American democracy is now a facade, and Canadians should be worried

The gravitational pull of American politics—especially as the US drifts toward oligarchic authoritarianism—has begun reshaping Canada’s political landscape in profound ways. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

American democracy, as many scholars and observers argue, no longer functions as a genuine democracy. What remains is a symbolic shell — a façade masking a political infrastructure that has been hollowed out by decades of hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift. The United States today resembles a late‑stage empire coasting on historical momentum, much like Rome after the Crisis of the Third Century, where imperial institutions still existed but meaningful governance of the Empire had collapsed under the combined pressures of political instability, extreme inflation, foreign wars and foreign invasions, and the plague.

The American decline did not begin with the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. His rise was a symptom of a system already damaged and in freefall. But his open admiration for authoritarian rulers, his willingness to subvert democratic norms, and his consolidation of power among billionaire oligarchs and right wing extremist networks (the MAGA movement) accelerated a process that had been underway for years. And for Canadians, the implications are profound. When the largest democracy in the Western alliance collapses into full‑blown authoritarianism, Canada will not be insulated. It will be engulfed — politically, economically, and culturally.

The long decline of American democracy

Political scientists have documented the erosion of US democratic norms for decades, but particularly in the 21st century. A 2023 study by the Brookings Institution describes the United States as experiencing early‑stage democratic decline, marked by weakened judicial constraints, executive overreach, and partisan sabotage of accountability institutions. This is fuelled by the fact that since 2010, state legislatures instituted laws intended to reduce voters’ access to the ballot, politicize election administration, and foreclose electoral competition via extreme gerrymandering of electoral districts. The United States also saw substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service.

Added to this is the issue of political polarization, which is central to this decline. Pew Research Center reports that partisan animosity in the US has reached historic highs, with majorities in both parties viewing the other as immoral, dishonest, unpatriotic and a threat to the nation. This is not merely cultural hostility—it is structural. When political actors no longer value democracy for its own sake, institutions become weapons to hammer opponents.

The Republican Party’s radicalization is well‑documented. Numerous analyses and studies since the 2020 presidential election have warned that the GOP’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimate election and its abandonment of peaceful power transfer norms pose an “existential threat” to US democracy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have often failed to defend democratic norms with sufficient force. Their technocratic instincts—described in political‑science literature as “managerial liberalism”—have led them to prioritize bureaucratic stability over structural reform. They have not been the “adults in the room” they claim to be. They have been caretakers of a decaying system.

The American Empire’s unraveling: The Iraq War and beyond

The decline of American democracy is inseparable from the decline of American global hegemony.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exposed the limits of US military power and shattered international trust. The 2008 financial crisis further undermined global confidence in the American economic model, revealing deep structural vulnerabilities and accelerating domestic polarization. Political economists have shown that when institutions fail to deliver shared prosperity, anti‑pluralist movements gain legitimacy. A 2026 review in the Journal of Economic Literature argues that institutional failure and identity‑driven polarization interact to erode democratic guardrails.

After 2010, the collapse accelerated with extreme partisan gerrymandering entrenching minority rule; Citizens United unleashing unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns; and Congressional gridlock becoming permanent.

Freedom House marks 2016 as the beginning of a measurable decline in US political rights and civil liberties.

The fascist drift: Symbols without substance

Today, the United States still displays the outward symbols of democracy — elections, courts, legislatures, and the ceremonial rituals of democratic governance — yet the substance beneath these institutions has been steadily hollowed out. The country increasingly resembles a political system where democratic forms persist but democratic norms have eroded. This erosion is visible in the conduct of its leadership, its security apparatus, its militaristic posture, and the overwhelming influence of corporate oligarchs—patterns that echo the situation in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The most visible and troubling example is the country’s political leadership—Donald Trump.  He has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian rulers, praising figures such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, and others. This is not a trivial matter of rhetorical excess but a signal that Trump sees democratic constraints as weaknesses rather than safeguards. At the same time, American militarism has become a defining feature of national identity. Since 2001, the United States has engaged in continuous warfare across multiple regions, attacking eight countries in Asia and Africa, projecting force abroad while failing to maintain democratic resilience at home.

Domestically, the internal security apparatus has also drifted toward authoritarian practices. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) has been documented committing hundreds of abuses and human rights violations, including: engaging in abusive detention practices, wrongfully detaining US citizens, and deaths of civilians and detainees, including dozens who have died in ICE detention facilities. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a system where accountability has weakened and state power is increasingly exercised without restraint.

Overlaying all of this is the immense influence of corporate and billionaire oligarchs. Unlimited campaign spending — enabled by decisions such as Citizens United — has allowed billionaires and corporations to shape political outcomes, policy agendas, and legislative priorities in ways that serve elite interests rather than democratic ones. The result is a political system where wealth, not citizenship, determines access to power. These developments are hallmarks of a state drifting toward authoritarianism, even if the democratic façade remains intact.

Canada’s drift toward authoritarianism and its US roots

Canada is not immune to these trends. In fact, Canada’s democratic erosion is increasingly linked to US oligarchic and political influence. The gravitational pull of American politics—especially as the US drifts toward oligarchic authoritarianism—has begun reshaping Canada’s political landscape in profound ways.

The Canadian Conservative Party has adopted strategies and narratives that closely mirror those of the US Republican Party. Culture‑war rhetoric, attacks on independent media, hostility toward climate science, and alignment with US billionaire‑funded think tanks have become increasingly common. Research shows that Canadian conservative messaging now mirrors US Republican narratives, amplified by cross‑border political networks and shared donors. This is not simply ideological convergence, it is a structural importation of American political tactics into Canada’s political culture.

Yet the Liberals are not innocent in this drift. Under Mark Carney—a former global finance executive deeply embedded in elite economic networks—the party has moved toward a technocratic centrism aligned with corporate and billionaire interests. Canadian political scientists have documented the Liberals’ close ties to Bay Street finance, the influence of multinational corporations on policy formation, and a weakening commitment to climate action and human rights. They also note an increasing reliance on private‑sector advisory groups, which further entrenches elite influence over public policy. A campaign launched by Democracy Watch warns that both major parties are increasingly shaped by elite economic actors whose interests diverge from those of the general population.

This bipartisan drift toward elite capture is reinforced by US oligarchic networks that exert direct influence on Canadian politics. American tech billionaires have shaped Canadian digital policy debates; cross‑border fossil‑fuel lobbying has influenced Canadian climate legislation; American political consultants have advised Canadian political campaigns; and US dark‑money networks have funded Canadian advocacy groups. A 2023 investigation by The Narwhal documented US oil‑industry funding of Canadian political organizations opposing climate regulation. These developments are not accidental. They are structural consequences of Canada’s proximity to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse.

Why Canadians should be alarmed

Canada’s fate is tied to the United States in ways that make American democratic decline a direct threat to Canadian stability. Economically, Canada is deeply integrated with the US, and any authoritarian instability south of the border would produce immediate and severe economic shockwaves in Canada, as we have seen with Trump’s tariff war. Politically, US authoritarian narratives spread easily across the border, influencing Canadian discourse and reshaping partisan identities. Corporate capture is also a shared phenomenon, where US oligarchs influence Canadian policy through cross‑border investments and multinational corporate structures.

Security risks are equally significant. A destabilized United States—politically, socially, or institutionally—poses direct threats to Canadian sovereignty, border stability, and national security. And beyond bilateral concerns, the collapse of the United States would destabilize the entire Western democratic alliance. If the US falls, the democratic world loses its keystone.

Canada is drifting toward authoritarianism not only because of domestic political choices, but because it is tethered to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse. The erosion of democracy in the United States is not a distant problem. It is a direct and immediate threat to Canadian political stability, democratic norms, and national sovereignty.

American democracy is no longer a functioning system. It is a veneer—a symbolic shell covering a political infrastructure that has been rotting for decades. Hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift have transformed the United States into a nation where democratic norms are optional.

Canada is drifting in the same direction albeit at a slower pace—not only because of domestic political failures, but because US oligarchic and political networks exert enormous influence over Canadian politics.

If the largest democratic domino falls, Canada will not remain standing. The veneer is cracking, and Canadians must pay attention and prepare before it shatters.

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

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.