Carney and Poilievre demonstrate galling hypocrisy on preventing genocide in Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches

Without acknowledging the Gaza genocide Carney and Poilievre diminish the humanity of Palestinians, further reinforcing Canadian complicity in Israeli atrocities.

 

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

 

Canada’s political leaders gathered at the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa today (January 27) to pay solemn tribute to the victims of one of history’s darkest chapters. Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre stood before the stark memorial, intoning the sacred vow of “never again.” Their words echoed the memory of the Holocaust’s atrocities and acknowledged Canada’s own historical complicity in turning away Jewish refugees during World War II. Carney spoke of the consequences of ignorance and hatred, emphasizing vigilance so that “never again” remains true. Poilievre highlighted rising antisemitism and the need for Jews to feel safe in Canada, declaring that only then would the oath be fulfilled. It was a poignant ceremony, meant to reaffirm our collective commitment to preventing genocide.

However, this display rings profoundly hollow. As these politicians uttered “never again,” a genocide continues to unfold in real time in Gaza, broadcast live on social media for the world to witness. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, ongoing since October 2023, has caused massive loss of life. While official figures put the death toll at more than 76,000 resulting from Israeli military assaults, independent analyses report hundreds of thousands of deaths (a third of them children) from famine, disease, infrastructure collapse, and malnutrition, pushing the total to more than 377,000 according to Ben Gurion University professor Yaakov Garb, and over 680,000 in an analysis by Australian academics Gideon Polya and Richard Hil. Emaciated children, bombed hospitals, destroyed neighbourhoods, and aid convoys turned into kill zones—these horrors are not concealed but streamed in high definition. Despite this visibility, Western leaders, including those in Canada, avert their eyes, offering political platitudes while enabling the violence through arms transfers and diplomatic cover.

This is the betrayal of “never again,” a phrase forged from the Holocaust’s ashes, meant to include all victims of genocide, but now selectively applied. The Gaza situation surpasses the Holocaust in visibility (live-streamed atrocities versus hidden camps), duration (spanning 78 years from the 1948 Nakba onward, including the 2007 blockade turning Gaza into an open-air concentration camp), inversion of victim and perpetrator (Israel invoking Holocaust narratives to justify genocide against Palestinians), and complicity (Western allies actively enabling Israel in its genocidal crimes). During the Holocaust, Nazis operated in secrecy and Allied forces uncovered the full horror only upon liberation. In Gaza, images and video of the genocide are widely shared on social media and perpetrators often share footage of destruction, yet no decisive intervention follows by the nations intoning “never again” in ceremonies today.

Canada’s complicity is particularly stark. Despite a 2024 pause on new military export permits to Israel, a major loophole persists. Canadian-made weapons components—aircraft parts, explosives, and armoured vehicle technology—are shipped to U.S. firms, then integrated into systems sent to Israel. Reports document dozens of such shipments since 2024, including aircraft components matched to Israeli imports between 2024 and 2025. Advocacy groups like Arms Embargo Now have exposed this “U.S. loophole,” which bypasses Canada’s permitting and human rights assessments. Bills like the No More Loopholes Act (C-233), introduced in 2025, seek to close it, but progress lags. Critics warn these exports make Canada complicit in Israeli war crimes. Meanwhile, Carney and Poilievre condemned antisemitism during today’s speeches, addressed the need to fight racism and hate, but made no reference to hate that has resulted in Gaza’s suffering or Canada’s role in sustaining it—transforming today’s remembrance ceremony into and exercise in national hypocrisy.

In his remarks Poilievre emphasized protection against antisemitism, yet his silence on Israeli atrocities in Gaza aligns with the unequivocal support the Conservatives have given Israel historically. Meanwhile, Carney’s government talks about its concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza but sustains the arms pipeline to Israel indirectly. Today’s ceremony, which failed to acknowledge the Gaza genocide causes “never again” to mean “never again to us,” applying only to Jews, thereby diminishing the humanity and lives of Palestinians. This selective remembrance, placing the lives of Jewish Holocaust victims above all others, inverts roles, where Israel invokes historic trauma and plays the victim while inflicting atrocities on Palestinians that have been labelled genocide by respected international organizations, human rights experts, Holocaust scholars, Jewish intellectuals, and others, crimes that have widespread support among Israeli Jews, according to a March 2025 poll in Ha’aretz.

Gaza’s decades of suffering and oppression traces back to the 1948 Nakba, when over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from over 500 towns and villages. The ongoing blockade of the enclave since 2007 has rationed essentials, inflicting generational despair. Bodies like the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have documented crimes that meet the definition of genocide, yet Canada provides political cover and tacit support via legal loopholes and continued diplomatic and economic relationships.

Compounding this is Holocaust Remembrance Day’s narrow framing. Statements from Carney, Poilievre, and other politicians focused almost exclusively on the six million Jewish victims. This omits a critical truth. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that Nazis murdered 11-17 million people total, including Roma, disabled individuals, Soviet POWs (millions starved), Slavic peoples (nearly two million killed), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and dissidents. By erasing these 5-11 million non-Jewish victims from public discourse, we mock the observance and insult their memory. It reduces the Holocaust to a singular narrative serving political ends, not universal lessons against all genocides. This moral hierarchy—elevating some sufferings while sidelining others, like the Holodomor, Cambodian genocide or colonial atrocities, normalizes apathy towards atrocities still being committed in Gaza.

This is a scenario where Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” applies, one where bureaucratic loopholes, diplomatic silences, and selective remembrances enable horrors. Carney and Poilievre’s remarks today in front of a monument to one of the worst horrors of the 20th Century, neglecting to connect past to present, betrays the vow of “never again.”

To truly honour the memory of Holocaust victims would require closing arms loopholes, imposing broad sanctions, recognizing more than 75 years of Palestinian suffering, and expanding remembrance to all victims. Only then can “never again” mean never again for anyone, anywhere.

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