By Gary Kenny

    There’s a meme that’s algorithmically bouncing about my Facebook news feed these days: “We have to talk about Gaza.”
    I’m not a fan of “have tos,” “musts,” and “shoulds.” But I’ll gladly make an exception when the subject is the “crime of all crimes.” 
    The genocide currently being perpetrated by the Israeli government in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza is a fact by any objective reckoning. That’s reason enough to express some measure of solidarity with the Palestinian people. 
    But the more so, because this criminality of unimaginable horror is unfolding in full journalistic view of the world: Live from Gaza, it’s genocide tonight!
    The more so yet, because it’s a genocide openly aided and abetted by Western nations, Canada among them.
    It's Israel’s shocking disregard for Palestinian children that, for me, is most emblematic of the unfolding genocide in Gaza. I thought of my 17-month-old grandson when I recently heard the anguished testimony of a pediatrician based in Gaza: "A child came in alive, literally burnt to the bone… Their faces were just charcoal, and they were alive and talking. And we had no morphine.” 
    Multiply scenes like that by the thousands.
    More than 27,000 Gazans have been killed, 70 percent women and children. Tens of thousands more are buried under rubble and presumed dead. And the killing continues. 
    The war between Israel and Palestinians didn’t begin on October 7, 2023 as mainstream media would have us believe. It began 75 years ago when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced by Israelis and their Western backers from their traditional homeland. Palestinians have known a brutally oppressive occupier’s boot ever since. 
    By any measure, Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack into Israel was a murderous crime against humanity. While the attack can’t be justified, it can be explained. Decades of an oppressor’s smothering boot on the neck of a people is bound to result in an angry militancy bent on revenge. 
    But Israel’s wildly disproportionate response to the Hamas attack is reprehensible in the extreme. 
    In January the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to comply with provisional measures to safeguard the right of Gazans to be protected from violence. The order also formalized the international legal obligations of other countries party to the UN Genocide Convention, Canada included. 
    Properly understood, the order should alter both the foreign and domestic policy decisions of Israel’s allies, including Canada and the United States (U.S.). It hasn’t.
Canada is complicit in the genocide on at least two counts. 
    The ICJ found that “the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further.” Accordingly, any country’s action knowingly contributing to further deterioration would violate the obligation to prevent genocide and could amount to complicity in genocide.
    Then, just hours after the ICJ’s ruling, the U.S. announced it was suspending funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The cuts came after Israeli allegations that a few UNRWA employees had participated in the Oct. 7th attack by Hamas. Canada quickly followed suit.
    Of UNWRA’s entire staff of 30,000 people – 13,000 of whom are based in Gaza – only a small number, reportedly 12, are alleged to have played some role in Hamas’ October 7 attack. UNRWA had already fired those staff and had initiated an investigation. 
    UNRWA is a critical lifeline for civilians in Gaza. Defunding the entire organization defies the recent ICJ order and amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population. How can the suspension of funding be viewed other than as a green light for genocide?
    Canada is a supplier of military goods to Israel. In its December 2023 report, “Fanning the Flames,” Project Ploughshares reported that Canadian firms, with federally approved permits, regularly export military goods to Israel. In 2022 alone, Canada sent $21 million in defence equipment to Israel, including over $3 million in bombs, torpedoes, missiles, and other explosives. 
    The exports also include $3.1 million worth of components that are manufactured in Canada and built into every F35 fighter jet assembled. The parts are exported to the US where the F35 is built. 
    These are the same jets that Israel’s Defence Forces Chief of Staff said “were contributing to [Israel’s] bombing campaign” in Gaza. 
    Because the ICJ found a serious risk of genocide in Gaza, continuing to export arms to Israel would be illegal. Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act also forbids arms permits to be issued if there’s a “substantial risk” that the goods could be used to facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian or human rights law.
    The exports would also be flagrantly inconsistent with Canada’s obligation to prevent genocide and could expose Canada and Canadian officials to liability for participation in genocide.
Please write to Prime Minister Trudeau, with a copy to your MP, demanding that Canada (1) restore its funding to UNRWA, and (2) ban all military exports to Israel including those channeled through the U.S. Never doubt that your letters can make a difference.  ◊