have treated Israel not as a nation to be held accountable, but as an ally beyond reproach. Even as Israel has violated the United Nations Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and countless Security Council resolutions for decades, Canada has rarely wavered in its support, issuing only occasional slaps on the wrist.

Meeting torture survivors would force the government to confront the truth about how Israel is committing atrocities — including genocide — in Gaza. That conclusion has already been reached by the UN Commission of Inquiry, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars.  So Carney’s and Anand’s refusal is not about diplomacy. It is about denial.

Now let’s turn to the matter of why at least two of the Canadian flotilla activists were intimidated and threatened by security officials and police when they landed at Pearson International Airport.

When Tinmaung and Tota returned home, they expected to be reunited with their families at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Instead, they were met by customs officers, airport security, and Peel Regional Police who subjected them to aggressive interrogation, isolation, intimidation, and threats — conduct disturbingly similar to what former UN Special Rapporteurs Richard Falk and Hilal Elver described when they were detained and interrogated at Pearson in 2025 for their pro‑Palestinian advocacy.

Anti-Palestinian racism in Canada

This is not a coincidence. It reflects a deeper, long‑standing pattern of institutional anti‑Palestinian racism in Canada — one so entrenched that even as a genocide unfolds in plain sight, our political leaders still refuse to name the crime for what it is.

Reports from the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, York University, and The Conversation have documented systemic anti‑Palestinian racism across Canadian institutions — including policing, education, media, and government. This racism manifests as:

• Silencing Palestinian advocacy; 
  
• Treating Palestinians and their allies as security threats;
  
• Defaming activists as extremists or “terrorists”;
  
• Erasing the story of Palestinian suffering and oppression;
  
• Denying Palestinian humanity.

This is exactly what happened at Pearson Airport. Canadian authorities treated at least two of the torture survivors as threats, not victims. They were intimidated, isolated, detained for hours, with Tinmaung threated with with being charged as a “threat to public safety”, before being pressured to leave the airport on terms set by police and security officials without seeing their families — a violation of their rights and a chilling message to all pro‑Palestinian activists.

This begs the question, how deep does anti‑Palestinian racism run in Canada’s political class?

The answer is it runs deep enough that the Canadian government still refuses to acknowledge the Gaza genocide — even as the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, leading genocide scholars, along with hundreds of human rights and legal scholars, have concluded that Israel is committing genocide. It runs deep enough that Canada has condemned genocide in Myanmar, China, and by Russia in Ukraine — but not in Gaza.  It is deep enough that the  government warns that calling Israel’s actions “genocide” might provoke antisemitism, rather than confronting the reality of mass murder, starvation, and ethnic cleansing. Anti-Palestinian racism is so entrenched that Canada (conditionally) recognized the State of Palestine in 2025 — but still refuses to hold Israel accountable for destroying it.

Anti‑Palestinian racism is not a fringe phenomenon. It is embedded in Canadian political culture.

Despite decades of Israeli crimes Canadian leaders still defend them

The record of Israeli crimes over the decades is overwhelming:

• Illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian land;
  
• Decades of a campaign of ethnic cleansing
  
• Systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions for almost eight decades;
  
• War crimes including collective punishment, targeting civilians, and starvation as a weapon of war;
  
• Apartheid, as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem;
  
• Genocide, as concluded by UN experts, major human rights organizations, and genocide scholars.
  
• Yet Canada continues to defend Israel or remain silent. The million‑dollar question is why.

Because Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East has been shaped for decades by pro‑Israel lobby groups such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and B’nai Brith Canada — organizations documented as promoting anti‑Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, genocide denial, and the conflation of anti‑Zionism and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

CIJA’s own conferences have pushed the government to adopt definitions of antisemitism that silence criticism of Israel. Their lobbying efforts have influenced every major political party, convincing party leaders to adopt policies that effectively silence pro‑Palestinian voices within their membership. This influence is so strong that Canada’s political class often appears more accountable to CIJA, which acts as an agent of the Israeli government, than to international law.

Canada refuses to support South Africa’s genocide case against Israel

However, there are nations in the world with a moral compass that are standing on the right side of history and pursuing justice for Palestinians.  One of those nations is South Africa, which launched a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023 over its brutal military assault on the people in Gaza.

Regrettably, and over the objections of many Canadians, the federal government has refused to join South Africa and 20 other nations supporting their case, including NATO allies Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Turkiye. Instead, Canada has dismissed the case as lacking merit despite the ICJ stating that it was plausible that Israel was committing genocide in a January 2024 preliminary ruling.

Canada’s refusal to join South Africa is not just a diplomatic misstep — it is a profound moral failure. It is also a breach of Canada’s clear legal obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide wherever it occurs. The decision is so indefensible that it raises an unavoidable, unsettling question — has Canadian Middle East policy become so deferential to Israel that Ottawa might as well be taking instructions directly from it? While that is not literally the case, the pattern is impossible to ignore. Again and again, Canada’s positions on the Middle East — especially where Palestinians and their rights are concerned — line up almost seamlessly with those of the apartheid state.

Canada may not take its marching orders directly from Israel, but it unquestionably takes its political cues from a familiar constellation of forces — pro‑Israel lobby groups, a political culture that treats Israel as beyond criticism, and a foreign‑policy establishment that reliably elevates strategic alliances over basic human rights, while wilfully ignoring obligations under international law.

This country’s deference becomes even starker when we examine whom our officials choose to engage with most often on issues related to Israel and Palestinians. CIJA, for one, is among the most active lobbying organizations in Ottawa — a fact reflected in the federal Lobbyist Registry. Its influence is unmistakable as the organization enjoys frequent access to ministers and MPs, helps shape policy priorities, and exerts significant influence over the Canadian narrative on issues affecting Palestinians. Yet multiple Jewish scholars and human‑rights organizations have documented how pro‑Israel organizations have promoted harmful stereotypes about Palestinians and Muslims, marginalized dissenting Jewish voices, and defended Israeli actions described by critics as grave violations of international law.

So when Canadian officials make time for these groups while refusing to meet with Canadian victims of Israeli torture, the message is unmistakable — some lives count and others do not.

What kind of nation do Canadians want this country to be?

Canadians must decide what kind of country we want to be and convey that forcefully to our leaders. Canada cannot claim to champion human rights yet ignore the torture of its own citizens, nor wrap itself in the language of justice while turning its back on Canadians tortured by a foreign state. It cannot profess to oppose genocide while refusing to acknowledge one unfolding in real time, or claim to fight racism while enabling the most entrenched and politically sanctioned form of racism in this country — anti‑Palestinian racism.

Tinmaung, Tota, and the eleven other Canadians abducted and tortured by Israel deserve justice — not silence, platitudes, or carefully crafted political statements that maintain a business as usual attitude with the genocidal state. They deserve a government that recognizes their humanity, and that of Palestinians, without reservation. Canadians deserve leaders who confront atrocities committed by allies — not ones who decide which victims matter and which to sacrifice on the altar of political expediency.

History will judge Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau for their morally bankrupt response to the Gaza genocide and for how their governments treated Canadians who stood on the side of justice for Palestinians. That judgment will not be kind. On the most basic questions of human rights, international law, and the duty to protect the innocent, both men failed — and they failed by choice.

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

An allegory about Palestinian oppression, suffering and erasure

Sometimes rather than explaining global events in geopolitical terms it requires telling a story to which ordinary people can personally connect.

 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

So imagine if someone showed up at your home, a place where you and your extended family have lived for generations, and said, “I’m moving into your house.”

You would laugh at first, because who says something like that. But then the person pushes their way through the door, carrying old papers and documents, and a confidence so absolute it feels unreal. You ask why they think they can just walk in. They hold up a faded document and declare, “My great, great, great, great grandfather lived here once. That means this home is rightfully mine.”

You stare at them, confused. Your family has lived in this house for generations. You have the keys, the deed, the memories, the photographs, the stories. Every corner of the home carries the imprint of your life. But this stranger insists that a distant ancestor’s presence—centuries ago—gives them the right to reclaim everything you built, and the land on which it sits.

Before you can process what’s happening, they push past you and your family and head upstairs to claim the guest room.

At first, the intruder insists it’s only symbolic, a small space that “means a lot.” You resist, but the authorities tell you to be reasonable, to compromise, to make room for someone whose claim they view as legitimate. Refusal, you’re warned, would make you the unreasonable one. The authorities even help the intruder settle in and assist them in inviting other relatives.

Soon, more rooms are taken—one after another—to accommodate their growing family. When you push back, the authorities threaten you with charges. Each expansion is framed as necessary, as part of reclaiming what was “always theirs.” You’re assured you still have plenty of space, even as your world shrinks around you.

Your children end up sharing a single bedroom. Your parents are moved into the hallway. Your kitchen becomes a narrow strip of counter you’re allowed to use only at certain hours. The living room—once the heart of your family—now has a locked gate, and you must request permission to enter.

You protest. You show your deed, your family photos, the bills you’ve paid, the repairs you’ve made. None of it matters. The intruders dismiss it all, and the authorities echo their indifference.

“My ancestor was here first,” the intruder repeats. “That’s the only thing that matters.”

Then their friends begin arriving at the intruder’s invitation.

Not one or two—dozens. They arrive with boxes, furniture, tools, and a sense of entitlement that mirrors the first intruder’s. They spread across the house, occupying rooms you never agreed to give up. They claim they’re helping “restore the home to its rightful owners.” Your presence, they insist, is temporary—tolerated only because removing you all at once would be troublesome.

Any objection is treated as aggression. Defending your own home is framed as a threat. Your resistance becomes proof, in their eyes, that you don’t deserve the shrinking space you still occupy.

Locks appear everywhere. Doors once open now have metal bars. Windows you used to open for fresh air are sealed shut. You’re told it’s for “security,” for “order,” and that good behavior might lead to fewer restrictions.

It never does.

Instead, the intruders begin building new rooms—extensions, additions, expansions—right on top of your garden, your yard, your driveway. They pave over the soil where your grandparents planted olive trees. They tear down the shed your father built with his own hands. They erect fences that slice through your property, separating your family from one another.

When you ask why, the intruders shrug. “We need more living space. And this home was always meant for us.”

You remind them of their earlier promises to leave certain areas untouched—spaces where your family could still live with dignity. They nod politely, then quietly build over those areas too. Everything is justified as temporary, as necessary, as something you should be grateful isn’t worse.

Meanwhile, you’re squeezed into smaller and smaller corners. You’re forbidden from renovating, expanding, or even fixing a broken window without permission. The intruders, however, build freely and endlessly. They even restrict your access to the bathroom and ration your water, while using as much as they please.

One morning, you wake to find that the room you were sleeping in has been reclassified as “disputed space.” You’re allowed to stay only if you remain silent, avoid drawing attention, and never mention that this was your home long before the intruders arrived.

Your children grow up hearing the intruders tell visitors, “This house was empty when we arrived,” or “The family living here never really belonged,” or “We brought civility to this place.” Your children look to you for clarity. They know the truth, but the intruders speak with such authority—and the local authorities reinforce their claims—that the broader community begins to believe them.

Then comes the inversion of reality. The intruders begin accusing you of being the trespasser.

You’re told you don’t belong. You’re told you should be grateful for whatever scraps of space remain. Your presence is framed as the obstacle to peace. If only you stopped insisting on your rights, everything would supposedly be fine.

This is said while the intruders sit in your living room, holding your keys, lounging on your family’s furniture which they now claim as their own..

When you try to tell your story—when you try to explain what happened, when you try to show the community the truth—the authorities silence you. Your account is dismissed as “too political,” “too emotional,” or “too upsetting for the intruders.” Acknowledging your history is labeled “controversial.”

Imagine that. Being told that the theft of your home is a sensitive topic, and that the feelings of those who took it matter more than the reality of what your family endured. Imagine being told your history is optional, debatable, or inconvenient. Imagine being told your suffering must be softened or erased so the intruders can feel comfortable in the house they stole.

Now imagine living like this not for a day, nor for a year, but for generations.

Imagine raising children who have never known safety in their own home. Imagine growing old in a place where every door is controlled by someone else, and being told repeatedly that you should be grateful for whatever space you’re allowed to occupy.

And then imagine being blamed for the entire situation.

As the years pass, something even darker unfolds. The intruders begin speaking openly about your family as if you are pests. They use words meant to strip you of your humanity—cockroaches, snakes, human animals. These slurs are tossed around casually, as if describing vermin rather than the human beings whose home they invaded.

At first, you think it’s just hateful language. But the language becomes a prelude to violence.

One night, one of the intruders corners your eldest son in the hallway. Your son dares to assert that this is his home, that he has a right to walk freely in it. The intruder responds with lethal force. Your son does not survive.

When you demand justice, the intruders dismiss your grief and the authorities express “regret” but support them. Your son is branded “dangerous,” accused of provoking the attack. Had he stayed in the tiny corner allotted to your family, they insist, he would still be alive.

You’re not allowed to mourn openly. Cry too loudly and you’re accused of disturbing the peace. Speak your son’s name and you’re accused of incitement. Try to tell visitors what happened and the intruders cut you off, calling you a liar.

Their friends and the authorities nod along. They admire the polished floors and expanded wings, pretending not to see the broken rooms where your family now sleeps. They praise the intruders’ “restoration work,” ignoring the fact that the home was beautiful, whole and thriving before it was invaded and taken over.

When you show these visitors old photographs proving your family lived here long before the intruders, they dismiss the evidence as “inconclusive” or “too complicated.” Dwelling on history, they warn, might “inflame tensions.” Some even accuse you of rewriting the story.

Meanwhile, the intruders grow bolder. They patrol the hallways with weapons, claiming it’s for their safety. Your presence, they insist, is the threat. If you weren’t so “hostile,” they wouldn’t need to defend themselves.

But you know the truth. The weapons are tools of domination.

One afternoon, your daughter tries to retrieve a favorite book from the bedroom that used to be hers. An intruder blocks her path. She is small, frightened, and desperate to reclaim a piece of her childhood. When she reaches for the book, the intruder reacts with lethal force.

You bury another child.

Once again, the intruders blame you. Your daughter “shouldn’t have been there.” She “posed a risk.” Her death is described as “regrettable” but the intruder had “no choice.”

The authorities—who claim to be neutral and care about justice—look uncomfortable for a moment, then return to admiring the intruders’ new kitchen remodel. You’re urged to “move on,” to “focus on the future,” to stop talking about what happened.

You realize the authorities favour the intruders. They have chosen to ignore the truth because acknowledging it would require confronting the injustice they have supported for years through their actions and inaction.

The intruders continue expanding, building new rooms on top of your children’s graves. They celebrate their “progress.” They host parties in the home they stole, toasting their own “resilience” and “security,” never mentioning the ugliness and brutality that made it possible.

Your family, once whole, now lives in fear, grief, and suffocating confinement. You cling to memories of what the home once was, even as the intruders insist those memories are false.

And through it all, they repeat the same refrain: “This house was always ours.”

They speak with such confidence that outsiders believe them. They repeat it so often that even some in the community begin to doubt the historical truth.

But you remember.  You remember every room, every wall, every tree in the yard. You remember the laughter that once filled the halls. You remember the life your family built long before the intruders arrived with their ancestor’s distant claim.

And you know—with a clarity that cannot be erased—that what happened to your home was not fate, not destiny, not a misunderstanding.  It was theft.  It was violence.

It was the deliberate erasure of a people’s place in the world.

And no amount of denial, propaganda, or dehumanizing language can change the truth of what was taken from you.

The end of the story hasn’t been written.  Because the intruders—Zionists and their supporters—will face justice one day for taking from the homeowner—Palestinians—their rights, their dignity, their property, their possessions, and their lives.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”  And that is why Palestinians will ultimately prevail, despite the bleakness they have endured for generations.  Ultimately, Palestinians will be free from the river to the sea. Because that is their destiny.

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