Defending human rights is a moral imperative that Western governments are abandoning

The preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative—a  commitment rooted in the understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral decay, and barbarism.  

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Before the modern human rights system emerged from the ruins of the Second World War, humanity lived in a world where rights were not inherent but conditional—granted or withdrawn at the whim of empires, monarchies, political systems, racial hierarchies, and economic elites. Across continents, people were governed by systems of domination rather than universal principles, where elites saw certain groups as inferior and unequal based on race, skin colour, ethnicity, faith, sexual identity or other defining characteristic. Colonial powers carved up territories and categorized peoples in terms of resources to be exploited without regard to any inherent rights.

In the America’s, Africa and Australia indigenous peoples were dispossessed and annihilated, to the point that in North America (present day Canada, Mexico and the United States), their populations declined to 5% of their pre-Columbian levels by the 1890s—a death toll of more than 95 million. Enslavement, segregation, caste oppression, and patriarchal subjugation were woven into the fabric of societies and were part and parcel of political governance. Workers laboured under conditions that amounted to economic bondage, and dissent was criminalized, while entire populations lived under the constant threat of violence by the state or economic elites who were only too willing to violently exploit workers.

This was the 19th Century world that shaped the views of American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” It was the world of the Jim Crow era US south that Rosa Parks confronted when she refused to surrender her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama—a simple act that exposed the absurdity and cruelty of the system of racial hierarchy that affected the lives of millions of Black Americans. It was the world B.R. Ambedkar, who fought to transform colonial India, arguing that democracy without social justice is merely a new form of tyranny. And it was the world that 18th century French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges challenged when she demanded equality for women, knowing full well that such demands were a threat to her own life.

Human rights, before 1945, were not universal—they were fragile aspirations, and often violently denied by political, economic and social elites.

The shock that forced a reckoning

The Second World War shattered any illusion that humanity could survive without a universal moral framework. The Holocaust, the mechanized extermination of millions, the mass slaughter of civilians in Europe and the Far East, and the global devastation of total war forced the world to confront the consequences of unrestrained state power. The scale of atrocity was so vast, so systematic—between 60 and 70 million killed—tthat it demanded a new global rights infrastructure.

The architects of the post‑war order understood that without binding principles, humanity would again descend into a barbarism that could engulf the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, insisted that the new system must reflect the dignity of all people, not merely the interests of powerful states. Her work, alongside French jurist René Cassin, Lebanese politician and diplomat Charles Malik, Chinese academic and diplomat Peng Chun Chang, and Canadian diplomat and human rights activist John Humphrey, produced a document intended as a “common standard of achievement”—a moral compass for a world emerging from darkness.

The UN Charter (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), and eventually the International Court of Justice were built on the ashes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Nanjing, and Hiroshima. They were designed to ensure that no state could again commit mass atrocities with impunity.

Elie Wiesel, speaking from the experience of genocide, warned that silence in the face of atrocity is itself a crime. His words became the ethical foundation of the post‑war human rights system—a reminder that neutrality is never neutral when human beings are being systematically annihilated.

The promise and the slow betrayal

For several decades after the war, the human rights architecture held—unevenly, imperfectly, but with enough force to restrain the worst impulses of states. Anti‑colonial movements invoked human rights to dismantle Europe’s empires. Civil rights leaders used its language to challenge segregation in the US. Feminist, Indigenous, labour, and LGBTQ movements drew strength from its universal principles. Nelson Mandela argued that denying human rights was an assault on human dignity itself. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught that moral courage requires confronting injustice even when the majority remains silent. And South African Anglican Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu reminded the world that neutrality in the face of oppression was a form of complicity.

However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 appeared to mark a turning point. With the collapse of the global bipolar power structure, the international human rights order built after World War II began to fray. Its erosion was visible in the Bosnian Genocide (1992–1995), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), and the sanctions and embargo regime imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, which led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children—a toll that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously said was “worth it” in a 1996 interview. As the United States emerged as the world’s lone superpower, it increasingly treated its international legal obligations not as binding commitments but as optional constraints it could disregard when convenient.

Israel—shielded by unwavering Western diplomatic and military backing, above all from the United States—has been able to violate Palestinian human rights repeatedly and with complete impunity for decades. No meaningful accountability has ever followed. Russia carried out atrocities in Chechnya and later in Ukraine, beginning with its 2014 annexation of Crimea. China constructed a surveillance‑driven authoritarian system and imprisoned millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps, abducting Uyghur children and placing them in indoctrination facilities—acts that meet the Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide. Both Moscow and Beijing were condemned for their crimes.

By comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and other European Union states supported US wars that violated international law, yet none faced consequences. The pattern became unmistakable—powerful states could break the rules without penalty, while weaker states were punished for far less. Observing this double standard, governments around the world logically concluded that it was power—not principle—that determined what was permissible in the realm of human rights.

The post‑Cold War era saw the rise of a global double standard where Human rights were invoked when convenient and ignored when politically expedient. The international system expanded in scope, but enforcement weakened, with serious violations increasingly going unpunished. In the process, the moral authority of the post‑war human rights order began to collapse, with genocides taking place in Darfur, Sudan (2003–present); Myanmar (2016–present); Xinjiang, China (2017–present); and Tigray, Ethiopia (2020–2022), with the erosion ultimately culminating in the current genocide in Gaza.

The collapse of global moral authority

The Israeli‑Palestinian conflict has deep historical roots, shaped by colonial legacies, competing nationalisms, and decades of conflict. But the events that have occurred since 2023 marked a moral rupture unprecedented in the modern era. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza have been leveled, while hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed. Civilians were intentionally targeted, starved, displaced, and massacred. International law was shredded in full view of the world, and Western humanity was shown to be a charade.  Additionally, the major Western powers did not merely fail to stop Israel’s genocidal crimes, they enabled it, particularly the US, by selling weapons to Israel which were used in their military assault on Gaza.

The United States served as Israel’s primary arms supplier, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and others close behind—and Washington defended Israel’s actions diplomatically at every turn. Canada wavered between muted criticism and active complicity, continuing to provide military components even as the scale of Israel’s violence became undeniable. The European Union voiced rhetorical concern, but offered no meaningful action capable of halting the atrocities. In Gaza, the international legal order—created precisely to prevent the kind of heinous, genocidal crimes Israel carried out and continues to carry out—was not merely ineffective, it was immobilized by the geopolitical interests of the very states entrusted with upholding it.

The betrayal of Palestinians can be summed up in the following statement: We must refuse to compromise our humanity and never back down from speaking the inconvenient truth to power, for people whose very humanity is under attack.

This is the moral crisis of our time. The very states that built the human rights system have chosen to abandoned it, and leave innocent people to be slaughtered, unless intervening advantages a higher political purpose. Which, in the case of Palestinians, doesn’t seem to be the case.

The voices that still guide us

In this moment of collapse, the wisdom of human rights icons becomes not historical reflection but urgent instruction.

South African anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko taught that oppression thrives when people internalize silence. Kenyan social and political activist Wangari Maathai showed that human rights include the right to a livable planet. South African musician and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba used her voice to expose apartheid’s brutality. American labour unionist Cesar Chavez demonstrated that economic justice is inseparable from human dignity. Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero died defending the poor against state violence, while Malcolm X insisted that dignity requires refusing subjugation in all its forms and speaking truth with uncompromising clarity.

Along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., these voices form a chorus across continents and centuries, united by one truth—that human rights are not granted by states—they are won with the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people.

The moral imperative today

We now live in a world where the major powers—the US, the UK, Russia, China and others—have abandoned the very international order they once claimed to uphold. They have returned to the logic of empire where power takes priority over principle and geopolitical agendas over human rights.

This is what political barbarism looks like. And the only force capable of stopping it is the collective moral courage of ordinary people, human rights organizations, activists, scholars, journalists, and anyone with even a modicum of economic or political influence that still possess a moral compass.

It’s clear from history that human rights don’t come about naturally.  They only exist if they are protected and defended.

To maintain human rights as part of our society and culture we have to live by the adage that when those in power are telling you to move as you stand for principle, you need to plant yourself like a tree and say, “No, you move.”

This is the ethos the world needs now.

The preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative. Not a slogan. Not a diplomatic talking point. A commitment rooted in the understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral decay and barbarism.

Human rights organizations must refuse to be cowed by political pressure, and activists must continue to speak truth to power even when power threatens them. Scholars must expose injustice with uncompromising clarity, journalists must refuse to sanitize atrocity, and citizens must demand accountability from their governments.

As before, the future will be shaped not by presidents or prime ministers but by social movements built by ordinary people—by those who refuse to accept a world where genocide is normalized, where oppression is rationalized, and where human dignity is treated as negotiable. American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead captured this truth with unmistakable force when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only

thing that ever has.”

The post–World War II human rights system was created because those who witnessed the horrors of that war understood that nothing less than a new moral architecture was required to prevent such crimes from happening again. If the system we rely on to defend human rights is to survive—let alone be renewed—it will be because ordinary people insisted on defending it when governments would not.

The world stands at a crossroads. One path leads back to barbarism, where human life is expendable. The other leads toward justice. It is up to us, collectively, to decide which path humanity will take.

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

Gaza genocide has shown that Western “humanity” is an illusion

The Gaza genocide has shattered the illusion of Western humanity, exposing the moral bankruptcy of the Western alliance, and revealed the selective nature of the “rules based order.”

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

For nearly eight decades, Western governments have portrayed themselves as the architects and guardians of the post‑World War Two international order—a system built on the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention. These instruments were meant to ensure that the horrors of the mid‑20th century would never be repeated, and that all peoples, regardless of geography or political alignment, would be protected from mass atrocities.

Yet the genocide in Gaza since October 2023—and the broader pattern of Israeli and American military aggression in Lebanon and Iran—have exposed a devastating truth. That the Western alliance does not uphold the universal principles it claims to defend. Instead, it applies them selectively, shielding allies even when they commit grave violations of international law. The result is a profound crisis of legitimacy for the so‑called “rules‑based international order,” and a shattering of the illusion of Western moral leadership.

The Gaza genocide, and the refusal of Western states to stop or even meaningfully condemn it, has revealed a system built not on universal human rights but on geopolitical interests. It has exposed the complicity of Western governments in atrocities committed by Israel and the United States, and it has accelerated the erosion of global conscience and morality.

Gaza: A genocide in full view of the world

The scale and nature of the destruction in Gaza have been documented extensively by UN agencies, humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and Holocaust scholars like Raz Segal, Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg. By early 2024, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported tens of thousands of civilian deaths, widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, schools, and water systems, and the displacement of nearly the entire population of Gaza. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese even cited a study by Australian academics Richard Hil and Gideon Polya which calculated that the Palestinian dead toll is more then 680,000.

In March 2024, Albanese concluded that Israel’s actions constituted a “genocide in progress,” identifying all five prohibited acts under Article II of the Genocide Convention, The report further stated that the genocide was “enabled by the failure of third states to prevent it,” directly implicating Western governments that continued to arm and support Israel.

In June 2024, the UN Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry reached a similar conclusion, finding “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israel was committing genocide and that senior Israeli officials bore responsibility. The Commission also noted that states providing weapons or diplomatic cover to Israel risked violating their own obligations under the Genocide Convention.

These findings were not fringe opinions. They were the conclusions of official UN bodies, supported by legal analyses from major human rights organizations. In November 2023, a coalition of legal scholars from the University Network for Human Rights, Yale Law School, and other institutions published a comprehensive report concluding that Israel was committing genocide and that third states were complicit through arms transfers and political support.

The evidence was overwhelming. The world saw the destruction unfold in real time. And yet Western governments did nothing to stop it.

Western complicity

The Genocide Convention imposes a clear obligation on all states: the duty to prevent genocide. This duty is triggered not when genocide is proven in court, but when there is a serious risk of genocide — a threshold that UN bodies and legal experts argued had been crossed early in the conflict.

Despite this, Western governments continued to supply Israel with weapons, intelligence, and political protection. The United States alone approved billions of dollars in military aid during the conflict, including expedited shipments of bombs and artillery shells. The United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and other NATO members also continued arms exports, even as their own legal advisers warned of potential violations of international law.

Diplomatically, Israel’s Western allies repeatedly blocked or watered down UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire. The United States used its veto power multiple times to shield Israel from international scrutiny, even as humanitarian conditions in Gaza deteriorated to catastrophic levels.

This pattern of behaviour—continued arms transfers, diplomatic obstruction, and public messaging that minimized or justified civilian casualties—moved Western governments from passive bystanders to active enablers. As the UN Special Rapporteur noted, “genocide is a collective crime,” and the failure of third states to prevent it constitutes a breach of their own legal obligations.

Lebanon, Iran, and the expansion of impunity

The crisis of Western complicity extends beyond Gaza. Israeli military aggression in Lebanon, including strikes that killed civilians and destroyed infrastructure, raised serious concerns under international humanitarian law. Yet Western governments offered little more than muted expressions of “concern,” while continuing to affirm Israel’s “right to self‑defence.”

Similarly, joint US-Israeli operations against Iran in June 2025 and subsequently in 2026—including targeted assassinations, attacks on civilian infrastructure, and cross‑border strikes—have been criticized by legal scholars as violations of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force. These actions risked escalating the conflict into a regional war, yet Western governments largely supported or justified them.

The message was clear, when Israel or the United States uses force, even in ways that appear to violate international law, Western allies will not intervene. This double standard undermines the very foundation of the post‑war legal order.

The myth of the “rules‑based international order”

Western leaders frequently invoke the phrase “rules‑based international order” to describe the system they claim to defend. Yet their response to Gaza reveals that this order is not based on universal rules at all. It is based on power. When adversaries violate international law, Western governments demand accountability, impose sanctions, and mobilize international institutions. But when allies commit similar or worse violations, those same governments offer weapons, diplomatic protection, and political support.

This selective application of international law is not merely hypocritical. It is destructive. It erodes the legitimacy of global institutions, fuels resentment and instability, and encourages other states to disregard international norms. As one legal scholar noted, “A rules‑based order that applies only to enemies is not a legal order. It is an instrument of geopolitical power.”

“Never again” and the collapse of Western moral authority

The Holocaust gave rise to the Genocide Convention and the universal promise of “Never Again.” But Gaza has revealed that this promise was never truly universal. It was conditional—applied selectively, depending on the ethnic or religious identity of the victims and the interests of powerful states.

The genocide in Gaza does not match the Holocaust in scale, but in other respects it is uniquely horrifying:

• It unfolded in full public view, live streamed to the world.
• Western governments knew exactly what was happening.
• They had the power to stop it.
• They chose not to.

This betrayal of “Never Again” has profound implications. It signals to the world that the West’s commitment to preventing genocide is not based on principle but on politics. It reveals that some lives, particularly Palestinian lives, are valued less than others. As the UN Special Rapporteur wrote, “The failure of powerful states to prevent genocide in Gaza marks a collapse of the international system’s moral foundation.”

The death of global conscience and the rise of authoritarianism

The Gaza genocide has also accelerated a broader trend—the erosion of human rights norms and the rise of authoritarian tendencies within Western democracies. Across Europe and North America, governments have cracked down on pro‑Palestinian protests, censored dissenting voices, and targeted journalists, academics and ordinary citizens who criticize Israeli actions.

Human rights organizations have warned that these measures represent a dangerous slide toward authoritarianism, driven by the desire to suppress criticism of Western foreign policy. The result is a shrinking space for democratic debate and a growing climate of fear.

This internal repression mirrors the external abandonment of human rights principles. Together, they signal the emergence of a “post‑human rights world,” in which the universal values proclaimed after World War Two are being systematically dismantled.

A world forever changed

The Gaza genocide has shattered the illusion of Western humanity. It has exposed the moral bankruptcy of the Western alliance, revealed the selective and self‑serving nature of the “rules‑based order,” and demonstrated the willingness of powerful states to tolerate — and even enable — mass atrocities when it suits their interests.

The consequences will be long‑lasting. The credibility of international law has been gravely damaged. The promise of “Never Again” has been betrayed. And the global moral order that emerged after World War Two is now in deep crisis.

Whether the world can rebuild a genuine, universal system of human rights remains uncertain. But one thing is clear: the illusion of Western moral leadership will not recover from the atrocities committed in Gaza.

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

Christmas in Gaza doesn’t mean peace or goodwill, only genocide with Canadian complicity

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. 

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.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the pinnacle of evil in the world today

Without decisive action by the international community to halt the Gaza genocide, Israel’s impunity will cement its legacy as the 21st century’s exemplar of evil rivalling that of Nazi Germany. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza stands as a stark monument to 21st-century barbarity and evil. As a deliberate campaign to annihilate a people it mirrors the darkest atrocities the 20th Century and will go down in history as the failure of the so-called “international rules based order” that Western nations like to invoke so often against their adversaries. Israel’s actions have convinced numerous respected voices that their crimes constitute the crime of genocide as defined under the Genocide Convention.

Among those who have come to this conclusion have been the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Israeli academics Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg, and Omer Bartov, hundreds of Jewish health care professionals, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, the United Nations, and many others. In public statements and letters all of these individuals and organizations have cited evidence of deliberate killings, starvation policies, and conditions aimed at destroying Palestinians as a people. This horror, which the world has watched on their social media feeds for more than two years, far from being an isolated eruption of Israeli violence, is the latest phase of a century-long Zionist colonial project, rooted in ethno-supremacist ideology akin to the 20th century’s worst genocides. It has positioned Israel as the Middle East’s gravest threat to peace and a prime example of modern evil no different than what the Nazis did during the Holocaust.

The Gaza genocide evokes the Holocaust’s horror, where Nazi Germany exterminated six million Jews alongside seven million Roma, disabled individuals, political dissidents and others in death camps like Auschwitz, driven by an ethno-supremacist ideology, and a dehumanizing rhetoric labelling victims as “vermin.” Gaza’s devastation parallels this with Israeli leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoking “Amalek”, a biblical call to exterminate an entire people and lay waste to their society. Similarly, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant branded Palestinians as “human animals,” justifying a siege to deny food, water, fuel, and other things necessary for human survival. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested using nuclear weapons to annihilate the people of Gaza, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded Gaza’s erasure, echoing Nazi calls for a “final solution.” The UN’s 2025 report confirms violations of the Genocide Convention—mass killings, intentional harm, and life conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians, while Amnesty International’s 2024 report calls it a “live-streamed genocide,” with hospitals, schools, and UN shelters bombed, killing more than 75,000 directly and potentially more than 600,000 indirectly.

This brutality recalls the Armenian Genocide of 1915–1917, where 1.5 million people were killed through death marches and starvation, and the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War Two, where 13,000 Jews were killed and the 50,000 who remained were sent to Nazi death camps. Gaza’s blockade since 2007, tightened post-2023, mirrors these historic atrocities with Israel forcing Palestinians into so-called “safe zones” only to bomb those who had survived previous bombings. The population of Gaza numbered 2.3 million in October 2023, half of them children. Since the start of Israel’s genocidal assault they have been subjected to bullets, bombs, mortars, starvation, deprivation and disease, in a 365 square kilometre open air concentration camp, with over 90% of the hospitals, 95% of the schools and universities, and more than 80% of the homes and buildings damaged or destroyed.

The international community’s inaction—despite warnings by the UN and hundreds of genocide scholars—echoes the Allies’ indifference to Armenian pleas in World War One, and the pleas of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in the lead up to World War Two. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994, where 800,000 Tutsis were hacked to death in 100 days amid Hutu radio calls for extermination, finds its parallel in Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians. Israeli airstrikes replicates the Nazi’s orchestrated slaughter of 11 million during the Holocaust. The Bosnian Genocide’s Srebrenica massacre is echoed in the way that Palestinians were herded into Gaza’s so-called “safe zones,” and bombed while in flimsy tents just trying to survive.

B’Tselem’s 2025 report—“Our Genocide”—details the “coordinated destruction” of Gaza, with 80% of the territory’s infrastructure razed, making everything in what were once the major centres of the enclave look like Hiroshima did after the atomic bomb was dropped. Dresden’s firebombing (25,000+ dead), Tokyo’s incineration (100,000+ dead), and Hiroshima-Nagasaki’s atomic annihilation (200,000+ dead)—share Gaza’s disproportionate carnage. Israel’s use of 2,000-pound bombs in dense neighbourhoods, documented by Human Rights Watch as “extermination,” prioritizes destruction over precision. Japan’s Nanjing Massacre (300,000+ killed) parallels the rape of Gaza women by Israeli soldiers and summary executions, with IDF soldiers’ TikTok videos boasting of atrocities, echoing the confessions contained in the diaries of Japanese soldiers.

The Gaza genocide is not a post-October 7, 2023 anomaly but the apex of Zionism’s colonial violence that began with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which ignored 700,000 indigenous Palestinians in historic Palestine to promise a “national home” to European Jews. The slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land,” coined by Israel Zangwill was Zionist propaganda that erased Palestine’s vibrant Muslim, Christian, and Jewish society, rivalling Nazi propaganda’s erasure of Jewish humanity in Germany.

Historian Rashid Khalidi notes this myth was used as a justification of the British-backed dispossession, setting the stage for the Nakba in 1948. That event, burned into the souls of Palestinians, saw Zionist terrorist militias—Haganah, Irgun, Lehi—ethnically cleanse 750,000 Palestinians, destroy 500 villages via Plan Dalet, and murder thousands of Palestinians, to secure a Jewish-majority state. Massacres like Deir Yassin and Lydda mirrored Nazi massacres of entire towns, with Palestinian survivors denied the right of return under UN Resolution 194, a condition of Israel’s 1949 UN admission which it immediately violated. More than seven million refugees and their descendants remain stateless around the world, which is a crime of ongoing displacement.

Zionism’s ethno-supremacist ideology, equating Jews as “God’s chosen people” with divine land rights in historic Palestine and beyond, parallels the Nazi slogan of Aryans being the “master race. David Ben-Gurion’s 1937 call to “expel Arabs and take their places” and Golda Meir’s 1969 denial of Palestinian existence, despite documents showing she was born in “Palestine” and therefore was a Palestinian, are reminiscent of Nazi deputy fuehrer Heinrich Himmler’s dehumanization of Jews.

Israel’s history of aggression extends beyond Gaza, instigating nearly every conflict with its neighbours in the region since 1948. The 1956 Suez Crisis saw Israel invade Egypt’s Sinai, unprovoked, alongside Britain and France. The 1967 Six-Day War, a pre-emptive strike on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, led to the illegal occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Sinai, and Golan Heights, violating Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. The 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions, including the Sabra-Shatila massacre (3,500 dead, facilitated by eventual PM Ariel Sharon), and multiple wars in Gaza since 2008 reflect a clear pattern of instigating violence. This is also evident in Israel’s attacks against Lebanon, and bombings of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Qatar since 2023—often without provocation—acts which breach sovereignty, international law, and the UN Charter. Israel’s criminality can also be seen in over 50 assassinations since 1948, in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Tunisia and Syria—once again, all violations of international law.

The Zionist project’s colonial roots trace back to the late 19th century, when the founder of the Zionist movement Theodor Herzl envisioned a Jewish secular state in Palestine, disregarding its indigenous population. His disdain for the inhabitants of Palestine (Muslim, Christian and Jewish) was made clear in 1904 when he said, “The Zionist colony would form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.” His vision was helped by the Balfour Declaration, which prioritized Zionist settlers over the territory’s 700,000 Palestinians, setting an ugly precedent for ethnic cleansing and exclusion.

This colonial framework, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappé argues in his 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, mirrors settler-colonial genocides in Australia and the Americas, where indigenous peoples and societies were erased to make way for settler societies made up primarily of white Europeans. The Nakba’s ethnic cleansing was not a spontaneous event but one that was meticulously planned, with Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion (born in modern day Poland) explicitly advocating for “transfer” [ethnic cleansing] to ensure Jewish dominance in historic Palestine. In a letter to his son Amos in October 1937 he wrote, “We must expel the Arabs [Palestinians] and take their places . . . And, if we have to use force, not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places, then we have force at our disposal.” The ongoing Gaza genocide extends this logic, aiming to render the territory uninhabitable for Palestinians through systematic destruction of agriculture, water systems, cultural heritage, all manner of civilian infrastructure, and mass murder, as documented by UN reports. This calculated erasure aligns with Raphael Lemkin’s genocide definition—acts to destroy a group’s “essential foundations of life.”

Western complicity, particularly from the United States, amplifies Israel’s impunity. Beyond financial aid, the US provides diplomatic cover, and has vetoed multiple UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel’s actions, a pattern since 1972. This protection has emboldened Israel’s violations, from the 1967 occupations to Gaza’s siege, mirroring how Nazi Germany exploited the League of Nations’ weakness. Western media often sanitizes Israel’s atrocities, framing Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” while ignoring Israel’s state terror, as noted in critiques of news outlets like CNN and BBC. This double standard dehumanizes Palestinians, the same way Nazi propaganda vilified Jews, thereby enabling public indifference to Gaza’s suffering. The supply of American precision-guided munitions, used in Gaza’s indiscriminate bombings, implicates the US directly in war crimes, as stated by respected human rights organizations and legal scholars.

Since its creation Israel’s actions have destabilized the Middle East, leading to wider conflicts. Its unprovoked strikes on Iran and Syria, alongside proxy wars via US-backed militias, have inflamed regional tensions. The 2025 Qatar attack, targetting Hamas officials, underscores Israel’s disregard for international law, and territorial sovereignty, provoking responses from groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. This recklessness, fuelled by Zionism’s expansionist zeal, threatens to draw the US and other Middle East nations into a wider war, echoing how unchecked aggression in the 1930s led to global conflict. The International Criminal Court’s 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes signal growing global concern, yet Western inaction to stop the genocide persists.

The Gaza genocide’s scale is compounded by Israel’s deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, a tactic rooted in Zionist goals to erase Palestinian presence, and mimicking tactics the Nazis used in the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War Two. Hospitals have been bombed repeatedly while medical staff and patients have been targeted and killed, violating Geneva Convention protections for medical facilities. UN reports document the destruction of over 90% of Gaza’s healthcare system, leaving millions without access to care, a strategy to maximize civilian suffering and death. This mirrors the Nazi destruction of Warsaw’s infrastructure to crush resistance, prioritizing annihilation over military objectives. Such actions, as Segal notes, aim to “destroy the group as such,” fulfilling genocide’s legal definition.

Israel’s religious and political rhetoric further exposes its genocidal intent. Beyond Netanyahu’s Amalek invocation, religious leaders have called Palestinians “beasts” and “animals” unfit for coexistence, while Knesset member Avi Dichter described Gaza’s assault as “rolling out the Nakba.” These statements, combined with half of Israeli Jews supporting genocide, and policies like cutting off Gaza’s electricity and water, reflect a supremacist ideology that justifies extermination, akin to Nazi depictions of Jews as subhuman. The Balfour Declaration’s legacy, seeing Jews as humans while dehumanizing Palestinians, continues to shape this violence, with Western powers complicit in its perpetuation. American historian Norman Finkelstein (a child of Holocaust survivors) argues that Israel’s actions constitute a “public genocide,” conducted openly with Western-supplied weapons.

Global inaction mirrors historical failures, enabling Israel’s crimes. The UN’s inability to enforce resolutions, hampered by US vetoes, recalls the League of Nations’ collapse before Nazi aggression. The failure to act in Rwanda and Bosnia (also hampered by UNSC vetoes) allowed genocides to unfold, and Gaza faces a similar fate as Western leaders deflect accountability with claims of “Israel’s right to self-defence.” International law, including the Genocide Convention, is rendered toothless when powerful nations shield perpetrators, as seen with US support for Israel’s war crimes. Grassroots movements, like global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, represent growing resistance, but political elites remain complicit as they ignore or willingly support Israeli actions.

The broader implications of Israel’s actions threaten global stability. Its attacks on multiple nations—Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Qatar—risk escalating into a regional war, potentially involving nuclear powers, reminiscent of pre-World War Two escalations. Unconditional support by the US, including sale of advanced weaponry, fuels this danger, implicating it in Gaza’s atrocities. The Zionist ideology’s expansionist vision, as articulated by Herzl and the current Zionist leadership of Israel aiming for a “Greater Israel,” drives this aggression, and threatens to destabilize the Middle East and beyond. The international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable risks normalizing genocidal violence, undermining global human rights frameworks and political stability.

Ending Israel’s apartheid, “de-Zionizing” Israeli society, enforcing Palestinian refugees’ right of return, and prosecuting war crimes demand urgent global resolve. The moral failures evident in the Gaza genocide, as in the Holocaust, Armenia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, lies in the collective silence and inaction of most of the global community. The Zionist myth of a “land without a people” and Jews being “God’s chosen people” continues to justify ethnic cleansing, echoing colonial genocides worldwide. Without decisive action—sanctions, arms embargoes, and ICC enforcement—Israel’s impunity will cement its legacy as the 21st century’s exemplar of evil, a state whose supremacist ideology and Western-backed genocidal violence rivals that of Nazi Germany.

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