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.
No comments:
Post a Comment