Refusal of Canada's leaders to condemn Israel, or aggressively prosecute Canadians for genocide, betrays the very essence of Christian ethics—love thy neighbour, defend the oppressed.
By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.
As Canadian families, including our political leaders, gather around festively decorated trees to celebrate the Christmas season with their children and grandchildren, exchanging gifts and sharing meals in warmth and security, a profound and tragic disparity unfolds half a world away in the Holy Land. In Gaza, a mere 75 kilometres from Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace—there is no semblance of holiday joy, no “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” Instead, the historic Christian communities of Gaza teeter on the brink of extinction, ravaged by Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians. Imagine the anguish of families huddled in bombed-out churches, their prayers drowned out by the whine of Israel drones and the thunder of artillery near the very sites where Christ once walked, turned into testaments of despair.
The suffering in Gaza is not abstract, it is a visceral, heart-wrenching nightmare that pierces the soul. Palestinian children and their families endure repeated bombings, sniper attacks, weaponized starvation through deliberate blockades of humanitarian aid, lack of sanitation, and inadequate shelter—all orchestrated by the Israeli government. Picture innocent toddlers, their tiny emaciated bodies shivering in the cold December temperatures, eyes wide with terror as explosions light up the night sky, their cries blending with the wails of grieving mothers. This has persisted for over 26 months, turning what should be a time of reflection and renewal into an endless cycle of agony. As we approach Christmas 2025, the supposed ceasefire declared on October 10 has proven illusory, violated by Israel more than 730 times through airstrikes, artillery shelling, sniper fire, and demolitions.
These breaches have claimed at least 394 Palestinian lives and injured 1,075 others, predominantly women and children, according to the Gaza media office. United Nations experts have documented at least 393 violations by late November, resulting in 339 deaths, including more than 70 children. Beyond the direct violence, Israel has systematically obstructed humanitarian aid, defying the ceasefire’s provisions and exacerbating misery through hunger, disease, and exposure to the elements—acts that scream of deliberate cruelty, designed to break the spirit of an entire people.
This calculated inhumanity was exacerbated in early December when Storm Byron battered Gaza, killing at least 14 people, including vulnerable children who succumbed to hypothermia and flooding amid inadequate shelter. Among the heartbreaking victims were eight-month-old Rahaf Abujazar, whose family tent flooded in Khan Younis; 33-day old infant Taim al-Khawaja in Shati camp; and a two-week-old Muhammed Abu Al-Khair who perished after heavy rains inundated his family’s makeshift home. How can one not weep at the thought of a newborn, barely entered into the world, freezing to death because blankets and tents are banned? Israel’s prohibition of essential winter items like tents, blankets, and building materials has weaponized the winter cold against Gaza’s population, who have already endured more than 800 days of genocide. United Nations officials report that Israel has rejected over 100 aid coordination requests since October, allowing fewer than 200 aid trucks daily—well below the agreed minimum of 600. This is not mere negligence. It is a deliberate strategy to increase suffering, to make every moment a struggle, every day a testament to survival against overwhelming odds.
The toll of this genocide is staggering, a mountain of grief that defies comprehension. Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the only independent organization still providing casualty figures for Gaza, places the death toll at over 75,000 Palestinians since October 2023, but experts suggest the true number is far higher when accounting for indirect deaths from starvation, disease, and lack of medical care. Professor Yaakov Garb of Ben Gurion University estimates the total dead could exceed 377,000, including those “disappeared” and presumed dead. Australian academics Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, in their detailed study, push the figure even higher, to over 680,000 dead, factoring in excess mortality from imposed deprivation.
These are not just statistics. They represent shattered families and destroyed hopes and dreams. They represent mothers burying their children, fathers carrying lifeless bodies through rubble, and orphans wandering aimlessly in a landscape of destruction. In Gaza, the ancient Christian community, once a vibrant part of Palestinian life, has been decimated, with churches gutted, congregants displaced or killed, and their presence all but erased by Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The survivors, fewer than 500 now from an already dwindling population, cling to their faith amid ruins, their Christmas hymns choked by sobs of loss.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Palestinian Christians face an escalating deluge of terror that threatens to wash away 2000 years of heritage. Land seizures, settler violence, and restrictions on movement prevent pilgrimages to sacred sites like Bethlehem, turning the journey to the Church of the Nativity—where tradition holds Christ was born—into a gauntlet of humiliation and danger. Since October 2023, Jewish settler attacks have surged to unprecedented levels, with over 150 incidents documented during the 2025 olive harvest season alone, the highest in recent years. Extremist Israeli settlers, often armed and emboldened by government inaction and backed by the Israeli military have torched olive groves, vandalized homes, and assaulted villagers with impunity, displacing entire communities and instilling a pervasive fear that chokes daily life.
In July 2025, a wave of violence reached the Christian village of Taybeh, where settlers attacked residents, destroying property and leaving families traumatized, their sense of security shattered like broken shattered glass. Just recently, a new settlement near Bethlehem was announced, further encroaching on Christian lands and accelerating the erosion of Palestinian presence in the area. As one Palestinian mayor noted, these actions exploit global distractions to hasten annexation, while UN reports highlight more frequent home demolitions, property seizures, and arrests of innocent Palestinians that compound the suffering. For Palestinian Christians, Christmas is not a time of peace but a painful vigil, their churches standing as fragile bastions pushing back against a tide of Zionist hate, their prayers laced with pleas for survival in a land governed by an ideology hostile to their existence.
Yet, as Canadian leaders like Prime Minister Mark Carney bask in the glow of holiday lights with their loved ones, they appear to give scant thought to this misery. They will sing carols of “Joy to the world” while ignoring the cries of Palestinian children buried under rubble or starving in tents. One has to ask how their hearts remain unmoved by such profound human tragedy? This wilful blindness is particularly galling for those who profess the Christian faith, including Carney himself, who has positioned himself as a leader guided by ethical principles. But what of the Sunday School lessons on Christ’s teachings? The Sermon on the Mount, with its calls to bless the peacemakers, the merciful, and the persecuted? The parable of the Good Samaritan, urging compassion across divides? These seem forgotten in the corridors of power in Ottawa and across the country, replaced by political expediency that betrays the core of faith and supports an evil unseen since the Holocaust.
Since October 2023, Canadian politicians have steadfastly supported Israel, refusing to unequivocally condemn its apartheid regime or the genocide commenced in the fall of 2023. Since then Canada has continued arms transfers, maintained diplomatic ties, and upheld economic relations without imposing any meaningful sanctions. This stance renders Canada complicit in violations of the “rules-based international order” that our leaders so often invoke. As a signatory to the Genocide Convention and supporter of UN resolutions, Canada is legally obligated to prevent and punish such atrocities. Instead, under both former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now Carney, the government has dragged its feet, offering political platitudes while allowing military exports to flow, including through loopholes that route weapons via the US. This is not Christian mercy; it is moral abdication, a stain on the nation’s soul.
In fact, the behaviour of these “Christian” leaders mirrors the complicity of German Christians who stood silent during the Nazi genocide against Jews and others. Just as ordinary citizens and officials in 1930s and 1940s Germany claimed ignorance or powerlessness while trains carried victims to death camps, Canadian politicians today avert their eyes from Gaza’s horrors. They rightly condemn antisemitism but fail to recognize the parallels between the Nazi genocide and Israel’s systematic extermination of Palestinians. History will judge those who enabled genocide through inaction, and future generations will view Carney, Trudeau, the Liberal Party and the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives as enablers of unspeakable evil. Their refusal to unequivocally condemn Israel, impose a two-way arms embargo, apply sanctions akin to those on apartheid South Africa, or aggressively prosecute Israeli leaders for genocide, betrays the very essence of Christian ethics—love thy neighbour, defend the oppressed.
This lack of a moral compass extends to domestic enablers. Canadian supporters of Israel, including domestic Zionist organizations who claim to speak for all Jews, which through words and actions, have committed hate crimes by endorsing genocide, yet face no repercussions. Leaders like Carney have failed to decisively act against such incitement, allowing it to fester under the guise of free speech. Meanwhile, humanitarian groups in Canada—Doctors for Humanity, Humanity Auxilium, Independent Jewish Voices, Justice for All Canada to name a few—have lobbied Parliamentarians, held media conferences and issued scores of media statements urging Canada to comply with its obligations under international law. They have called for enforcing the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, halting arms sales, divesting public funds from Israeli-linked companies, arresting Canadian citizens who joined Israel’s military during the genocide, and advocating for UN-led humanitarian corridors. The calls to action by these organizations, grounded in morality and law, go unheeded, drowned out by the silence of power.
As a nation that claims to be a defender of human rights, Canada must confront its hypocrisy as Christmas looms. While families here unwrap presents, Palestinians in the Holy Land unwrap nothing but grief, their dreams crushed under the weight of occupation and the inhumanity of genocide. In committing its atrocities Israel has also silenced truth-tellers by killing over 270 Palestinian journalists since 2023 (more than all the major wars since World War One combined), and blocking Western media from entering Gaza to tell the truth untainted by Israeli propaganda. This censorship nsures the world sees only sanitized versions of the horror, further enabling complicity and allowing the cycle of suffering to continue unchecked.
In this season of supposed peace and goodwill, Canadian leaders must rediscover their moral bearings, or risk being remembered as those who turned away from the light. Anything less dishonours Christ’s birth and perpetuates injustice. Peace and goodwill demand action by ending complicity, imposing broad sanctions, and standing in defence of basic humanity. Only then can the Holy Land—and the world—glimpse true joy, healing the wounds of a people crying out for mercy.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
For Palestinian Christians in Gaza and the West Bank, the Christmas season doesn’t bring celebration, but a soul-crushing despair, as relentless violence, displacement, and deprivation strip away any reason to rejoice, leaving behind only echoes of shattered lives and a faith under assault. This Christmas, like the two before it since October 2023, serves as a grim reminder that the message of hope embodied in Christ’s birth has been utterly eclipsed by unimaginable human cruelty in the very land where it originated.
The suffering in Gaza is not abstract, it is a visceral, heart-wrenching nightmare that pierces the soul. Palestinian children and their families endure repeated bombings, sniper attacks, weaponized starvation through deliberate blockades of humanitarian aid, lack of sanitation, and inadequate shelter—all orchestrated by the Israeli government. Picture innocent toddlers, their tiny emaciated bodies shivering in the cold December temperatures, eyes wide with terror as explosions light up the night sky, their cries blending with the wails of grieving mothers. This has persisted for over 26 months, turning what should be a time of reflection and renewal into an endless cycle of agony. As we approach Christmas 2025, the supposed ceasefire declared on October 10 has proven illusory, violated by Israel more than 730 times through airstrikes, artillery shelling, sniper fire, and demolitions.
These breaches have claimed at least 394 Palestinian lives and injured 1,075 others, predominantly women and children, according to the Gaza media office. United Nations experts have documented at least 393 violations by late November, resulting in 339 deaths, including more than 70 children. Beyond the direct violence, Israel has systematically obstructed humanitarian aid, defying the ceasefire’s provisions and exacerbating misery through hunger, disease, and exposure to the elements—acts that scream of deliberate cruelty, designed to break the spirit of an entire people.
This calculated inhumanity was exacerbated in early December when Storm Byron battered Gaza, killing at least 14 people, including vulnerable children who succumbed to hypothermia and flooding amid inadequate shelter. Among the heartbreaking victims were eight-month-old Rahaf Abujazar, whose family tent flooded in Khan Younis; 33-day old infant Taim al-Khawaja in Shati camp; and a two-week-old Muhammed Abu Al-Khair who perished after heavy rains inundated his family’s makeshift home. How can one not weep at the thought of a newborn, barely entered into the world, freezing to death because blankets and tents are banned? Israel’s prohibition of essential winter items like tents, blankets, and building materials has weaponized the winter cold against Gaza’s population, who have already endured more than 800 days of genocide. United Nations officials report that Israel has rejected over 100 aid coordination requests since October, allowing fewer than 200 aid trucks daily—well below the agreed minimum of 600. This is not mere negligence. It is a deliberate strategy to increase suffering, to make every moment a struggle, every day a testament to survival against overwhelming odds.
The toll of this genocide is staggering, a mountain of grief that defies comprehension. Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the only independent organization still providing casualty figures for Gaza, places the death toll at over 75,000 Palestinians since October 2023, but experts suggest the true number is far higher when accounting for indirect deaths from starvation, disease, and lack of medical care. Professor Yaakov Garb of Ben Gurion University estimates the total dead could exceed 377,000, including those “disappeared” and presumed dead. Australian academics Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, in their detailed study, push the figure even higher, to over 680,000 dead, factoring in excess mortality from imposed deprivation.
These are not just statistics. They represent shattered families and destroyed hopes and dreams. They represent mothers burying their children, fathers carrying lifeless bodies through rubble, and orphans wandering aimlessly in a landscape of destruction. In Gaza, the ancient Christian community, once a vibrant part of Palestinian life, has been decimated, with churches gutted, congregants displaced or killed, and their presence all but erased by Israel’s policies of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. The survivors, fewer than 500 now from an already dwindling population, cling to their faith amid ruins, their Christmas hymns choked by sobs of loss.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Palestinian Christians face an escalating deluge of terror that threatens to wash away 2000 years of heritage. Land seizures, settler violence, and restrictions on movement prevent pilgrimages to sacred sites like Bethlehem, turning the journey to the Church of the Nativity—where tradition holds Christ was born—into a gauntlet of humiliation and danger. Since October 2023, Jewish settler attacks have surged to unprecedented levels, with over 150 incidents documented during the 2025 olive harvest season alone, the highest in recent years. Extremist Israeli settlers, often armed and emboldened by government inaction and backed by the Israeli military have torched olive groves, vandalized homes, and assaulted villagers with impunity, displacing entire communities and instilling a pervasive fear that chokes daily life.
In July 2025, a wave of violence reached the Christian village of Taybeh, where settlers attacked residents, destroying property and leaving families traumatized, their sense of security shattered like broken shattered glass. Just recently, a new settlement near Bethlehem was announced, further encroaching on Christian lands and accelerating the erosion of Palestinian presence in the area. As one Palestinian mayor noted, these actions exploit global distractions to hasten annexation, while UN reports highlight more frequent home demolitions, property seizures, and arrests of innocent Palestinians that compound the suffering. For Palestinian Christians, Christmas is not a time of peace but a painful vigil, their churches standing as fragile bastions pushing back against a tide of Zionist hate, their prayers laced with pleas for survival in a land governed by an ideology hostile to their existence.
Yet, as Canadian leaders like Prime Minister Mark Carney bask in the glow of holiday lights with their loved ones, they appear to give scant thought to this misery. They will sing carols of “Joy to the world” while ignoring the cries of Palestinian children buried under rubble or starving in tents. One has to ask how their hearts remain unmoved by such profound human tragedy? This wilful blindness is particularly galling for those who profess the Christian faith, including Carney himself, who has positioned himself as a leader guided by ethical principles. But what of the Sunday School lessons on Christ’s teachings? The Sermon on the Mount, with its calls to bless the peacemakers, the merciful, and the persecuted? The parable of the Good Samaritan, urging compassion across divides? These seem forgotten in the corridors of power in Ottawa and across the country, replaced by political expediency that betrays the core of faith and supports an evil unseen since the Holocaust.
Since October 2023, Canadian politicians have steadfastly supported Israel, refusing to unequivocally condemn its apartheid regime or the genocide commenced in the fall of 2023. Since then Canada has continued arms transfers, maintained diplomatic ties, and upheld economic relations without imposing any meaningful sanctions. This stance renders Canada complicit in violations of the “rules-based international order” that our leaders so often invoke. As a signatory to the Genocide Convention and supporter of UN resolutions, Canada is legally obligated to prevent and punish such atrocities. Instead, under both former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now Carney, the government has dragged its feet, offering political platitudes while allowing military exports to flow, including through loopholes that route weapons via the US. This is not Christian mercy; it is moral abdication, a stain on the nation’s soul.
In fact, the behaviour of these “Christian” leaders mirrors the complicity of German Christians who stood silent during the Nazi genocide against Jews and others. Just as ordinary citizens and officials in 1930s and 1940s Germany claimed ignorance or powerlessness while trains carried victims to death camps, Canadian politicians today avert their eyes from Gaza’s horrors. They rightly condemn antisemitism but fail to recognize the parallels between the Nazi genocide and Israel’s systematic extermination of Palestinians. History will judge those who enabled genocide through inaction, and future generations will view Carney, Trudeau, the Liberal Party and the Pierre Poilievre Conservatives as enablers of unspeakable evil. Their refusal to unequivocally condemn Israel, impose a two-way arms embargo, apply sanctions akin to those on apartheid South Africa, or aggressively prosecute Israeli leaders for genocide, betrays the very essence of Christian ethics—love thy neighbour, defend the oppressed.
This lack of a moral compass extends to domestic enablers. Canadian supporters of Israel, including domestic Zionist organizations who claim to speak for all Jews, which through words and actions, have committed hate crimes by endorsing genocide, yet face no repercussions. Leaders like Carney have failed to decisively act against such incitement, allowing it to fester under the guise of free speech. Meanwhile, humanitarian groups in Canada—Doctors for Humanity, Humanity Auxilium, Independent Jewish Voices, Justice for All Canada to name a few—have lobbied Parliamentarians, held media conferences and issued scores of media statements urging Canada to comply with its obligations under international law. They have called for enforcing the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, halting arms sales, divesting public funds from Israeli-linked companies, arresting Canadian citizens who joined Israel’s military during the genocide, and advocating for UN-led humanitarian corridors. The calls to action by these organizations, grounded in morality and law, go unheeded, drowned out by the silence of power.
As a nation that claims to be a defender of human rights, Canada must confront its hypocrisy as Christmas looms. While families here unwrap presents, Palestinians in the Holy Land unwrap nothing but grief, their dreams crushed under the weight of occupation and the inhumanity of genocide. In committing its atrocities Israel has also silenced truth-tellers by killing over 270 Palestinian journalists since 2023 (more than all the major wars since World War One combined), and blocking Western media from entering Gaza to tell the truth untainted by Israeli propaganda. This censorship nsures the world sees only sanitized versions of the horror, further enabling complicity and allowing the cycle of suffering to continue unchecked.
In this season of supposed peace and goodwill, Canadian leaders must rediscover their moral bearings, or risk being remembered as those who turned away from the light. Anything less dishonours Christ’s birth and perpetuates injustice. Peace and goodwill demand action by ending complicity, imposing broad sanctions, and standing in defence of basic humanity. Only then can the Holy Land—and the world—glimpse true joy, healing the wounds of a people crying out for mercy.
© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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