The international legal order along with the human rights of Palestinians under Israeli rule and in the West are under assault by Israel and its Western cheer leaders like never before as three foundational documents of the UN go ignored: the UN Charter, Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As the world marks 10 months since the start of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in response to the Hamas attack on Israel, we have to question whether Canada’s leaders who often claim to be defenders of human rights and the “international rule of law” actually believe in standing behind these documents and treaties, and whether Canada truly cares about stopping genocide. Because if Canada’s response to past genocides and current Israeli crimes in Gaza since October are any indication the answer seems to be “no”.
Since its election in 2015 the government of Justin Trudeau has often talked about Canada being a “rule of law nation” and a defender of human rights. But such political rhetoric is meaningless if his government does nothing to back that claim, particularly as the world witnesses the Palestinian genocide with almost 47,000 Palestinians killed by Israel as of mid-July.
In September 2018 the House of Commons and Senate made history when they each passed motions with unanimous support declaring the atrocities committed by Myanmar against the Rohingya in 2017–18 as a genocide, becoming the first country to do so. Subsequently the Canadian government did little of substance to follow it up with actions to stop the on-going crimes.
In February 2021 the House of Commons passed a motion declaring China’s persecution of its Uyghur minority as genocide. Of 338 MPs 266 voted in favour of the motion with the entire cabinet but one being absent for the vote. Since then, the Canadian government has done nothing of consequence, either on its own or with other like minded nations, to help stop the Uyghur genocide.
In January of this year the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an interim ruling on South Africa’s genocide case for Israeli crimes in Gaza calling it “plausible” that Palestinians were victims of genocide. Twelve other countries have joined South Africa’s case, including Ireland, and Canada’s NATO allies Belgium and Spain, but not Canada. This is another instance of Canada doing nothing to help stop genocidal crimes. Even a motion in the House of Commons tabled by the NDP and supported by NDP, Bloc Quebecois, Green Party and all but three Liberal MPs calling for a ceasefire and an end to Canadian arms sales to Israel, hasn’t compelled the Trudeau government to act. Canada continues to be complicit in Israeli crimes by selling Israel weapons.
Under the Genocide Convention Israel is committing four of the five crimes against Palestinians defined as genocide. By all appearances, these alleged crimes have been perpetrated “with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, including: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Even Jewish and Israeli academics have signed letters and petitions calling Israeli atrocities a genocide. Israeli scholar Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, has called Israel’s actions “A textbook case of genocide”. And hundreds of thousands of Jews in the diaspora have joined pro-Palestinian protests in Western nations demanding an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Signatories to the Genocide Convention are legally bound to prevent the crime from happening and also prosecute perpetrators. Canada has done neither in the past, and has run interference at the ICJ and the International Criminal Court in recent years by criticizing both courts and interfering in their investigations into genocidal crimes committed by Israel and its leaders.
Canada’s failure to live up to its international legal obligations isn’t new. Along with the Rohingya and Uyghur genocides it failed to act to prevent the Rwandan genocide, the Balkans genocide, the Darfur genocide, and now the Palestinian genocide.
Claiming to support the international rule of law and institutions that enforce it but undermining each in the face of genocide is the ultimate act of hypocrisy and racism by Canada, especially given that Palestinians, Rwandans, the Rohingya, Uyghurs, Darfuris, and Muslims in the Balkans are non-white or predominantly Muslim. It’s clear through their words and actions that Liberal and Conservative governments have utterly failed to serve the cause of human rights and international rule of law in the past, and especially right now when Palestinians are facing genocide. They have only shown humanity for genocide victims after the fact, and empathy and compassion for them only when politically expedient. In doing so they demonstrate the deep racism of Canada’s foreign policy, that Canada and its leaders don’t really care about stopping genocide and seemingly never have.
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