Carney’s moral failure is sacrificing human rights on the altar of trade and finance

Mark Carney sees the world through balance sheets and trade deals not moral obligations, and treats human rights as negotiable, secondary, or inconvenient. 

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

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been described by many political observers as a “technocrat.” Canada has had technocratic prime ministers before—leaders who manage rather than inspire, who prefer balance sheets to moral clarity. But in living memory, there has been no PM that has been as weak on human rights as Mark Carney. His tenure has revealed a troubling truth—when confronted with the suffering of persecuted peoples, Carney consistently chooses financial gain over the defence of human dignity.

This is not a partisan critique, it is a moral one. And the pattern has become impossible to ignore.

Carney presents himself as a modern, rational, data‑driven leader. But beneath the polished language of markets and macroeconomics lies an apparent worldview in which human rights are treated as irritants—obstacles to be managed rather than principles to be defended. He speaks fluently about GDP growth, supply chains, and investment flows, yet stumbles when confronted with the basic question of whether human beings deserve protection from mass atrocity.

This moral hollowness is not theoretical. It is visible when he has been asked to respond to every major human‑rights crisis of his premiership.

The Gaza Genocide is Carney’s most damning failure

Carney’s refusal even to utter the word genocide in relation to Israel’s 34‑month genocidal campaign in Gaza is not political caution—it is a moral abdication. The term is not a fringe accusation, nor is it controversial among experts. It has been applied by dozens of respected global human‑rights authorities, including the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry; Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; Israeli human rights group B’Tselem; Physicians for Human Rights Israel; the International Federation of Human Rights; and the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Leading Israeli Holocaust scholars—Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman—have likewise affirmed that Israel’s actions meet the definition of genocide. When such a broad and authoritative chorus recognizes the reality of genocide, a prime minister’s refusal to acknowledge it is not prudence; it is a profound failure of moral responsibility.

This silence is not neutrality. It is a deliberate political choice to avoid moral responsibility. Carney knows that naming genocide carries obligations—legal, diplomatic, and ethical. He knows that acknowledging genocide would require sanctions, embargoes, and a fundamental shift in Canada’s relationship with Israel. And he knows that such actions would disrupt trade, investment, geopolitical alliances, and domestic political considerations for the Liberal Party he leads.

So rather than doing what is right he chooses silence.

Worse still, he has refused to impose sanctions on Israel—sanctions Canada deployed swiftly and forcefully against Russia when it committed the same crimes in Ukraine. The contrast is glaring. When Russia violated international law, Canada responded with boycotts, sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and moral outrage. When Israel committed the same crimes, the Canadian government offered platitudes, evasions, and the language of “concern.”

This hypocrisy reveals the core of Carney’s worldview, Human rights matter only when they align with economic or geopolitical interests. When they do not, they are quietly set aside.

Carney’s now‑infamous statement condemning Israeli Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir for the “abominable” treatment of kidnapped Sumud flotilla activists, which was shared on social media, was revealing not for what it said, but for what it ignored. By singling out one extremist minister, Carney sidestepped the far more consequential truth. The atrocities in Gaza are not the work of one man, but of an entire political and military apparatus, led by people who consider Palestinians subhuman, that has inflicted decades of oppression, occupation, brutality and death on the Palestinian people. This infrastructure has inflicted More than 34 months of genocide in Gaza; a 20-year siege on Gaza that has deliberately restricted food, medicine, and humanitarian aid; six decades of a brutal occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza; nearly eight decades of ethnic cleansing across the territories controlled by Israel; and a conservatively estimated 80,000—possibly as many as 680,000—Palestinians murdered in Gaza. By condemning only Ben‑Gvir, Carney avoided confronting the full scale of state violence, and in doing so revealed the limits of his moral courage, the character flaws of his leadership, and the extent of his cowardice.

More trade with China—another genocidal state

Carney’s weakness on human rights is not confined to Israel. His pursuit of expanded trade with China—despite Beijing’s ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs—shows the same pattern of moral blindness.

The Chinese government has built a vast network of concentration camps, indoctrination boarding schools that separate Uyghur children from their families, forced-labour factories, and an all‑seeing surveillance state designed to crush an entire people. The United States, the United Kingdom, and several European governments have formally recognized these atrocities as genocide, while Canada has not. And Carney’s response has been one of astonishing moral indifference.

He treats China’s genocide as a regrettable footnote rather than the absolute barrier to trade it should be. He speaks in the antiseptic language of “market access,” “strategic partnerships,” and “economic diversification,” while millions of Uyghurs are subjected to forced labour, mass detention, sterilization campaigns, cultural erasure, and the destruction of their religious identity. There is no moral universe in which a genocide can be bracketed off as an inconvenient detail in a trade negotiation. Yet that is precisely what Carney is doing—reducing one of the gravest crimes known to humanity to a background concern that must not interfere with Canada’s economic ambitions.

Under Carney, Ottawa has sought deeper economic ties with Beijing. Human rights have not been a meaningful point of negotiation. Forced labour has not been a red line. The genocide of Uyghurs has not been a barrier.

The message is unmistakable: profit is more important than people.

Appeasing a Hindu supremacist regime

The Carney government’s efforts to negotiate a comprehensive trade deal with India is another example of his willingness to overlook atrocities for economic gain. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has embraced a racist, fascist, Hindu supremacist ideology that has made persecution of Muslims, Dalits and other Indian minority communities a matter of state policy. Citizenship laws target Muslims. Lynchings of Muslims by Hindu extremists occur with impunity. Journalists, academics, and activists face arrest for criticizing the government. The Modi regime has dismantled democratic norms and weaponized Hindu fundamentalism and nationalism as a tool of exclusion.

Yet Carney has pursued trade negotiations with India without including human rights a factor in negotiations. There has been no insistence on protections for Indo‑Muslims, Dalits, Christians or other minorities. No pressure on Modi’s government to end discriminatory policies. No moral leadership.

As South Africa’s Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” But it seems Carney hasn’t learned this lesson.

More trade with authoritarian states

Carney’s eagerness to forge trade deals with authoritarian regimes in the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia further underscores his disregard for human rights. These states—Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain—are among the least free societies in the world when it comes to civil liberties. Laws ban criticism of the ruling families, state policies, or Islam. Their governments use spyware and monitoring tools to target dissidents and activists. Political parties are illegal, and national legislatures have no real power. Millions of low-income workers face harsh conditions under the kafala sponsorship system. Activists and critics face arbitrary detention, lengthy prison terms, and unfair trials. Women’s rights are suppressed, being LGBTQ2 is criminalized, and independent journalism is silenced.

Yet Carney has treated these governments as normal trading partners, never making human rights a major point of negotiation. He speaks of Gulf autocracies as if they were simply emerging markets rather than repressive states where human rights are an afterthought. Canada, a nation that once prided itself on being a moral voice in global affairs, has now silenced itself under Carney.

Carney fails to defend Canadians’ Charter rights

Carney’s weakness on human rights is not limited to foreign policy. It is visible at home in his refusal to confront provincial governments that abuse the Canadian Constitution’s notwithstanding clause to violate the fundamental rights of Canadians. The clause was never intended as a routine political tool. It was meant to be an extraordinary measure used sparingly. But provinces have increasingly deployed it to override Charter rights for political convenience to: suppress labour rights; restrict freedom of expression; target vulnerable communities (Muslims in Quebec, the LGBTQ2 community in Alberta and Saskatchewan); and to pre‑empt judicial review of legislation.

This trend represents the slow normalization of constitutional vandalism. And Carney has done nothing to stop it (nor did his predecessors).

Refusal to use the power of “Disallowance”

The Constitution gives the federal government a powerful tool: disallowance. Under sections 55–57 of the Constitution Act, 1867, Ottawa can invalidate provincial laws that violate national principles or constitutional norms. This power has fallen into disuse, not because it is unconstitutional, but because federal governments have lacked the political courage to use it when needed.

Carney’s refusal to even consider disallowance to address Quebec’s Bill 21 “secularism” law or Alberta’s violation of LGBTQ2 rights is not restraint it is dereliction. When provinces openly use the notwithstanding clause to strip Canadians of Charter protections, the federal government has both the authority and the responsibility to intervene. But the federal government refuses

Political leaders who will not protect the rights of their own citizens cannot be trusted to defend the rights of persecuted peoples abroad.

Comparing Trudeau and Carney

While this analysis focuses on Carney and his government, similar criticisms can be levelled at his predecessor Justin Trudeau. On Gaza, on Israel’s decades-long occupation, on the misuse of the notwithstanding clause by provinces, Trudeau also failed to show the moral courage required of a national leader. He avoided naming Israeli atrocities for what they were. He refused to impose sanctions. He allowed provinces to weaponize the notwithstanding clause without federal intervention. On China, India, and the Gulf autocracies, Trudeau walked the same path Carney is now sprinting down—prioritizing trade, investment, and geopolitical convenience over human rights.

But there is one crucial difference. One of Trudeau’s first and most admirable decisions as prime minister was accepting thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing war and persecution just after he was elected prime minister. That act did not make Trudeau an angel on the other issues discussed here, but it demonstrated that he possessed at least some moral compass when it came to defending humanity. Carney has shown no such instinct. Where Trudeau jogged slowly down the path of moral compromise, Carney is racing down that road headlong, unencumbered by even the faintest hesitation about concerns for human rights.

Carney’s defenders often point to his credentials: a former governor of the Bank of Canada, former governor of the Bank of England, celebrated economist, respected financial thinker. But these accomplishments reveal the core problem. Carney approaches politics like a banker, not as a political leader representing all Canadians. He sees the world through balance sheets, not moral obligations, and treats human rights as negotiable, secondary, or inconvenient. He is a man who believes the market can solve everything except the things that matter most.

When humanity becomes a variable in an economic equation, it is always the first thing sacrificed.

Canada deserves a prime minister who understands that human rights are not optional. They are not bargaining chips to be traded away in back-room negotiations, nor are they secondary considerations to be weighed against export markets, investment flows, or geopolitical convenience.

Human rights are the moral foundation of any society that claims to value dignity, equality, and justice. In all the cases mentioned in this analysis Carney has responded not with the instinct to protect the vulnerable but with the instinct to protect economic interests

History teaches a simple lesson. A leader who refuses to protect humanity cannot be trusted on anything else. The measure of a prime minister is not the size of the economy he manages, but the size of the moral obligations he is willing to shoulder. By that measure, Carney has failed—and Canada must reckon with the consequences of a leader who has forgotten that the first duty of public office—to defend human life, not the bottom line.

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

Canadians want a politics of decency and humanity, and NDP leader Avi Lewis could deliver it

Canadians are rejecting the politics of fear and capitulation and instead choosing a politics of empathy, solidarity, and material improvement. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack

Avi Lewis’s election as leader of the federal New Democratic Party earlier this year was not merely an internal party upset or a moment of ideological turbulence. It was a national signal—clear, forceful, and overdue that Canadians are rejecting the traditional political binary that has dominated federal politics for years—a choice between the Conservative Party and Pierre Poilievre’s rage‑based theatrics, or the Liberal Party led by Mark Carney, a polished but pliant technocrat. Lewis’s victory shows that Canadians are hungry for something different, for a politics rooted in humanity, solidarity, and economic dignity.

For decades, Canadians have been told that their political choices begin and end with the two parties that have governed the country since Confederation—parties now led by a career politician who thrives on division and a former central banker who campaigned on “elbows up” toughness but has governed with “hands up” submission. Neither Poilievre or Carney offers what Canadians actually need. One cannot deliver because he sits in Opposition, and the other has failed because none of the initiatives he announced as prime minister have materialized—whether on affordable housing, affordable groceries, affordable internet and phone services, a government willing to confront corporate greed, or a leader with a moral compass in the face of genocide who stands up to foreign pressure rather than bows before it.

Lewis’s rise demonstrates that Canadians are sick of fear‑based politics and want to embrace a politics of decency—one that understands the daily struggles of ordinary people and refuses to treat corporate interests or foreign governments as the true constituency of Canadian democracy.

The failure of the old politics

Poilievre’s politics revolve around resentment, division, and perpetual outrage. He has mastered the art of weaponizing anger while offering little in the way of substantive solutions. Carney, by contrast, presents himself as a steady hand, a global thinker, a technocrat who has the international experience to manage crises with calm expertise. But his record since becoming prime minister reveals a troubling pattern. Despite his speeches promoting “elbows up”, when confronted by pressure from Donald Trump’s administration, Carney has given concessions without getting anything from the United States in return.

Many Canadians voted for Carney out of fear—fear of Poilievre becoming prime minister, and fear of Trump’s threats to annex Canada or impose crippling tariffs. But fear is not a governing philosophy, and Canadians are now realizing that Carney’s leadership has delivered submission more than economic stability, and that his tools to deliver that economic stability are very limited.

Trump’s escalating war with Iran (something over which Carney has no control) has already destabilized global markets, driven up energy prices, rattled supply chains, and pushed major economies toward recession. Canadians have felt the effects of this in gas prices and at the grocery store.  His erratic tariff threats, sanctions, and military adventurism have created an environment where no country can count on predictable trade flows or stable investment conditions.

Carney promised during the federal election that he would shield Canadians from global volatility, insisting that his experience as a central banker in both Canada and the United Kingdom equipped him to steady the economy in turbulent times. But the reality has been starkly different. Despite his international stature and frequent overseas trips to seek investment and sign trade deals, Carney has no meaningful ability to counteract the economic shockwaves generated by Trump’s decisions. His government cannot blunt the impact of Trump’s escalating confrontation with Iran, which has already driven up global energy prices, disrupted supply chains, and pushed major economies toward the brink of recession. Nor can Carney insulate Canadians from the broader instability created by Trump’s unpredictable sanctions, tariff threats, and military brinkmanship. In practice, Carney’s government has little leverage and no effective strategy beyond waiting for the chaos instigated by Washington to pass. The economic turbulence unleashed by the US president since returning to office is far larger than Carney’s ability to deliver on his promises, and Canadians are now living with the consequences.

Carney’s pattern of capitulation

Carney’s “elbows up” pledge has collapsed under the weight of repeated concessions to Washington. Four major examples illustrate this pattern clearly.

Digital Services Tax retreat: Carney promised to ensure multinational tech giants pay their fair share—a 3% levy on the Canadian revenues of US tech giants. But when Trump threatened retaliatory tariffs, Carney rescinded implementation of the Digital Services Tax in June 2025, effectively surrendering to US pressure rather than defending Canadian sovereignty. Critics across the political spectrum described the move as a capitulation wrapped in the political spin of affordability for Canadian consumers.

Gordie Howe Bridge concession: Trump’s administration attempted to use the Gordie Howe International Bridge as leverage, threatening delays and regulatory obstacles unless Canada made concessions on unrelated trade issues. Instead of asserting Canada’s rights in a binational infrastructure project based on a legal and binding agreement, Carney quietly acquiesced. His government’s refusal to release the details of the deal speaks volumes. It’s another instance of when Trump pushes, Carney yields.

The F‑35 procurement paralysis: More than a year after Carney called for a review of Canada’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets, his refusal to make a clear decision—despite years of planning and billions of taxpayer dollars already committed—is another example of his unwillingness to confront Washington. Trump’s administration openly pressured Canada to accelerate the procurement and Canada even put in a down payment on 14 additional jets, and Carney has responded with indecision rather than resolve. His hesitation signaled weakness and an unwillingness to make a decision that affects the future of the RCAF.

Withdrawal of the Online Streaming Act levy: Perhaps the clearest example of Carney’s capitulation came with his withdrawal of the Online Streaming Act levy. The levy would have required major American streaming platforms—Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and others—to contribute up to 15% of their Canadian revenues toward Canadian and Indigenous content production. The policy was designed to strengthen Canada’s cultural sector and ensure foreign platforms invested in the country from which they profit.

But after intense pressure from US officials, American tech companies, and Trump’s trade representatives—who called the levy “discriminatory”—Carney reversed course. He directed the CRTC to rewrite the rules, effectively scrapping the levy and replacing it with a $600‑million annual federal subsidy. Carney framed the decision as an affordability measure, claiming the levy would raise subscription costs for Canadians. But critics immediately recognized the move for what it was: another concession to Washington in the middle of Trump’s trade war with Canada.

The reversal shocked Canada’s cultural sector, blindsided Liberal MPs, and signaled to foreign corporations that Canadian cultural policy is negotiable whenever U.S. pressure is applied. It was a textbook example of Carney’s governing style—rhetorical toughness paired with policy surrender.

Avi Lewis represents the politics many Canadians want

Lewis’s victory in the NDP leadership race signals a profound shift in the Canadian political landscape, as is the NDP’s rise in the polls. Canadians are rejecting the politics of fear and capitulation and instead choosing a politics of empathy, solidarity, and material improvement.

The truth is that Lewis understands what Canadians want: affordable housing built for people, not investors.  Affordable groceries in a market dominated by corporate giants; affordable internet, data, and phone services in a country where telecom monopolies extract some of the highest fees in the world; a government that stands up to corporate power, not one that bends to it; a foreign policy rooted in human rights, not one shaped by the interests of states like Israel whose actions violate international law with impunity.

Lewis’s politics are grounded in the daily realities of Canadians who are struggling to pay rent, feed their families, and stay connected in an increasingly digital world. He speaks to the majority, not the elite minority.

A new kind of leadership

Lewis offers something Canadians have been denied for years—a politics of courage and compassion. He does not posture. He does not perform toughness while quietly capitulating behind closed doors. He does not weaponize anger or fear. Instead, he offers a politics rooted in human dignity.

He has shown he can empathize with people’s struggles and articulate a vision of Canada that is not defined by corporate interests or foreign pressure. He has demonstrated that he understands the basic needs of the vast majority of Canadians—and that he is willing to fight for them.

This is why his rise to lead the NDP matters. It is not simply a victory for the party’s left wing. It is a declaration that Canadians are ready for a new political era.

The Canadian public has shifted

The old political class still insists that Canadians are fundamentally centrist, cautious, and resistant to bold change. But Lewis’s victory proves otherwise. Canadians are tired of being told that they must accept corporate greed, rising costs, and foreign interference as inevitable facts of life. They are tired of being governed by people who do not understand them.

Lewis’s election is a wake‑up call—not just for the NDP, but for the entire country. It shows that Canadians are ready to embrace a politics that prioritizes human dignity over corporate profit, sovereignty over submission, and solidarity over division.

Carney and Poilievre offer Canadians politics as it has been for most of Canada’s existence—alternating between two parties which have both shifted to the right of the political spectrum.  Lewis offers a politics of hope, and Canadians are making it clear which they prefer.

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

In the face of the ongoing Gaza Genocide we cannot break or be silent

We cannot allow ourselves to be numbed into despair, exhausted into silence, or lied to until the last Palestinian child has been murdered by a terrorist, genocidal regime.

 

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

To every person of conscience, to every soul still capable of outrage and hope—we have watched horrors unfold that history will never forgive. Since October 2023, Gaza has been subjected to a relentless campaign of annihilation. The numbers are staggering and merciless—tens of thousands murdered outright by the Israeli military, hundreds of thousands more dead from starvation, disease, and the deliberate destruction of every means of sustaining life. The bombs dropped on this tiny strip of land have exceeded—by more than six times—the destructive force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The most documented genocide in history

What Israel is doing is not war. This is genocide as confirmed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, respected Jewish Holocaust scholars, and various international medical organizations.

This crime of crimes has been carried out with weapons and political cover supplied by the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Canada, and other nations which still dare to speak of upholding “international law” and “human rights” but do nothing uphold the ideals behind those terms. And the genocide continues—even now—despite every ceasefire announcement, every diplomatic phrase, every claim of restraint.

In all of this we see clearly who Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is—a man who has turned the attack of October 7 into a license for the permanent conquest and erasure of the Palestinian people. He speaks of “peace” while ordering extermination. He speaks of “security” while directing the systematic destruction of an entire people’s future—its homes, its hospitals, its schools, its history, its children, its future. Every lie he utters, every racist edict, every mass grave he creates, stains not only his name but the moral credibility of the state he leads carrying out these crimes in the name of the Jewish people.

Netanyahu’s actions will stain Jewish communities around the world for generations. When a state commits atrocities while claiming to act on behalf of an entire people, the world too often answers with the oldest and most dangerous reflex—collective blame. We have seen this movie before, and we must refuse to let it be written again.

The Palestinian people are not collateral damage, they are the target. Their only crime is existing. Their only demand is to live free on the land their ancestors tended for centuries—free from military occupation, free from apartheid walls, free from settler violence, free from the daily humiliation of having their very existence debated as a security threat.

In the face of all this we cannot allow ourselves to be numbed into despair. We cannot allow ourselves to be exhausted into silence. We cannot allow ourselves to be lied to until the last Palestinian child’s voice is extinguished.

The day of reckoning for the criminal perpetrators of the Gaza genocide is inevitable. Those who ordered, enabled, financed, and excused this genocide will one day face justice, the judgment of history and of humanity. And that day arrives faster when ordinary people refuse to look away and be complicit through their silence.

As human beings witnessing horrors we will never forget, we demand—loudly, unapologetically, and without compromise—that our governments:

• Use all political, diplomatic and military means at their disposal to stop Israel’s genocidal crimes; 
• Open all of Gaza’s borders to allow humanitarian aid into the enclave;
• Immediately and unconditionally call for the release of the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli detention without charge or trial;
• Support the suspension and expulsion of Israel from the United Nations and all international institutions until it complies with international law;
• Impose a full military, economic, and trade embargo on Israel;
• Issue arrest warrants for all of Israel’s political and military leaders involved in implementing genocidal policies;
• Expel the Israeli ambassador and recall our own from Tel Aviv;
• Publicly and definitively reject the very flawed IHRA definition of antisemitism;
• Uphold and defend the rights of Palestinians to freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly;
• Require the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from all occupied Palestinian territories;
• Pursue accountability through international courts and under the concept of universal jurisdiction for every individual and every individual and institution responsible for crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza.

This is not a list of distant ideals. These are the minimum conditions of justice. Anything less is continued partnership in a crime against humanity.

The eyes of the world are watching those who have power to act. The future of an entire people—and the soul of the so-called “rules-based international order”—now depends on whether our leaders choose cowardice and political expediency or courage.

Do not wait for the perfect moment. Do not wait until the last house in Gaza is rubble and the last Palestinian child has been silenced.

It is our duty as beings who claim to be human to rise up, speak out, organize, disrupt, and demand until there is justice, safety and freedom for Palestinians.

We cannot bend or break. We cannot forget, and we will not forgive complicity.

Free Palestine—from the river to the sea—and from the river to the sea, justice will prevail.

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

Reflections on Christmas in a fractured world

Empathy, a cornerstone of the Christmas story—where a "king" is born in poverty to uplift the marginalized—has been supplanted by apathy and self-interest. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

As the twinkling lights adorn our streets and the carols echo through frost-kissed air, Christmas arrives once more like a gentle snowfall, blanketing the world in promises of peace on Earth and goodwill toward all. In its purest essence, this season commemorates the birth of a child in a humble manger—a symbol of humility, compassion, and the radical idea that love can upend empires and heal divisions. It’s a time when we’re called to pause, to extend kindness to strangers, and to envision a world where swords are beaten into ploughshares.

Yet, in the glow of our holiday hearths, one can’t help but wonder: What does this ancient message truly mean in our hyper-connected, hyper-divided, hyper-capitalist era? Amid the festive cheer, Christmas serves as a stark mirror, reflecting not just our joys but the profound dissonances of the society we’ve built and in which we live.

Consider the irony woven into the fabric of this season. Christmas carols speak of silent nights and holy nights, invoking a tranquility that feels increasingly elusive. For eleven months of the year, the world churns with discord—violent conflicts rage unchecked, political vitriol poisons societal discourse, and empathy seems a scarce commodity. Then, as December dawns, a collective mass amnesia sets in. We exchange pleasantries with people we ignore for most of the year, donate to food banks we forget by February, and preach unity while scrolling past headlines of suffering. If the figure at the heart of Christmas—a teacher who championed the poor, challenged the powerful, and preached forgiveness—were to walk among us today, what verdict might he render on our progress? Would he recognize the “goodwill” in a society where kindness is rationed, confined to Hallmark cards and holiday parties, rather than a year-round ethic?

Those of us who came of age in the latter half of the 20th century remember a different cadence to history. From the early 1970s through the late 1990s, despite the Cold War, regional conflicts, and the shadow of nuclear annihilation hanging like the sword of Damocles over us, there was an undercurrent of optimism. The civil rights movements had borne fruit, environmental awakenings like Earth Day promised stewardship of our planet, and the fall of the Berlin Wall heralded an end to the Cold War as millions behind the “Iron Curtain” experienced freedom and democracy for the first time.

We dreamed of a future where technology bridged gaps and improved lives, the economy lifted all boats, and global cooperation tamed existential threats. But the turn of the millennium brought a seismic shift. The horror of the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, didn’t just scar a city skyline, they planted seeds of fear that have blossomed into today’s thorny vines of extremism. What began as a response to terrorism morphed into endless wars, surveillance states, and a resurgence of authoritarian impulses that echo the dark preludes of the 1930s.

Today, that once-unimaginable world stares back at us, unrecognizable and unforgiving. In the United States, the most powerful nation on Earth, democratic institutions—forged through generations of struggle—are besieged and being dismantled by forces that prioritize power and control over democracy and principle, eroding hard-won advances in equality, justice, human rights and environmentalism.

In Canada, we have a leader in Mark Carney elected as a Liberal on progressive promises and a commitment to push back against Donald Trump’s economic and political aggression, governing with a conservatism that blurs ideological lines. Across the aisle from him in Parliament the leader of the Official Opposition—Pierre Poilievre—pines to remake Canada in the mold of America’s most conservative of Republican states, where individual freedoms are suppressed, corporate interests are elevated, and cultural wars are used to advance regressive policies. This isn’t the enlightened era Boomers, Gen Xers, or Millennials envisioned growing up. It’s a landscape where fascism’s spectre looms not as a ghost but as a living threat, fuelled by rising right wing extremism, disinformation, division, and a yearning to make things “great” again.

At the core of this malaise lies a profound inversion of values. Empathy, a cornerstone of the Christmas story—where a “king” is born in poverty to uplift the marginalized—has been supplanted by apathy and self-interest. We inhabit a realm where accountability doesn’t exist for the rich and powerful, where petty offenders languish in prisons while titans of industry evade justice for crimes that span continents and affect millions.

Corporations ravage ecosystems in pursuit of quarterly profits, turning forests into wastelands and oceans into plastic graveyards, all while political leaders dither amid the flames of a climate catastrophe that has gotten worse by the year. The planet warms, droughts, floods and fire storms rage, and thousands of species vanish, yet the response is often a shrug, a denial, or a greenwashed press release. How is it that we have normalized this?

The top ten wealthiest individuals in the world hoard wealth like a dragon hoards gold, and that wealth eclipses the GDP of 147 of the least wealthy nations combined, yet they dodge taxes that could fund schools, hospitals and sustainable futures and eradicate poverty. The rest of us foot the bill, watching as inequality grows and festers like a gaping wound, and wonder how the obscenity of a single man having more wealth than could be enjoyed in a hundred lifetimes is allowed to exist.

Worse still is the moral contortion evident in global affairs. On our screens, we witness atrocities unfold in real time—a genocide that echoes the horrors of World War Two, with civilians caught in crossfires of indifference. In Gaza, for more than 800 days, Palestinians have faced horrors that we thought had been left behind in World War Two, with people being slaughtered daily, even during the season of peace and goodwill for three consecutive years, while those with the leverage to intervene opt for silence, political platitudes or complicity. Truth-tellers who decry environmental ruin, economic exploitation, or systemic oppression are marginalized, censored, or worse, by elites who guard their wealth and power. This is a world turned upside down, where humanity’s better angels are drowned out by the clamour of greed and grievance.

We scroll through a daily deluge of ugliness—poverty amid plenty, division amid diversity—and yet, where are the mass mobilizations of people to storm the political barricades? Why aren’t people flooding the streets, demanding a reckoning with these injustices? The future we once hoped for has curdled like sour milk into a dystopia, and we should grieve for the children inheriting this legacy—a planet scarred by our shortsightedness, societies slowly fracturing from our failures.

Yet even in this bleak tableau Christmas whispers a counter-narrative, one that refuses to surrender to despair. The season’s enduring message isn’t mere nostalgia, it’s a clarion call to reclaim what we’ve lost. Peace on Earth isn’t a passive wish—it’s an active pursuit, demanding we extend goodwill beyond December’s borders. Imagine if we harnessed the fleeting kindness of the holidays as a catalyst for lasting change. What if the energy we muster for Christmas family gatherings was extended year-round to the homeless in our streets, the single parent working two jobs to just get by, or the generosity of gift-giving fuelled campaigns against inequality?

History teaches us that progress isn’t linear, it’s forged in moments of collective awakening. The same generations that marched for civil rights and environmental protections can inspire today’s youth to rise against fascism’s tide, to hold leaders accountable for catering to corporate elites, and to innovate solutions for a warming world.

In the manger’s shadow, there’s hope in humility—the recognition that no empire is eternal, no injustice invincible. We’ve seen glimmers in grassroots movements amplifying voices against genocide, youth-led strikes demanding climate action, and communities bridging divides through dialogue. The rich might hoard wealth but they can’t monopolize compassion or activism.

As we “deck the halls” this year, let Christmas be more than ritual, let it be revolution. By embodying its spirit daily throughout the year—choosing empathy over enmity, accountability over apathy—we can weave a new tapestry for tomorrow. The world may seem uglier now, but in the quiet miracle of a single act of kindness lies the seed of redemption. This season, we should do more than celebrate the light, we should become it. Let’s illuminate a path toward the peace we’ve long desired but most of us have seldom pursued. In that pursuit, perhaps we’ll find the just and peaceful world we always imagined—not perfect, but progressing, one hopeful step at a time.

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

How the Gaza genocide shattered the illusion of Western humanity

The nations that are complicit—the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, and others—aren't just bystanders, they are architects of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and have shown their inhumanity with their inaction to stop Gaza's horrors. 

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

We have often heard political leaders talk about “Western humanity” over the decades. But the phrase is now a sick joke. A bedtime fable for adults who want to believe that their governments are the “good guys”. After more than two years of Israeli bombardment, engineered famine, and industrial-scale murder in Gaza, the fairy tale of Western governments being defenders of human rights or humanity is dead.

 

Over the last 25 months the self-anointed guardians of the so-called “rules-based international order” have proven they are nothing but a criminal cabal heading so-called “Christian” nations that weaponize international law against the powerless and suspend it for the powerful and their friends. They have shown that anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia runs deeper in Washington, London, Berlin, and other capitals in the Western alliance than any commitment to human life.

As children we are told that monsters live only in myths and fairy tales. As adults we learn the terrifying truth. Monsters live among us, they are always human, they wear suits and ties, and they lead nations like Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. What else but monstrous hatred explains the refusal to stop Israel's genocidal slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, even after every single Israeli hostage has been returned? What else explains a refusal to act when major human rights organizations, hundreds of genocide and Holocaust scholars, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has labelled Israel's actions as genocide?

Look at the timeline from the current bleak vantage point. The latest “ceasefire” was sold to the world as simple—if Hamas returned all Israeli hostages Israel would stop their military assault on Palestinians. The last living hostages were freed weeks ago. Even the bodies of the deceased have been repatriated. Yet Israel's murder spree continues. In the past month alone—during the so-called ceasefire—Israeli forces have murdered another 242 Palestinians, including 85 children, while injuring 619 more with live fire and tank shells. On November 19th, in Khan Younis, 33 civilians waiting for flour were shredded by an Israeli airstrike. This is not merely a breach of the ceasefire, but rather proof that the ceasefire was always a lie to allow Israel to rearm and continue its genocidal crimes.

The scale of the crimes are beyond comprehension. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, one of the few organizations still able to document on the ground, reports that as of October 2025 Israel has killed at least 75,190 Palestinians in Gaza—including 21,310 children and 13,987 women—with 173,200 wounded and tens of thousands facing lifelong disability. But these official figures are grotesque undercounts. Israeli academic Yaakov Garb, using satellite imagery and data from the Israeli military, published a report via Harvard Dataverse which estimates that between 377,000 and 400,000 Palestinians have simply “disappeared”—their bodies blown apart or buried beneath 51 million tons of rubble. Australian academics Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, factoring in direct killings plus deaths from starvation, disease, and the total collapse of Gaza's healthcare system, calculated over 680,000 excess deaths by April 2025 alone. A number that is likely to be far higher today.

This is the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) multiplied—a catastrophe not born in 2023, but forged in the fires of 1948, when Zionist militias unleashed a calculated campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing to carve out a Jewish state from the land of Palestine. Over 750,000 Palestinians—more than half the non-Jewish population—was violently expelled from their homes in what historians like Ilan Pappé have unflinchingly documented as the crime of ethnic cleansing. It began with a blueprint drafted in 1948 aimed at “clearing” Palestinian villages to secure strategic corridors for the nascent Israeli state. Massacres followed, like the infamous Deir Yassin slaughter on April 9, 1948 where Irgun and Lehi terrorists gunned down hundreds of villagers, including women and children. By war's end, 531 Palestinian villages were wiped from the map, their centuries old olive groves and orchards torched, wells poisoned, and inhabitants herded like cattle toward Gaza, the West Bank, or exile in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria—creating the world's longest unresolved refugee crisis, with 6.1 million descendants still denied the right of return today.

If the Nakba was the overture, Gaza's horrors are the crescendo—a genocide that not only echoes the Holocaust but indicts its solemn vow of “Never Again” as a hollow lie. The Holocaust, that meticulously documented abomination that claimed 11 million lives, including six million Jews, was a six-year frenzy of industrialized death, hidden from prying eyes until Allied boots kicked down the gates of Nazi concentration camps in 1945. Gaza's slaughter, by contrast, is a brazen spectacle, live-streamed in high-definition horror—drones assassinating aid-seekers, so-called “precision” bombs vaporizing hundreds in tents, emaciated toddlers crying as starvation ravages their bodies, and even Israeli soldiers flaunting their crimes on TikTok. Where Nazis shrouded the cattle cars filled with their victims in secrecy, Israel's genocidal killing machine operates under global spotlights, with impunity.

Israeli scholars like Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg and Omer Bartov decry Israel’s actions as settler-colonial genocide, a perversion where “Never Again” mutates into “Never Again to Us,” dooming brown and Muslim bodies. The perversity deepens with the duration of the criminal acts. Where the Holocaust's terror ended with the defeat of the Nazis, Gaza is a 77-year dirge of attrition, only lacking the moral outrage that toppled Hitler.

Ha’aretz polls reveal the depth of the rot and anti-Palestinian hate in Israeli society. More than 80% of Jewish Israelis back ethnically cleansing all Gazans, while 47% endorse the mass slaughter of every Palestinian, children included, echoing the Nazi dehumanization that once targeted Jews as “vermin.” This is an escalation which shows that Israeli society has sunk to lows last seen in Nazi Germany, and illustrates that Israel's actions have the social licence of almost half of Israeli Jews.

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ is one of the few things that gives hope to Palestinians seeking justice. Armed with their own research and additional data from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and the UN, the ICJ case stands as a lone legal bulwark against Israel, yet faces US threats and sanctions on truth-tellers like UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Gaza surpasses the Holocaust not in raw numbers but in its “prolonged generational agony,” a structural evil sustained for decades by Israeli cruelty and Western support, where grandparents fled Zionist massacres in 1948 only for their grandchildren to perish during a two year long genocide. This moral hierarchy—Jewish suffering enshrined in memorials while Palestinian agony is dismissed as “tragic” and “collateral damage”—mirrors forgotten horrors like the Congo genocide of the early 20th Century under Belgium's King Leopold where 10 million were killed, or Winston Churchill's orchestrated Bengal Famine in 1943 where three million were starved.

Those nations that are complicit—the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, and others—aren't just bystanders, they are architects which, with their silence and inaction to stop Gaza's horrors, are no less criminal than those who wore Nazi uniforms as they slaughtered Jews. The West knew Gaza was a genocide from the very first weeks because the experts made it clear that it was. Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal called it a “textbook case of genocide” before October 2023 was even over. By the end of that month more than 800 genocide scholars and international-law experts issued a public warning that Israel was committing genocide in real time. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor branded it “the most transparent genocide in human history.” The ICJ called Israel's actions “plausible genocide,” and ordered them to prevent genocidal acts in January 2024. But none of it mattered. The US ignored the words of those who had studied the crime for decades, vetoed every meaningful UN resolution to halt the slaughter quickly, shipped billions more in military hardware to Israel as it committed atrocities, while Israel ignored the ICJ’s judicial orders, and global community’s condemnations.

There is no complexity here. This is anti-Palestinian hatred plain and simple, so deeply embedded in Western governments, media and civil society institutions that it's a part of their cultural and political DNA. It's clear that Palestinians are not seen as human in the corridors of Western power, the same way Jews weren't considered human in the halls of European power in centuries past. They are an obstacle, a demographic problem, “human animals” in the words of Israeli leaders, a term borrowed from European history once used to describe Jews. The same governments that weep crocodile tears over the Holocaust now fund, arm, and defend a 21st-century Holocaust in Gaza.

The West's failure to take action to halt the Gaza genocide has shown us that monsters are real and they walk among us, and they lead us. So let's never talk again about Western “humanity” nor Canada’s defence of “international rule of law” again. Let's see Western leaders for what they are—criminals and monsters. And those of us that have a moral compass, let's join together to build the just society that former prime minister Pierre Trudeau once spoke of more than half a century ago.

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