Ed Sheeran had options to removing Macklemore from his tour, instead he chose cowardice

Had Sheeran refused to censor Macklemore, any venue that retaliated and didn’t fulfill contractual obligations with his tour would have exposed itself to severe legal liability.

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

The controversy surrounding Ed Sheeran’s decision to drop Macklemore from his tour under pressure from Robert Kraft and other stadium owners is not just a story about celebrity conflict. It is a story about moral failure, legal cowardice, and the ease with which powerful artists can abandon their principles when confronted by billionaire influence. Entertainment attorneys have now weighed in, and their analysis makes one thing clear: Sheeran had options — legally, ethically, and artistically. He simply chose not to use them.

 

The public narrative has largely framed Sheeran as a passive participant swept up in a political storm. But this framing is false. Sheeran was not powerless. He was not cornered. He was not forced into submission. He had contractual rights, legal leverage, and a global fan base that would have backed him had he chosen to stand with Macklemore. Instead, he capitulated — and in doing so, he betrayed a friend, undermined artistic freedom, and aligned himself with political forces that demanded silence in the face of genocide.

The legal power Sheeran refused to use

Concert agreements between artists and venues are binding contracts. They are not suggestions, nor are they easily discarded when a stadium owner dislikes an artist’s political stance. If a venue unilaterally cancels a performance without a valid contractual justification, the artist is entitled to damages. Entertainment lawyers have made clear that Sheeran could have refused the demand to drop Macklemore and forced the stadium owners to either honour their contracts or cancel the shows — and if they had cancelled, Sheeran would have had the right to sue for breach of contract.

This is not theoretical. It is grounded in established entertainment law. Venue cancellation liability is well documented, and artists routinely pursue damages when venues break agreements for political or reputational reasons.

Sheeran’s legal leverage didn’t end with breach‑of‑contract claims. Entertainment attorneys have commented that he also had grounds to pursue tortious interference — a doctrine that applies when a third party deliberately disrupts an existing business relationship or contract. In this case, the situation is straightforward. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and other stadium executives allegedly used pressure, threats, and coercion to push Sheeran into breaking his professional relationship with Macklemore. By demanding that Sheeran sever ties with his touring partner these stadium owners inserted themselves directly into the business arrangement between the two artists, creating precisely the kind of interference the law is designed to address.

Tortious interference claims are common in the entertainment industry, where reputational pressure is often weaponized to manipulate business relationships. In this instance Sheeran had a powerful legal pathway available to him. So either he received bad advice or he simply chose not to do the right thing.

The political machinery behind the pressure

The pressure campaign against Macklemore did not materialize out of thin air. It was the predictable result of a deeply entrenched anti-Palestinian political ecosystem — one dominated by billionaire stadium owners whose financial interests, ideological commitments, and personal networks intersect with the most hard-line elements of American and Israeli politics. Many of these owners have longstanding relationships with Donald Trump and influential Zionist supporters in his inner circle, individuals who have spent years shaping US political discourse around Israel and aggressively policing public criticism of its actions. Robert Kraft is not merely the owner of the New England Patriots and the stadium where they play, he is a major political actor with a long record of supporting Israeli policies, funding pro‑Israel initiatives, and cultivating ties with political figures who treat any support for Palestine as a threat to be neutralized. In this context, the demand to remove Macklemore was never a neutral business decision, it was a political act — a deliberate attempt to silence an artist who dared to speak openly about Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the decades‑long brutal oppression of Palestinians.

One can hardly say that Sheeran is naive with little understanding about how politics plays out in the entertainment industry. He understood exactly what was happening. He knew the pressure was political, not artistic. He knew that Macklemore was being targeted because he refused to align himself with pro-Zionist narratives around Israel and the Gaza genocide. And yet Sheeran still complied with the demands of stadium owners.

What makes Sheeran’s capitulation even more baffling is that standing firm would have strengthened his legal position, not weakened it. Had Sheeran refused to censor his friend, any stadium or venue that retaliated by refusing to fulfill contractual obligations with his tour would have exposed itself to additional legal claims — including breach‑of‑contract damages and potential tortious‑interference liability. In other words, the law was not only on Sheeran’s side in the present moment, it would have remained on his side in every future instance where a venue attempted to punish him for defending artistic freedom. He had political cover, legal leverage, and moral clarity available to him. He simply chose not to use any of it.

Sheeran’s empty words and hypocrisy

When Sheeran finally addressed the controversy on social media this past Tuesday, his statement was a masterclass in evasion and hypocrisy. He stated that he doesn’t use his professional platform for politics, a line that was meant to portray himself as neutral, apolitical, and above the fray. But this claim collapses under the weight of his own record.

Sheeran did get involved in politics when the victims were white and predominantly Christian in Ukraine. He publicly condemned Russia’s invasion of that country, expressed solidarity with Ukrainians, and used his platform to raise awareness about their suffering. He did not hide behind neutrality then. He did not claim that he doesn’t get involved in politics. He took a side.

But when the victims are brown, Palestinian, and largely Muslim — when the suffering is inflicted by a state allied with Western power — Sheeran suddenly retreats into the safety of apolitical posturing. He suddenly claims neutrality. He suddenly insists that he cannot take sides.

This is not neutrality, it is unmitigated hypocrisy.

His refusal to acknowledge the Gaza genocide — even as he took sides in Ukraine — reveals a pattern that is impossible to ignore. Sheeran seems willing to speak out when the victims fit a Western cultural narrative of innocence, but when the victims are Palestinian, when the oppressor is Israel, when the political cost is higher, he hides behind the crutch of “not getting involved.”

His social media response was not a principled stand. It was a calculated dodge. It was empty words designed to deflect criticism while avoiding moral responsibility. And fans saw through it immediately. The backlash has been intense with the remaining supporting acts and the back up band on his tour quitting over the removal of Macklemore. Supporting acts Aaron Rowe, Lukas Graham, Beoga and Finneas announced that they were withdrawing from Sheeran’s tour to stand in solidarity with Macklemore and with Palestinians — meaning the tour now has no openers or back up band.

The moral failure

Instead of defending artistic freedom, Sheeran chose to silence someone he called a friend who was speaking out against genocide. Macklemore’s statements were not fringe and this was not the first time he had used his performances to speak about Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. They reflected the views of many of his own fans and millions of people around the world who have watched, in horror, as Israel has slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza for three years, and the decades‑long brutal oppression by the Israeli state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Macklemore used his platform to call attention to this suffering. Sheeran chose to use his platform to distance himself from that call.

Artists have long been at the forefront of moral resistance — from musicians protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s to anti‑apartheid performers in the 1980s. Sheeran had the chance to join that lineage by standing with his friend, with many of his fans, and with the oppressed. He had the chance to be remembered as someone who refused to bow to billionaire pressure. Instead, he will be remembered as someone who chose to be complicit with those supporting Israeli atrocities.

The irony is that Sheeran’s fan base — particularly the younger demographic — overwhelmingly supports Palestinian rights and opposes genocide, as was demonstrated by the reactions of fans at the shows where Macklemore made his anti-Israel comments. Had Sheeran stood with Macklemore, he would have been celebrated and seen as a hero. He would have earned goodwill that no marketing campaign could buy. And yes, he would have made money — because fans reward courage.

Instead, he alienated many of those fans. He showed them that when confronted with a moral test, he chose comfort over conscience, billionaire approval over artistic integrity, and apathy over solidarity.

The price of cowardice

Sheeran is not alone in this moral collapse. Pink slammed Macklemore’s on stage anti-genocide advocacy on social media, aligning herself with the same forces that demanded silence. She, along with Sheeran, will pay a price for this. Their reputations have already taken a hit, Sheeran’s tour has imploded, and the backlash will not fade quickly. Fans do not forget when artists betray their own stated values.

They now join a growing list of entertainers without a moral compass who have chosen to defend or excuse Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and have called those protesting the Gaza genocide “antisemitic” — a list that includes actors Debra Messing, Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Mayim Bialik, Michael Douglas, and others. These are artists who have used their platforms not to challenge the brutality of power but to reinforce it. They have aligned themselves with state violence rather than human rights, and are reminiscent of those entertainers and artists in 1930s Germany who aligned themselves with the Nazi regime.

Had Sheeran chosen differently, the story today would be radically different. He would be celebrated for standing with Macklemore. He would be praised for defending artistic freedom and admired for refusing to bow to political pressure. He would have strengthened his bond with fans who care deeply about justice, and he would have had strong legal claims that would have protected him financially.

He had every incentive — moral, legal, artistic, and economic — to do the right thing. He simply chose not to.

Ed Sheeran’s decision was a choice where he betrayed a friend, abandoned a righteous and moral cause, and sided with billionaire power brokers who demanded that those who oppose Israel’s genocide be silenced.

He had options. He had leverage. He had the law on his side. He just didn’t have the courage, and he now sees the result of that cowardice.

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

Ed Sheeran’s collapse of morality and conscience

Macklemore has shown what moral courage looks like. He used his platform to support justice for Palestinians — at personal cost — while Sheeran chose to side with those supporting genocide.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

Ed Sheeran’s decision to drop Macklemore from the US leg of his tour is not a minor disagreement between artists, nor is it a simple matter of “political neutrality.” It is a moral failure of historic proportions — the kind of failure that reveals who stands with the oppressed and who stands with the machinery of oppression.

Sheeran has chosen his side, and it is the side of power, silence, and complicity in the most depraved atrocities being committed against an oppressed people. In moments of genocide, neutrality is not a shield; it is an endorsement. And Sheeran has endorsed the persecution of Palestinians by choosing to silence one of the few artists willing to speak openly about their their brutal oppression and suffering.

Media reports have made it clear that Macklemore was removed from Sheeran’s tour because he spoke about the Gaza genocide and shouted “Free Palestine” from the stage during his opening sets at MetLife Stadium on September 4 and 5. Stadium owners — including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who controls Gillette Stadium — threatened to cancel Sheeran’s concerts unless Macklemore was removed. Kraft, a billionaire with a long record of support for Israel’s government, reportedly rallied other stadium owners where Sheeran was scheduled to perform to join the pressure campaign. Faced with this ultimatum, Sheeran folded with little hesitation. He did not resist. He did not defend his friend. He simply surrendered.

This is not neutrality. In the face of mass atrocity, is complicity.

The moral failure of neutrality

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Sheeran’s insistence that he is “not political” is not a shield from moral judgment — it is an admission of moral failure. When tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, when entire neighborhoods have been flattened, when children are buried under rubble, when famine is used as a weapon, when journalists and aid workers are systematically targeted, neutrality is not an option. It is a choice to look away.

Would Sheeran have been “neutral” during the Holocaust? Would he have insisted that he “doesn’t take sides” while Jews were being rounded up, starved, and murdered? The question is uncomfortable because it exposes the truth. Neutrality in the face of genocide is indistinguishable from endorsement. It is the same moral position that allowed past atrocities to unfold — the same posture that allowed genocidal regimes to operate with impunity while artists, celebrities, and elites looked away.

Sheeran’s decision echoes that history. It is not identical — history never repeats itself perfectly — but it echoes the actions of people who came before him. It echoes the cowardice of those who refused to speak when speaking mattered. It echoes the silence of those who valued comfort over conscience. It echoes the silence of the elites who enabled genocidal regimes by refusing to challenge power.

The immoral billionaire pressure machine

Media reports have made it clear that Sheeran did not act alone. He acted under pressure from a billionaire class that has aligned itself with Israel’s government and its genocide in Gaza. Robert Kraft, who is Jewish, and whose philanthropic and political activities are deeply tied to pro‑Israel advocacy, reportedly told Sheeran that Macklemore would not be allowed onstage at Gillette Stadium. Kraft then rallied other stadium owners to join him, threatening to cancel Sheeran’s concerts if Macklemore remained on the bill.

This is not simply censorship. It is a coordinated effort by powerful elites to silence voices calling attention to a genocide that is still happening in Gaza. It is a pressure campaign designed to protect a racist apartheid government engaged in mass atrocities. And Sheeran, rather than resisting, chose to comply.

The parallels to history are unavoidable. During the Holocaust, German industrialists and wealthy elites supported and enabled the Nazi regime as it committed the Holocaust. They provided resources, political cover, and economic infrastructure. They did not commit the atrocities themselves, but they ensured the machinery of genocide could operate smoothly. Today, American billionaires — through political influence, media pressure, and economic leverage — play a similar role in shielding Israel’s government from accountability. Their actions do not mirror the Holocaust itself, but they mirror the enabling class that made genocide possible.

Unlike Macklemore, Sheeran has aligned himself with that class. He has chosen comfort over conscience, profit over principle, silence over solidarity.

Macklemore’s moral courage

In contrast, Macklemore has shown what moral courage looks like. He has spoken openly about the Gaza genocide, waved a Palestinian flag, and shouted “Free Palestine” from the stage. He used his platform — at personal cost — to call attention to mass suffering. He did what artists with a moral conscience are supposed to do — speak truth, challenge power, and stand with the oppressed.

Macklemore has not attacked Sheeran for cancelling him, nor demanded retribution. Instead he has shown grace. But grace does not erase the moral contrast between the two artists. Macklemore stood up to the rich and powerful. Sheeran bowed to them. Macklemore risked his career. Sheeran protected his. Macklemore chose humanity. Sheeran chose convenience.

As one commentator put it, Sheeran could have told Robert Kraft “to go fuck himself,” along with the other stadium owners who joined the pressure campaign.[8] He could have refused to participate in their censorship. He could have stood on principle. Instead, he caved — and in doing so, he chose a side.

Pink’s reprehensible role

Pink’s involvement is no less disturbing. In the days following Macklemore’s remarks, Pink did not express concern for Palestinians being massacred, starved, or displaced. Instead, she focused her outrage on the presence of Palestinian flags and the slogan “Free Palestine,” claiming that Macklemore’s public commentary scared her, and it scared people she loved. She selfishly framed Macklemore’s act of solidarity as an intrusion into her personal emotional space, as though the mere sight of a flag representing an oppressed people was a greater moral threat than the ongoing destruction of Gaza. Pink’s self-centred priorities reveal a profound moral inversion, one where: symbols of solidarity are treated as dangerous, while mass killing is treated as background noise. Her statements are not neutral. They are part of a broader cultural pattern in which Palestinian identity is pathologized, and expressions of Palestinian humanity are treated as acts of aggression.

Reports about her public reaction shows that Pink went further than simply disagreeing with Macklemore’s choice of words. She implied that his advocacy created “division” and “loneliness,” suggesting that the problem was not the genocide itself but the discomfort caused by acknowledging it. This framing mirrors the logic used by institutions that punish pro‑Palestinian speech: the idea that calling attention to atrocity is somehow more harmful than the atrocity itself. Pink’s stance reinforces the same pressure that led Sheeran to drop Macklemore — a cultural environment where Palestinian suffering is erased, and those who speak about it are punished. Her reaction fits neatly into the machinery of silencing: a celebrity with enormous reach using her platform not to challenge injustice, but to delegitimize those who do.\

Pink’s response also reveals how deeply normalized the erasure of Palestinian life has become in Western entertainment culture. She did not express horror at the images emerging from Gaza. She did not condemn the killing of children or the destruction of hospitals. She did not acknowledge the famine, the displacement, or the mass graves. Instead, she centered her own discomfort, treating Palestinian solidarity as a personal affront.

In this way, Pink’s stance is not merely disappointing; it is actively harmful. It signals to other artists that speaking about genocide will be met with hostility, not support. It tells fans that Palestinian lives matter less than celebrity comfort. And it reinforces the message sent by Sheeran’s decision: that in the entertainment industry, the powerful will punish those who refuse to look away from atrocity. Pink may not have directly pressured Sheeran, but her public reaction contributed to the same climate of fear and suppression — a climate in which Palestinian suffering is minimized, and those who speak about it are cast as troublemakers rather than truth‑tellers.

The price of complicity

Sheeran will pay a price for his decision. It will not come from stadium owners or billionaire patrons. It will come from the public — from fans who refuse to accept his decision and his silence in the face of genocide, from audiences who understand that neutrality is complicity, from people who are sure to disrupt his concerts by shouting “Free Palestine” until he is forced to confront the consequences of his choice. Sheeran’s remaining concerts are sure to be marked by protest, disruption, and moral confrontation as those who bought tickets learn of why Macklemore was removed from the concert schedule, and how Sheeran chose to align himself with wealth and power.

Many of Macklemore’s fans will also not forgive Sheeran. They will not show him the charity Macklemore has shown. They will see his decision for what it is, a betrayal of humanity. Sheeran could have chosen to lose money and risk controversy. Instead, he chose to sacrifice his integrity.

Ed Sheeran has shown that his integrity is worth the price of a tour. He has shown that he will fold under pressure from billionaires who support genocide. He has shown that he values commercial success over human life. He has shown that he will silence voices calling for freedom rather than confront the machinery of brutality and oppression.

History will not remember this as a minor controversy. It will remember it as a moment when an artist with immense influence chose silence over solidarity, comfort over courage, and complicity over conscience.

And history will judge him accordingly.

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

Canada has a racist and Islamophobic foreign policy where Palestinians are concerned

Mark Carney's government forfeits any claim to moral authority, human rights leadership, or rule of law credibility while enabling Israel's genocide in Gaza.

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

Canada and its leaders have long promoted a self‑image of this nation as a principled defender of human rights, a champion of the “international rule of law,” and a nation whose foreign policy is guided by moral clarity. But as Israel’s genocide in Gaza approaches the end of its third year, that mythology has collapsed.

The Mark Carney government — like that of Justin Trudeau’s government before it — has revealed that Canada’s commitment to the “rule of law” differs depending on the race and faith of the victims.  Under both their government’s Canada’s actions have demonstrated that when the victims are white and Christian, as in the case of Ukrainians, it responds with urgency, clarity, and moral conviction. But when the victims are brown, Muslim, and Palestinian, Canada is willing to discard its professed values, diminish their suffering, and reduce their humanity to a diplomatic afterthought. In Gaza, Canada has shown that it will cushion genocide with soft language, mask injustice with polite indifference, and choose political comfort over the lives of an entire people.

The contrast between Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza is not merely a “double standard.” It is evidence of a foreign policy architecture built on racism, Islamophobia, and a willingness to abandon international law when the perpetrator is a Western ally. It is also evidence that Canada’s leaders —both Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau — have not been neutral observers but active participants in enabling mass atrocity.

This is not hyperbole. It is a conclusion drawn from Canada’s own actions, its own omissions, and its own refusal to apply the same legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian standards to Palestinians that it has applied to Ukrainians.

Moral clarity for Ukraine, evasion for Gaza

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Canada responded with immediate moral certainty, and within two months the House of Commons unanimously declared Russia’s actions genocide — even though international legal scholars and human rights organizations had not reached a conclusion. Canada did not wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or any global consensus. It acted on principle, or at least on what it claimed was principle.

But when Israel began its systematic destruction of Gaza — a campaign that global human rights organizations, UN experts, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and thousands of jurists ultimately identified as genocide—Canada refused to utter the word. In October 2023 Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal had already labelled Israeli atrocities as genocide. By December 2023 the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention — named for Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” — came to the same conclusion, that Israel was committing the crime of crimes. Even then, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau continued to hide behind neutralized language: “conflict,” “shortages,” “humanitarian crisis,” “tragic loss of life.” By the time Mark Carney became prime minister in March 2025, the global consensus on the Gaza genocide was unequivocal—with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the United Nations and other prominent legal and human rights voices declaring that Israel was committing genocide. Yet Canada still refused to call the crime by its name or acknowledge that Israel was the perpetrator responsible.

This rhetorical sanitization is not accidental, it is a deliberate political choice. It is crafted to shield Israel from accountability and to shield Canada from the legal consequences that would follow from acknowledging that genocide is taking place. Canada’s refusal to admit that Israel is committing genocide is not merely cowardice—it is a breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which requires states to prevent and punish genocide once they know it is occurring. Canada’s leaders have known this for more than two years. They have simply chosen not to act.

Penalties for Russia, protection for Israel

Canada’s material response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was sweeping: sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, trade embargoes, and billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine. Canada used every available tool to punish the aggressor and support the victim.

In Gaza, Canada has done the opposite. It has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel. It has not suspended trade. It has not applied Magnitsky sanctions to Israeli officials responsible for war crimes. It continues to sell Israel Canadian made military goods, despite a House of Commons resolution in March 2024 calling for Canada to halt military exports to Israel. Instead, Canada has offered symbolic gestures: conditional statements about Palestinian statehood, calls for “ceasefire,” and diplomatic language crafted to avoid offending Israel. These gestures are meaningless when Canada continues to arm the perpetrator.

Carney’s government even refused to force down flights carrying Benjamin Netanyahu as he passed through Canadian airspace — despite Carney’s public claim that Canada would enforce ICC arrest warrants. This is not neutrality. It is active protection of an indicted war criminal.

Canada’s actions under Carney demonstrate that its foreign policy is not guided by law but by geopolitical loyalty. Russia is an adversary, Israel is an ally. Ukrainians are white, Palestinians are not. The consequences follow accordingly.

Open doors for Ukrainian refugees, closed gates for Palestinians

Canada’s refugee response exposes the racism at the core of its foreign policy.

For Ukrainians, Canada created an uncapped emergency visa program. By April 2024 almost 300,000 Ukrainian refugees were admitted into the country with minimal restrictions. They received open work permits, study permits, and extended temporary status. Canada treated Ukrainian displacement as a humanitarian emergency requiring immediate, large‑scale action.

For Palestinians, Canada created a program that was initially capped at just 1,000 applicants — later nominally increased to 5,000—but with requirements so onerous that fewer than 1,000 have been approved since early 2024, and only a fraction have actually arrived. Applicants must prove family ties in Canada, navigate impossible security checks, and survive a bureaucratic maze designed to reject them.

This is not humanitarian action. It is discrimination, plain and simple. Canada’s refugee policy operates on a political presumption that Palestinians require extraordinary suspicion, extraordinary scrutiny, and extraordinary barriers before they can be granted even the most basic protection. The result is a system that treats Palestinian applicants as security risks to be filtered out rather than human beings fleeing mass atrocity. In contrast, Ukrainians were met with an open‑door policy that assumed urgency, innocence, and the need for immediate refuge. One group was welcomed with broad, accessible pathways; the other was confronted with narrow caps, impossible documentation requirements, and security checks so onerous they functioned as de facto exclusion. The message embedded in Canada’s policy architecture is unmistakable: some lives merit swift protection, while others are forced to prove their worthiness at every step.

Canada’s responses to the two conflicts reveal that the racism at work is not incidental or rhetorical. It is structural—built into the policies, assumptions, and institutional practices that determine whose lives are protected and whose suffering is politically expendable.

News media’s humanization for Ukraine and dehumanization for Gaza

Canadian news media coverage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine expressed unified moral outrage. They humanized Ukrainian victims, highlighted Russian atrocities, and framed the conflict in clear terms—aggressor and victim, lawbreaker and law‑abiding state.

But when it came to coverage of the Gaza genocide, Canada’s mainstream news media largely adopted narratives that sanitize Israeli violence. Independent outlets such as The Breach and The Maple have published extensive data‑driven analyses and investigative reports showing a consistent pro‑Israel bias and an anti‑Palestinian prejudice across establishment newsrooms. Civilian deaths are routinely framed as “collateral damage.” Starvation is reduced to “food shortages.” Bombed hospitals are recast as “hidden Hamas strongholds.” The pattern is not theoretical—it is documented. One major outlet, CTV News, went so far as to forbid its reporters from using the words “Palestinian” or “genocide,” while whistleblowers at CBC revealed how the public broadcaster tolerated discriminatory editorial practices around Palestinian stories and disciplined staff who challenged them. The cumulative effect is unmistakable—a media ecosystem that constrains truth, narrows public understanding, and reinforces a foreign‑policy that erases Palestinian suffering in real time.

This is not accidental. It reflects a longstanding structural bias within Canada’s mainstream news media establishment, where stories that critically examine Israeli state violence are routinely softened, sidelined, or shelved to avoid provoking politically charged—and often unfounded—accusations of “antisemitism.” The result is a media environment in which the boundaries of acceptable discourse are policed not by journalistic principle but by political fear.

Regardless of the facts on the ground, Canada’s major networks and newspapers consistently elevate narratives that minimize or obscure Israeli violations of international law while marginalizing or reframing pro‑Palestinian perspectives. This pattern has persisted for decades, shaping public understanding of the Palestinian reality and narrowing the space for honest reporting. But in the face of the Gaza genocide, the scale of this distortion has become impossible to ignore. The gap between the truth and mainstream media reporting is now so vast that it exposes the media’s role not as a neutral observer, but as an active participant in sustaining a foreign‑policy status quo that privileges Israel’s political comfort over the survival of the Palestinian people.

Canada is a “rule of law” nation in name only

Canada’s leaders claim to uphold the so called “rule of law.” But the rule of law is not a slogan, it is a practice, and Canada’s application of the rule of law, particularly in its foreign policy, is selective.

A rule‑of‑law nation does not:

• Refuse to name genocide when global human rights and legal bodies have already done so;
• Continue exporting weapons to a state committing mass atrocity;
• Shield war criminals from arrest;
• Impose sanctions on one criminal aggressor while protecting another;
• Welcome refugees from one conflict while excluding refugees from another;
• Apply international law only when the victims are white and Christian.

The fact is that Canada’s foreign policy is not principled. It is racist and Islamophobic. Additionally, as a result Canada’s actions relating to the Gaza genocide, Canada as a state and its leaders are criminally complicit in the genocidal crimes committed by Israel.

Mark Carney’s government cannot claim moral authority while enabling mass atrocity. It cannot claim to defend human rights while refusing to act against a state committing genocide. It cannot claim to uphold international law while violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Canada’s response to Gaza is not a failure. It is a choice made by its leaders—a choice to protect Israel, a choice to abandon Palestinians, a choice to prioritize geopolitics over humanity, a choice to uphold racism over justice.

Unlike its claims otherwise Canada is not a rule‑of‑law nation. It is a nation that applies international law selectively, morality conditionally, and humanity hierarchically. And until it confronts its own hypocrisy and criminality, it will remain complicit in one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 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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