“Anti Palestinianism” – A systemic racism equal in gravity to antisemitism (or maybe worse)

Anti‑Palestinianism is a system that devalues Palestinian life, suppresses Palestinian history, criminalizes Palestinian resistance, and punishes those who support Palestinian rights and refuse to look away.

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

You’ve probably never heard the expression “anti‑Palestinianism.”  It is a term that has become synonymous with the more commonly used term “anti-Palestinian racism” or its acronym “APR.”  Anti-Palestinianism is defined as the systematic erasure, silencing, defamation, and punishment of Palestinians and those who stand with them, and it has become one of the most pervasive and least acknowledged forms of racism and hate in the Western world. It is not merely a matter of interpersonal prejudice, but rather a structural system that operates across governments, news media, universities, policing, and public discourse.

In Canada, the most detailed data available about this racism shows a dramatic escalation of APR or anti-Palestinianism since October 7, 2023. A national report documented a 600% increase of this type of hate in the eight months following October 2023, far above the 506 incidents recorded in 2022. These incidents include defamation, harassment, employment retaliation, censorship, and political vilification. The overwhelming majority—77%—involved defamatory slander portraying Palestinians or their supporters as “terrorist sympathizers” or inherently antisemitic. This was in addition to a reported 1800% increase in incidents of Islamophobia in the year following October 7th, as reported by the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM).

These are not accidental spikes. They are the visible surface of a deeper structure that mirrors, in its logic and effects, the long history of antisemitism in Europe and Western nations.

The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) defines anti‑Palestinian racism as a form of racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives, including by denying the Nakba (ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine), justifying violence against Palestinians, erasing their human rights, and defaming them and their allies as inherently antisemitic or terrorist. This definition is not abstract. It is borne out in the way governments, police, universities, corporations, and news media in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia have responded to Palestinian life, Palestinian grief, and resistance to Israeli oppression and occupation —not just since October 2023, but for almost eight decades since indigenous Palestinians were pushed off their land in historic Palestine.

The parallels between antisemitism and anti‑Palestinianism become unmistakable when we examine how each system constructs a racialized “other.” Antisemitism historically cast Jews as conspiratorial, disloyal, and inherently dangerous, and anti‑Palestinianism reproduces this same logic today by depicting Palestinians as violent, irrational, or terroristic regardless of their actual actions or political views. This pattern is starkly reflected in the 2023 Anti‑Palestinian Racism report by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), which found that 585 documented incidents—nearly 60 percent of the total—involved slander portraying Palestinians as “terrorist sympathizers,” a trope relentlessly circulated in Canadian media and political discourse. Right‑wing news outlets in Canada, the United States, and Europe amplified this narrative by branding peaceful, multifaith, pro‑ceasefire demonstrations as “pro‑Hamas rallies” or “terrorist‑supporting mobs,” even when the protests were explicitly framed around human rights and opposition to genocide. In doing so, these media ecosystems played a central role in dehumanizing Palestinians and their supporters, recasting anti‑genocide campaigns as threats to national security and democratic stability rather than legitimate expressions of conscience.

This racialization is not confined to Canada. Analyses of anti‑Palestinian racism in the US shows how Palestinians and their supporters are routinely framed as extremists or potential terrorists in American media and political rhetoric, especially when they criticize Israeli policy or use language of decolonization. In Europe, similar patterns appear when governments and media describe large pro‑Palestinian marches in London, Paris, or Berlin as “hate marches” or “pro‑terror” gatherings, despite the overwhelmingly peaceful character of these demonstrations. The effect is to mark Palestinian identity and solidarity as inherently suspect, just as antisemitic discourse once marked Jewish identity as inherently dangerous.

Suppression of Palestinian identity and history is another core feature of anti‑Palestinianism. It amplifies anti‑Palestinian bias and prejudice by denying the Nakba, erasing Palestinian indigeneity, and suppressing acknowledgment of decades of occupation, ethnic cleansing, brutalization, and Israeli state violence. The ACLA description, summarized in multiple Canadian and international reports, explicitly identifies “denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians” and “failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine” as core manifestations of APR. In Canadian public discourse, 1948 is still overwhelmingly narrated as the year Israel came into being, with little or no acknowledgment of the mass expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians, and the erasure of more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages, bulldozed or having forests planted where they once existed. This erasure extends into education and media. School curricula often omit the Nakba entirely, and mainstream media coverage of Gaza and the West Bank frequently strips events of historical context, presenting Israeli violence as isolated “responses” rather than part of a long continuum of occupation and settlement.

Criminalization of Palestinian political expression is another defining feature of anti‑Palestinianism. A national study of protest policing in Canada between 2021 and 2025 found that pro‑Palestinian protests accounted for only 10.1 percent of all demonstrations, yet they made up 37 percent of all police interventions. The CJPME study found that in 2024, nearly two‑thirds of all protest policing in Canada targeted pro‑Palestinian activity, despite the fact that more than 96% of these events were entirely peaceful. The report describes a coordinated architecture involving federal intelligence bodies and local police, treating a human‑rights movement as a security threat and using surveillance, bail conditions, intimidation and legal overreach to suppress speech. In several Canadian cities, police deployed riot squads and made mass arrests at peaceful sit‑ins and marches calling for a ceasefire, and imposed restrictive bail conditions that barred activists from attending future protests or using social media to express pro‑Palestinian views.

Across the Atlantic, European governments have gone even further. France issued blanket bans on pro‑Palestinian demonstrations, with the Interior Minister ordering police to disperse any such gatherings and arrest organizers. Germany banned or severely restricted many pro‑Palestinian protests in Berlin and other cities, often on the grounds of preventing “antisemitic incitement,” and has moved to outlaw organizations such as Samidoun—a Palestinian prisoner support network—under counter‑extremism laws. In the United Kingdom, senior officials described large pro‑Palestinian marches in London as “hate marches,” and then–Home Secretary Suella Braverman publicly labeled the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” a “hate slogan,” encouraging police to treat its use as potential criminality. In the United States, campus encampments and city‑center protests have been met with aggressive policing. At Columbia University and other campuses in spring 2024, police in riot gear dismantled pro‑Palestinian encampments, arresting hundreds of students and faculty on charges such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, even when the protests were nonviolent.

Punishment of allies is another hallmark of anti‑Palestinianism. Antisemitism historically targeted non‑Jews who stood with Jewish communities against persecution. Anti‑Palestinianism similarly punishes Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular supporters of Palestinian rights, branding them “antisemitic,” “extremist,” or terrorist‑adjacent for advocating equality. The “Palestine exception” documented by the Islamophobia Research Hub at York University shows how institutions that celebrate diversity and human rights routinely suspend those commitments when Palestine is involved, targeting not only Palestinians but also their allies. In Canada, the Palestine Exception report and related surveys document numerous cases in which students, academics, and professionals faced retaliation for supporting Palestinian rights. Jewish and non‑Jewish signatories to ceasefire letters have been subjected to internal investigations, contract cancellations, and public smearing. Some university instructors have even had their courses scrutinized or their professional appointments delayed after they spoke out against Israeli apartheid or about the Nakba, while student groups have faced official derecognition or funding cuts for organizing Palestine solidarity events.

This pattern is visible across the Western world. In the United States, high‑profile “doxxing trucks” have driven around elite campuses displaying the names and photos of students—many of them Jewish—who signed statements supporting Palestinian rights, labelling them “antisemites” or “terrorist supporters” and inviting employers to blacklist them. Journalists have been fired or pushed out of newsrooms for using terms like “Palestine,” “occupation,” or “genocide” in their reporting or social media posts. Clergy and lay leaders in European Christian churches who have spoken out for Palestinian rights have been denounced as antisemitic and, in some cases, removed from positions or had their events cancelled. These are not random overreactions; they are the enforcement mechanisms of anti‑Palestinianism as a system that seeks to isolate Palestinians by making solidarity socially and professionally dangerous.

Anti‑Palestinianism is also inseparable from the material system of domination under which Palestinians live. In the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, Palestinians endure military occupation, siege, settlement expansion, home demolitions, and mass incarceration. Repeated large‑scale assaults on Gaza—in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and the ongoing Gaza genocide since 2023—have killed tens of thousands of civilians, including children, journalists, medics, and elders, with two independent studies estimating the cumulative death toll at 377,000 and more than 680,000. Yet anti‑Palestinian discourse routinely inverts this reality, portraying Palestinians as the primary source of violence while erasing or rationalizing the structural violence imposed on them by Israel. As the systemic APR study notes, justifying violence against Palestinians and denying them equal dignity and worth are defining features of anti‑Palestinianism. In Canadian media and politics, this manifests in the reflexive framing of Israeli military actions as “self‑defence,” while Palestinian resistance—whether armed, unarmed, or purely symbolic—is cast as terrorism. This dynamic is reinforced by the stark imbalance in political and media access, where pro‑Palestinian advocates are granted far less face time with elected officials and far less airtime or column space in mainstream news than pro‑Israel or Zionist voices, further entrenching a narrative that marginalizes Palestinian humanity and perspectives.

These dynamics become even more stark when viewed through the lens of the Mark Carney government’s posture toward the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. Even as international courts, UN agencies, genocide and Holocaust scholars, and prominent human rights organizations have declared that genocidal crimes are taking place as defined under the Genocide Convention, the Carney government has refused to use the word at all, choosing instead a vocabulary of euphemisms—“crisis,” “conflict,” “tragedy”—that obscures the deliberate, systematic destruction of an entire people. This refusal is not semantic, it is political. To name genocide would be to acknowledge legal obligations under the Genocide Convention, including the duty to prevent, the duty to punish, and the duty to cease all forms of complicity. By declining to name the crime, the Carney shields himself and his government from these obligations and reinforces the broader architecture of anti‑Palestinianism that treats Palestinian life as less grievable, less visible, and less worthy of protection.

The Canadian government’s decision to continue authorizing weapons exports to Israel even as the official death toll in Gaza approached 80,000, even as entire neighborhoods were flattened, even as UN experts warned of famine engineered through the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, reflects the same logic. The government’s insistence that these exports were “non‑lethal” or “not directly linked” to the assault mirrors the logic of anti‑Palestinianism—a logic that minimizes Palestinian suffering, abstracts Palestinian death into technicalities, and treats Palestinian bodies as collateral rather than as human beings entitled to the full protection of international law. The government’s refusal to sanction Israeli political and military leaders—despite their explicit calls for the destruction of Gaza, despite their public statements advocating the genocide of Palestinians, despite their command responsibility for mass killing—reveals a deeper moral failure. When Israeli leaders openly invoke the biblical language of extermination, when they describe Palestinians as “human animals,” when they call for Gaza to be destroyed or completely “erased,” these are not ambiguous statements. They are incitement to genocide. Yet the Canadian government has declined to impose sanctions, declined to restrict diplomatic engagement, and declined to hold any Israeli official accountable.

When antisemitism and anti‑Palestinianism are placed side by side, the parallels between them come sharply into focus. Both operate by constructing an entire people as inherently dangerous or undeserving of rights, and both depend on erasing or denying the group’s history, trauma, and claims to justice. Each system suppresses political expression, punishes those who stand in solidarity, and provides ideological cover for state violence. However, one difference is that Western societies have come to terms with their historic treatment of Jews and made amends, while anti-Palestinianism is embedded within institutions that profess universal human‑rights commitments while simultaneously carving out exceptions when the victims are Palestinians. It is within this broader architecture that the Carney government’s refusal to recognize the genocide in Gaza, its continued authorization of weapons exports to Israel, and its unwillingness to sanction Israeli leaders must be understood. These are not isolated policy missteps or bureaucratic oversights; they are manifestations of a deeper, systemic prejudice that devalues Palestinian life and shields those responsible for Palestinian suffering from accountability.

Recognizing anti‑Palestinianism as a form of racism equal in gravity to antisemitism does not diminish the specificity of Jewish historical trauma, nor does it collapse distinct experiences into a single narrative. Instead, it insists that the tools we have developed to understand and combat antisemitism—attention to dehumanizing stereotypes, to structural exclusion, to the criminalization of identity, and to the role of state power—must also be applied to the treatment of Palestinians and those who stand with them. The CJPME reports and the ACLA study make clear that anti‑Palestinian racism is systemic in Canada, operating across media, politics, education, and law. Analyses from scholars and journalists show that similar dynamics are at work in the United States and Europe, where Palestinians and their supporters face erasure, defamation, repression and persecution.

If antisemitism is rightly understood as a profound moral and political danger that corrodes democratic life and paves the way for atrocity, then anti‑Palestinianism must be understood in the same register. It is a system that devalues Palestinian life, suppresses Palestinian history, criminalizes Palestinian resistance, and punishes those who refuse to look away. It is also a system that enables governments like Carney’s to continue supplying weapons to a state accused of genocide, to refuse to name the crime unfolding before the world, and to ignore the deliberate starvation of an entire population through the blocking of humanitarian aid. To confront anti‑Palestinianism is not to undermine the struggle against antisemitism; it is to extend the same ethical standard to another people whose humanity has been systematically denied. It is to insist that the universal principles invoked in defense of Jewish life must also be invoked in defense of Palestinian life. And it is to recognize that a government that refuses to name genocide, refuses to halt its material support for it, and refuses to hold its perpetrators accountable is not neutral—it is complicit.

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Son of Rohingya genocide survivors puts “never again” into practice with Gaza aid flotilla

Tinmaung’s story exposes the hollowness and selective nature of “Never Again” as practiced by Canada and the West. Rohingya survivors and their descendants recognize the patterns of genocide.  

By Fareed Khan

A version of this can be found on Substack.

Late Wednesday evening, June 3, as Ko Tinmaung (a close friend) stepped off a Virgin Atlantic flight from London at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canadians across the country should have had reason to reflect on the profound courage of a man—a son whose family survived genocide—propelled him to risk everything for strangers half a world away.

A Rohingya-Canadian human rights activist, Tinmaung was among a dozen Canadians on the Global Sumud Gaza Flotilla—a multinational humanitarian mission attempting to break Israel’s 19-year siege of Gaza. Illegally intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters in mid-May, he, along with 11 other Canadians and hundreds of other flotilla volunteers, was detained and subjected to torture before being deported by Israel.  He finally made his way home via a hospital in Turkey, The Hague—where he met with ICC officials—and the UK where he met with a prominent genocide scholar. His ordeal is not merely the story of one determined activist. It is a searing indictment of Western hypocrisy on violating the sacred pledge of “Never Again” made after the horrors of World War Two and the Holocaust.

Tinmaung’s parents fled the horrors of Myanmar’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya in the late 1970s, part of a decades-long persecution that escalated dramatically in 2017 and 2018, with mass killings, rapes, the wholesale destruction of Rohingya villages, the murder of babies, and the displacement of over 800,000 people to refugee camps in Bangladesh. The United States government formally determined that Myanmar’s military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, as did Canada. United Nations fact-finding missions and International Court of Justice proceedings have documented the systematic intent to destroy the Rohingya people in whole or in part.

Having survived this nightmare through exile and displacement his parents were accepted for settlement in Canada where they taught their son not to look away when others faced the same types of horrors they did. Tinmaung could have chosen not to heed those lessons or focussed on narrow ethnic advocacy. Instead, he has embodied the universal lesson of his people’s suffering. He joined the Global Sumud Flotilla in May—a multinational civilian mission involving dozens of vessels and over 400 participants from more than 40 countries—carrying humanitarian aid to challenge Israel’s 19-year blockade of Gaza and draw global attention to what multiple respected bodies have identified as an ongoing genocide in the enclave.

In international waters off Cyprus, Israeli forces illegally intercepted the flotilla in what international law experts have called an act of state piracy. Hundreds of activists, including a dozen Canadians, were detained. In a testimony posted by Doctors Against Genocide Tinmaung reported brutal treatment—beatings, repeated tasering, and other forms of torture. Social media posts showing detainees being taunted and threatened by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir sparked international outrage, leading to Tinmaung’s deportation to Turkey along with the other activists. There, he received hospital treatment for his injuries before travelling to The Hague to testify before International Criminal Court officials, and then meeting with noted genocide scholar Professor Maung Zarni in the UK. His resilience mirrors the idea of “sumud”—steadfastness or perseverance—he sought to support in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Tinmaung has explicitly drawn parallels between the Rohingya genocide and the situation in Gaza. If one examines the two atrocities, both involve systematic dehumanization, collective punishment, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the targeting of a people’s ability to survive and reproduce as a group. His participation in the flotilla was a living enactment of “Never Again”—not as a slogan for one tragedy, but as a moral imperative against all peoples who are targets of genocide.

Western politicians, particularly in Canada, have mouthed this phrase for decades at annual genocide commemoration events while failing to apply it consistently. The Holocaust rightly forged a global commitment to prevent future genocides, yet that commitment has proven selective. When the victims are not aligned with geopolitical interests, “Never Again” becomes “Never Again . . . where it’s convenient and politically expedient,” thereby ignoring the core nature of the phrase.

In Gaza, the evidence of genocidal acts is overwhelming. A UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry has concluded that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, citing acts including killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction. The International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution affirming that Israel’s policies meet the legal definition under the 1948 Genocide Convention. Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Amnesty International, and numerous scholars have reached similar conclusions after meticulous documentation.

These are not fringe voices. They include UN experts, legal bodies, and even Israeli organizations confronting the reality of their government’s criminal actions—mass civilian deaths (with independent organizations conservatively estimating over 80,000 Palestinians killed), widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, and universities, forced displacement of nearly the entire population, and deliberate deprivation of food, water, medicine, and electricity. Children have been disproportionately affected, with reports of entire families erased and a new acronym in medical literature: WCNSF—Wounded Child No Surviving Family.

Canada’s response under Prime Minister Mark Carney has been tepid at best. Following the flotilla interception and the mistreatment of Canadian citizens, the government’s primary action was summoning Israel’s ambassador and issuing statements condemning the “appalling treatment.” No sanctions, no arms embargo, no meaningful diplomatic isolation, no suspension of trade—despite the participation of Canadians in a peaceful humanitarian mission that was met with an act of violent state piracy and terrorism on the high seas.

The Canadian government’s passivity is part of a broader pattern. While Canada has recognized the State of Palestine (conditionally) and called for ceasefires and humanitarian access, it has stopped short of taking the decisive measures required by the Genocide Convention’s obligation to prevent and punish genocide. State parties, including Canada, have a duty not only to refrain from complicity in genocide but to take positive action to halt it. Summoning an ambassador while continuing business as usual—arms exports, trade ties, and diplomatic cover—falls tragically short and makes Canada criminally complicit.

Critics will argue that Israel’s actions are a justifiable response to the October 7, 2023 by Hamas.  And while no one any nation’s right to defend itself under international law self-defence does not justify collective punishment, indiscriminate destruction, or acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention. The scale, the intent inferred from statements by Israeli officials, and the brutal and systematic nature of the campaign in Gaza distinguish it from legitimate warfare. As genocide scholars note, security pretexts have historically masked genocidal campaigns in the past and Israel is doing the same now.

Tinmaung’s story exposes the hollowness and selective nature of “Never Again” as practiced by Canada and the West. Rohingya survivors and their descendants recognize the patterns of genocide—pattern of language dehumanizing the “other,” ghettoization, siege, destruction of cultural and reproductive capacity, and international inaction until it is too late. His decision to sail with the Sumud Flotilla was an act of profound solidarity and courage—putting his money, body, and freedom where his mouth is. The same is the case for the other Canadians, and hundreds of other Flotilla participants from over 40 countries.  He (and they) did what politicians evade—translate historic memory around atrocities into moral courage.

Mark Carney’s and other Western leaders’ reluctance to do what is moral and right stems from various factors—strategic alliances, domestic politics, lobbying, and fears of antisemitism accusations. However, legitimate concern for Jewish safety must not become a shield for impunity. If Carney had courage and demonstrated real leadership he would demand accountability from Israel for its actions which erode its moral standing and long-term security. Complicity in genocide damages everyone, including Jewish communities which face rising antisemitism partly fueled by outrage over what Israel—the supposed embodiment of the Jewish people globally—is doing in Gaza.

Canada’s approach under Carney—words of concern paired with minimal action—exemplifies performative solidarity. The Carney government has acknowledged the humanitarian disaster and supported some international aid efforts, yet it has not imposed targeted sanctions on Israeli political and military leaders responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and genocide, nor meaningfully restricted Canada’s military-related exports to Israel. This is not leadership. It is complicity through omission.

Tinmaung’s arrival in Toronto was met with welcoming cheers from a large group of supporters. But it should also result in a national reckoning. Canadians pride ourselves on what is now a myth, that this country upholds human rights advocacy and protects refugees. In the 1970s we welcomed Vietnamese Boat People. We welcomed Bosnians and Kosovars in the 1990s.  We opened the doors to Syrian refugees in the 2010s.  And we have welcomed small numbers of Rohingya genocide survivors.  Will we now reject the principles that brought these groups here now that the victims are Palestinian?

The Global Sumud Flotilla, despite its interception, succeeded in one vital way it kept the world’s attention on the Gaza genocide when fatigue and other global crises threaten to normalize the horror. Activists like Tinmaung who displayed amazing courage along with the other Canadians who participated in the Flotilla force us to confront what “Never Again” truly requires—economic pressure, diplomatic isolation of perpetrators, support for international justice mechanisms like the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and unhindered humanitarian aid.

As Tinmaung recovers from his injuries resulting from Israeli torture and shares his testimony, his message will likely echo the one he carried to sea: the struggles against genocide are connected. Silence or weak responses by governments to one emboldens others. The Rohingya waited years for meaningful action, and many still wait for justice. Palestinians cannot afford the same delay.

Canada has to do far better than it has in relation to Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza. It must impose comprehensive sanctions on Israeli political and military officials and entities implicated in grave violations of international law. It must halt all arms-related trade with Israel by closing loopholes in Canadian law. It must lead calls for enforcement of ICJ provisional measures. It must use Canada’s influence in international forums to demand an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza and accountability. Anything less dishonors not only Tinmaung’s personal sacrifice but also the memory of all genocide victims, including those of the Holocaust whose suffering birthed the “Never Again” pledge.

Ko Tinmaung has put his body and life on the line for a principle Western politicians treat as optional rhetoric. His story demands we choose. Will “Never Again” finally mean something universal, or will it remain a selective eulogy for the politically convenient dead? The answer will define Canada’s moral standing in this century and how it is perceived in the global south for decades to come. 

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

Canada's complicity in Gaza genocide shows its leaders are morally bankrupt

The current crisis is rooted in decades of a brutal occupation, peace processes repeatedly sabotaged by Israel, and repeated incidents of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 

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

 

Last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a strong public condemnation following a social media post by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The post included footage of activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla—who were attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza—being intercepted by Israeli forces in international waters. The video showed the activists bound and held in stress positions while Ben-Gvir taunted and insulted them. Carney stated: “The abominable treatment of civilians aboard the flotilla, including that which is documented in footage shared by Itamar Ben-Gvir, is unacceptable.”

This selective outrage exposes a glaring moral inconsistency at the heart of Carney’s foreign policy. While his government rightly condemns specific abuses against flotilla participants—including Canadian citizens—it continues to pursue policies that fuel a far broader conflict, enabling civilian suffering on a horrifying scale, including the sale of Canadian weapons to Israel. Critics rightly argue that this reveals a government that is both unacceptable and morally bankrupt—one that maintains normalized relations with a state accused of genocide, while turning a blind eye to Canadian-made weapons and components flowing to Israel as it brutalizes a helpless population.

The Gaza genocide, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, has escalated into one of the deadliest episodes of mass violence in the region’s history since the Iraq War and the Syrian civil war. According to data released by Euromed Human Rights Monitor, the only organization providing independent death toll figures, it is estimated that more than 80,000 Palestinians have been killed as of the end of May 2026, with estimates that there may be anywhere from 377,000 to more than 680,000 buried under Gaza’s rubble, most of them women and children. Entire neighbourhoods have been devastated, infrastructure including hospitals, schools, and water systems lies in ruins, and mass displacement has occurred repeatedly creating a refugee population of approximately 1.9 million.

Multiple respected organizations have concluded that Israel’s actions meet the legal threshold for genocide--defined under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These include:

• Amnesty International: Documented “sufficient basis” for genocide, citing killings, serious harm, and conditions calculated to bring about physical destruction.
• Human Rights Watch: Accused Israel of genocidal acts, including deprivation of water and essential resources.
• B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel: Prominent Israeli organizations that examined policies, official statements, and outcomes, concluding coordinated action to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza.
• International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS): Declared Israel’s policies constitute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, citing mass civilian casualties, destruction of life-sustaining systems, and targeting of children.
• United Nations bodies and experts: Various reports and special rapporteurs have highlighted patterns consistent with genocide characteristics, including starvation as a weapon and widespread destruction.

Noted Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars, have added weight to these assessments by drawing on direct evidence from within Israeli society, including a poll published by Haaretz in May 2025 which reported that 47% of Israel Jews support the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and 82% who support their ethnic cleansing, and 56% support ethnically cleansing all Palestinians from territories controlled by Israel. These are not fringe views but conclusions from rigorous documentation by human rights monitors, legal analysts, and scholars.

Canada’s Role: Arms Exports and Complicity

Despite these findings, Canada under Prime Minister Mark Carney (as well as former PM Justin Trudeau) has maintained elements of military cooperation with Israel. While direct export permits to Israel were paused, loopholes persist which allow components routed through the United States. Reports from civil society and parliamentarians indicate ongoing flows of Canadian-made weapons and technology, contradicting claims of a full embargo.

This is unacceptable. International law, including the Arms Trade Treaty and Canada’s own Export and Import Permits Act, imposes obligations to halt transfers where there is a clear risk of use in serious violations of international humanitarian law or genocide. Continuing such sales—directly or indirectly—implicates Canada in prolonging the suffering. Critics, including NDP voices and groups like Oxfam and Unifor, argue this breaches both domestic commitments and international duties.

Carney’s government singles out figures like Ben-Gvir for sanctions while sustaining the broader military relationship with Israel. Ben-Gvir is an extremist, but focusing solely on him distracts from systemic issues: the 19 year blockade of Gaza (deemed collective punishment by many), illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank (a violation under international law), and the human toll in the Gaza genocide. Official Israeli statements invoking “erasing” threats or total destruction, combined with operational outcomes, fuel the genocide determinations of international voices.

Historical Context and Moral Failure

The current crisis did not emerge in a vacuum. It is rooted in decades of a brutal occupation, peace processes repeatedly sabotaged by Israel which has voted against the creation of a Palestinian state, and repeated incidents of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel’s right to security after October 7, 2023 is clear. However, international humanitarian law requires that any response respect the principles of proportionality, distinction between combatants and civilians, and the prohibition on collective punishment. Critics argue that Israel has disregarded these obligations. The immense scale of destruction in Gaza—death toll estimates of up to 30% of the population, the erasure of entire family lines, and the devastation of cultural and educational infrastructure—has prompted serious questions about whether the campaign goes beyond legitimate self-defence and reflects an intent to inflict indiscriminate harm on an entire society.

A morally coherent policy for Canada would be to impose a comprehensive two-way arms embargo, push for accountability for Israel at the ICC and ICJ, suspend the Canada-Israel free trade agreement, call for an end to the occupation, and support a viable political solution that pursues freedom and justice for Palestinians. Instead, Carney’s selective statements and dangerous comments about a “Zionist Palestinian state”, and continued arms exports project ignorance and hypocrisy. Condemning flotilla abuses while enabling the larger machinery of war undermines Canada’s claimed commitment to human rights and the so-called “rules-based international order.” This is not mere policy disagreement. It is moral bankruptcy. When a government prioritizes alliances and trade over halting contributions to alleged genocide—despite warnings from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli NGOs, the UN, and genocide scholars—Canada forfeits ethical legitimacy. Canadians deserve better--a foreign policy grounded in consistent principles, not selective indignation.

The flotilla incident is abominable but not surprising given Israel’s criminal leadership. Far more so is the tolerance of policies enabling mass death and destruction. Prime Minister Carney must end all Canadian military support and cooperation with Israel, lead in international accountability efforts against a state committing genocide, and align pro-human rights rhetoric with actions that uphold universal human dignity. Anything less remains unacceptable.
  
© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

The betrayal of “Never Again”: Why the Gaza genocide is worse than the Holocaust

Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust exposes the hypocrisy of “never again” as Gaza’s horrors are largely ignored by those nations with the power to stop the sadistic brutality inflicted on Palestinians.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack. 

For decades the refrain of “never again” has rung hollow at annual Holocaust commemorations, where Western nations—Germany, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and others—solemnly vow to prevent another genocide. Yet, as these ceremonies took place over the past two years, a catastrophe of staggering proportions has ravaged Gaza, surpassing the Holocaust, not in body count but in its brazen visibility, prolonged generational agony, perverse victim-perpetrator inversion, and the complicity of Israel’s Western allies. 

 https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/4/19/gaza-genocide-and-the-worlds-most-heinous-crime

The Holocaust, a meticulously hidden slaughter of 11 million people, including six million Jews, left an indelible scar on humanity’s conscience. Gaza’s genocide, however, unfolds in real time, live streamed for all to see, yet it has elicited apathy from the very powers that defeated the Nazis and swore to uphold justice and prevent atrocities like those that occurred in World War Two. This comparison does not diminish the Holocaust’s horror but exposes the selective moral outrage that normalizes Palestinian pain and suffering while elevating Jewish trauma above that all of other peoples that have experienced genocide. The horrors taking place in Gaza, fuelled by Western funding and impunity, indicts our era more profoundly than the 20th century’s darkest years ever could.

The first and most chilling distinction lies in Gaza’s visibility, a transparency the Holocaust lacked. The Nazi extermination of Jews, Roma, Slavs, political enemies, etc. relied on secrecy where death camps like Auschwitz operated in the shadows, their atrocities uncovered only after Allied liberation at the end of World War Two. In Gaza, the violence is broadcast live. Smartphones and social media flood the world with high-definition images--emaciated children, entire neighbourhoods reduced to a post-apocalyptic hellscape, families obliterated in so-called “precision” airstrikes that kill hundreds of civilians at a time. Viral clips on platforms like TikTok show Israeli drones targeting starving Palestinians, often shared by the perpetrators themselves. Yet this exposure sparks no meaningful intervention by the nations that have the power to stop the slaughter.

A study by Israeli professor Yaakov Garb, published by Harvard’s Dataverse, reveals the scale of Israel’s genocide that is beyond comprehension. Since October 2023, at least 377,000 Palestinians in Gaza—half of them children—have been “disappeared” by Israel and are presumed dead. Garb’s cross-referencing of satellite imagery, IDF data, and displacement patterns exposes systematic erasure—a mobile killing machine operating under global scrutiny, undeterred by the world’s gaze. This dwarfs the numbers provided by the Gaza Health Ministry--approximately 70,000 direct deaths, mostly women and children, as of September 2025. A separate study by Australian professors Richard Hill and Gideon Polya estimates a staggering 680,000 deaths, including 380,000 children, factoring in indirect fatalities from starvation and disease. Where Nazis feared exposure, Israel exploits it, confident that the global community will fail to take action despite the scale of the atrocities.

This visibility underscores a second horror. Gaza’s violence is a slow, generational grind, unlike the Holocaust’s compressed brutality. The Nazi genocide, a frenzied slaughter within the six years of World War Two, ended with Germany’s defeat in 1945. Gaza’s torment, however, stretches back to the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist militias—led by figures like Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, David Ben-Gurion, and Chaim Weizmann—ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians through terror and mass murder to create a Jewish-majority state. This was no anomaly but a blueprint, perpetuated through decades of planning, settlement expansion, military checkpoints, and, since 2007, a suffocating blockade that turned Gaza into an open-air concentration camp for more than two million people. This is a prison where food, water, and medicine have been rationed to inflict maximum death and despair. Today, famine grips Gaza with children being the primary victims, as aid sites become kill zones where desperate crowds are gunned down by the Israeli army and private contractors, while waiting to collect food rations.

What has been done to Palestinians is a structural genocide, spanning generations—people killed and grandparents ethnically cleansed in 1948, parents imprisoned and tortured under occupation, children bombed in so-called safe zones. Unlike the Holocaust’s finite crescendo, Gaza has suffered a 78-year dirge, escalating relentlessly, erasing a people through attrition. Amnesty International’s reports since October 2023 document deliberate intent—Israeli airstrikes on Gaza hospitals, blocked aid, and inflammatory genocidal rhetoric from Israeli leaders vowing to “erase” Gaza and its people, all normalized as a necessary to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens. Its banality, and prolonged, bureaucratic cruelty makes Israeli crimes all the more insidious.

Equally perverse is the third distinction, where Israeli leaders, claiming Holocaust victimhood, invert the narrative to justify their actions. Israel, born from the ashes of Nazi genocide, has weaponized that trauma, casting Palestinians as modern-day Nazis to excuse brutal settler-colonialism, apartheid, and Gaza’s siege. “Never again” has morphed into “never again to us” and “to hell with Palestinian suffering,” sanctifying policies that Israeli scholars like Raz Segal, Omer Bartov, and Amos Goldberg label as settler-colonial genocide.

A March 2025 Ha’aretz poll, conducted with Penn State University, also reveals a chilling consensus—82% of Jewish Israelis support expelling all Palestinians from Gaza, and 47%—nearly half—endorse killing every Palestinian, including children, with the views strongest among younger generations. This aligns with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocations of the biblical Amalek story, urging the destruction of Israel’s Palestinian enemies “from child to elder”.

Zionism’s pre-World War Two roots, articulated by Ben-Gurion’s call to “expel Arabs and take their places,” reveal an ethnic-cleansing ethos embedded in the foundations of Israeli society cloaked in Holocaust victimhood. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism exacerbates this, labelling criticism of Israel’s occupation as “antisemitic” while ignoring the denial of Palestinian self-determination through more than 700,000 illegal Jewish settlers on stolen land. This inversion—painting Palestinian victims as villains—fuels a genocide that surpasses the perversity of other genocides that have occurred in the 20th century.

A fourth dimension of horror is the global complicity that was absent in the Holocaust. The Nazis faced local resistance, supported by the Allies, which ultimately contributed to their defeat. By contrast, Israel’s military has been bankrolled by the West for decades. Since October 2023, the US alone has provided $17.9 billion in military aid, on top of the $3.3 billion it gives Israel annually. European allies like Germany, the UK, France and Canada have contributed further, while the US protects Israel at the UN with vetoes on resolutions that could hold the apartheid nation accountable and end the carnage.

However, the Western alliance, there is one nation above all others that has put its words in defence of Palestinians into action. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) presents considerable evidence in its accusations of Israel's genocidal intent, citing mass killings, deliberate harm, and conditions designed to destroy Palestinians, backed by official Israeli statements. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israeli human rights group B’Tselem corroborate this, labelling Gaza’s siege a crime against humanity and genocide.

Finally, the world’s inaction indicts the West more deeply than the Holocaust’s bystanders. No fog of war obscures Gaza’s death toll—more than 70,000 identified deaths, and potentially 680,000 if the recent Australian study is to be accepted. Satellite imagery, NGO reports, ICJ rulings, a UN investigation, reports by assassinated Palestinian journalists, videos and posts by Gazans, data from the Israeli military, and Israeli soldiers’ own social media posts lay bare the truth. And yet the nations with the power to halt the bloodshed still fail to act.

This partially stems from a moral hierarchy rooted in Western guilt when it refused to help Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis, and its helplessness in preventing the Holocaust, which has elevated Jewish suffering above others. However, consider history’s other overlooked atrocities: King Leopold II's depravities in the Belgian Congo  (1885-1908) which killed over 10 million Africans, with mutilations as punishment for failing to achieve quotas of extracted resources; Stalin’s Holodomor (1932-33) which starved 5-7 million Ukrainians; Churchill’s policies in colonial India fuelled Bengal’s 1943 famine, that killed 3 million Bengalis, whom he derided as “breeding like rabbits”; and the Khmer Rouge erased roughly 2 million Cambodians—25% of the population—in the 1970s. These horrors, affecting non-Western and non-white people, rarely merit annual memorials as does the Holocaust, and Gaza fits this pattern. Palestinians, a Semitic (and predominantly Muslim) people, suffer while unfounded claims of “antisemitism” silences critics and shields Israel, conflating critique of the nation with Jew-hatred.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, a colonial promise by the British, prioritized a Jewish homeland over indigenous Palestinian rights, a precedent cemented by post-World War Two Western guilt despite increasing Zionist violence against non-Jews in historic Palestine. Stifling criticism of Zionism, once called racism by UN Resolution 3379 before its repeal under American pressure, has allowed Israel to inflict violence in historic Palestine with impunity for almost eight decades. The Jerusalem Declaration, endorsed by 350 scholars, urges a redefinition of antisemitism to include Palestinians as Semites, separating anti-Zionism from anti-Jewish hatred to foster equality.

Gaza’s genocide, defined by intent and outcome, not mere numbers, matches the Holocaust’s evil in its deliberate erasure of Palestinians, and surpasses it in some ways. The Ha’aretz poll’s revelation—47% of Jewish Israelis backing total extermination of Palestinians in Gaza—mirrors the Nazi eras dehumanization of Jews. Comparing Gaza to the Holocaust exposes the hypocrisy of “never again” as Gaza’s horrors are largely ignored by those nations with the power to stop the sadistic brutality inflicted by Israel. 

What is happening on the ground in Gaza demands action, not meaningless platitudes by Western leaders who cry crocodile tears for Palestinian suffering. The emaciated children on our screens plead for a universal “never again” that honours their humanity as fiercely as any other. Failing them renders the West as complicit in Israeli crimes as those who did nothing while cattle cars filled with concentration camp prisoners rolled into Auschwitz, Dachau, and other Nazi death camps.

An evil we hoped to never see again is taking place in Gaza as we breathe. It is a clear illustration of what Israeli philosopher Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil.” This genocide, live-streamed yet in many ways ignored by the powerful of the world, embodies Arendt’s warning, sustained by Western nations that arms the perpetrator and do nothing to stop it, while reciting hollow vows. Only by dismantling the moral hierarchy that privileges one people’s suffering over another can we ensure “never again” becomes a promise kept for all, including Palestinians who have endured the longest and most brutal occupation in modern history, and are now being subjected to the most heinous crimes imaginable under human law.

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