A Palestinian mother holding her child who died of malnutrition in Gaza.
A Palestinian mother holding her child who died of malnutrition in Gaza. Credit: Ashraf Amra / UNRWA Credit: Ashraf Amra / UNRWA

On Monday, May 19 Canada joined France and the UK to issue an unusually forceful and unambiguous statement condemning Israel’s tactics in Gaza.

The three countries “strongly oppose the expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza.”

“The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable,” France, the UK and Canada argue. 

They add that the trickle of food aid Israel said it would allow into Gaza, after months of a total blockade, was “wholly inadequate.”

For good measure, the three countries point out a well-known fact both Israel and the U.S wilfully ignore: 

“Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.”

In this case, Canada, France and the UK are referring to Israel’s far-right coalition’s ambitions to create what would amount to a Greater Israel. 

The Israeli coalition’s vision would have the Palestinian West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip along the Mediterranean absorbed into Israel proper. The millions of Palestinians now living in those territories would be encouraged, or coerced, to move.

U.S. President Donald Trump nourished that once-extreme view with his own proposal to move the Gazans out of Gaza in order to transform the strip into a tourist paradise, ripe for real estate investment (including his own).

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu frequently alludes favourably to what he calls the “Trump Plan” – which dovetails neatly with that of his coalition. 

By contrast, the joint Canada-France-UK statement affirms the Palestinian people’s right to a secure homeland on the West Bank and in Gaza. 

The statement emphatically supports the “two-state solution” and condemns Israel’s “illegal settlements” on the West Bank.

Backing up words with action

The three signatory countries are aware, of course, that words are cheap, and that Netanyahu has heard similar words before, many times, and blithely ignored them. 

True to form, Netanyahu categorically brushed the Canada-France-UK words aside. He then accused the three countries, which have been staunch allies of Israel for decades, of giving comfort to Hamas. Canadian Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre quickly echoed the Israeli PM’s view.

Anticipating this reaction from Netanyahu, the three-country statement threatens to move beyond words to tangible and concrete steps, in this single sentence: 

“We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.”

True to the joint statement’s admonitions, the very next day one of the signatory countries, the UK, took concrete steps. It paused trade talks with Israel and imposed additional sanctions on West Bank Israeli settlers. 

The UK foreign secretary David Lammy also ratcheted up the rhetoric.

He described Israel’s military escalation in Gaza as “monstrous” and a “dark new phase in this conflict.”

In Canada, many were waiting for the other shoe to drop, for prime minister Mark Carney’s Canadian government to announce its own measures.

And then, in Washington D.C. there was a terrible crime, which, for now, has disrupted the Canada-France-UK initiative.

Israel exploits Washington murders

On Wednesday night, May 21, a man named Elias Rodriguez murdered two young people who worked for the Israeli embassy at an interfaith event in the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. 

When police arrested him, Rodriguez shouted: “Free Palestine!”

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney quickly joined other world leaders, including those of the UK and France, in condemning this attack. 

Carney characterized it as “violent and antisemitic”.

The French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot condemned the “horrific attack targeting Israeli diplomats”, adding that “this blind violence is completely unjustifiable.” 

British PM Keir Starmer said: “I thoroughly condemn the antisemitic attack outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. Antisemitism is an evil we must stamp out wherever it appears.”

But Carney and his colleagues were not quick enough.

Israeli leaders beat them to the podium. They unabashedly exploited the crime in Washington to justify their own sanguinary military campaign in Gaza.

Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar said: “There is a direct line connecting antisemitic and anti-Israeli incitement to these murders. This incitement is also done by leaders and officials of many countries and international organisations, especially from Europe.” 

Netanyahu then added that Israel’s Canadian and European critics might have believed they were working for peace, but they were doing exactly the opposite. They were, the Israeli leader said, “offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities.”

One of those atrocities was the murderous event in the U.S. capital.

And so has ended, for now, an almost surprising effort by three G-7 countries to tether unrestrained Israeli extremism and save lives in Gaza.

In that tiny territory, where the population is not much more than two million, tens of thousands have died since October 2023. Now, due to Israel’s blockade, near fatal food insecurity has joined bombs, bullets and missiles as a deadly threat to the people of Gaza

A few days ago, the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that monitors food insecurity globally, estimated that over 14,000 children under the age of five will experience severe malnutrition over the course of the next year if the blockade of aid into the Gaza strip continued.

The lessons of Elias Rodriguez’ rampage in Washington might have more to do with gun control and mental health than the war in Gaza. In the West, however, and especially in the U.S. and Canada, it would be hard, at the present moment, to get an audience for that sort of dispassionate analysis.

On the other hand, there is this truth: In the 21st Century our attention spans have grown frightfully short. 

Too many of us spend too many hours each day obsessively doom-scrolling and flitting from news website to entertainment website, from YouTube video to social media post, from email message to WhatsApp group.

A couple of months from now the murder of two young people in the U.S. – in what looks very much like a hate crime, even if exacerbated by mental illness – might, sadly, seem like ancient history. 

In due course, the Carney government might calculate it is safe to match the words of the joint three-country statement with concrete action. 

Canada’s signature is a gesture of independence from the U.S.

Whatever Carney and his government ultimately choose to do, Canada is a small player when it comes to influencing Israel. 

In fact, France, Canada and the UK combined do not collectively constitute a force big enough to matter much to Israel – not when Israel can count on the support of one much bigger player, the U.S.

There was some talk, less than a week ago, of the U.S.’s growing tired of Netanyahu’s intransigence. Observers pointed out that U.S. president Trump had just visited the middle east without calling on Netanyahu. 

But sometimes observers can be more influenced by wishful thinking than actual facts. 

Nobody should expect a change of course from the Trump regime that would in any way discomfit Israel’s far-right, expansionist cabinet. The current U.S. and Israeli governments are simply too similar, true kindred spirits, to make hope of a break-up realistic. 

For Canada, the importance of signing the joint statement might be more about asserting our independence from Washington on foreign policy, and helping pave the way to stronger ties with our friends across the Atlantic, than challenging the current immovable regime in Jerusalem.

But to help keep even that modest aspect of this initiative in perspective, consider the following:

While the controversy around the three-country statement was blooming, Canada’s new prime minister was affirming Canadian support for one of Donald Trump’s pet (and likely most outlandish) projects: the Golden Dome defence system.

That Dome would serve the purpose, like Israel’s famed Iron Dome, of protecting North America from missile attacks, in this case nuclear missiles. 

Three previous Canadian PM’s, Paul Martin, Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, refused to participate in earlier iterations of anti-nuclear-missile defence.

Scientists and experts on nuclear strategy have warned for decades that notionally defensive systems of this sort are unworkable, and, worse, dangerous. 

Missile defence shields engender the false belief that one’s country could somehow survive, even win, a nuclear attack – thus making nuclear confrontation more, not less, likely.

But that’s a whole other, and rather complex, story, which will have to wait for another day.

Karl Nerenberg

Karl Nerenberg joined rabble in 2011 to cover Canadian politics. He has worked as a journalist and filmmaker for many decades, including two and a half decades at CBC/Radio-Canada. Among his career highlights...