This year, the United Nations (UN) has chosen the theme for the International Day of Peace, September 21, to be “Promoting a Culture of Peace.” Between countries, this implies, at a minimum, the requirement for respect for international law and human rights by all. For a little over two years, the diametrically opposed positions taken by Canada in the face of the war in Ukraine, then in the face of Israel’s assault on Gaza, have revealed to us the extent to which its attachment to international law and human rights is artificial and instrumentalized.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Canada and other Western countries instantly sounded the alarm. Russia is violating the “rules-based world order,” targeting civilian infrastructure, creating millions of refugees and thousands of civilian casualties, illegally annexing territory, etc. All true, of course… but only one side of the coin, obscuring the other, that of their own responsibilities.
Canada also launched a series of sanctions against close associates of the government, financial “entities” in the defense and energy sectors, and banks. It banned exports that could benefit the Russian military and services essential to the functioning of Russia’s oil, gas, and chemical industries, etc. Barely a week after the war began, Canada, along with 38 other states, asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia in Ukraine. And two months later, the Canadian Parliament adopted a motion condemning “acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people.”
Since October 2023, the blockade — extended to water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel — and Israel’s monstrous assault have both reduced the Gaza Strip to ruins and plunged the population into conditions of wandering, famine, insalubrity, exhaustion and trauma. Based on figures from the Ministry of Health, it is calculated that more than 3,600 civilians have been killed on average each month in Gaza, compared to less than 400 per month in Ukraine (according to UN figures). In Gaza, more than 1,400 children have been killed on average each month, compared to 23 in Ukraine. Where are Canada’s condemnations and sanctions commensurate with these crimes?
In Gaza, according to major international humanitarian and human rights organizations, the scale of the violations of the law and the suffering inflicted on humans is immense, as is the scale of the widespread destruction of infrastructure. Agnès Callamard, Executive Director of Amnesty International, even describes them as “unprecedented.” The speed with which the population was plunged into a situation of famine is also unprecedented. United Nations agencies and special rapporteurs are repeatedly sounding the alarm. Not to mention that in August 2024, the Israeli organization B’Tselem published a report entitled “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System, a Network of Torture Camps.” Where are Canada’s condemnations and sanctions commensurate with these crimes?
As early as October 13, 2023, Palestinian human rights organizations launched an appeal to third states to urgently intervene to protect the Palestinian people from genocide. Subsequently, a large number of international experts, the latest of whom is Omer Bartov, a prominent historian of the Holocaust and 20th-century genocidese century, have called Israeli actions in Gaza “genocide.”
In addition, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on January 26, 2024, that it was plausible that Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza. On May 24, it ordered Israel to cease its military offensive in Rafah. On May 20, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity against Israel’s prime minister and defense minister. In response, Israel has called the ICJ and the ICC prosecutor anti-Semitic.
Where are Canada’s condemnations and sanctions to fulfill its responsibility to prevent genocide under the International Convention, to which it is a signatory in this regard?
In the face of all this, Canada has done nothing of what it did in the case of Ukraine. What should we understand from this? Simply that, in the face of violations committed by strategic rivals (Russia, China) of US hegemony, or in the face of countries that reject this hegemony (Cuba, Iran, Venezuela), Canada and other Western countries — led in this by the United States, the architect of NATO — denounce and sanction in all directions. Whereas in the face of violations by an ally, guilty of worse, we look the other way, we feign compassion for the victims, we repeat empty words. ad nauseam and we do nothing.
To defend the indefensible, we go even further: we vilify those who relentlessly denounce Israel’s crimes and Canada’s complicity, by equating their action with anti-Semitism, and we repress them.
The major trends at work in Canada and other Western societies are antithetical to a culture of peace. Rhetoric of confrontation with countries that “threaten” Western hegemony, accelerated militarization and arms races, the rise of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and intolerance within our societies, all of this is increasingly corrupting our common humanity and our chances of survival as a species, in the event of a third world war towards which we seem absolutely determined to be led!
Promoting a culture of peace means first and foremost having the courage to oppose these currents with all our strength. And this urgently requires growing solidarity with the people of Palestine and denouncing an assault that we consider to be genocidal, as well as the unconditional support of our leaders for Israel.