Nowhere is the evil that
is identified in the final judgment from Nuremberg more brazen than in
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza—a 21st Century reincarnation of what the
Nazis did.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
“War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined
to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world... A war of
aggression is the supreme international crime differing only from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole.”
These words, etched into the judgment of the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, were not mere rhetoric. They were a solemn indictment of leaders who unleashed industrialized slaughter on humanity, convicting Nazi architects of crimes that devoured 70 to 85 million lives—over 50 million civilians among them. As the gavel fell in 1946, the world vowed (once again) to never to forget war’s futility, its horror, its senseless grind of flesh and bone for the egos and greed of dictators, kings, presidents and prime ministers.
Yet here we stand, on another Remembrance Day in Canada, gazing at the sea of red poppies worn on lapels and laid at cenotaphs that honour the fallen and the scarred—soldiers who marched into the maw of machine guns, who clawed through mud-choked trenches, who watched friends dissolve in clouds of chemical weapon. We commemorate their sacrifice, their valour, their unbreakable spirit, but at the same time we tarnish their sacrifice by being complicit, as a nation, in the very sort of evil they fought in World War II.
Ceremonies swell with anthems and wreaths, stirring national pride and sombre reflection. But in this ritual of reverence, the true venom of war—the supreme evil named at Nuremberg—is whispered only in passing, if at all. We gloss over the architects—the foolhardy politicians whose vanities birthed these cataclysms. We sentimentalize the survivors while burying the deeper truth—that war is not noble tragedy but orchestrated abomination, a crime that devours innocents for fleeting gains. And today, as Western leaders, including those in Canada, funnel arms into fresh infernos, we risk repeating history’s gravest sin—complicity in aggression’s accumulated evil.
Since 9/11 and the Afghanistan War, where 165 Canadians died, Remembrance Day has morphed into a spectacle laced with nationalism and political theatre. In Canada, politicians drape themselves in solemnity, invoking the ghosts of Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach and the Battle of Kandahar to stoke unity. But this veneer obscures the ugly genesis of our traditions.
The First World War was no inexorable clash of ideologies fated to happen. It was the bastard child of European egos—emperors, kings and politicians, entangled in a web of alliances forged by imperial hunger that knocked over the first domino leading to international catastrophe. A century of fragile peace, from Waterloo to Sarajevo, shattered by the assassination of an archduke and an ensuing crisis of ultimatums and mobilizations too rigid to halt. Germany’s blank cheque to Austria-Hungary, Russia’s hasty full mobilization, Britain’s deployment to support Belgium—all foolhardy gambles that dragged empires into four years of slaughter.
By 1918 between 17 to 22 million lay dead, with over 10 million civilians starved, diseased, or shredded by bombs and artillery, with 25 million more wounded, their bodies and minds irreparably broken. Trench warfare birthed death on an industrialized level with the use of poison gas, tanks, and barbed wire turning open fields into abattoirs of human remains. For what? The war’s futility was etched in a poem by Wilfred Owen, “Anthem For Doomed Youth” which evoked horror: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”
The Treaty of Versailles, meant to end the nightmare and prevent future wars, instead sowed the seeds of its sequel. Punitive reparations crippled Germany, fuelling resentment that Adolf Hitler weaponized to launch World War II, wanting to “make Germany great again”. This second apocalypse claimed between 70 and 85 million souls, with over 50 million civilians gassed, bombed, or starved in genocidal fury. The Nazis embodied pure aggression, their blitzkriegs and death camps was the distilled evil that Nuremberg condemned.
The Americans, the British and Canadians landed at Normandy beaches on D-Day with more than 4,400 killed in the landings. As Allied troops broke through the lines of German defences the cost in human lives was more than 600,000, not counting the civilians who were caught between the two forces. Counting losses in both world wars over 111,000 Canadians, more than 533,000 Americans, and over 983,000 British military personnel died, their blood spilled in conflicts politicians could have averted through diplomacy if they truly believed in peace.
After the German and Japanese surrendered in World War II, the pattern persisted, a grim refrain. Just five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw over 200,000 civilians incinerated by the US, the Korean War erupted—a Cold War conflict scripted by superpowers. North Korea, backed by China and the Soviets, invaded the South, and the UN coalition, led by the US (including 26,000 Canadians) countered. What began as ideological saber-rattling teetered on nuclear brinkmanship, ultimately killing 3 to 3.5 million—two million civilians pulverized by bombs, napalm and artillery by 1953. Villages were razed as families fled, not for honour but for the Cold War’s chessboard. Today as those who gave their lives on battlefields are commemorated, there are no parades or ceremonies for the millions of civilian victims of the war machine, their memories fading into footnotes.
“There is no honour in war,” is a sentiment embraced by many, including those who have returned home bloodied and disfigured from battlefields. War is a senseless slaughter for economic plunder or political advantage where the vast majority of victims are not combatants. The 20th century’s ledger drips rivers of blood as civilians, once peripheral to the battles of history. are now those who are the primary victims, courtesy of so-called “smart” bombs and cluster munitions that claim to spare the innocent but never do.
Post-9/11, Western wars—led by the US—unleashed hell in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The Costs of War Project tallies 4.5 to 4.6 million dead (primarily Muslims and Arabs), with more than 38 million displaced. One analysis pushes the total number of dead to 6 million, the unrecorded results of war’s rubble and ruin. The illegal invasion of Iraq, which Canada dodged, but the fallout of which we reaped, birthed instability in the Middle-East and the carnage in Syria. Millions of Muslims perished in 25 years of such “interventions,” but there are no cenotaphs or monuments for them. These wars, sold as liberation for oppressed peoples, or efforts to root out terrorism, were aggression’s kin—resource grabs or political aggression masked as righteousness, destabilizing a region with more than 400 million people to the point that it has become a perpetual pyre.
As Canada’s World War II veterans dwindle—now numbering under 30,000, averaging 94 years of age—their visceral testimonies fade. The acrid smell of cordite, the screams of the eviscerated, and the stench of rotting bodies—these horrors will recede and the veterans’ stories will be romanticized by some to advance political agendas. When the last veteran passes the insanity of global war risks being slowly erased, leaving only myths of glory. Those who organize Remembrance Day related events must change how the day is commemorated and reclaim the unvarnished horror of war, not just remembering the dead and maimed, but the evil that dispatched them into a maw of horror fed by lies about “protecting democracy” while peddling fear at home.
Nowhere is the evil that is identified in the final judgment from Nuremberg more brazen than in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza—a 21st Century reincarnation of what the Nazis did. Since October 7, 2023, over 75,000 Palestinians have been killed according to official numbers—with one Harvard published study by Israeli academic Yaakov Garb putting the death toll at more than 377,000, and another by two Australian professors asserting that more than 680,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel.
More than 80% of Gaza’s structures have been levelled under Israeli bombardment, children have been bombed in “safe zones”, hospitals and health facilities have been decimated, aid convoys attacked, and food weaponized to orchestrate famine. This is the evil that the Nuremberg judgment spoke of that should be prevented. But here we are in 2025 watching Israel commit crimes no different than what the Nazis inflicted on millions and yet those countries (Canada included) who support the so-called “international rule of law” do nothing to stop it, even though they have the power to do so.
The UN’s September 2025 Commission of Inquiry declared Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, citing four acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention—mass killing, serious harm, life-destroying conditions, birth prevention—inflicted with intent, incited by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, carried out by his military leaders, and supported by almost half of Israeli society according to a Ha’aretz poll. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem echo the UN’s conclusions—deliberate starvation, sabotaging water facilities, starvation as a weapon, reproductive devastation. Israeli data itself reveals that 83% of the dead are civilians, a number unparalleled outside Rwanda or Srebrenica. When leaders dehumanize—”eliminate anything that walks or breathes”—and raze health facilities, cut power to incubators for babies, destroy, the hate and aggression has reached an apex and is an example of the accumulated evil referenced in the Nuremberg judgment.
Yet despite the mountains of evidence—videos, eyewitness testimonies, media reports, social media posts by the Israeli soldiers themselves—Western nations, Nuremberg’s heirs, fuel this inferno. The US pumps $3.8 billion in military aid annually into Israel, plus more than $20 billion since October 2023 in munitions that have pulverized Gaza. The UK, despite suspending 30 export licenses in September 2024, shipped F-35 parts for jets dropping 2,000 pound bombs on schools and tent camps. Canada, feigning a higher morality, exported $18.9 million in weapons components in 2024, adding $37.2 million more by mid-2025, including 421,000 bullets and mortar cartridges via US loopholes. Our political leaders—Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney—have blood soaked hands in a conflict which they hypocritically condemn, while arming the aggressor. This is complicity, plain and simple. They aid Israel’s crimes according to UN experts, while violating the Arms Trade Treaty. Over 60 states, mostly Western, bear this stain, acting as diplomatic shields and economic lifelines, or providing ideological alibis that perpetuate Israel’s genocidal carnage.
On this Remembrance Day, as bagpipes wail and poppies are laid at cenotaphs, let us pierce the pomp and circumstance with a dose of present day reality. Let’s honour the fallen not with platitudes, but by naming war’s evil—the aggression that orphans generations, poisons futures, and mocks the vow made after Nuremberg’s convictions. Those who served after World War II—Canadian sons and daughters—were sent overseas believing the lie that they were fighting for freedom, shielding innocents. Many died needlessly as pawns played by political egos, and while their names grace tombs and monuments their memories are being disgraced by the government and politicians that sent them off to kill brown people.
To truly commemorate November 11th, we must dismantle the ideologies that sow the seeds of war—militarism, imperialism, colonialism, Islamophobia, white supremacy—these are the cancers that are war’s siren call. We must hold politicians accountable for their own complicity, demanding arms embargoes, and an end to support for criminal regimes. We must fight the stealth erosion of our rights via fear mongering bills, the creation of a surveillance state, and hate laws cloaked in the blanket of security and protection. If we fail, letting Gaza’s screams join the echoes of Vimy Ridge, Flanders, and the Dieppe raid, we spit on the fallen. Their blood bought us liberties we squander—speech unbound, bodies sovereign, humanity indivisible. War’s futility is not fate, it’s a choice. We must choose differently by ending the supreme crime and remembering it on the day we commemorate the fallen. If we don’t, the merciless judge of history will convict us all, and we will never see real justice in a world that is becoming more lawless at the hands of national leaders who match the evil of Nazi Germany.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
These words, etched into the judgment of the Nuremberg Trials following World War II, were not mere rhetoric. They were a solemn indictment of leaders who unleashed industrialized slaughter on humanity, convicting Nazi architects of crimes that devoured 70 to 85 million lives—over 50 million civilians among them. As the gavel fell in 1946, the world vowed (once again) to never to forget war’s futility, its horror, its senseless grind of flesh and bone for the egos and greed of dictators, kings, presidents and prime ministers.
Yet here we stand, on another Remembrance Day in Canada, gazing at the sea of red poppies worn on lapels and laid at cenotaphs that honour the fallen and the scarred—soldiers who marched into the maw of machine guns, who clawed through mud-choked trenches, who watched friends dissolve in clouds of chemical weapon. We commemorate their sacrifice, their valour, their unbreakable spirit, but at the same time we tarnish their sacrifice by being complicit, as a nation, in the very sort of evil they fought in World War II.
Ceremonies swell with anthems and wreaths, stirring national pride and sombre reflection. But in this ritual of reverence, the true venom of war—the supreme evil named at Nuremberg—is whispered only in passing, if at all. We gloss over the architects—the foolhardy politicians whose vanities birthed these cataclysms. We sentimentalize the survivors while burying the deeper truth—that war is not noble tragedy but orchestrated abomination, a crime that devours innocents for fleeting gains. And today, as Western leaders, including those in Canada, funnel arms into fresh infernos, we risk repeating history’s gravest sin—complicity in aggression’s accumulated evil.
Since 9/11 and the Afghanistan War, where 165 Canadians died, Remembrance Day has morphed into a spectacle laced with nationalism and political theatre. In Canada, politicians drape themselves in solemnity, invoking the ghosts of Vimy Ridge, Juno Beach and the Battle of Kandahar to stoke unity. But this veneer obscures the ugly genesis of our traditions.
The First World War was no inexorable clash of ideologies fated to happen. It was the bastard child of European egos—emperors, kings and politicians, entangled in a web of alliances forged by imperial hunger that knocked over the first domino leading to international catastrophe. A century of fragile peace, from Waterloo to Sarajevo, shattered by the assassination of an archduke and an ensuing crisis of ultimatums and mobilizations too rigid to halt. Germany’s blank cheque to Austria-Hungary, Russia’s hasty full mobilization, Britain’s deployment to support Belgium—all foolhardy gambles that dragged empires into four years of slaughter.
By 1918 between 17 to 22 million lay dead, with over 10 million civilians starved, diseased, or shredded by bombs and artillery, with 25 million more wounded, their bodies and minds irreparably broken. Trench warfare birthed death on an industrialized level with the use of poison gas, tanks, and barbed wire turning open fields into abattoirs of human remains. For what? The war’s futility was etched in a poem by Wilfred Owen, “Anthem For Doomed Youth” which evoked horror: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”
The Treaty of Versailles, meant to end the nightmare and prevent future wars, instead sowed the seeds of its sequel. Punitive reparations crippled Germany, fuelling resentment that Adolf Hitler weaponized to launch World War II, wanting to “make Germany great again”. This second apocalypse claimed between 70 and 85 million souls, with over 50 million civilians gassed, bombed, or starved in genocidal fury. The Nazis embodied pure aggression, their blitzkriegs and death camps was the distilled evil that Nuremberg condemned.
The Americans, the British and Canadians landed at Normandy beaches on D-Day with more than 4,400 killed in the landings. As Allied troops broke through the lines of German defences the cost in human lives was more than 600,000, not counting the civilians who were caught between the two forces. Counting losses in both world wars over 111,000 Canadians, more than 533,000 Americans, and over 983,000 British military personnel died, their blood spilled in conflicts politicians could have averted through diplomacy if they truly believed in peace.
After the German and Japanese surrendered in World War II, the pattern persisted, a grim refrain. Just five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki saw over 200,000 civilians incinerated by the US, the Korean War erupted—a Cold War conflict scripted by superpowers. North Korea, backed by China and the Soviets, invaded the South, and the UN coalition, led by the US (including 26,000 Canadians) countered. What began as ideological saber-rattling teetered on nuclear brinkmanship, ultimately killing 3 to 3.5 million—two million civilians pulverized by bombs, napalm and artillery by 1953. Villages were razed as families fled, not for honour but for the Cold War’s chessboard. Today as those who gave their lives on battlefields are commemorated, there are no parades or ceremonies for the millions of civilian victims of the war machine, their memories fading into footnotes.
“There is no honour in war,” is a sentiment embraced by many, including those who have returned home bloodied and disfigured from battlefields. War is a senseless slaughter for economic plunder or political advantage where the vast majority of victims are not combatants. The 20th century’s ledger drips rivers of blood as civilians, once peripheral to the battles of history. are now those who are the primary victims, courtesy of so-called “smart” bombs and cluster munitions that claim to spare the innocent but never do.
Post-9/11, Western wars—led by the US—unleashed hell in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. The Costs of War Project tallies 4.5 to 4.6 million dead (primarily Muslims and Arabs), with more than 38 million displaced. One analysis pushes the total number of dead to 6 million, the unrecorded results of war’s rubble and ruin. The illegal invasion of Iraq, which Canada dodged, but the fallout of which we reaped, birthed instability in the Middle-East and the carnage in Syria. Millions of Muslims perished in 25 years of such “interventions,” but there are no cenotaphs or monuments for them. These wars, sold as liberation for oppressed peoples, or efforts to root out terrorism, were aggression’s kin—resource grabs or political aggression masked as righteousness, destabilizing a region with more than 400 million people to the point that it has become a perpetual pyre.
As Canada’s World War II veterans dwindle—now numbering under 30,000, averaging 94 years of age—their visceral testimonies fade. The acrid smell of cordite, the screams of the eviscerated, and the stench of rotting bodies—these horrors will recede and the veterans’ stories will be romanticized by some to advance political agendas. When the last veteran passes the insanity of global war risks being slowly erased, leaving only myths of glory. Those who organize Remembrance Day related events must change how the day is commemorated and reclaim the unvarnished horror of war, not just remembering the dead and maimed, but the evil that dispatched them into a maw of horror fed by lies about “protecting democracy” while peddling fear at home.
Nowhere is the evil that is identified in the final judgment from Nuremberg more brazen than in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza—a 21st Century reincarnation of what the Nazis did. Since October 7, 2023, over 75,000 Palestinians have been killed according to official numbers—with one Harvard published study by Israeli academic Yaakov Garb putting the death toll at more than 377,000, and another by two Australian professors asserting that more than 680,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel.
More than 80% of Gaza’s structures have been levelled under Israeli bombardment, children have been bombed in “safe zones”, hospitals and health facilities have been decimated, aid convoys attacked, and food weaponized to orchestrate famine. This is the evil that the Nuremberg judgment spoke of that should be prevented. But here we are in 2025 watching Israel commit crimes no different than what the Nazis inflicted on millions and yet those countries (Canada included) who support the so-called “international rule of law” do nothing to stop it, even though they have the power to do so.
The UN’s September 2025 Commission of Inquiry declared Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, citing four acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention—mass killing, serious harm, life-destroying conditions, birth prevention—inflicted with intent, incited by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet, carried out by his military leaders, and supported by almost half of Israeli society according to a Ha’aretz poll. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem echo the UN’s conclusions—deliberate starvation, sabotaging water facilities, starvation as a weapon, reproductive devastation. Israeli data itself reveals that 83% of the dead are civilians, a number unparalleled outside Rwanda or Srebrenica. When leaders dehumanize—”eliminate anything that walks or breathes”—and raze health facilities, cut power to incubators for babies, destroy, the hate and aggression has reached an apex and is an example of the accumulated evil referenced in the Nuremberg judgment.
Yet despite the mountains of evidence—videos, eyewitness testimonies, media reports, social media posts by the Israeli soldiers themselves—Western nations, Nuremberg’s heirs, fuel this inferno. The US pumps $3.8 billion in military aid annually into Israel, plus more than $20 billion since October 2023 in munitions that have pulverized Gaza. The UK, despite suspending 30 export licenses in September 2024, shipped F-35 parts for jets dropping 2,000 pound bombs on schools and tent camps. Canada, feigning a higher morality, exported $18.9 million in weapons components in 2024, adding $37.2 million more by mid-2025, including 421,000 bullets and mortar cartridges via US loopholes. Our political leaders—Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney—have blood soaked hands in a conflict which they hypocritically condemn, while arming the aggressor. This is complicity, plain and simple. They aid Israel’s crimes according to UN experts, while violating the Arms Trade Treaty. Over 60 states, mostly Western, bear this stain, acting as diplomatic shields and economic lifelines, or providing ideological alibis that perpetuate Israel’s genocidal carnage.
On this Remembrance Day, as bagpipes wail and poppies are laid at cenotaphs, let us pierce the pomp and circumstance with a dose of present day reality. Let’s honour the fallen not with platitudes, but by naming war’s evil—the aggression that orphans generations, poisons futures, and mocks the vow made after Nuremberg’s convictions. Those who served after World War II—Canadian sons and daughters—were sent overseas believing the lie that they were fighting for freedom, shielding innocents. Many died needlessly as pawns played by political egos, and while their names grace tombs and monuments their memories are being disgraced by the government and politicians that sent them off to kill brown people.
To truly commemorate November 11th, we must dismantle the ideologies that sow the seeds of war—militarism, imperialism, colonialism, Islamophobia, white supremacy—these are the cancers that are war’s siren call. We must hold politicians accountable for their own complicity, demanding arms embargoes, and an end to support for criminal regimes. We must fight the stealth erosion of our rights via fear mongering bills, the creation of a surveillance state, and hate laws cloaked in the blanket of security and protection. If we fail, letting Gaza’s screams join the echoes of Vimy Ridge, Flanders, and the Dieppe raid, we spit on the fallen. Their blood bought us liberties we squander—speech unbound, bodies sovereign, humanity indivisible. War’s futility is not fate, it’s a choice. We must choose differently by ending the supreme crime and remembering it on the day we commemorate the fallen. If we don’t, the merciless judge of history will convict us all, and we will never see real justice in a world that is becoming more lawless at the hands of national leaders who match the evil of Nazi Germany.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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