On Human Rights Day let’s reflect on Canada’s complicity in the Gaza Genocide

Under both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments, Canada has authorized the sale of weapons components to Israel, directly fuelling Israel's genocidal death machine. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

This article can also be found on Rabble.ca.

As the world commemorates International Human Rights Day on December 10th, we pause to reflect on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention, both adopted in 1948 by the United Nations. In addition, December 9th was the International Day to Commemorate Victims of Genocide, a solemn reminder of humanity's pledge to prevent such horrors from recurring. These days were meant to symbolize our collective commitment to dignity, justice, and the sanctity of life. Yet, in 2025, Canada's adherence to these ideals feels like a cruel farce.

For more than two years, Israel's brutal and devastating campaign in Gaza—widely described as genocide by experts, the UN, the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch—has exposed the hollow core of Western nations' self-proclaimed role as guardians of human rights. Canada, once a beacon of rule-of-law and moral leadership, stands accused of criminal complicity in the systematic destruction of Palestinian lives. 

The scale of the atrocities in Gaza defies comprehension. According to the Geneva-based NGO Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, by early November 2025, over 75,000 Palestinians had been killed, with 30% of them children, and more than 173,200 wounded. These numbers, staggering as they are, may understate the true Palestinian death toll. An analysis by Australian scholars Gideon Polya and Richard Hil, published in the summer of 2025, estimates over 680,000 Palestinian deaths from Israeli violence, starvation, and disease—a figure echoed by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. These are not mere statistics. They represent shattered families, obliterated communities, and futures erased. Since the fall of 2023, Canada has enabled this carnage through inaction and active support, betraying the very principles it claims to uphold.

What makes this even more chilling is the apparent societal endorsement within Israel. A June 2025 poll by Ha'aretz revealed that 82% of Jewish Israelis support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, while 47% back the mass murder of all Palestinians, including children. This echoes the dehumanizing rhetoric of the Nazis toward Jews during the Holocaust, perverting "Never Again" into a selective shield that protects Jews while condemning Palestinians to annihilation. It's not just Israel's political and military elites perpetrating these crimes, nearly half of its Jewish population appears to endorse genocidal ideologies and acts.

Where is Canada's outrage? Our government's silence on this genocidal racism is deafening, especially when contrasted with its swift condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This double standard reeks of the same white supremacist and racist logic that fueled Canada's own historical genocide against Indigenous peoples. Today, that racism manifests as anti-Palestinian hatred, permeating our government, academia, corporations, and mainstream news media.

Canada's refusal to label Israel's actions as genocide, despite overwhelming evidence, further underscores this bigotry. Organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned it unequivocally. The United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and even Holocaust scholars have decried the perversion of "Never Again," arguing it must apply universally, not just to Jews. These experts see Israel's military assault in Gaza as a textbook case of genocide, yet Ottawa turns a blind eye. The only plausible explanation for Canada’s inaction is a deep-seated anti-Palestinian animus and racism that prioritizes geopolitical alliances over human lives and upholding international law. 

Even the fragile October 2025 ceasefire has done little to stem the violence, exposing the West's—and Canada's—indifference to Palestinian suffering. While Israeli hostages have been released, Israel's murder spree continues unabated. Hundreds have died since the truce took effect, including 33 civilians killed in a November 19 military incursion on Khan Yunis as they queued for food. Just this past week, two brothers—aged 8 and 10—were killed by and Israeli drone for crossing an invisible line near where Israeli troops were situated, only to be posthumously framed as "terrorists" by Israeli forces. These incidents are not anomalies, they are part of a pattern of unchecked Israeli brutality. In the face of this, Canada does nothing to enforce the Genocide Convention it once championed. Instead, it enables the horror. 

Under both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments, Canada has authorized the sale of weapons components to Israel, directly fuelling Israel's genocidal death machine. Our leaders are reluctant to arrest or charge Canadians who have travelled to Israel to join the Israeli Occupation Forces, effectively greenlighting participation in genocidal acts. Moreover, the government has failed to move quickly to revoke charitable status from dozens of Canadian Jewish organizations that funnel funds to Israel, supporting racist and genocidal entities. These policies are not oversights, they are deliberate choices that make Canada an Israeli accomplice.  If we persist on this path, Canada risks plunging into a moral abyss that will scar this society for generations.

As children, we were taught that monsters lurked in fairy tales—shadowy figures defeated by heroes. As adults, we confront a harsher truth. Monsters are real.  They wear suits and ties, wielding power in political back rooms and corporate boardrooms. Disturbingly, some are our own political leaders, steering the nation toward complicity in yet another genocide. Their actions stain Canada's soul with the blood of innocent Palestinians, echoing our dark history of Indigenous dispossession and racial injustice. 

But despair need not define us. Those with intact moral compasses—ordinary Canadians from all walks of life—must unite to reclaim the just society envisioned by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. If our leaders falter, it falls to us to ignite a political revolution to challenge them or replace them. We must demand immediate action--an arms embargo on Israel, comprehensive sanctions, divestment from complicit entities, prosecutions of war criminals—including Israeli political and military leaders—and restitution for Palestinians whose lives have been devastated. 

Beyond these measures, we need systemic change. Our government must purge the influence of Israeli agents and lobbyists who pull the strings behind the scenes. We require politicians with unwavering moral integrity, who defend human rights equally for all, regardless of ethnicity or faith. Canadians once played a critical role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention.  It's time to honor their legacy by channelling the morality of those visionary Canadians who dreamed of a world free from oppression and injustice. 

On this Human Rights Day, let us not merely commemorate ideals but live them. By opposing genocide unequivocally and championing the rights of all people, we can avert the abyss of inhumanity. Courage and unity can forge a Canada that truly stands as a global exemplar of justice. The choice is ours--complicity or redemption. For the sake of Palestinians—and our own humanity—let us choose the path that defends human rights equally and upholds justice for Palestinians and all oppressed peoples.

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

Canada is a hypocrite when it comes to taking meaningful action to defend human rights at home and abroad

By Fareed Khan

At a time when human rights in Canada and around the world are under assault like never before there is one word that describes the Canadian government’s lacklustre approach to dealing with human rights at home and abroad.  That word is ‘hypocrisy’.

It speaks to the limited or absence of meaningful action by the Canadian government to address human rights and injustice against targeted minorities at home and abroad with actions that have effect.  And it should remind Canadian political leaders of the words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “The greatest sin of our time is not the destruction of the good around us by the few but the apathy of the vast majority who sit idly by as it happens.”

 

Canadians should feel ashamed that the federal government claims to be a vigorous defender of human rights but is actually a charlatan when it comes to taking action to defend rights guaranteed to us under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms against the actions of provincial governments, or robustly defend the human rights of oppressed and persecuted minorities overseas in compliance with Canada’s international legal obligations.

 

International Human Rights Day was established on this date in 1940 to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly, which is the foundation of international human rights law.  It occurs this year against a backdrop of ongoing rights violations in Quebec with its racist Bill 21 “secularism” law, and its Bill 96 French language law, both of which target minority communities in that province, and Ontario’s use of the Section 33 “notwithstanding” clause of the Charter for the third time since it was elected in 2018, to violate fundamental rights of a segment of Ontario’s population. 

 

Across Canada the Charter rights of Canadians have been violated 26 times by provincial and territorial governments since 1982 when the Charter came into effect, not because there was some urgent civil emergency that required it but because governments chose to sacrifice basic human rights on the altars of their political agendas.  In none of these 26 instances did the Canadian government use its authority under the Constitution to override those provincial laws and protect the fundamental rights of those Canadians who were targeted.  The worst offender is Quebec which has used the notwithstanding clause an unprecedented 17 times to violate the rights of Quebecers guaranteed under the Charter over 40 years.  These violations are an affront to the principles of democracy and justice. 

 

In addition, we have to acknowledge the worsening human rights environment internationally. 

 

The Chinese government is following Nazi Germany's example in its persecution of democracy activists and the genocide it is committing against the Uyghurs.  Meanwhile the Canadian government does very little to penalize them politically or economically for their anti-democracy pogrom in Hong Kong or the horrific crimes that Uyghurs in East Turkestan are being subjected to.  By comparison, the US government has not only officially recognized the Uyghur genocide (unlike the Canadian government) it is also taking meaningful action legislatively and diplomatically to penalize China.  Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement, “I believe this genocide is ongoing, and that we are witnessing the systematic attempt to destroy Uighurs by the Chinese party-state."

 

The Canadian government also continues to pursue a free trade deal with India despite the fact that leading members of Narendra Modi’s fascist government have called for the genocide of the country’s 200 million Muslims, in a nation where Muslims speaking out against the governing party or merely being suspected of eating beef leads to lynchings often with the complicity of police.  If the FIPA investment agreement that Canada signed with China in 2014 is any example of future repercussions this could be another deal with the devil. 

 

As well, it is deeply troubling that Canada continues its business as usual attitude with Israel, a nation designated an Apartheid state based on in-depth research done independently by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Israel-based human rights group B'Tselem, which has called Israel “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”.

 

 

And last but not least is Canada’s weak response to the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. Whereas it started out as a leader by committing $300 million in humanitarian aid and becoming the first country to officially recognize what was happening to the Rohingya as genocide in 2018, in subsequent years there has been little action by Canada to punish the Myanmar government or its political leaders for their role in the abuses and atrocities committed against the Rohingya who are now refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh, or the approximately 500,000 Rohingya remaining in the country.  Furthermore, while Canada issued multiple media statements since 2018 about how it will help Gambia’s Rohingya genocide case at the International Court of Justice it has done nothing to follow through on that promise. 

 

In each of these countries brutal and violent human rights crimes – crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide –  are being committed by governments against minority communities under their control, and yet Canada does very little or nothing at all legally, politically or economically to punish the leaders of these countries or their governments.  These are not the hallmarks of a nation committed to defending human rights.  Were they alive today the Canadian diplomats who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention would hang their heads in shame at how far Canada has fallen.

 

So Canadians need to call their MPs and pressure the Canadian government to live up to its Constitutional obligations to protect their Charter rights against provincial excesses, and fulfil its international legal obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention if this nation is to claim the mantle of a true defender of human rights. 

 

No one should have their fundamental rights violated in Canada, or be subjected to the brutality of racist, fascist and authoritarian regimes internationally.  Canada must do better.  Because the price of not doing so is to willfully ignore the principles of fundamental justice and the human rights of the oppressed. 

 

© 2022 The View From Here.  © 2022 Fareed Khan.  All Rights Reserved.