Canada likes to imagine itself as a peacekeeper — a moral nation standing for law, justice, and human rights. Yet time and again, we find ourselves as the dutiful deputy in our ally’s wars, fighting, funding, or excusing atrocities that history later condemns. After the dust settles, we collect medals for humanitarian rhetoric and quietly distance ourselves from the wreckage. But Gaza is not Iraq, nor Afghanistan — and this time, silence will not buy us absolution.
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has made it painfully clear: Gaza’s devastation is not the work of Israel and the United States alone. It is an internationally enabled crime — one built on the complicity of states that arm, fund, and shield Israel from accountability. Canada is among them. Named four times in Albanese’s latest report, we nonetheless cast a long shadow across its pages — present in every category of support that sustains this catastrophe*
According to Albanese, genocide in Gaza is sustained by the diplomatic, military, and economic lifelines extended by so-called democratic nations. Military partnerships supply the weapons and components — including those for the F-35 strike fighters raining destruction on Gaza. Diplomatic cover normalizes the occupation, reducing Israel’s actions to “self-defence.” Economic cooperation fattens the profits of an apartheid system built on the dispossession of an entire people. Each act, she notes, carries legal consequences under international law. And Canada is no innocent bystander.
Our government’s gestures of conscience are cosmetic. In July 2024, Ottawa joined others in sanctioning a handful of extremist Israeli settlers and far-right ministers — symbolic moves designed to polish our moral credentials while weapons and dual-use technologies continue to flow. Canada has not revoked existing arms export licences. It has allowed military components to transit through its ports and airfields. It has continued trade with companies directly implicated in war crimes — and it has done all this while proclaiming its concern for “civilian suffering.”
Albanese recalls that Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, urged Israel to accept a “sustained ceasefire” in late 2023. Yet when Washington vetoed those calls at the UN, Ottawa folded, content to let the matter die in procedural silence. Even as it condemned the planned assault on Rafah, Canada joined others in suspending funds to UNRWA, the main humanitarian agency sustaining Gaza’s population. Hypocrisy seldom comes more neatly packaged.
Former UN investigator Chris Sidoti, speaking recently in a global human rights forum, accused states like Canada and Australia of enabling Israel’s crimes through trade, technology, and silence. He reminded Western governments of their obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention — not only to refrain from complicity but to actively prevent genocide. Canada has done neither. Instead, it has preferred to follow Washington’s lead, defending “Israel’s right to exist” while ignoring the Palestinian right to live.
Meanwhile, Albanese’s findings have been buried by mainstream media and ignored by political elites. The pattern is familiar: when moral clarity threatens diplomatic comfort, silence prevails. International law, once the cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy, has been relegated to the seminar room and the footnotes of forgotten treaties.
Canada cannot again retreat behind platitudes and procedural niceties while its policies abet atrocity. To insist on Israel’s “right to defence itself” while ignoring an entire people’s right to exist is not diplomacy – it is moral abdication. Our exports, alliances, and silences have consequences measured in human lives. To continue arming an aggressor and shielding it from accountability is to stand on the wrong side of history and law alike. The test before Canada is not one of geopolitical loyalty but of moral courage: whether we will uphold the principles we preach, or once more betray them at the altar of convenience. Gaza will be remembered – and so will those who looked away.
*Military aid – arms exports or defense technology
Diplomatic cover – shielding Israel from criticism or sanctions
Economic ties – trade with companies involved in the occupation
Political silence – refusing to condemn or act meaningfully.
Canada has declined to fully back the ICJ’s ruling – made it clear that it does not accept the premise of the genocide.
Javed Akbar is a freelance writer with published works in the Toronto Star and across diverse digital platforms.
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