Fareed Khan -- The View From Here

Hindu supremacist leader Mohan Bhagwat must be barred from entering Canada

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:03:46 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

Canada is facing a critical test of its commitment to human rights and pluralism. Mohan Bhagwat, Chief of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu fascist movement, is expected to visit Toronto on August 31 and September 1, 2026—his first visit to Canada and the first by an RSS leader in more than two decades. His arrival is not a cultural exchange. It is a political operation aimed at sanitizing the global image of an organization whose fascist ideology and violent actions against India’s minorities have long been associated with exclusion, discrimination, and violence.

Canada must deny Mohan Bhagwat entry. Based on Bhagwat’s organization’s long record of racist violence and its ethno‑religious supremacist worldview Canada must deny him entry. His presence is incompatible with Canada’s commitments to diversity, equity and pluralism.

The RSS is not a conservative cultural association. It is an ethno‑religious nationalist movement whose ideology mirrors the logic of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan—except that its hierarchy is built on Hindu majoritarian supremacy rather than white racial dominance. At its core, the RSS advances a fascist vision of society in which Hindus are the rightful rulers of India, and non‑Hindu minorities—Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, and tribal communities—must either accept permanent subordination. This ideology, known as Hindutva, is not Hinduism. Like Zionism, it is a political project of exclusion, hierarchy, and domination.

The RSS’s foundations are based on supremacy not culture

Founded in 1925, the RSS has always been explicit about its goals. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar—one of the most prominent Hindu nationalists and ideologues who influenced the RSS—praised Nazi Germany’s racial nationalism in his writings and speeches where he argued that minorities in India should be treated the same way Nazi Germany treated Jews under Hitler: as outsiders with no claim to equal citizenship.

This is not a relic of the past. It is the ideological backbone of the RSS today.

The RSS is the parent organization of the Sangh Parivar, a network of Hindu nationalist political, social, educational, charitable, and diaspora groups. Among them is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Canada’s own Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has described the BJP as implementing a Hindu‑nationalist policy agenda that targets India’s minority communities.

Under Modi’s BJP government, Hindutva ideology has moved from the margins to the center of state power, to the detriment of India’s non-Hindu communities.

Hindutva in practice: Discrimination, persecution, violence

The consequences of RSS‑BJP rule are well documented. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended targeted sanctions against the RSS, citing “severe violations of religious freedom.” Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented widespread abuses, including mob violence, lynchings, discriminatory laws, and politically motivated prosecutions.

Reporting by CNN has shown how Hindu extremist groups—many ideologically aligned with or inspired by the RSS—have grown more aggressive and violent. Al Jazeera documented a 2021 religious gathering in Haridwar where Hindu monk Yati Narsinghanand called for genocide against Muslims. Participants openly urged called for the mass murder of Indo Muslims. These events were not fringe but part of a broader ecosystem of hate emboldened by the BJP’s political dominance and the RSS’s ideological influence.

The BJP government has enacted discriminatory laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which fast‑tracks citizenship for non‑Muslim migrants while excluding Muslims. It revoked Kashmir’s autonomy, imposed military lockdowns, and detained thousands. Under the Modi government journalists, academics, civil society organizations, and human rights defenders have faced raids, arrests, and intimidation.

This is the political reality the RSS has built under Modi’s government, and this is the reality Bhagwat seeks to whitewash during his international tour.

Canada has already seen the consequences

Canada is not insulated from the RSS‑BJP network. The Foreign Interference Commission has reported that the BJP‑led Indian government engages in transnational repression in Canada, including monitoring diaspora communities, using proxies to intimidate critics, and attempting to suppress lawful advocacy. CSIS has obtained evidence linking Indian government agents to homicides, violent acts, organized crime, clandestine information gathering, and interference in Canadian democratic processes.

Allowing Bhagwat into Canada would legitimize an organization connected to a foreign government already implicated in interference and violence on Canadian soil.

A record of violence and exclusion

The RSS has been linked to major episodes of communal violence, including the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque by a Hindu nationalist mob that included RSS members. That event triggered nationwide riots that killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

The organization’s present‑day activities reflect a consistent pattern of violence and persecution of Muslims and other Indian minorities, including:

Discriminatory laws and policies targeting religious minorities;
Inflammatory rhetoric fuelling communal violence;
Attacks and intimidation against Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and tribal communities;
Politically motivated prosecutions of journalists and human rights defenders who speak out against the RSS; and
Concerted efforts to suppress critical voices domestically and internationally.

Their actions prove that they are not a cultural organization, but an extremist movement that promotes religious hierarchy in Indian society and undermines democratic norms.

Canada must not become a platform for extremism

Bhagwat’s visit is a calculated attempt to rehabilitate the RSS’s global reputation. His organizers have been explicit: the purpose of the tour is to reshape “international perceptions” of the RSS—a euphemism for damage control.

Canadian institutions must not become instruments in this whitewashing campaign. The effort is disturbingly reminiscent of how Nazi officials in the 1930s sought to reassure Western audiences that they were merely promoting German culture while concealing the violent supremacist ideology driving their movement.

Before any public official, charity, or community organization engages with Bhagwat or
those hosting him, Canadians deserve full transparency. Who is financing his visit? Which groups are coordinating it? Are any registered Canadian charities linked to the RSS or the broader Sangh Parivar network, and are they operating in full compliance with Canadian law?

These questions must be answered before Canada allows itself to be used as a stage for extremist image‑management. Canada has consistently acted against extremist organizations across ideological and religious spectrums. The same standards must apply universally.

This is not about Hindu Canadians

It is essential to state clearly: this is not an attack on Hindu Canadians or Hinduism. Those who follow the teachings of the Hindu faith in Canada enrich this country in countless ways. Hindu scholars and human rights defenders have been among the strongest voices opposing Hindutva majoritarianism. The issue is not religion. It is extremism.

Supremacist ideologies do not become acceptable simply because they originate from a different cultural or religious context.

In light of the RSS’s ideology, its documented history of violence and fascism, its connection to discriminatory policies under the BJP government, and its involvement in transnational repression, Canada must take decisive action by:

Barring Mohan Bhagwat from entering Canada;
Launching a national security review of the RSS and affiliated organizations;
Reviewing and, where appropriate, revoke charitable status for RSS‑linked groups;
Assessing whether the RSS meets criteria for terrorist designation; and
Ensuring full transparency under Canada’s foreign influence laws.

Canada’s diversity and pluralism are its strength, but it is not a loophole. It must never be exploited to advance ideologies that promote religious or ethnic supremacy, or undermine the equal dignity of all communities.

Bhagwat’s visit is not a cultural celebration, it is a test of Canada’s resolve to stand against political extremism and fascism, and Canada must say no.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

American democracy is now a facade, and Canadians should be worried

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:01:35 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

American democracy, as many scholars and observers argue, no longer functions as a genuine democracy. What remains is a symbolic shell — a façade masking a political infrastructure that has been hollowed out by decades of hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift. The United States today resembles a late‑stage empire coasting on historical momentum, much like Rome after the Crisis of the Third Century, where imperial institutions still existed but meaningful governance of the Empire had collapsed under the combined pressures of political instability, extreme inflation, foreign wars and foreign invasions, and the plague.

The American decline did not begin with the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. His rise was a symptom of a system already damaged and in freefall. But his open admiration for authoritarian rulers, his willingness to subvert democratic norms, and his consolidation of power among billionaire oligarchs and right wing extremist networks (the MAGA movement) accelerated a process that had been underway for years. And for Canadians, the implications are profound. When the largest democracy in the Western alliance collapses into full‑blown authoritarianism, Canada will not be insulated. It will be engulfed — politically, economically, and culturally.

The long decline of American democracy

Political scientists have documented the erosion of US democratic norms for decades, but particularly in the 21st century. A 2023 study by the Brookings Institution describes the United States as experiencing early‑stage democratic decline, marked by weakened judicial constraints, executive overreach, and partisan sabotage of accountability institutions. This is fuelled by the fact that since 2010, state legislatures instituted laws intended to reduce voters’ access to the ballot, politicize election administration, and foreclose electoral competition via extreme gerrymandering of electoral districts. The United States also saw substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service.

Added to this is the issue of political polarization, which is central to this decline. Pew Research Center reports that partisan animosity in the US has reached historic highs, with majorities in both parties viewing the other as immoral, dishonest, unpatriotic and a threat to the nation. This is not merely cultural hostility—it is structural. When political actors no longer value democracy for its own sake, institutions become weapons to hammer opponents.

The Republican Party’s radicalization is well‑documented. Numerous analyses and studies since the 2020 presidential election have warned that the GOP’s refusal to acknowledge Joe Biden’s legitimate election and its abandonment of peaceful power transfer norms pose an “existential threat” to US democracy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have often failed to defend democratic norms with sufficient force. Their technocratic instincts—described in political‑science literature as “managerial liberalism”—have led them to prioritize bureaucratic stability over structural reform. They have not been the “adults in the room” they claim to be. They have been caretakers of a decaying system.

The American Empire’s unraveling: The Iraq War and beyond

The decline of American democracy is inseparable from the decline of American global hegemony.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exposed the limits of US military power and shattered international trust. The 2008 financial crisis further undermined global confidence in the American economic model, revealing deep structural vulnerabilities and accelerating domestic polarization. Political economists have shown that when institutions fail to deliver shared prosperity, anti‑pluralist movements gain legitimacy. A 2026 review in the Journal of Economic Literature argues that institutional failure and identity‑driven polarization interact to erode democratic guardrails.

After 2010, the collapse accelerated with extreme partisan gerrymandering entrenching minority rule; Citizens United unleashing unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns; and Congressional gridlock becoming permanent.

Freedom House marks 2016 as the beginning of a measurable decline in US political rights and civil liberties.

The fascist drift: Symbols without substance

Today, the United States still displays the outward symbols of democracy — elections, courts, legislatures, and the ceremonial rituals of democratic governance — yet the substance beneath these institutions has been steadily hollowed out. The country increasingly resembles a political system where democratic forms persist but democratic norms have eroded. This erosion is visible in the conduct of its leadership, its security apparatus, its militaristic posture, and the overwhelming influence of corporate oligarchs—patterns that echo the situation in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The most visible and troubling example is the country’s political leadership—Donald Trump. He has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian rulers, praising figures such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un, and others. This is not a trivial matter of rhetorical excess but a signal that Trump sees democratic constraints as weaknesses rather than safeguards. At the same time, American militarism has become a defining feature of national identity. Since 2001, the United States has engaged in continuous warfare across multiple regions, attacking eight countries in Asia and Africa, projecting force abroad while failing to maintain democratic resilience at home.

Domestically, the internal security apparatus has also drifted toward authoritarian practices. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) has been documented committing hundreds of abuses and human rights violations, including: engaging in abusive detention practices, wrongfully detaining US citizens, and deaths of civilians and detainees, including dozens who have died in ICE detention facilities. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a system where accountability has weakened and state power is increasingly exercised without restraint.

Overlaying all of this is the immense influence of corporate and billionaire oligarchs. Unlimited campaign spending — enabled by decisions such as Citizens United — has allowed billionaires and corporations to shape political outcomes, policy agendas, and legislative priorities in ways that serve elite interests rather than democratic ones. The result is a political system where wealth, not citizenship, determines access to power. These developments are hallmarks of a state drifting toward authoritarianism, even if the democratic façade remains intact.

Canada’s drift toward authoritarianism and its US roots

Canada is not immune to these trends. In fact, Canada’s democratic erosion is increasingly linked to US oligarchic and political influence. The gravitational pull of American politics—especially as the US drifts toward oligarchic authoritarianism—has begun reshaping Canada’s political landscape in profound ways.

The Canadian Conservative Party has adopted strategies and narratives that closely mirror those of the US Republican Party. Culture‑war rhetoric, attacks on independent media, hostility toward climate science, and alignment with US billionaire‑funded think tanks have become increasingly common. Research shows that Canadian conservative messaging now mirrors US Republican narratives, amplified by cross‑border political networks and shared donors. This is not simply ideological convergence, it is a structural importation of American political tactics into Canada’s political culture.

Yet the Liberals are not innocent in this drift. Under Mark Carney—a former global finance executive deeply embedded in elite economic networks—the party has moved toward a technocratic centrism aligned with corporate and billionaire interests. Canadian political scientists have documented the Liberals’ close ties to Bay Street finance, the influence of multinational corporations on policy formation, and a weakening commitment to climate action and human rights. They also note an increasing reliance on private‑sector advisory groups, which further entrenches elite influence over public policy. A campaign launched by Democracy Watch warns that both major parties are increasingly shaped by elite economic actors whose interests diverge from those of the general population.

This bipartisan drift toward elite capture is reinforced by US oligarchic networks that exert direct influence on Canadian politics. American tech billionaires have shaped Canadian digital policy debates; cross‑border fossil‑fuel lobbying has influenced Canadian climate legislation; American political consultants have advised Canadian political campaigns; and US dark‑money networks have funded Canadian advocacy groups. A 2023 investigation by The Narwhal documented US oil‑industry funding of Canadian political organizations opposing climate regulation. These developments are not accidental. They are structural consequences of Canada’s proximity to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse.

Why Canadians should be alarmed

Canada’s fate is tied to the United States in ways that make American democratic decline a direct threat to Canadian stability. Economically, Canada is deeply integrated with the US, and any authoritarian instability south of the border would produce immediate and severe economic shockwaves in Canada, as we have seen with Trump’s tariff war. Politically, US authoritarian narratives spread easily across the border, influencing Canadian discourse and reshaping partisan identities. Corporate capture is also a shared phenomenon, where US oligarchs influence Canadian policy through cross‑border investments and multinational corporate structures.

Security risks are equally significant. A destabilized United States—politically, socially, or institutionally—poses direct threats to Canadian sovereignty, border stability, and national security. And beyond bilateral concerns, the collapse of the United States would destabilize the entire Western democratic alliance. If the US falls, the democratic world loses its keystone.

Canada is drifting toward authoritarianism not only because of domestic political choices, but because it is tethered to a superpower undergoing democratic collapse. The erosion of democracy in the United States is not a distant problem. It is a direct and immediate threat to Canadian political stability, democratic norms, and national sovereignty.

American democracy is no longer a functioning system. It is a veneer—a symbolic shell covering a political infrastructure that has been rotting for decades. Hyper‑partisanship, corporate capture, institutional decay, and authoritarian drift have transformed the United States into a nation where democratic norms are optional.

Canada is drifting in the same direction albeit at a slower pace—not only because of domestic political failures, but because US oligarchic and political networks exert enormous influence over Canadian politics.

If the largest democratic domino falls, Canada will not remain standing. The veneer is cracking, and Canadians must pay attention and prepare before it shatters.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Canada has a racist and Islamophobic foreign policy where Palestinians are concerned

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 01:16:30 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

Canada and its leaders have long promoted a self‑image of this nation as a principled defender of human rights, a champion of the “international rule of law,” and a nation whose foreign policy is guided by moral clarity. But as Israel’s genocide in Gaza approaches the end of its third year, that mythology has collapsed.

The Mark Carney government — like that of Justin Trudeau’s government before it — has revealed that Canada’s commitment to the “rule of law” differs depending on the race and faith of the victims. Under both their government’s Canada’s actions have demonstrated that when the victims are white and Christian, as in the case of Ukrainians, it responds with urgency, clarity, and moral conviction. But when the victims are brown, Muslim, and Palestinian, Canada is willing to discard its professed values, diminish their suffering, and reduce their humanity to a diplomatic afterthought. In Gaza, Canada has shown that it will cushion genocide with soft language, mask injustice with polite indifference, and choose political comfort over the lives of an entire people.

The contrast between Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its response to Israel’s destruction of Gaza is not merely a “double standard.” It is evidence of a foreign policy architecture built on racism, Islamophobia, and a willingness to abandon international law when the perpetrator is a Western ally. It is also evidence that Canada’s leaders —both Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau — have not been neutral observers but active participants in enabling mass atrocity.

This is not hyperbole. It is a conclusion drawn from Canada’s own actions, its own omissions, and its own refusal to apply the same legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian standards to Palestinians that it has applied to Ukrainians.

Moral clarity for Ukraine, evasion for Gaza

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Canada responded with immediate moral certainty, and within two months the House of Commons unanimously declared Russia’s actions genocide — even though international legal scholars and human rights organizations had not reached a conclusion. Canada did not wait for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), or any global consensus. It acted on principle, or at least on what it claimed was principle.

But when Israel began its systematic destruction of Gaza — a campaign that global human rights organizations, UN experts, the International Federation for Human Rights, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and thousands of jurists ultimately identified as genocide—Canada refused to utter the word. In October 2023 Israeli Holocaust scholar Raz Segal had already labelled Israeli atrocities as genocide. By December 2023 the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention — named for Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” — came to the same conclusion, that Israel was committing the crime of crimes. Even then, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau continued to hide behind neutralized language: “conflict,” “shortages,” “humanitarian crisis,” “tragic loss of life.” By the time Mark Carney became prime minister in March 2025, the global consensus on the Gaza genocide was unequivocal—with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the United Nations and other prominent legal and human rights voices declaring that Israel was committing genocide. Yet Canada still refused to call the crime by its name or acknowledge that Israel was the perpetrator responsible.

This rhetorical sanitization is not accidental, it is a deliberate political choice. It is crafted to shield Israel from accountability and to shield Canada from the legal consequences that would follow from acknowledging that genocide is taking place. Canada’s refusal to admit that Israel is committing genocide is not merely cowardice—it is a breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention, which requires states to prevent and punish genocide once they know it is occurring. Canada’s leaders have known this for more than two years. They have simply chosen not to act.

Penalties for Russia, protection for Israel

Canada’s material response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was sweeping: sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, trade embargoes, and billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Ukraine. Canada used every available tool to punish the aggressor and support the victim.

In Gaza, Canada has done the opposite. It has imposed no meaningful sanctions on Israel. It has not suspended trade. It has not applied Magnitsky sanctions to Israeli officials responsible for war crimes. It continues to sell Israel Canadian made military goods, despite a House of Commons resolution in March 2024 calling for Canada to halt military exports to Israel. Instead, Canada has offered symbolic gestures: conditional statements about Palestinian statehood, calls for “ceasefire,” and diplomatic language crafted to avoid offending Israel. These gestures are meaningless when Canada continues to arm the perpetrator.

Carney’s government even refused to force down flights carrying Benjamin Netanyahu as he passed through Canadian airspace — despite Carney’s public claim that Canada would enforce ICC arrest warrants. This is not neutrality. It is active protection of an indicted war criminal.

Canada’s actions under Carney demonstrate that its foreign policy is not guided by law but by geopolitical loyalty. Russia is an adversary, Israel is an ally. Ukrainians are white, Palestinians are not. The consequences follow accordingly.

Open doors for Ukrainian refugees, closed gates for Palestinians

Canada’s refugee response exposes the racism at the core of its foreign policy.

For Ukrainians, Canada created an uncapped emergency visa program. By April 2024 almost 300,000 Ukrainian refugees were admitted into the country with minimal restrictions. They received open work permits, study permits, and extended temporary status. Canada treated Ukrainian displacement as a humanitarian emergency requiring immediate, large‑scale action.

For Palestinians, Canada created a program that was initially capped at just 1,000 applicants — later nominally increased to 5,000—but with requirements so onerous that fewer than 1,000 have been approved since early 2024, and only a fraction have actually arrived. Applicants must prove family ties in Canada, navigate impossible security checks, and survive a bureaucratic maze designed to reject them.

This is not humanitarian action. It is discrimination, plain and simple. Canada’s refugee policy operates on a political presumption that Palestinians require extraordinary suspicion, extraordinary scrutiny, and extraordinary barriers before they can be granted even the most basic protection. The result is a system that treats Palestinian applicants as security risks to be filtered out rather than human beings fleeing mass atrocity. In contrast, Ukrainians were met with an open‑door policy that assumed urgency, innocence, and the need for immediate refuge. One group was welcomed with broad, accessible pathways; the other was confronted with narrow caps, impossible documentation requirements, and security checks so onerous they functioned as de facto exclusion. The message embedded in Canada’s policy architecture is unmistakable: some lives merit swift protection, while others are forced to prove their worthiness at every step.

Canada’s responses to the two conflicts reveal that the racism at work is not incidental or rhetorical. It is structural—built into the policies, assumptions, and institutional practices that determine whose lives are protected and whose suffering is politically expendable.

News media’s humanization for Ukraine and dehumanization for Gaza

Canadian news media coverage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine expressed unified moral outrage. They humanized Ukrainian victims, highlighted Russian atrocities, and framed the conflict in clear terms—aggressor and victim, lawbreaker and law‑abiding state.

But when it came to coverage of the Gaza genocide, Canada’s mainstream news media largely adopted narratives that sanitize Israeli violence. Independent outlets such as The Breach and The Maple have published extensive data‑driven analyses and investigative reports showing a consistent pro‑Israel bias and an anti‑Palestinian prejudice across establishment newsrooms. Civilian deaths are routinely framed as “collateral damage.” Starvation is reduced to “food shortages.” Bombed hospitals are recast as “hidden Hamas strongholds.” The pattern is not theoretical—it is documented. One major outlet, CTV News, went so far as to forbid its reporters from using the words “Palestinian” or “genocide,” while whistleblowers at CBC revealed how the public broadcaster tolerated discriminatory editorial practices around Palestinian stories and disciplined staff who challenged them. The cumulative effect is unmistakable—a media ecosystem that constrains truth, narrows public understanding, and reinforces a foreign‑policy that erases Palestinian suffering in real time.

This is not accidental. It reflects a longstanding structural bias within Canada’s mainstream news media establishment, where stories that critically examine Israeli state violence are routinely softened, sidelined, or shelved to avoid provoking politically charged—and often unfounded—accusations of “antisemitism.” The result is a media environment in which the boundaries of acceptable discourse are policed not by journalistic principle but by political fear.

Regardless of the facts on the ground, Canada’s major networks and newspapers consistently elevate narratives that minimize or obscure Israeli violations of international law while marginalizing or reframing pro‑Palestinian perspectives. This pattern has persisted for decades, shaping public understanding of the Palestinian reality and narrowing the space for honest reporting. But in the face of the Gaza genocide, the scale of this distortion has become impossible to ignore. The gap between the truth and mainstream media reporting is now so vast that it exposes the media’s role not as a neutral observer, but as an active participant in sustaining a foreign‑policy status quo that privileges Israel’s political comfort over the survival of the Palestinian people.

Canada is a “rule of law” nation in name only

Canada’s leaders claim to uphold the so called “rule of law.” But the rule of law is not a slogan, it is a practice, and Canada’s application of the rule of law, particularly in its foreign policy, is selective.

A rule‑of‑law nation does not:

Refuse to name genocide when global human rights and legal bodies have already done so;
Continue exporting weapons to a state committing mass atrocity;
Shield war criminals from arrest;
Impose sanctions on one criminal aggressor while protecting another;
Welcome refugees from one conflict while excluding refugees from another;
Apply international law only when the victims are white and christian.

The fact is that Canada’s foreign policy is not principled. It is racist and Islamophobic. Additionally, as a result Canada’s actions relating to the Gaza genocide, Canada as a state and its leaders are criminally complicit in the genocidal crimes committed by Israel.

Mark Carney’s government cannot claim moral authority while enabling mass atrocity. It cannot claim to defend human rights while refusing to act against a state committing genocide. It cannot claim to uphold international law while violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Canada’s response to Gaza is not a failure. It is a choice made by its leaders—a choice to protect Israel, a choice to abandon Palestinians, a choice to prioritize geopolitics over humanity, a choice to uphold racism over justice.

Unlike its claims otherwise Canada is not a rule‑of‑law nation. It is a nation that applies international law selectively, morality conditionally, and humanity hierarchically. And until it confronts its own hypocrisy and criminality, it will remain complicit in one of the greatest crimes of the 21st century.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Zionist racism and Palestinian dehumanization are the foundations of Israel’s moral character

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 01:00:40 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

From its earliest formulations in late‑19th‑century Europe, Zionism imagined a political order in historic Palestine built around the supremacy of one ethnonational group—Jews. Over the decades, that vision hardened into a state structure that one Israeli human rights organization—B’Tselem—has described as a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Other groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have concluded that Israeli governance across all of historic Palestine constitutes apartheid, and in the eyes of some genocide scholars an unfolding genocidal process.

This is not a claim about Judaism or Jewish identity. It is a claim about state power, ideology, and structures of supremacy. And it is a claim increasingly made by courageous Israelis who defy the powerful interests of a state committing genocide.

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard captured this internal reckoning with painful clarity when he said, “I look at these young people who are poisoned with racism and hatred, and at some of their elders, who are their spiritual mentors and implant in them toxic notions of Jewish supremacy… How did we produce from among us the replicas of our persecutors?”

Sfard’s question is not rhetorical. It is a diagnosis of a society shaped by decades of occupation, settlement, and ethnonational fear—one in which Jewish supremacy and dehumanization of Palestinians has become normalized, even valorized.

Zionism’s racialized and fascist foundations

Zionism emerged in the same intellectual climate that produced European colonialism, racial hierarchy, and the early currents of ethnonationalism that would later culminate in fascist movements. Theodor Herzl, the movement’s founder, envisioned a racist Jewish state in Palestine as a civilizing outpost of Europe. In Der Judenstaat and Altneuland, Herzl described the future Jewish society as modern, rational, and European—implicitly superior to the “backward” native population.

Herzl’s writings repeatedly framed Palestinians not as a people with political rights, but as an obstacle to be managed, displaced, or subordinated to the Zionist agenda. His admiration for European colonial models—particularly British rule in South Africa—reveals a worldview steeped in racial hierarchy.

Critics and scholars have argued that Herzl’s political imagination contained proto‑fascist elements, including: a belief in demographic engineering; a vision of a homogenous ethnonational state; a hierarchical worldview that placed European Jews at the apex; and a willingness to subordinate or remove indigenous populations.

These elements do not make Herzl a fascist. But they place him within the intellectual family of European racial nationalism, a genealogy that later fed into the fascist ideologies that dominated Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. If one removes the Jewish identity component, Herzl’s framework shares structural similarities with other European ethnonationalist movements of his era—movements that came to dominate politics in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and Portugal.

This is not an accusation of personal malevolence but a recognition that Herzl’s political imagination was shaped by the dominant ideologies of his time, namely settler colonialism, racialized progress, and ethnonational exclusivity. These ideas later crystallized into policies within the Zionist movement that promoted Jewish demographic dominance and territorial control over Palestinian rights.

The making of a supremacist regime

The Nakba of 1948—marked by mass displacement, village destruction, and the permanent exclusion of over 750,000 Palestinian refugees—was not an aberration but a foundational moment. Laws such as the Absentee Property Law ensured that Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed could never return to their homes, while their land was transferred to Jewish ownership.

After 1967, the occupation entrenched a dual legal system, one where Israeli settlers in the West Bank lived under Israeli civil law, enjoyed full political rights, and received state protection, while Palestinians lived under military law, faced movement restrictions, home demolitions, land seizures, and arbitrary detention. B’Tselem concluded in 2021 that this constitutes “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” effectively making Israel an apartheid state.

Human Rights Watch’s A Threshold Crossed reached the same conclusion, documenting policies designed to maintain Jewish demographic and political dominance through land control, movement restrictions, and discriminatory laws.

Along with a similar report by Amnesty International in 2022, these claims of Israel being an apartheid state are not fringe interpretations. They are the assessments of leading human rights institutions, and are supported by research by human rights scholars.

Dehumanization as policy and culture

Supremacy is sustained not only through laws but through dehumanizing language. Israeli political leaders have long deployed rhetoric that erases Palestinian identity and strips Palestinians of their humanity. They rarely refer to Palestinians as “Palestinians” at all, choosing instead the generic term “Arabs,” a deliberate linguistic move that denies a people their name, their history, and their nationhood. This erasure is reinforced by explicit dehumanization. Senior officials have repeatedly used language that casts Palestinians as subhuman or inherently threatening. Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked notoriously described Palestinian children as “little snakes,” even calling for the killing of Palestinian mothers to prevent future generations. Such rhetoric is not incidental; it is part of the ideological machinery that makes domination thinkable and violence permissible.

Such language is not merely hateful—it is functional. It prepares the public to accept policies of collective punishment, siege, and large‑scale military assault. Also, settler violence, often carried out with impunity and the support if Israeli authorities, reinforces this logic. Sfard’s comparison of extremist settlers to the Ku Klux Klan is not hyperbole but a reflection of vigilante terror used to enforce ethnic hierarchy.

This dehumanization has intensified during Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza over the years. By mid‑November 2023, Holocaust and genocide scholars—including Marion Kaplan, Omer Bartov, and Barry Trachtenberg—warned that Israel’s actions risked or constituted genocide. Their warnings were grounded in patterns familiar from other cases of forced displacement, destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass killing, and rhetoric invoking biblical annihilation narratives.

Holocaust survivors and descendants have echoed these warnings, arguing that the dehumanization of Palestinians mirrors patterns they recognize from their own histories. Their testimony cannot be dismissed as it is rooted in lived experience and scholarly expertise.

For decades, Israel enjoyed near-total impunity in the international legal system. That era is ending. Cases before the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court have forced a global reckoning with the legal and moral implications of prolonged occupation and systemic discrimination. Some Holocaust scholars who initially defended Israel’s actions in Gaza have since gone silent. Their earlier support for state violence—rather than for the universal principles of human rights—reveals a troubling willingness to subordinate anti‑racist commitments to ethnonational loyalty.

As critics have noted, this silence is a betrayal of the very lessons the field of genocide studies was created to uphold.

Parallels between Zionism and white supremacy

We must also confront the fact that Zionism, as practiced by the Israeli state, shares structural parallels with white supremacy. Both are systems of domination built on similar foundations. Each constructs a superior in‑group understood as uniquely entitled to land, sovereignty, and political power. Each justifies the dispossession of an Indigenous or subordinate population through narratives of civilizational advancement or historical destiny. Both rely on demographic engineering to secure permanent control, deploy stories of cultural or racial superiority to legitimize exclusion, and normalize segregation, unequal citizenship, and the systematic denial of rights. These are not incidental similarities. They reflect the underlying architecture of two regimes organized around maintaining the dominance of one group over another.

In the United States, “manifest destiny” justified the displacement of Indigenous peoples. In Israel, the Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews worldwide while denying Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes. Academic work in Holy Land Studies and other journals describes Zionism as a racial regime that reproduces whiteness through land control and exclusion of Arabs and non‑European Jews.

A society shaped by ethnosupremacy

Haaretz has documented how Jewish supremacy has fractured Israeli society itself, empowering extremist settlers and far‑right movements that now dominate national politics. The Oslo era did not moderate these forces, it entrenched them. Settlement expansion accelerated, Palestinian territory fragmented into disconnected enclaves, and the logic of domination became normalized. Jewish self‑determination has been transformed into a system of supremacy that denies Palestinians equivalent rights.

This is not a fringe view. It is increasingly the consensus among scholars of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnonationalism. Recognizing the supremacist structures embedded in Israeli governance does not diminish Jewish suffering or deny the trauma of antisemitism. It does not delegitimize Jewish collective identity or aspirations for safety. But it does demand a reckoning with the reality that no people can secure their freedom by denying another’s.

Ending the occupation, dismantling apartheid structures, and recognizing Palestinian political and human rights are not acts of hostility toward Jews. They are acts of fidelity to universal principles of justice.

As Sfard asked: How did we produce replicas of our persecutors? The answer lies not in Jewish identity, but in the corrosive power of Zionism, an ideology of ethnonational supremacy. The task now is to build a political order grounded not in domination, but in equality.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Ottawa judge whitewashes racist attack by Swiss man against Palestinian-Canadian woman

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:01:29 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

On May 29, 2024, outside Ottawa’s EY Centre, a 21‑year‑old Palestinian‑Canadian woman in a hijab protesting a defence contractors conference was punched in the face and knocked to the ground by a Swiss man attending the CANSEC expo. When she told him he was “actively supporting genocide” by attending, he responded with his fist. That moment was brutal, racist, and unmistakably criminal—but it was not when Canada’s justice system failed her. The failure came earlier this week inside an Ottawa courtroom, when Justice Norman Boxall decided that this assault deserved no conviction, no sentence, and no meaningful consequence at all.

The facts are not in dispute. David Henschel, a 58‑year‑old Swiss national and employee of defence contractor Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Schweiz AG, encountered multiple protesters on his way to CANSEC. According to agreed facts read in court, one protester called him a racist. Henschel replied, “I’m a f---ing racist and I’m proud of it.” He then crossed the street, where the young woman told him his presence meant he was supporting genocide and said, “Shame on you, sir.” In response Henschel swung his arm and struck her in the face with a closed fist, dropping her to the ground, then forcefully shoved another protester before continuing toward the conference.

He was arrested and eventually pled guilty to assault in a 2025 court hearing. During sentencing submissions in June 2026, he tried to explain the attack away with claims of low blood sugar and PTSD, supported by a psychiatrist whose assessment relied largely on Henschel’s own self‑reporting. The Crown rightly challenged this as a thin, self‑serving narrative designed to minimize responsibility for a targeted attack on a visibly Muslim woman at a peaceful protest.

Then, on July 22, 2026, Justice Norman Boxall delivered the real blow—not to Henschel, but to the victim and to public faith in the courts. He granted an absolute discharge—a finding of guilt with no conviction, no probation, no conditions, and no sentence tied to the assault itself. The only financial consequence—a $5,000 surcharge—was imposed not for the attack, but because Henschel had failed to appear in person at an earlier sentencing date.

Boxall went further. He rejected the Crown’s argument that the assault was fuelled by racist and hateful attitudes, despite Henschel’s own declaration that he was a racist and proud of it, delivered moments before he punched a Palestinian‑Canadian woman in a hijab. He framed the assault as a “frustrated and emotional response,” a “situational” lapse, and accepted the defence’s request for no conviction.

This was not neutral judging in support of justice for the victim. It was judicial complicity in the minimization of racist violence.

When a judge watches a video showing a man openly proclaiming himself a racist, sees him striking a visibly Muslim woman in the face at a peaceful protest, hears witnesses confirm the details of the events, and reads victim impact statements describing the assault as part of a broader pattern of anti‑Palestinian and anti‑Muslim hostility—yet still concludes the attack was not motivated by racism—that judge has not made simply made an error. Rather he is declaring, through his ruling, that racism against Palestinians and Muslims does not count in his courtroom. And a judge who cannot recognize racism in a case this blatant has no business sitting on the bench or presiding over matters of justice.

The victim’s father, Bassam Hashem, captured the reality outside court when he said, “We came to this country for one reason . . . that we can express ourselves. That we are equal citizens. Today we were told, ‘No. You are second‑class citizens. You can be assaulted and that’s OK.’”

Hashem’s children no longer attend demonstrations. They no longer feel safe. That is the direct consequence of Boxall’s ruling: a chilling effect on protest, a message to racialized communities that their safety is negotiable, and a public declaration that a racist assault on a Palestinian‑Canadian woman can be washed away as a momentary emotional lapse.

The Crown has already filed a notice of appeal, calling the sentence “demonstrably unfit.” They are right. But the problem is not only the sentence—it is the judge. A justice who cannot recognize racism when a perpetrator announces it; who accepts low‑blood‑sugar excuses over the lived reality of a targeted attack; who treats a violent assault on a peaceful protester as discharge‑worthy has forfeited the moral authority required to sit on the bench.

This is not a marginal disagreement over sentencing philosophy. It is a failure of judgment so profound that it undermines the promise that “everyone is equal before the law.”

Justice Norman Boxall should not remain on the bench. At minimum, he should be subjected to serious remedial training on hate‑motivated violence, anti‑Palestinian and anti‑Muslim racism, and the rights of protesters. But the deeper truth is more disturbing. A judge who refuses to see racism in a case like this cannot be trusted to adjudicate cases involving racialized communities at all.

On May 29, 2024, a Muslim Palestinian‑Canadian woman was assaulted for daring to confront an arms dealer about genocide. On July 22, 2026, the Ontario Court of Justice told her, in effect, that her attacker’s comfort mattered more than her safety, her dignity, or her rights.

Only one of those events was unavoidable—and it wasn’t the ruling.

If Canada is serious about equal justice, this decision cannot stand. The appeal must succeed. And the judge whose reasoning turned a racist assault into a consequence‑free discharge should be held to account, not quietly shielded by the institution he has just disgraced.

Justice for the victim is not a discharge. Justice is accountability for the person who committed the crime. And on that measure, Justice Norman Boxall has failed.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Israel’s war in Lebanon is another example of the criminal impunity of a rogue, terrorist state

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 13:01:30 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

While the genocide in Gaza continues unabated Israeli leaders have now expanded their war crimes regime to Lebanon, where the 2026 invasion is not an aberration, not a sudden eruption of violence, and certainly not a defensive reflex. It is the latest chapter in a decades‑long pattern of criminal impunity—an extension of the same tactics, doctrines, and policies that have devastated Gaza. What is unfolding today in southern Lebanon is not merely a “spillover” from Gaza or a confrontation with Hezbollah. It is the exportation of the Gaza model of military aggression—the systematic destruction, mass displacement, territorial engineering, and steady normalization of Israel’s annexationist ambitions that have animated its leaders’ strategic thinking for decades.

Since the beginning of the Israeli invasion Lebanese authorities have reported more than 4,300 killed and over 12,000 wounded, with over one million displaced—roughly one‑fifth of the country forced from their homes. Israel has conducted thousands of airstrikes, bulldozed entire villages, bombed the suburbs of Beirut, and expanded operations far beyond its self‑declared “Yellow Line,” pushing up to ten kilometers into Lebanese territory. These are not temporary incursions, and this has been confirmed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in conversations with Israeli soldiers. They are in effect the creation of “facts on the ground,” the same methodical approach Israel has used for decades in the West Bank to transform an illegal occupation into a permanent presence.

The Gaza model exported

Israel’s military leaders have openly described their Lebanon campaign as a replication of tactics used in the Gaza genocide. Defence Minister Israel Katz referenced the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model,” promising to demolish homes, flatten neighborhoods, and prevent civilian returns until Israel’s objectives are met. Soldiers have told reporters they are “operating exactly as we do in Gaza,” with daily destruction quotas and target lists.

Satellite imagery confirms the scale of devastation. Villages such as Bint Jbeil, Ayta al‑Shaab, and Khiam have been razed through controlled demolitions and bulldozing of buildings, mirroring Gaza’s obliterated districts. Additionally, Israel has struck civilian infrastructure—bridges over the Litani River, water facilities near the Qaraoun Dam, hospitals, schools, mosques, and farmland—all considered war crimes under international law. Furthermore, reported use of white phosphorus against civilian targets—already documented extensively in Gaza—have emerged again in Lebanon. Another instance of Israel committing a war crime.

These actions are neither counterterrorism nor acts of self-defence. They are collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and territorial reconfiguration intended to support long-term occupation. It is the Gaza doctrine applied against a sovereign state.

A historical pattern of territorial ambition

While Israel’s defenders insist that these operations are purely defensive, aimed at neutralizing Hezbollah, the scale, the systematic razing of villages, the infrastructure destruction, and the establishment of a de facto occupied buffer zone suggest something far more ambitious—demographic engineering with the intent of effectively annexing territory.

This ambition is not new. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978, again in 1982, and occupied southern Lebanon until 2000. It launched a massive war in 2006, destroying swaths of the country. Each time, Israeli leaders spoke of “security zones,” “buffer areas,” and “temporary measures.” Each time, those measures hardened into long‑term territorial claims.

These actions align with a broader ideological project often referred to as “Greater Israel”—a maximalist vision proposed by Zionism’s founder Theodor Herzl, rooted in biblical nationalism and embraced by elements of Israel’s political and religious right. This project imagines Israeli control stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, and from Turkey to northern Saudi Arabia. While not official state policy, its influence is unmistakable in settlement expansion, annexation rhetoric, and repeated military incursions into neighboring states.

Lebanon, characterized by political fragmentation, deep economic crisis, a weak military, and the overwhelming impact of incessant and highly destructive attacks by Israel, is uniquely vulnerable to such ambitions. Israel’s current operations—creating cleared zones, establishing military outposts, and preventing civilians from returning to their homes and properties—mirror the early stages of territorial absorption seen in the West Bank. The logic is clear. Israel weakens the state, depopulates strategic areas, and normalizes Israeli presence, all in violation of international law.

Crimes under international law

The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment, the destruction of civilian property and infrastructure, and the forcible transfer of populations—precisely the kinds of actions Israel has carried out in Lebanon. The Rome Statute defines war crimes as intentional attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and crimes against humanity as widespread or systematic assaults on civilian populations. Israel’s conduct in Lebanon falls squarely within these prohibitions.

The mass displacement of over one million people, the razing of villages, the destruction of essential infrastructure, and the establishment of a de facto occupation zone constitute grave breaches of international law. Additionally, UN experts and human rights organizations have warned of ethnic cleansing and potential crimes against humanity. These warnings echo those issued during Israel’s Gaza campaign, where the International Court of Justice found a “plausible risk of genocide” and ordered provisional measures to prevent further atrocities. Enabled by its Western allies, the US in particular, Israel ignored them.

US backing fuels Israeli impunity

Israel’s ability to commit these crimes repeatedly—and expand them into new theaters—rests on one foundation: unconditional US support.

The United States provides billions in military aid annually, regularly vetoes UN resolutions calling for ceasefires or accountability, and shields Israel from sanctions or international prosecution. This support persists regardless of the severity of Israeli crimes. It persisted through the flattening of Gaza, the mass murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, and refugee camps, and it now continues with Israeli crimes in Lebanon.

The contrast with Western responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is staggering. Russia’s aggression triggered sweeping sanctions, diplomatic isolation, ICC arrest warrants, and massive military support for Ukraine. Israel’s aggression in Gaza triggered statements of “concern” and “alarm” followed by expedited weapons shipments. This double standard is not merely hypocrisy—it is blatant complicity. Under international law, states that knowingly provide material support enabling war crimes share responsibility for those crimes.

Israel as the region’s most destabilizing force

Israel’s defenders claim that as the only “democracy” in the Middle-East it is a stabilizing force in a volatile region. However, decades of evidence suggests the opposite.

Israel has launched major wars or invasions against Lebanon (1978, 1982, 1996, 2006, 2026), Gaza (2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023–26), and repeatedly escalated tensions with Syria and Iran. It maintains an apartheid system in the West Bank, enforces a siege on Gaza, and conducts regular strikes across the region. No other Middle Eastern state has initiated as many cross‑border conflicts, displaced as many civilians, or destroyed as much infrastructure in neighboring countries. No other state has repeatedly violated international law with such impunity, and yet the world has done nothing to stop them.

Israel’s actions have destabilized Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. They have inflamed regional tensions, fuelled extremism, and undermined diplomatic efforts. And because Israel can influence US military policy—through lobbying, intelligence partnerships, and political pressure—it can and has dragged the world’s most powerful military into regional escalations that are detrimental to American interests.

A state that repeatedly violates international law, destabilizes its neighbors, and wields disproportionate influence over US foreign policy is not merely a regional threat. It is a potential threat to world peace.

The biker gang analogy

If a biker gang rolled into a town, torched buildings, murdered residents, and declared parts of the territory off‑limits, the full weight of law enforcement would descend. No appeals to “self‑defence” against adversaries would excuse systematic destruction.

Yet when Israel does the same—flattening villages, displacing millions, occupying foreign soil—the international response has been muted, and there has been no effort to hold its leaders accountable. This selective enforcement of law reveals the moral bankruptcy of the so‑called international “rules‑based order” which Western nations so often invoke against their adversaries

Israel’s war in Lebanon is not an isolated conflict. It is part of a decades‑long pattern of aggression, territorial ambition, and criminal impunity. Without accountability—through sanctions, arms embargoes, ICC prosecutions, and diplomatic pressure—the cycle is bound to continue.

The world cannot remain passive in the face of Israeli exceptionalism. The credibility of international law, the stability of the Middle East, and even the prospects for global peace depend on ending this impunity and holding Israel’s leaders fully accountable.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Defending human rights is a moral imperative that Western governments are abandoning

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 14:01:25 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

Before the modern human rights system emerged from the ruins of the Second World War, humanity lived in a world where rights were not inherent but conditional—granted or withdrawn at the whim of empires, monarchies, political systems, racial hierarchies, and economic elites. Across continents, people were governed by systems of domination rather than universal principles, where elites saw certain groups as inferior and unequal based on race, skin colour, ethnicity, faith, sexual identity or other defining characteristic. Colonial powers carved up territories and categorized peoples in terms of resources to be exploited without regard to any inherent rights.

In the America’s, Africa and Australia indigenous peoples were dispossessed and annihilated, to the point that in North America (present day Canada, Mexico and the United States), their populations declined to 5% of their pre-Columbian levels by the 1890s—a death toll of more than 95 million. Enslavement, segregation, caste oppression, and patriarchal subjugation were woven into the fabric of societies and were part and parcel of political governance. Workers laboured under conditions that amounted to economic bondage, and dissent was criminalized, while entire populations lived under the constant threat of violence by the state or economic elites who were only too willing to violently exploit workers.

This was the 19th Century world that shaped the views of American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass, who said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” It was the world of the Jim Crow era US south that Rosa Parks confronted when she refused to surrender her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama—a simple act that exposed the absurdity and cruelty of the system of racial hierarchy that affected the lives of millions of Black Americans. It was the world B.R. Ambedkar, who fought to transform colonial India, arguing that democracy without social justice is merely a new form of tyranny. And it was the world that 18th century French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges challenged when she demanded equality for women, knowing full well that such demands were a threat to her own life.

Human rights, before 1945, were not universal—they were fragile aspirations, and often violently denied by political, economic and social elites.

The shock that forced a reckoning

The Second World War shattered any illusion that humanity could survive without a universal moral framework. The Holocaust, the mechanized extermination of millions, the mass slaughter of civilians in Europe and the Far East, and the global devastation of total war forced the world to confront the consequences of unrestrained state power. The scale of atrocity was so vast, so systematic—between 60 and 70 million killed—tthat it demanded a new global rights infrastructure.

The architects of the post‑war order understood that without binding principles, humanity would again descend into a barbarism that could engulf the world. Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the drafting committee for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, insisted that the new system must reflect the dignity of all people, not merely the interests of powerful states. Her work, alongside French jurist René Cassin, Lebanese politician and diplomat Charles Malik, Chinese academic and diplomat Peng Chun Chang, and Canadian diplomat and human rights activist John Humphrey, produced a document intended as a “common standard of achievement”—a moral compass for a world emerging from darkness.

The UN Charter (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), and eventually the International Court of Justice were built on the ashes of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Nanjing, and Hiroshima. They were designed to ensure that no state could again commit mass atrocities with impunity.

Elie Wiesel, speaking from the experience of genocide, warned that silence in the face of atrocity is itself a crime. His words became the ethical foundation of the post‑war human rights system—a reminder that neutrality is never neutral when human beings are being systematically annihilated.

The promise and the slow betrayal

For several decades after the war, the human rights architecture held—unevenly, imperfectly, but with enough force to restrain the worst impulses of states. Anti‑colonial movements invoked human rights to dismantle Europe’s empires. Civil rights leaders used its language to challenge segregation in the US. Feminist, Indigenous, labour, and LGBTQ movements drew strength from its universal principles. Nelson Mandela argued that denying human rights was an assault on human dignity itself. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. taught that moral courage requires confronting injustice even when the majority remains silent. And South African Anglican Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu reminded the world that neutrality in the face of oppression was a form of complicity.

However, the end of the Cold War in 1991 appeared to mark a turning point. With the collapse of the global bipolar power structure, the international human rights order built after World War II began to fray. Its erosion was visible in the Bosnian Genocide (1992–1995), the Rwandan Genocide (1994), and the sanctions and embargo regime imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, which led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children—a toll that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright infamously said was “worth it” in a 1996 interview. As the United States emerged as the world’s lone superpower, it increasingly treated its international legal obligations not as binding commitments but as optional constraints it could disregard when convenient.

Israel—shielded by unwavering Western diplomatic and military backing, above all from the United States—has been able to violate Palestinian human rights repeatedly and with complete impunity for decades. No meaningful accountability has ever followed. Russia carried out atrocities in Chechnya and later in Ukraine, beginning with its 2014 annexation of Crimea. China constructed a surveillance‑driven authoritarian system and imprisoned millions of Uyghurs in concentration camps, abducting Uyghur children and placing them in indoctrination facilities—acts that meet the Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide. Both Moscow and Beijing were condemned for their crimes.

By comparison, the United Kingdom, France, and other European Union states supported US wars that violated international law, yet none faced consequences. The pattern became unmistakable—powerful states could break the rules without penalty, while weaker states were punished for far less. Observing this double standard, governments around the world logically concluded that it was power—not principle—that determined what was permissible in the realm of human rights.

The post‑Cold War era saw the rise of a global double standard where Human rights were invoked when convenient and ignored when politically expedient. The international system expanded in scope, but enforcement weakened, with serious violations increasingly going unpunished. In the process, the moral authority of the post‑war human rights order began to collapse, with genocides taking place in Darfur, Sudan (2003–present); Myanmar (2016–present); Xinjiang, China (2017–present); and Tigray, Ethiopia (2020–2022), with the erosion ultimately culminating in the current genocide in Gaza.

The collapse of global moral authority

The Israeli‑Palestinian conflict has deep historical roots, shaped by colonial legacies, competing nationalisms, and decades of conflict. But the events that have occurred since 2023 marked a moral rupture unprecedented in the modern era. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza have been leveled, while hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed. Civilians were intentionally targeted, starved, displaced, and massacred. International law was shredded in full view of the world, and Western humanity was shown to be a charade. Additionally, the major Western powers did not merely fail to stop Israel’s genocidal crimes, they enabled it, particularly the US, by selling weapons to Israel which were used in their military assault on Gaza.

The United States served as Israel’s primary arms supplier, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and others close behind—and Washington defended Israel’s actions diplomatically at every turn. Canada wavered between muted criticism and active complicity, continuing to provide military components even as the scale of Israel’s violence became undeniable. The European Union voiced rhetorical concern, but offered no meaningful action capable of halting the atrocities. In Gaza, the international legal order—created precisely to prevent the kind of heinous, genocidal crimes Israel carried out and continues to carry out—was not merely ineffective, it was immobilized by the geopolitical interests of the very states entrusted with upholding it.

The betrayal of Palestinians can be summed up in the following statement: We must refuse to compromise our humanity and never back down from speaking the inconvenient truth to power, for people whose very humanity is under attack.

This is the moral crisis of our time. The very states that built the human rights system have chosen to abandoned it, and leave innocent people to be slaughtered, unless intervening advantages a higher political purpose. Which, in the case of Palestinians, doesn’t seem to be the case.

The voices that still guide us

In this moment of collapse, the wisdom of human rights icons becomes not historical reflection but urgent instruction.

South African anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko taught that oppression thrives when people internalize silence. Kenyan social and political activist Wangari Maathai showed that human rights include the right to a livable planet. South African musician and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba used her voice to expose apartheid’s brutality. American labour unionist Cesar Chavez demonstrated that economic justice is inseparable from human dignity. Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero died defending the poor against state violence, while Malcolm X insisted that dignity requires refusing subjugation in all its forms and speaking truth with uncompromising clarity.

Along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., these voices form a chorus across continents and centuries, united by one truth—that human rights are not granted by states—they are won with the blood, sweat and tears of ordinary people.

The moral imperative today

We now live in a world where the major powers—the US, the UK, Russia, China and others—have abandoned the very international order they once claimed to uphold. They have returned to the logic of empire where power takes priority over principle and geopolitical agendas over human rights.

This is what political barbarism looks like. And the only force capable of stopping it is the collective moral courage of ordinary people, human rights organizations, activists, scholars, journalists, and anyone with even a modicum of economic or political influence that still possess a moral compass.

It’s clear from history that human rights don’t come about naturally. They only exist if they are protected and defended.

To maintain human rights as part of our society and culture we have to live by the adage that when those in power are telling you to move as you stand for principle, you need to plant yourself like a tree and say, “No, you move.”

This is the ethos the world needs now.

The preservation of human rights must become a global moral imperative. Not a slogan. Not a diplomatic talking point. A commitment rooted in the understanding that without human rights, civilization collapses into violence, moral decay and barbarism.

Human rights organizations must refuse to be cowed by political pressure, and activists must continue to speak truth to power even when power threatens them. Scholars must expose injustice with uncompromising clarity, journalists must refuse to sanitize atrocity, and citizens must demand accountability from their governments.

As before, the future will be shaped not by presidents or prime ministers but by social movements built by ordinary people—by those who refuse to accept a world where genocide is normalized, where oppression is rationalized, and where human dignity is treated as negotiable. American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead captured this truth with unmistakable force when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

The post–World War II human rights system was created because those who witnessed the horrors of that war understood that nothing less than a new moral architecture was required to prevent such crimes from happening again. If the system we rely on to defend human rights is to survive—let alone be renewed—it will be because ordinary people insisted on defending it when governments would not.

The world stands at a crossroads. One path leads back to barbarism, where human life is expendable. The other leads toward justice. It is up to us, collectively, to decide which path humanity will take.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Mark Carney and Justin Trudeau: The morally bankrupt leaders who ignore the Gaza genocide

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 22:01:01 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared in mid-May that the treatment of civilians aboard the Sumud Flotilla to Gaza—kidnapped in international waters by Israeli forces—was “abominable”, he revealed far more about his government than he intended. His statement was meant to project moral outrage, to signal that Canada still possesses a moral compass. Instead, it exposed a government that has lost its ethical bearings entirely. Because if Carney truly believed that the abuse of civilians was “abominable,” he would have said so long before a video of Itamar Ben‑Gvir taunting bound activists forced his hand.

But Carney did not, and the reason is simple. Carney has no moral compass, especially when it comes to how Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs are treated, whether by a foreign government or by his own administration in Canada.

Mark Carney only entered politics in early 2025, after Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as Liberal leader. Before that, Carney spent decades in elite financial institutions—Goldman Sachs, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England—where he cultivated a reputation for technocratic competence and global statesmanship. Yet in all those years, through Israel’s decades-long brutal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, its repeated assaults on the Gaza Strip, and finally its ongoing genocide, Carney never made a public comment. Not a word about the siege. Not a word about the occupation. Not a word about apartheid. Not a word about the mass killing of Palestinians. And this is for the most part understandable given the trajectory of his career.

However, his silence was not accidental, but it was revealing. It was the silence of a man who had never needed to confront the consequences of Western power, who had never needed to reckon with the violence that Western powers inflicted on the world’s most vulnerable, under the guise of maintaining an “international rules based order.” And so when he entered politics, his silence became a part of Canadian government policy.

Trudeau’s legacy of weakness and denial

However, this wasn’t new policy. Carney inherited this moral vacuum from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose own record on Israel and Palestine was defined by weakness, evasion, and denial. Trudeau made occasional statements expressing “concern” about Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, but these were always carefully calibrated to avoid offending Israel or the US. Ultimately they were meaningless because he condemned very little of Israel’s criminal acts, recognized even less, and took no action to uphold international law or hold Israel accountable.

And at the end of his prime ministership, Trudeau finally said the quiet part out loud—he declared himself to be a Zionist. With that admission, everything became clear. His refusal to condemn Israel’s actions was not diplomatic caution, it was ideological alignment. His refusal to recognize genocide was not uncertainty, it was political loyalty to a foreign state. His government’s unwavering support for Israel, even as the death toll in Gaza climbed into the tens of thousands, was not a lack of courage, it was a deliberate choice and admission that Trudeau was an anti-Palestinian racist.

When Carney became prime minister he simply continued Trudeau’s policy of denial, complicity, and moral collapse.

Choosing not to see genocide in Gaza

Since it started both Trudeau and Carney refused to acknowledge that genocide was taking place in Gaza. This denial is not only factually indefensible, it is politically grotesque. Because the list of institutions, experts, and humanitarian organizations that have declared Israel’s assault on Gaza’s population as genocidal is unprecedented in modern history.

Among the organizations and individuals recognizing that Israel is committing the crime of genocide as defined under Genocide Convention are:

the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry;
the UN Special Committee;
the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights;
the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories;
the former UN Humanitarian Chief;
Amnesty International;
Human Rights Watch;
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem;
Physicians for Human Rights Israel;
Doctors Without Borders;
Oxfam;
Save the Children;
Action Aid;
Action on Armed Violence;
the International Federation of Human Rights;
the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS);
Melanie O’Brien, president of the IAGS;
Dirk Moses, editor of the Journal of Genocide Research;
Martin Shaw, author of What Is Genocide?;
Leading Israeli Holocaust scholars: Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal, Shmuel Lederman;
the Norwegian Refugee Council;
the Danish Refugee Council;
Refugees International;
the International Rescue Committee;
Moshe Yaalon, former head of Israel’s military;
Amiram Levin, former deputy head of Mossad;
Ehud Olmert, former Prime Minister of Israel; and
the 30 nations supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

This list is not merely long—it is overwhelming. It represents the broadest consensus on genocide since Rwanda. Yet Canada, a nation that claims to champion human rights, has rejected all of it.

Canada is violating its international legal obligations

Under the Genocide Convention, Canada is obligated not only to prevent genocide but to punish those who participate in it. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Canada must act to stop grave breaches, including collective punishment, targeting civilians, and starvation as a method of warfare. Under the UN Charter, Canada must uphold international peace and security and oppose violations of international humanitarian law.

Instead, Canada continues to:

Sell weapons and weapons components to Israel;
Provide diplomatic cover for Israel;
Refuse to sanction Israeli officials responsible for mass atrocities;
Reject international legal findings of genocide; and
Attack Canadian human rights advocates who speak out.

This is not neutrality. It is complicity.

Carney’s hypocrisy is impossible to ignore

Carney’s condemnation of Ben‑Gvir was not wrong. Ben‑Gvir is a racist extremist who celebrated his birthday with a cake emblazoned with a noose, who raised a champagne glass when the Knesset advanced a death‑penalty bill that applies only to Palestinians, and who has repeatedly called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. But Carney’s selective outrage is revealing. Ben‑Gvir is not an outlier; he is the distilled expression of a much wider system of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal violence in Israeli society — a society where a 2025 poll showed that 47% of Jewish Israelis supported the Gaza genocide. Singling him out for sanctions while continuing to arm the state he serves is not moral leadership. It is political posturing, a gesture designed to look principled while avoiding the far more consequential act of holding Israel itself accountable.

If Carney truly believed Ben‑Gvir’s actions were “unacceptable,” he would sanction the entire Israeli government and military leadership. He would halt all weapons exports immediately. He would prosecute Canadians who have joined the Israeli military and participated in war crimes. He would recognize the genocide that the rest of the world has already named.

He has done none of these things.

Historically, Canada avoided pursuing war criminals

There is a myth in Canada that the country has a proud and robust history of prosecuting war criminals. It is a comforting story, one that allows Canadians to imagine themselves as steadfast defenders of human rights and international justice. But the moment this narrative is examined with even minimal scrutiny, it collapses. In truth, Canada has not made much effort to hunt down war criminals since World War Two, and its record is defined far more by avoidance, delay, and half‑measures than by genuine accountability.

For decades, Canada preferred to look away rather than confront perpetrators of atrocity, just as it is doing with Israel. Instead of launching serious investigations, pursuing criminal trials, or building the legal capacity to prosecute genocidal criminals, Canada has relied on bureaucratic tools—denaturalization and deportation—that allow the government to quietly remove individuals without ever proving guilt in court. These measures create the appearance of action while avoiding actual prosecution. Far from being a global leader in accountability, Canada’s war‑crimes record is a story of institutional reluctance, political timidity, and systemic inertia. It is a record that reveals a country far more committed to protecting its own political convenience than to upholding the principles of international law it claims to champion.

Following the Second World War Canada prosecuted a small number of Nazi war criminals immediately afterwards—almost all of them POWs already in Canadian custody. After 1948, however, Canada entered a 30‑year period of complete inactivity. During the 1950s through the 1980s, hundreds of suspected Nazi collaborators entered Canada, yet the government made no serious attempt to locate, investigate, or criminally prosecute them.

The 1985 Deschênes Commission confirmed what survivors and human‑rights advocates had long known: Canada had never meaningfully prosecuted Nazi war criminals domestically, despite ample evidence and decades of opportunity. The few criminal trials attempted in the 1990s—including the high‑profile case of Imre Finta—ended in acquittals, after which Canada effectively abandoned domestic prosecution altogether.

The rare exception of Rwandan génocidaires

Canada’s record of domestic war‑crimes prosecution is remarkably thin, and its only true success stands out precisely because it is so rare. The single case in which Canada managed to secure a conviction under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act was the prosecution of Désiré Munyaneza, a Rwandan génocidaire found guilty in 2009. His conviction was historic: the first time Canada used the principle of universal jurisdiction to try an individual for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed abroad. Munyaneza’s trial demonstrated that Canada could hold perpetrators of mass atrocity accountable when it chose to invest the political will, legal expertise, and prosecutorial resources required.

But Munyaneza’s case was the exception, not the beginning of a sustained effort. The only other attempt at a domestic war‑crimes trial under the same legislation—Jacques Mungwarere—ended in acquittal in 2013. After that, Canada effectively retreated from the field. No further domestic prosecutions followed, and no institutional momentum emerged to build on the precedent set. Instead of developing a robust system capable of confronting atrocity, Canada returned to its longstanding reliance on administrative measures. The result is a war‑crimes record defined not by a legacy of accountability, but by one conviction surrounded by decades of institutional reluctance.

Canada’s support for Israel is built on lies

For decades, Canadian governments have insisted that Canada is a defender of human rights, a champion of international law, and a guardian of the rules‑based order. But these claims collapse under the weight of scrutiny, and certainly as we witness Canada’s lack of action around the Gaza genocide.

Canada cannot claim to defend human rights while arming a genocidal state. Canada cannot claim to uphold international law while ignoring the world’s legal findings. Canada cannot claim to support peace while enabling mass slaughter.

The Carney government’s position is not simply hypocritical—it is morally bankrupt, as was that of Justin Trudeau’s government

What is truly “unacceptable”

When he saw the video of Israeli minister Ben-Gvir taunting the imprisoned activists from the Sumud Flotilla he used the word “unacceptable” in reaction to what he saw. But what is truly unacceptable is Canada’s complicity. What is unacceptable is the refusal to name genocide. What is unacceptable is the sale of Canadian weapons to a state committing mass atrocities. What is unacceptable is the betrayal of international law. What is unacceptable is the dehumanization of Palestinians through complicity.

Carney’s government has failed the most basic test of moral leadership—the ability to recognize human suffering and act to stop it. Instead, Canada has become a bystander to genocide, and worse, an enabler of the crime of crimes.

History will not forget this moment. And it will not forgive those who chose silence, denial, and complicity over justice.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Trump’s wildfire blame game is an ignorant reaction to a friend dealing with tragedy

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 20:00:35 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

When United States President Donald Trump declared that Canada was “mismanaging” its forests and therefore responsible for the smoke drifting into the United States, he did more than display a misunderstanding of basic science. He revealed a profound ignorance about the natural world, the scale of Canada’s geography, and the limits of human power in the face of climate‑driven catastrophe. His threat to impose tariffs unless Canada “gets its wildfires under control” is not merely foolish—it is a reckless distortion of reality that undermines one of America’s closest allies.

Let’s be clear. No government on Earth can prevent or control wildfires across a landmass as vast, remote, and ecologically complex as Canada’s northern forests. To suggest otherwise is to advertise a dangerous level of stupidity about how nature works.

A forest the size of a continent

Canada’s boreal forest region is not a national park with paved access roads and ranger stations. It is the largest intact forest ecosystem on the planet, stretching more than 4,800 kilometres (3,000 miles) from Canada’s border with Alaska to the shores of Newfoundland on the North Atlantic. It covers 5.6 million square kilometres (2.3 million square miles)—roughly 80% of the size of the entire lower 48 American states, or 140% of the landmass of the European Union.

This is a wilderness so vast that large portions have never been walked by human beings. There are no highways, no towns, no infrastructure, and no practical way to “manage” the forest in the simplistic way Trump implies. To accuse Canada of “poor management” of an ecosystem this large is absurd. It is like blaming the US government for failing to “manage” the Pacific Ocean.

Wildfires in this region are not caused by bureaucratic negligence. They are caused by the same forces that have shaped the boreal forest for millennia—lightning, drought, heat, wind, and climate change.

Lightning doesn’t ask permission

In just the past several days, the Government of Canada’s Lightning Detection Network has recorded more than 14,000 lightning strikes across northern Ontario and southern Manitoba—each one a potential ignition source when the forest floor is parched. Lightning is responsible for most of the large wildfires in Canada’s boreal region, a reality no government can prevent any more than it can command rainfall or reverse drought conditions driven by climate change.

Canada is experiencing one of the driest, hottest summers in recorded history. The Canadian Wildland Fire Information System reports that fire danger levels across multiple provinces are at “extreme”, driven by record‑low precipitation and high winds. These are climate‑driven conditions, not political ones.

To blame Canada’s government for the smoke drifting into the United States is like blaming firefighters for the direction of the wind.

Canada is throwing everything it has at the fires

Trump’s comments ignore the scale of the response Canada has already mobilized. According to federal and provincial emergency agencies:

More than 6,000 firefighters are currently deployed nationwide, including crews from every province and territory.
Over 200 aircraft, including Canada’s world‑renowned water bombers, are engaged in suppression operations across the country
International assistance has been requested and received from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, South Africa, and Mexico.
The Canadian Armed Forces have been deployed to support evacuations, logistics, and ground operations.
Thousands of volunteers and emergency workers are risking their lives daily in some of the most dangerous terrain on Earth.

In other words, Canada is not sitting idle nor “mismanaging” anything. Canada is throwing everything it has—every plane, every firefighter, every resource—at a fire season that is historically unprecedented. And yet the fires still rage because nature is bigger than governments.

A forest fire is not a house fire

Perhaps the most useful way to illustrate the absurdity of Trump’s claim is through analogy.

When a house catches fire, firefighters arrive within minutes. They have hydrants, hoses, ladders, and roads. They can surround the structure, attack the flames from multiple angles, and extinguish the fire within hours. The area is small. The access is easy. The resources are concentrated.

Now imagine a fire the size of Delaware, or Connecticut, or Vermont. Imagine that fire burning in terrain with no roads, no hydrants, no communications infrastructure, and no safe access points. Imagine flames over 30 metres high (over 100 feet) moving at 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) through dense forest, driven by winds that shift unpredictably. Imagine smoke so thick that aircraft cannot fly and temperatures so high that water dropped from planes evaporates before it hits the ground.

That is what Canadian firefighters are facing.

To demand that Canada “put out the fires” is to demand the impossible. It is to demand that human beings overpower the combined forces of drought, heat, lightning, wind, and climate change. Only a fool would make such a demand.

Canada has always stood with the US

Trump’s comments also betray a disturbing lack of gratitude.

Just last week, a Canadian water bomber pilot died fighting fires in Colorado. Canadians have fought fires in California, provided aid after hurricanes in Louisiana, helped with floods in New York, and following tornadoes in the Midwest. We have never blamed American leaders for the impacts of natural disasters. We have never threatened tariffs or politicized tragedies beyond our control because smoke crossed the border.

We asked how we could help, we donated and we prayed for our friends because that is what neighbours do.

Let’s be honest. Trump’s threats have nothing to do with forest management. They are part of a pattern, where he uses crises—real or manufactured—to bully Canada into concessions on trade, energy, and continental security. Rather than being angry about smoke from forest fires crossing borders, he is exploiting smoke.

He is using a natural disaster as a political weapon, as leverage to extract economic concessions from a country that has stood by the United States for generations. It is gangster politics—extortion dressed up as environmental concern, and it is beneath the office he holds.

Only weather can change the situation

Every fire expert in Canada and the United States agrees that the only force capable of shifting the tide is weather. Significant rainfall, cooler temperatures, and reduced winds are the only variables that can slow or extinguish fires of this scale.

Government’s cannot manufacture rain, legislate humidity, or order lightning to stop. The fires will end when nature decides they will end.

Blaming Canada for the uncontrollable forces of nature is not leadership. It is ignorance and it is dangerous. It undermines the very alliance that has kept North America stable and prosperous.

The facts are clear. The science is clear. The scale is clear.

The only question is whether the President of the United States is willing to see it.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Canadians want a politics of decency and humanity, and NDP leader Avi Lewis could deliver it

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:02:45 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

Avi Lewis’s election as leader of the federal New Democratic Party earlier this year was not merely an internal party upset or a moment of ideological turbulence. It was a national signal—clear, forceful, and overdue that Canadians are rejecting the traditional political binary that has dominated federal politics for years—a choice between the Conservative Party and Pierre Poilievre’s rage‑based theatrics, or the Liberal Party led by Mark Carney, a polished but pliant technocrat. Lewis’s victory shows that Canadians are hungry for something different, for a politics rooted in humanity, solidarity, and economic dignity.

For decades, Canadians have been told that their political choices begin and end with the two parties that have governed the country since Confederation—parties now led by a career politician who thrives on division and a former central banker who campaigned on “elbows up” toughness but has governed with “hands up” submission. Neither Poilievre or Carney offers what Canadians actually need. One cannot deliver because he sits in Opposition, and the other has failed because none of the initiatives he announced as prime minister have materialized—whether on affordable housing, affordable groceries, affordable internet and phone services, a government willing to confront corporate greed, or a leader with a moral compass in the face of genocide who stands up to foreign pressure rather than bows before it.

Lewis’s rise demonstrates that Canadians are sick of fear‑based politics and want to embrace a politics of decency—one that understands the daily struggles of ordinary people and refuses to treat corporate interests or foreign governments as the true constituency of Canadian democracy.

The failure of the old politics

Poilievre’s politics revolve around resentment, division, and perpetual outrage. He has mastered the art of weaponizing anger while offering little in the way of substantive solutions. Carney, by contrast, presents himself as a steady hand, a global thinker, a technocrat who has the international experience to manage crises with calm expertise. But his record since becoming prime minister reveals a troubling pattern. Despite his speeches promoting “elbows up”, when confronted by pressure from Donald Trump’s administration, Carney has given concessions without getting anything from the United States in return.

Many Canadians voted for Carney out of fear—fear of Poilievre becoming prime minister, and fear of Trump’s threats to annex Canada or impose crippling tariffs. But fear is not a governing philosophy, and Canadians are now realizing that Carney’s leadership has delivered submission more than economic stability, and that his tools to deliver that economic stability are very limited.

Trump’s escalating war with Iran (something over which Carney has no control) has already destabilized global markets, driven up energy prices, rattled supply chains, and pushed major economies toward recession. Canadians have felt the effects of this in gas prices and at the grocery store. His erratic tariff threats, sanctions, and military adventurism have created an environment where no country can count on predictable trade flows or stable investment conditions.

Carney promised during the federal election that he would shield Canadians from global volatility, insisting that his experience as a central banker in both Canada and the United Kingdom equipped him to steady the economy in turbulent times. But the reality has been starkly different. Despite his international stature and frequent overseas trips to seek investment and sign trade deals, Carney has no meaningful ability to counteract the economic shockwaves generated by Trump’s decisions. His government cannot blunt the impact of Trump’s escalating confrontation with Iran, which has already driven up global energy prices, disrupted supply chains, and pushed major economies toward the brink of recession. Nor can Carney insulate Canadians from the broader instability created by Trump’s unpredictable sanctions, tariff threats, and military brinkmanship. In practice, Carney’s government has little leverage and no effective strategy beyond waiting for the chaos instigated by Washington to pass. The economic turbulence unleashed by the US president since returning to office is far larger than Carney’s ability to deliver on his promises, and Canadians are now living with the consequences.

Carney’s pattern of capitulation

Carney’s “elbows up” pledge has collapsed under the weight of repeated concessions to Washington. Four major examples illustrate this pattern clearly.

Digital Services Tax retreat: Carney promised to ensure multinational tech giants pay their fair share—a 3% levy on the Canadian revenues of US tech giants. But when Trump threatened retaliatory tariffs, Carney rescinded implementation of the Digital Services Tax in June 2025, effectively surrendering to US pressure rather than defending Canadian sovereignty. Critics across the political spectrum described the move as a capitulation wrapped in the political spin of affordability for Canadian consumers.

Gordie Howe Bridge concession: Trump’s administration attempted to use the Gordie Howe International Bridge as leverage, threatening delays and regulatory obstacles unless Canada made concessions on unrelated trade issues. Instead of asserting Canada’s rights in a binational infrastructure project based on a legal and binding agreement, Carney quietly acquiesced. His government’s refusal to release the details of the deal speaks volumes. It’s another instance of when Trump pushes, Carney yields.

The F‑35 procurement paralysis: More than a year after Carney called for a review of Canada’s purchase of F-35 fighter jets, his refusal to make a clear decision—despite years of planning and billions of taxpayer dollars already committed—is another example of his unwillingness to confront Washington. Trump’s administration openly pressured Canada to accelerate the procurement and Canada even put in a down payment on 14 additional jets, and Carney has responded with indecision rather than resolve. His hesitation signaled weakness and an unwillingness to make a decision that affects the future of the RCAF.

Withdrawal of the Online Streaming Act levy: Perhaps the clearest example of Carney’s capitulation came with his withdrawal of the Online Streaming Act levy. The levy would have required major American streaming platforms—Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and others—to contribute up to 15% of their Canadian revenues toward Canadian and Indigenous content production. The policy was designed to strengthen Canada’s cultural sector and ensure foreign platforms invested in the country from which they profit.

But after intense pressure from US officials, American tech companies, and Trump’s trade representatives—who called the levy “discriminatory”—Carney reversed course. He directed the CRTC to rewrite the rules, effectively scrapping the levy and replacing it with a $600‑million annual federal subsidy. Carney framed the decision as an affordability measure, claiming the levy would raise subscription costs for Canadians. But critics immediately recognized the move for what it was: another concession to Washington in the middle of Trump’s trade war with Canada.

The reversal shocked Canada’s cultural sector, blindsided Liberal MPs, and signaled to foreign corporations that Canadian cultural policy is negotiable whenever U.S. pressure is applied. It was a textbook example of Carney’s governing style—rhetorical toughness paired with policy surrender.

Avi Lewis represents the politics many Canadians want

Lewis’s victory in the NDP leadership race signals a profound shift in the Canadian political landscape, as is the NDP’s rise in the polls. Canadians are rejecting the politics of fear and capitulation and instead choosing a politics of empathy, solidarity, and material improvement.

The truth is that Lewis understands what Canadians want: affordable housing built for people, not investors. Affordable groceries in a market dominated by corporate giants; affordable internet, data, and phone services in a country where telecom monopolies extract some of the highest fees in the world; a government that stands up to corporate power, not one that bends to it; a foreign policy rooted in human rights, not one shaped by the interests of states like Israel whose actions violate international law with impunity.

Lewis’s politics are grounded in the daily realities of Canadians who are struggling to pay rent, feed their families, and stay connected in an increasingly digital world. He speaks to the majority, not the elite minority.

A new kind of leadership

Lewis offers something Canadians have been denied for years—a politics of courage and compassion. He does not posture. He does not perform toughness while quietly capitulating behind closed doors. He does not weaponize anger or fear. Instead, he offers a politics rooted in human dignity.

He has shown he can empathize with people’s struggles and articulate a vision of Canada that is not defined by corporate interests or foreign pressure. He has demonstrated that he understands the basic needs of the vast majority of Canadians—and that he is willing to fight for them.

This is why his rise to lead the NDP matters. It is not simply a victory for the party’s left wing. It is a declaration that Canadians are ready for a new political era.

The Canadian public has shifted

The old political class still insists that Canadians are fundamentally centrist, cautious, and resistant to bold change. But Lewis’s victory proves otherwise. Canadians are tired of being told that they must accept corporate greed, rising costs, and foreign interference as inevitable facts of life. They are tired of being governed by people who do not understand them.

Lewis’s election is a wake‑up call—not just for the NDP, but for the entire country. It shows that Canadians are ready to embrace a politics that prioritizes human dignity over corporate profit, sovereignty over submission, and solidarity over division.

Carney and Poilievre offer Canadians politics as it has been for most of Canada’s existence—alternating between two parties which have both shifted to the right of the political spectrum. Lewis offers a politics of hope, and Canadians are making it clear which they prefer.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Carney showed Canadians his weakness by paying “ransom” to Trump over Gordie Howe Bridge opening

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 21:02:32 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

Mark Carney’s government has now provided the clearest evidence yet that Canada’s “elbows‑up” strategy, which he promoted after becoming prime minister, is over. The prime minister who promised Canadians that their country would no longer be pushed around or intimidated by the United States under Donald Trump has instead delivered a humiliating concession over the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge—an infrastructure project that Canada fully funded, managed, and built. And yet, when the moment of truth arrived, Carney folded.

To understand the scale of this capitulation, Canadians need to revisit the history of the bridge itself. The Gordie Howe International Bridge was conceived as a long‑overdue modernization of the Windsor–Detroit crossing, a corridor responsible for on average US$360 million in daily trade between Canada and the US. The existing 96-year-old Ambassador Bridge—owned by the Moroun family, a private US business dynasty—had long been a choke point, a monopoly crossing plagued by aging infrastructure and political interference.

In 2012, after years of obstruction from the Ambassador Bridge owners, Canada and the Obama administration signed a binational agreement, that began construction of a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit. Under the arrangement Canada would pay the full cost of the new bridge—$6.4 billion—and in return Canada would collect 100% of toll revenues until its investment was recouped. Only after Canada recovered its costs would profits be split 50/50. It was a fair deal, a rational deal, and a deal that was supposed to protect Canadian taxpayers.

Then Donald Trump entered the picture.

According to multiple investigative reports, the owners of the Ambassador Bridge donated $1.5 million to a Trump‑aligned MAGA PAC shortly before the Trump administration began obstructing the bridge’s opening with claims of a bad deal for the US. The timing was not subtle and the intent was not hidden. The Ambassador Bridge owners wanted to delay or derail the Gordie Howe Bridge, and they were willing to pay whatever it took to do it.

Being the corrupt, transactional thug that he is Trump delivered.

The Trump administration signalled that the bridge would not open unless Canada renegotiated the financial terms of the original deal. In other words: the United States demanded a ransom, and Mark Carney paid it.

The new arrangement—forced on Canada under threat of indefinite delay—hands the United States benefits it never earned and concessions it never paid for. The US contributed nothing to the bridge’s construction. Yet Carney agreed to a deal that gives Americans a share of profits, a veto over toll increases of more than 10%, and access to a US‑only economic development fund financed by toll revenue.

The specifics of the “ransom” Canada paid include:

15‑Year Profit Sharing: Canada still collects toll revenue, but 50% of net profits for the first 15 years will be diverted to a US regional development fund—money to which Canadians will not have access;
US Toll Governance: Canada must obtain US consent to raise tolls more than 10% or lower them below regional averages. In other words, Canada no longer controls the pricing of the bridge it paid for.
US‑Only Reinvestment: The diverted profits will be spent exclusively on American infrastructure and economic projects. In other words, Canadians will fund it but only Americans will spend it.

This is not partnership, or diplomacy, or respect between two sovereign nations. It is extortion and blatant gangsterism. And Carney’s response to Trump’s thuggery was not “elbows up.” It was “hands up.”

The prime minister who once declared that Canada would no longer be intimidated has now demonstrated the opposite. Canada can be taken into a back room by a gangster‑style US president and beaten until it agrees to whatever Washington demands. Trump threatened to block the opening of a bridge Canada built, and Carney surrendered.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern we have seen since Trump returned to office, one where Trump threatens and Canada capitulates.

Carney has repeatedly shown weakness in the face of US pressure. His government’s digital services legislation—originally intended to ensure fair taxation of tech giants like Amazon, Google and Meta operating in Canada—was rescinded on June 30, 2025 in order to restart trade talks with the US. The result was that Canada gained little given that trade talks are still effectively halted. It conceded much to the detriment of Canadians, and once again demonstrated that US threats and intimidation can bend Ottawa’s spine.

The Gordie Howe Bridge fiasco is not an isolated embarrassment—it is the clearest, most visible symptom of a deeper structural failure. Carney’s decisions have not fortified Canada’s sovereignty in its relationship with the United States; they have steadily eroded it. No matter how loudly the Carney government advertises its other international “wins,” the reality is unavoidable: Canada is emerging from these confrontations with the Trump administration weaker, more vulnerable, and more dependent on the goodwill of its single largest trading partner.

Consider the symbolism. The bridge was meant to be a triumph of Canadian initiative, a strategic investment in national economic security. Instead, it has become a monument to American coercion and Canadian capitulation. The country that paid for the bridge now needs permission to operate it from the country that paid nothing.

Carney’s defenders will argue that the deal was necessary to avoid further delays. They will say that opening the bridge is vital for trade, for jobs, for the economy. And they are right about the importance of the bridge. But they are wrong about the price paid.

Canada could have stood firm. Canada could have insisted that the original agreement be honoured, and even sued in US and Canadian courts. Canada could have refused to renegotiate under duress. Instead, Carney rewarded extortion with concessions.

The consequences will echo far beyond Windsor and Detroit.

First, Canada has signaled to the United States that bullying and extortion works. If Trump—or any future US administration—wants something from Canada, they now know the formula: threaten economic disruption, apply political pressure, and wait for Ottawa to fold.

Second, Canada has undermined its own credibility. A country that cannot defend a $6.4‑billion investment it fully funded cannot credibly claim to be a sovereign equal in North American negotiations.

Third, Canada has set a dangerous precedent for future infrastructure projects. If the US can extract concessions on a bridge it did not pay for, what will stop it from doing the same on pipelines, rail corridors, or energy grids?

Carney’s failure of resolve isn’t merely a political misstep. It is a direct threat to Canada’s national security posture.

This nation’s prosperity depends on cross‑border infrastructure. If that infrastructure becomes a bargaining chip for US political actors, Canada’s economic future becomes hostage to American domestic politics. And if Canada’s prime minister cannot stand up to a US president who openly uses extortion as a negotiating tactic, then Canada is not negotiating—it is submitting.

The Gordie Howe Bridge should have been a symbol of Canadian strength. Instead, it has become a symbol of Canadian vulnerability.

Carney promised Canadians that he would lead with strength. He promised that Canada would no longer be pushed around. He promised an “elbows‑up” foreign policy. But when Donald Trump came knocking, Carney didn’t put his elbows up. He raised his hands in submission. And for that Canada has paid the price, and will continue to for decades.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

The world’s most dangerous nation is Canada’s southern neighbour, and it is a threat to Canada

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:00:35 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

The United States is the most war‑embracing and dangerous nation in the world. Its record over the last 35 years—and many decades before that—makes this impossible to deny. No other country has launched more wars, bombed more nations, imposed more devastating sanctions, or destabilized more societies. Western politicians insist that China, Russia, or Iran threaten global peace. But the historical evidence points in only one direction—the greatest threat to world peace is the United States itself.

And other than the nations the US attacked, the country that stands to lose the most if the US goes rogue is Canada—America’s closest neighbour, largest trading partner, and most economically dependent ally. Canada’s prosperity, sovereignty, and security are tied to a declining superpower whose foreign policy has become increasingly reckless, militarized, and unpredictable.

This is not hyperbole, its reality.

Bill Clinton: The quiet architect of catastrophe

The calamity that the world faces today began in 1990s following the Persian Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, a time when the US was the only global superpower, a time often remembered as a peaceful decade. In reality, the 90s were the prelude to the global violence that took place in subsequent decades. Under President Bill Clinton, the United States imposed one of the most devastating sanctions regimes in modern history on Iraq. These sanctions crippled Iraq’s economy, destroyed its infrastructure, and led to widespread malnutrition and disease. UNICEF estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqi children died as a result.

When asked in a 1996 60 Minutes interview whether the deaths of half a million children were “worth it,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.” It was a moment of moral clarity where the vile mindset of senior American officials was revealed for what it was—one where: Washington openly admitted that mass civilian death, and those of children no less, was an acceptable cost of American power.

In 1998, Clinton also ordered the bombing of Sudan’s Al‑Shifa pharmaceutical plant, claiming—without evidence—that it was producing chemical weapons. In reality, the plant produced 50–60% of Sudan’s medicines, including treatments for malaria and tuberculosis, and its destruction plunged Sudan into a public health crisis that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in subsequent years.

These were not isolated mistakes. They were early signals of a country that had embraced militarism as a permanent operating principle.

George W. Bush is a war criminal shielded by power

George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan which led to a 20 year war and occupation, and its war o Iraq reshaped the Middle East and South Asia. The Iraq War—launched based on lies about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)—was illegal under international law and lacked United Nations authorization. By the international legal standards applied to other leaders, Bush should have been tried and convicted at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching a war of aggression, and as the leader of a nation that committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The consequences of the war were catastrophic. It is estimated that up to a million Iraqis were killed or died from the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Iraqi society. Millions more were displaced, and a region was destabilized for generations. Iraq had long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, and its destruction removed a major political counterweight to Israeli regional ambitions. Israel had openly identified Iraq as a strategic threat and quietly encouraged US confrontation with Saddam Hussein.

Yet Bush has never faced accountability for the destruction caused by his policies. His war crimes have been sanitized through political power, media complicity, the passage of time, and the myth of American exceptionalism.

Barrack Obama: The drone executioner

Under Barack Obama, US warfare expanded dramatically. Obama did not merely inherit Bush’s war machine and continue operating it, he refined it, technologized it, and made it more lethal. Central to this transformation was the massive enlargement of the CIA’s drone assassination program.

Military drone warfare intensified in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, turning these countries into unacknowledged killing fields. American missiles struck homes, weddings, funerals, marketplaces, and entire villages. Independent investigations repeatedly found that the vast majority of those killed were civilians, including children. The Obama administration even adopted a policy that counted any “military‑aged male” in a strike zone as a “combatant” unless proven otherwise—a bureaucratic trick that erased civilian casualties from official records.

These were extrajudicial executions carried out across sovereign nations with which the United States was not formally at war. By any reasonable standard, Barack Obama is a war criminal, as is Hillary Clinton, who championed and defended these operations. Senior US officials who designed and expanded the drone program belong in international tribunals, not lecture halls or corporate boards.

The fact that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 is one of the most grotesque ironies of the century. Based on his record in office his prize should have been rescinded long ago.

The destruction of Libya

Libya stands out as one of the most consequential and destructive interventions of the 21st century. Obama and Clinton sold the NATO bombing campaign to the UN Security Council as a humanitarian mission in support of Arab Spring protestors. In reality, it was a plan to destroy a functioning state, one which plunged Libya into civil war, and opened the door to slave markets, and effectively made it into a failed state.

Libya was not bombed simply because of the Arab Spring. It was bombed because Muammar Gaddafi threatened Western financial dominance. Gaddafi had proposed a Pan‑African Gold Dinar, a currency backed by gold rather than the US dollar. His plan included: an African central bank; an African investment bank; an African monetary fund, a unified African military, and a common African passport.

These institutions would have reduced Western financial and political control and allowed African nations to trade oil and other natural resources based on the intrinsic value of gold. Crucially, Gaddafi’s plan threatened the petrodollar system, which underpins American financial hegemony.

Libya was also a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause, and Israel had long viewed Libya as a regional adversary and quietly supported Western pressure against Gaddafi.

By any reasonable standard, Obama, Clinton, and the leaders of NATO nations that participated in the bombing are unindicted war criminals.

Syria and Iran were targeted for supporting Palestine

Syria and Iran have long stood outside the orbit of American and Israeli geopolitical control. Both nations have been consistent, vocal, and material supporters of the Palestinian cause for decades. And in Washington’s worldview—shaped heavily by Israeli lobbying—this alone has been enough to mark them for punishment.

Syria became a battlefield for US airstrikes under Barack Obama, with bombings justified under the banner of fighting ISIS and supporting Arab Spring protesters in that country. But the reality was far more complex. The United States armed and supported militant groups, imposed sweeping sanctions, and carried out airstrikes that devastated civilian infrastructure. The Costs of War Project at Brown University documents tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Syria attributable to US military operations, sanctions‑driven deprivation, and the cascading effects of regional destabilization.

Syria’s long‑standing support for Palestinian resistance movements made it a target for Israeli pressure, with Israel openly advocating for US confrontation with Damascus, viewing Syria’s alliance with Hezbollah and Iran as a strategic threat. Washington obliged, turning Syria into another front in its endless war doctrine.

Iran is the ultimate target of US–Israeli aggression

Iran has been under US sanctions for more than four decades—sanctions that have crippled its economy, restricted access to medicine, and harmed millions of civilians. These sanctions are not defensive measures but instruments of economic warfare. They are designed to break Iran’s political will by destabilize its society and forcing regime change.

In recent years, the US–Israeli campaign against Iran has escalated dramatically. The pattern is unmistakable:

· On June 2025 Israel launched strikes deep inside Iran, targeting infrastructure and military sites;

· From February 2026 onward the United States joined Israel in coordinated attacks, striking Iranian facilities, air defenses, and civilian areas;

· These attacks were carried out without UN authorization, making them illegal under international law;

· Western governments refused to condemn the strikes, revealing a profound moral bankruptcy at the heart of the so‑called “rules‑based international order.”

Iran’s crime, in the eyes of Washington and Tel Aviv, is not terrorism, nuclear ambition, or regional aggression. Iran’s crime is supporting Palestine, resisting Israeli expansionism, and refusing to submit to US geopolitical control.

The human toll: A region bleeding from US wars

The Costs of War Project provides the most authoritative accounting of the devastation:

Iraq: Over 300,000 direct deaths, and more than 1 million indirect deaths.
Afghanistan: Over 176,000 direct deaths, and more than 1 million indirect deaths.
Pakistan: Tens of thousands killed by US drone strikes and counterterror operations.
Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria: Hundreds of thousands more killed through US airstrikes, proxy wars, sanctions, and destabilization.

Across the region, the total death toll attributable to US wars since 9/11 exceeds 4.6 million people—a figure Brown University describes as “conservative.”

Iran now stands on the brink of becoming the next Iraq, the next Libya, the next Syria—another nation shattered because it refused to bow to American and Israeli power.

The US–Israeli attack on Iran—both in 2025 and since February 2026— is illegal, unprovoked, and geopolitically reckless. It exposes the West’s hypocrisy: preaching human rights while committing war crimes. It reveals that the “rules‑based order” is a myth—an ideological shield for Western militarism. And it shows that the US is willing to ignite a regional war that could kill millions, destabilize global markets, and plunge the world into crisis.

Canada: The neighbour living beside a volcano

Canada is the country most economically intertwined with the United Staten, with Canada’s manufacturing sector exporting nearly 75% of Canadian exports go to the US—energy, agricultural produce, steel, aluminum, manufactured goods, and supply chains are deeply dependent on the American market. If the United States ever turned its economic or military power against Canada, the consequences would be catastrophic. Canada has received only a taste of that aggression with Donald Trump’s tariff war.

However, if the US launched a full‑scale economic assault—tariffs, sanctions, border closures, or financial pressure—would devastate Canada’s economy within months. If such an assault were combined with military action, Canada would be unable to resist. The Canadian Armed Forces, professional and dedicated though they are, are simply not built to withstand the overwhelming force of the US military. Canada would be routed in weeks, if not days, if Washington ever chose to attack.

This is not speculation. It is history.

The last time Canada had a formal defence plan for responding to a US invasion was in the 1920s and 1930s: Defence Scheme No. 1, a strategy that involved pre‑emptively invading parts of the United States to slow an American advance. The plan was eventually abandoned because it was suicidal.

More recently, Canadian military planners quietly modelled a Taliban‑style insurgency as the only viable response to a hypothetical US invasion. The Canadian government even acknowledged this modelling publicly. Analysts have noted that both countries historically planned for conflict scenarios, though Canada’s options have always been limited.

If the United States continues down its current path of militarism, economic coercion, and geopolitical recklessness, Canada will not simply feel the shockwaves—it will be struck by the full force of the blast. No other country on Earth is as exposed to American instability as Canada. Every major artery of Canadian prosperity—trade, energy, manufacturing, agriculture, finance, supply chains—runs directly through the US. When Washington shakes, Ottawa trembles. When Washington lashes out, Canada gets bruised and bleeds. And if Washington goes rogue, Canada will become the first and most vulnerable casualty.

Canada must recognize that the greatest threat to its future is not a distant authoritarian power—it is the increasingly unstable superpower next door. If the United States continues down its current trajectory—endless wars of aggression abroad, economic blackmail against allies, and a foreign policy that tries to control and dominate other nations—Canada will be the first nation to suffer the consequences. The question is no longer whether Canada is vulnerable. The question is whether Canada is prepared to confront the reality that its greatest existential threat comes not from across an ocean, but from across a border, and Canadian leaders have to ask themselves are we prepared for this scenario, and what is the price Canadians are willing to pay to defend ourselves.

Anti-Palestinian racism in Canada: The Nakba exhibit as a national test of truth and power

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:00:33 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

The opening of Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) on June 27, 2026 marked a watershed moment in Canadian public memory. For Palestinian Canadians—many of whom contributed family artifacts, testimonies, and archival materials—the exhibit represented something long denied to them—recognition that their history of ethnic cleansing is part of Canada’s human rights story, not a political controversy to be managed. Yet the ferocious backlash from Zionist Jewish organizations and the political pressure exerted on federal officials revealed a deeper truth—that anti‑Palestinian racism is very deeply embedded in Canadian institutions, shaping whose suffering is acknowledged and made public and whose is erased.

The controversy surrounding the exhibit did not emerge spontaneously. It exposed a long‑standing pattern in which Palestinian narratives are treated as dangerous, conditional, or illegitimate—while Zionist organizations assert a proprietary right to define how Palestinians and their history may be represented. The Nakba exhibit thus became more than a cultural installation. It became a test of whether Canada is willing to uphold truth, justice, and equality in the face of political interference and racialized suppression.

A campaign to silence Palestinian memory

Opposition to the exhibit began even before its doors opened. Several Zionist organizations—including the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg, and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)— publicly attacked the exhibit, claiming it lacked “balance” and failed to include their perspectives. Heritage Minister Mark Miller even demanded that certain “omissions” and “errors” be “rectified.” His specific complaint was the absence of references to Hamas (an organization that didn’t exist until the early 1990s), echoing the talking points of those lobbying to undermine the exhibit. His intervention signaled a willingness to revisit the museum’s independence and to reframe Palestinian narratives through a Zionist lens.

The implications are unmistakable: Palestinians, whose lived experiences form the foundation of the exhibit, are not considered legitimate stakeholders in telling their own history. Instead, Zionist organizations asserted that they were the ones “directly impacted” by an exhibit documenting Palestinians’ history of dispossession, and pressured Miller to intervene.

CIJA escalated its objections, accusing the museum of “engaging extreme political activists” and failing to consult “communities directly impacted by its content.” This framing suggested that Palestinian testimony is inherently suspect unless validated by Zionist and Jewish voices—voices representing the very ideology responsible for the ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians in 1947-48.

The hostility escalated further when Shurat HaDin, an Israel‑based legal organization, threatened legal action against the CMHR, claiming that the exhibit “erases Jewish history” and “delegitimizes Jewish self‑determination.” Such accusations rest on a deeper racialized logic: the presumption that Palestinian narratives are inherently destabilizing to Jewish identity. Beneath the surface, this framing implies that the very act of Palestinians recounting their history, indeed, their existence itself, is a provocation.

Asymmetry of memory: The Holocaust vs. Palestinian erasure

The material imbalance between Jewish and Palestinian narratives at the CMHR is stark. The Holocaust exhibit occupies more than 4,500 square feet, while the Nakba exhibit occupies less than three percent of that space. Canadian governments also funds three standalone Holocaust museums—in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver—each dedicated to ensuring that Nazi crimes are remembered, studied, and taught.

When those institutions were created, no one demanded that Nazis or Nazi sympathizers be consulted to provide “context or “balance” for those institutions. Yet in the case of the Nakba exhibit, Zionist and Jewish organizations insisted that their perspectives be built into the curatorial process. This asymmetry exposes a deeper truth in Canada—that Holocaust memory is treated as unquestionable moral ground, while Palestinian memory is treated as dangerous and conditional.

The is no argument that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, commemorated annually, and memorialized. The massive amount of cultural and academic knowledge that has been produced since World War Two through museums, monuments, films, and an enormous body of academic research, makes it one of the most studied and memorialized events in modern history. But the contrast with Palestinian history is profound. The Nakba—during which more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and thousands massacred by Jewish terrorist militias and subsequently by the Israeli army in 1948—has received a very small fraction of the institutional attention devoted to the Holocaust. There are no publicly funded Nakba museums, no national commemorations, and no high school curricula dedicated to Palestinian history.

The CMHR exhibit is the first of its kind in a major Canadian institution. Its modest scale is in contrast to the enormous outrage it provoked within segments of the Canadian Jewish community, demonstrating that Palestinian suffering is not merely ignored or forgotten, it is actively suppressed.

A systemic pattern of anti‑Palestinian racism

The reaction to the Nakba exhibit aligns with findings from major studies on anti‑Palestinian racism in Canada. The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) April 2022 report defines anti‑Palestinian racism as systemic discrimination that includes:

denying Palestinian existence, history, and identity;
suppressing or punishing Palestinian narratives;
portraying Palestinians as inherently violent or antisemitic;
erasing the legitimacy of Palestinian suffering.

Research by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) similarly documents widespread patterns of media bias, political suppression, and institutional hostility toward Palestinian advocacy.

The backlash against the Nakba exhibit is a textbook example of these dynamics. Legacy Jewish organizations’ insistence that Palestinian narratives be “balanced” with Zionist perspectives—especially in a human rights museum—reflects a racialized hierarchy in which Palestinian testimony is treated as incomplete or dangerous unless validated by those who helped produce the conditions of Palestinian dispossession.

This is not neutral “context.” It is a demand that Palestinians be denied the right to narrate their own history.

Zionist Organizations and Supremacist Logic

Zionist organizations’ efforts to shut down, dilute, or reframe the Nakba exhibit reveal the depth of anti‑Palestinian racism embedded in their political advocacy. Their objections were never rooted in concerns about historical accuracy, and instead were driven by a determination to preserve a narrative in which Palestinians appear only as footnotes to a triumphant story of Jewish nation‑building in colonized Palestine.

Any attempt to centre Palestinian experiences of dispossession is treated as a threat—not because the facts are in dispute, but because acknowledging those facts destabilizes the ideological framework these organizations defend.

CIJA’s claim that the exhibit could “contribute to discrimination, bullying and even assault targeting Jewish students” is a striking example of how Palestinian narratives are stigmatized. The suggestion that acknowledging Palestinian suffering is inherently dangerous to Jews reflects a supremacist worldview in which Palestinians are seen not as victims of human rights violations but as inherent threats to the rights of others by their mere existence.

Similarly, Shurat HaDin’s assertion that the exhibit “delegitimizes Jewish self‑determination” reveals a belief that Palestinian history must be suppressed to protect Jewish identity. This is not political disagreement; it is supremacist logic.

Zionism, as practiced by these organizations, functions as a supremacist ideology—one that justifies the displacement, erasure, and dehumanization of Palestinians. The reaction to the Nakba exhibit demonstrates that these organizations are not defending historical accuracy but rather a political ideology that cannot tolerate the legitimacy of Palestinian narratives.

Institutional Power and Racialized Suppression

The resignation of Mark Berlin—the museum’s only Jewish trustee—became a flashpoint. Berlin accused the CMHR of “institutional anti‑Zionism” and denounced the exhibit as “curation by omission.” His departure illustrated how deeply Zionist ideology is expected to be accommodated in Canadian institutions, and where any attempt to tell stories about Palestinian suffering is swiftly recast as anti‑Jewish, biased, or dangerous.

This reflexive reframing does not arise from evidence. It arises from a political project that treats Palestinian memory as inherently dangerous to Jews and Palestinian voices as needing correction, containment, or counter‑narration.

Canada’s Human Rights Test

The Nakba exhibit is Canada’s human rights test. It asks whether Palestinians can exist in Canadian public memory without being filtered through Zionist ideology. It asks whether Palestinian suffering can be acknowledged without apology, without demands for “context” from those hostile to Palestinian existence, and without political interference.

Canada’s approach to historical memory makes the imbalance unmistakable. The country has invested enormous resources in memorializing the Holocaust but almost none in acknowledging the Zionist Jewish violence and atrocities that accompanied the creation of Israel through Palestinian dispossession. The CMHR exhibit is the first major attempt to acknowledge this history—and even that modest effort has been met with outrage, lobbying, and demands for ideological correction.

This opposition the CMHR display is purely political. The fury directed at the museum for daring to tell Palestinian stories demonstrates that the erasure of Palestinians is not a passive omission but an active project in Canada—one sustained by powerful Zionist organizations that insist Palestinian suffering must be filtered through their ideological lens.

If Canada is ever to claim a genuine commitment to human rights, it must confront this reality directly. It must reject supremacist ideologies that seek to silence or reshape Palestinian narratives. And it must affirm, unequivocally, the right of Palestinians to narrate their own history—without permission from those who helped produce their dispossession.

Only then can Canada begin to live up to the principles it claims to uphold.

1000 days of genocide (Part 3): A world after the Gaza Genocide

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 12:03:15 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

A version of this article can also be found on Rabble.ca.

A thousand days of genocide in Gaza has not only exposed the brutality of Israeli policy and the complicity of Western governments, it has also revealed the machinery that made such violence possible, and part of that machinery is the propaganda apparatus needed to sell genocide to Western publics. No genocide in history has unfolded without such a system to sanitize the violence and dehumanize the victims. In Rwanda, it was Radio Mille Collines. In Nazi Germany, it was Der Stürmer. In Gaza, it has been Western news media.

Across Canada, the United States, and Europe, major outlets softened or erased the reality of Israeli atrocities. Canadian networks—CBC, CTV, Global—and the country’s major newspapers consistently reproduced Israeli government narratives while obscuring Palestinian suffering. They refused to call genocide by its name. They framed mass killing as “conflict,” deliberate starvation as “shortages,” and ethnic cleansing as “evacuation.” This was not a matter of journalistic misjudgment or unconscious bias. It was media complicity. It was the manufacturing of public consent for atrocity, the ideological scaffolding that allowed political leaders to act without accountability. Media executives, editors, and owners bear moral responsibility for this distortion of reality—and if justice ever prevails, they may one day bear legal responsibility as well.

While Western governments and media shielded Israel, the global South took a radically different path. South Africa led the genocide case at the International Court of Justice, invoking the very legal framework the West once claimed as its moral legacy. Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and others condemned Israel’s actions without hesitation. Millions marched across Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America protesting and showing an unmistakable divide—one where the West defended genocide, while the global South and those Westerners with a conscience defended international law. This moment marks a profound geopolitical realignment. The Gaza genocide has accelerated the decline of Western influence and the rise of a multipolar world in which Western moral authority no longer carries the weight it once did. Nations that once deferred to Western leadership have seen enough.

The consequences for Western legitimacy are severe and irreversible. The genocide has shattered the West’s credibility on human rights, revealing that its commitment is conditional, racialized, and politically selective. It has exposed the hollowness of its claims to uphold international law, which it seemingly applies only when convenient and discards the moment it threatens Western interests or those of an ally. It has undermined the integrity of Western democracy, as leaders ignored overwhelming public support for a ceasefire, criminalized anti-genocide protests, smeared human rights activists, and attempted to silence dissent. In doing so, it has destroyed any remaining claim to moral leadership on the global stage.

Rebuilding any semblance of a moral order requires accountability—not symbolic gestures, not rhetorical condemnations, but real consequences for nations that commit horrific crimes. That means broad sanctions on Israel, comprehensive arms embargoes, prosecutions at the International Criminal Court, enforcement of the International Court of Justice’s rulings, universal‑jurisdiction cases against perpetrators, reparations for Palestinians, and political consequences for Western leaders who enabled genocide. Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and other nations must all face a legal and moral reckoning for their complicity in genocide. Without accountability, the international system will remain what Gaza has revealed it to be, a structure designed to protect the powerful and abandon the vulnerable.

Yet despite the devastation, Palestinians remain resolute, still holding fast to the dream of freedom from Israeli oppression and occupation. Israel has destroyed their homes, schools, hospitals, archives, museums, mosques, and churches. It has tried to erase Palestinian culture, history, and memory. It has targeted intellectuals, artists, journalists, and educators in an effort to extinguish the very sources of cultural continuity. But it has failed. Instead of erasing Palestinian consciousness, it has strengthened it—creating not only a generation of Palestinians more determined than ever to assert their identity, but an international community of supporters who refuse to let their struggle be forgotten.

Palestinian identity endures through oral history, literature, art, music, resistance, and global solidarity. A people cannot be erased as long as they continue to proclaim their existence and tell their story. The resilience of Palestinians—under conditions that would have shattered most societies—stands as one of the most extraordinary expressions of collective endurance in modern history.

A thousand days of genocide in Gaza have revealed the truth about our world. One where Israel has committed the crime of crimes, the pinnacle of contemporary evil. Western governments have enabled it, Western media have sold it, and international institutions have failed to stop it. The global South has risen in moral leadership, while Palestinians have shown extraordinary courage and resilience. The genocide in Gaza is not just a crime against a people—it is a crime against the idea of humanity itself.

The world that emerges from this moment will not resemble the world that existed before it. The West’s moral authority is gone. The human rights system it built is broken. The international legal order it claimed to steward is discredited beyond repair. And Palestinians—despite unimaginable suffering, trauma, and the erasure of entire family lines—remain unbowed. Their endurance has become a moral indictment of the global powers that armed their oppressor and a testament to the human capacity to resist annihilation. History will remember who acted, who remained silent, and who chose complicity over humanity. It will remember the governments and politicians that defended a genocidal state, the media institutions that sanitized its crimes, and the millions who marched in defiance of both. It will remember who stood with the oppressed when the cost of doing so was high.

The path forward begins with the truth—unvarnished, unfiltered, and unsoftened. The truth of what happened in Gaza. The truth of who ordered it, who carried out the orders, who enabled it, and the truth of how the world allowed it to continue long after the scale of the atrocity was undeniable. That truth must be followed by accountability, real consequences for those who committed, supported, financed, or justified genocide. Accountability for the political leaders who armed the killing, for the institutions that normalized it, and for the states that obstructed justice at every turn. And it must end with justice for the thousands upon thousands of Palestinian dead, for the families erased from the civil registry, for the tens of thousands of children left orphaned, maimed, and traumatized. It must end with justice for a people who have endured dispossession, occupation, apartheid, and mass killing for generations—a people who are, by every measure, the most persecuted minority of the modern era, not just in the land of historic Palestine but also in the diaspora in Western nations.

Without truth, accountability, and justice, Gaza will not be the last genocide. It will be the template for other megalomaniacal leaders to follow. It will mark the beginning of a world in which the powerful kill with impunity and the international community looks away. A world where human rights are a slogan, not a standard. A world where law is a weapon wielded by the strong against the weak. The stakes could not be higher. What happens after the Gaza genocide is finally stopped will determine the moral trajectory of the twenty‑first century—whether humanity chooses a future grounded in justice and universal rights, or whether it descends into an era defined by brutality, impunity, and the normalization of mass atrocity.

We must ensure that this moment leads us toward a more just world, not a darker one. Gaza must become the turning point, a beacon, the moment when humanity finally confronts the systems that made genocide possible and chooses to build something better. The world after Gaza is unwritten, and it is ours to shape.

1000 days of genocide (Part 2): The collapse of Western moral order

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:02:32 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

As the world marked a thousand days of the Gaza genocide today the question is no longer whether Western governments have failed to uphold international law or the principles of justice and equality among peoples. The real question—the one that will define the 21st century—is what it means for the global order when the world’s most powerful democracies enable genocide in real time, with full knowledge, full visibility, and full capacity to stop it.

The genocide in Gaza has not only exposed the brutality and inhumanity of Israel and its leadership, it has detonated the foundations of the moral order built on the ashes of World War Two and the Holocaust that the West claimed to embody. For eight decades, Western nations insisted that the horrors of the Holocaust had transformed global ethics. They built institutions—the United Nations, the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC)—designed to prevent future atrocities. They taught generations of children that the world had learned its lesson, that “Never Again” was a universal commitment rather than a slogan.

Gaza has revealed that this lesson either was never learned, or if it was it has been abandoned. And it has shown that Western governments, including Canada’s, have abandoned even the pretense of universal human rights.

The genocide in Gaza is “worse” than the Holocaust in one devastating sense. It is happening in full view of the world, livestreamed, documented, and preventable—yet allowed to continue. The world of the 1930s and 1940s did not have instant communications, or international legal mechanisms capable of intervening in real time. The world of 2023–2026 does. And yet Western governments chose complicity. This is not a failure of intelligence. It is a failure of morality and of humanity.

It seems the West’s commitment to “Never Again” was never universal. It was selective, conditional, and politically instrumental. It applied when the perpetrators were enemies, not allies; when the victims were white, not brown; European, not Palestinian or Arab; Christian or Jewish, not Muslim. The moral authority the West claimed after 1945 has evaporated. The world has seen the truth. Western humanity is an illusion, a performance that collapses the moment it conflicts with geopolitical or economic interests.

International law as a system of Western power

The Genocide Convention imposes three obligations on signatory states: to prevent genocide, to punish genocide, and to refrain from aiding or abetting genocide. The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and other Western democracies have violated all three. These are the nations that helped design the post‑1945 legal order, that claimed to be its guardians, and that possess the political, economic, and military leverage to enforce it. Yet when confronted with a genocide carried out by an ally, they abandoned the law entirely and behaved like outlaws. Their failure is not passive. It is an active and deliberate dereliction of duty that exposes how deeply the international system is shaped by power rather than principles of justice.

The UN Charter prohibits aggression, annexation, collective punishment, the targeting of civilians, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. Israel has violated each of these on multiple occasions since 1948, and is currently doing so in the south of Lebanon. And rather than legal, political and economic sanctions, Western governments have responded with weapons, diplomatic protection, and political support, essentially allowing Israel to do what it wants. The Geneva Conventions prohibit starvation of civilians, attacks on hospitals and schools, assaults on refugee camps, and forced displacement. Israel has committed all these crimes openly with impunity, and its Western allies have done nothing to stop it.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant—an unprecedented step that should have galvanized Western democracies to defend the very system of international justice they claim to uphold. Instead, Canada and its allies attacked the Court itself, undermining its legitimacy, threatening its prosecutors and judges, and even imposing sanctions on ICC officials for daring to pursue accountability. Israel’s own security establishment joined in, with the former head of Mossad reportedly threatening the ICC’s chief prosecutor in an effort to pressure the Court into dropping a war crimes investigation.

The message is unmistakable. For Western governments, international law is not a universal framework but a weapon wielded selectively against nations it wishes to control or punish. It binds the weak, never the powerful. It restrains adversaries, never allies. The architecture of global justice collapses the moment it threatens those with real geopolitical influence globally.

Canada’s complicity: A case study in moral abdication

If Canada were genuinely committed to international law as it has so often claimed over the years, its actions would have been clear and decisive. It would have imposed a full arms embargo on Israel, suspended the Canada–Israel Free Trade Agreement, sanctioned Israeli political and military leaders responsible for atrocities, supported South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, expelled the Israeli ambassador, recalled its own ambassador from Tel Aviv, and initiated universal‑jurisdiction prosecutions against those implicated in genocidal crimes in Gaza, including Canadians who have travelled to Israel to join the Israeli military since 2023. None of these measures are radical. They are the minimum legal obligations of any state party to the Genocide Convention when confronted with a nation committing genocide.

Instead, Canada retreated into symbolic gestures and empty rhetoric. Both the Trudeau government and the Carney government failed—not because they lacked legal tools, but because they lacked courage and integrity. They feared the political cost of confronting the powerful pro‑Israel lobby in Canada that exerts enormous influence over Canadian foreign policy. They placed strategic alliances above human life. They treated Palestinian suffering as something to be managed rather than confronted. Their decisions revealed a worldview in which Palestinians were not regarded as fully human, and therefore not entitled to the same urgency, protection, or moral consideration afforded to others.

The contrast with Canada’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposes this double standard with brutal clarity. Canada acted decisively for Ukraine—sanctions, diplomatic isolation, military support—and even declared Russia’s actions “genocide,” despite the absence of consensus among genocide scholars. Yet when confronted with overwhelming expert consensus that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, Canada refused to use the word at all. It acted decisively for white Christian Europeans and symbolically for brown and primarily Muslim Palestinians.

This is not neutrality. It is complicity.

The end of Western legitimacy

The genocide in Gaza has torn away the last shreds of the illusion that the so‑called “rules‑based international order” is grounded in law, principle, or universal human rights. It has exposed that order for what it has always been: a hierarchy of power masquerading as morality, designed and enforced by Western states to protect their interests, not humanity. In Gaza, the West did not merely fail to uphold its professed values—it abandoned them with breathtaking clarity. Canada, the United States, and Europe watched an entire people starved, bombed, forcibly displaced, and massacred, and instead of intervening chose to arm the perpetrators, shield them diplomatically, and sabotage every attempt at accountability. The moral authority the West claimed after 1945—invoking “Never Again” as a universal promise—has collapsed under the weight of its own hypocrisy. The world has seen the truth, and it will not be forgotten. There is no moral leadership among Western nations; they have revealed themselves as rogue actors, outlaws in suits, indifferent to the suffering of those who are not like them or of them. Their claim to being the moral guardians of the world order has been shattered, and no amount of rhetoric, no invocation of past virtue, can restore it.

And it is precisely at this moment—when Western legitimacy disintegrates in full view—that the story of the world after Gaza begins.

The collapse of the moral order the West claimed to uphold has opened a new and profoundly uncertain chapter in world history—one defined not only by global realignment and the erosion of Western credibility, but by the emergence of a multipolar world in which Western governments can no longer dictate the terms of international politics. The genocide in Gaza has become the catalyst for this shift. It has exposed the limits of Western power and the bankruptcy of Western moral claims, and it has emboldened states across the Global South to assert their own visions of justice, sovereignty, and human dignity. The steadfastness of the Palestinian people—their refusal to disappear despite 78 years of occupation, dispossession, apartheid, and brutal oppression—has become a rallying point for a world no longer willing to accept Western double standards as natural law. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, governments and civil societies have spoken with remarkable clarity—they reject Western hypocrisy, they reject Western exceptionalism, and they overwhelmingly support the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Their voices, once dismissed or patronized, now carry weight in a world where Western authority is visibly crumbling.

This is the landscape of the world after Gaza: a world in which uncertainty is the new order of the day, not because chaos reigns, but because the old certainties—Western dominance, Western rule‑making, Western moral superiority—have been shattered. The Global South is no longer content to be lectured by nations that arm genocide while preaching human rights. It is demanding a seat at the table, demanding accountability, demanding a new international order built not on coercion but on genuine universality. Activists, scholars, and ordinary citizens across the planet are reassessing the foundations of global politics, asking who truly speaks for justice and who merely speaks for power. The question now confronting humanity is profound and unavoidable: what kind of world will emerge from this moment, and who will shape it? Gaza has become the fault line between the collapsing old order and the uncertain but potentially transformative new one. The future will be written not by those who clung to hypocrisy and self-interest, but by those who confronted it, rejected it, and insisted on a different path—one in which Palestinians, and the Global South more broadly, are no longer subjects of Western policy but authors of their own destiny.

In the end, the world after Gaza will not be shaped by Western governments clinging to a crumbling order, but by the billions who refused to accept that order’s brutality as inevitable. The uncertainty ahead is real, but it is also an opening—a rupture through which new possibilities can emerge, driven by the moral clarity of those who see the movement to bring freedom to Palestinians as an inflection point, and the unyielding struggle of Palestinians themselves. What comes next will be contested, turbulent, and transformative. But one truth is already unmistakable: the age of Western moral dominance is over, and a new global conversation—one that the West can no longer monopolize—has begun.

1000 days of genocide (Part 1/3): A story of Western immorality and Israeli inhumanity

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:02:12 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.
A version of this article can also be found on Rabble.ca.

On July 3, 2026 the world will cross a threshold that should never exist—a thousand days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A thousand days of mass murder, starvation, displacement, cultural destruction, and the systematic annihilation of a people and society. A thousand days during which Western governments have not merely failed to stop the genocide, but have actively enabled it. A thousand days in which the mask of Western “humanity,” “values,” and “moral leadership” has fallen away, revealing a political order that has decided that Palestinians are less than human and that their lives are disposable.

For the better part of three years, the world has watched the destruction of Gaza unfold in real time. Every major human‑rights organization—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, the International Federation for Human Rights and others—has documented patterns of killing, destruction, and dehumanizing rhetoric. Each eventually concluded that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention. Prominent Israeli Holocaust scholars such as Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, and Raz Segal, affirmed the same. United Nations agencies have also repeatedly warned that Israel’s actions constituted genocide.

Yet despite overwhelming evidence, Canada and most of its allies refused to acknowledge the crime. Worse, they continued to supply Israel with weapons, diplomatic cover, and political legitimacy. The United States remained the primary enabler, but Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and others played indispensable supporting roles. Canada exploited a legislative loophole that allowed it to continue exporting weapons and components to Israel via the United States, even as Gaza’s hospitals, universities, refugee camps, and entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble.

Western governments have made the truth impossible to deny. Through both their actions and their refusals to act, they have effectively endorsed Israel’s project of erasing the Palestinian population of Gaza. Their persistent refusal to intervene anywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories—Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem—signals not neutrality or support for a two‑state compromise, but alignment with Israel’s long‑standing ambition to consolidate a “Greater Israel” cleansed of its Indigenous Palestinian population. For decades, Western leaders cloaked this alignment behind the language of a “two‑state solution,” a phrase repeated so often it became a diplomatic reflex rather than a genuine policy. In practice, it functioned as a convenient fiction—an empty slogan used to mask Western complicity in Israel’s expansionist, settler‑colonial agenda and to obscure the reality that their actions consistently advanced the very outcome they claimed to oppose.

A 78 year record of enabling Israeli impunity

If Western governments had ever truly intended to uphold international law, the UN Charter, or the Genocide Convention, they would have acted long before genocidal violence was initiated by Israel in the fall of 2023. Israel’s history since 1948 is a catalogue of violations of the very legal instruments the West claims to defend:

Ethnic cleansing and mass displacement during the Nakba in 1948;
Illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem;
Systematic apartheid, as documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem;
Repeated wars on Gaza, each involving mass civilian casualties—in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, and the ongoing Gaza genocide since 2023;
Targeting of journalists, medics, and children;
Collective punishment, prohibited under the Geneva Conventions; and
Annexation of occupied territory, which is illegal under the UN Charter.

For decades, Western governments responded with statements of “concern,” “regret,” or “alarm”—but never with meaningful action. No sanctions. No arms embargoes. No diplomatic isolation. No accountability.

This is not mere failure. It is deliberate policy.

The West’s unwavering support for Israel—political, military, economic, and ideological—created the conditions in which genocide could occur openly, livestreamed to the world, without consequence. In the process, the so‑called “international rules‑based order” has been exposed as a selective system designed to protect Western allies and punish Western adversaries. Palestinians, like many non‑Western peoples, were never part of the moral universe that order claimed to defend.

The death of the responsibility to protect

After the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the UN adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), committing states to intervene when mass atrocities occur. Gaza has proven that R2P is a hollow promise. If Western leaders possessed even a fraction of the humanity they claim, they would have invoked R2P the moment genocide was affirmed by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, UN agencies, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Israeli human‑rights groups, and leading Holocaust scholars.

Instead, Western governments did the opposite. They shielded Israel from accountability, vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions, and continued supplying weapons. The message to the world was unmistakable: Palestinian lives do not trigger Western moral obligations.

Canada’s Hypocrisy

Canada’s political class—under both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments—has perfected the art of moral posturing while enabling atrocity. Canadian leaders routinely describe Canada as a defender of human rights, a champion of the UN, and a guardian of the “rules‑based international order.” Yet Canada violated its legal obligations under the UN Charter and the Genocide Convention by refusing to take the actions required when genocide is occurring.

If Canada were truly committed to international law, it would have:

Imposed a full arms embargo on Israel;
Suspended the Canada–Israel Free Trade Agreement;
Sanctioned Israeli political and military leaders responsible for genocidal acts;
Supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justicde (ICJ), as NATO allies Belgium, Iceland, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkiye, along with 16 other countries have done;
Expelled the Israeli ambassador and recalled Canada’s ambassador; and
Launched universal‑jurisdiction prosecutions against top Israeli political and military officials.

These actions are not radical. They represent the bare minimum required under the principles of basic morality when genocide is unfolding. Yet Canada undertook none of them. Instead, it continued exporting weapons—often through loopholes—and hid behind symbolic gestures that carried no material consequence for Israel. Its belated, heavily conditioned “recognition” of Palestine, while welcomed, did nothing on the ground, offered no protection to Palestinians, and imposed no cost on Israel. Such gestures function as political theatre designed to placate public outrage while allowing Canada to maintain alignment with Israeli policy.

A Study in Racialized Morality

The clearest demonstration of Western hypocrisy is the contrast between the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Canada acted with speed and moral clarity: sanctions, diplomatic isolation, asset freezes, ICC support, and a unanimous parliamentary declaration of “genocide.” Yet when Israel began its genocide in Gaza, Canada imposed no sanctions, no arms embargo, no diplomatic isolation, no accountability mechanisms, and refused to acknowledge genocide at all.

The only difference between the two cases is the identity of the victims and the political alignment of the aggressors. Ukrainians are white, European, primarily Christian, and aligned with the West. Palestinians are Indigenous, Arab, Muslim, and colonized by a Western ally.

This is not diplomacy. It is the operationalization of a racial hierarchy—a worldview in which the rights, lives, and suffering of some peoples are treated as inherently more valuable than those of others.

A Thousand Days That Changed the World

As the world marks a thousand days of genocide in Gaza, something fundamental has shifted. The world has watched Western inhumanity and Israeli brutality exposed with a clarity that cannot be undone. The illusion of Western moral superiority—already eroding for years—has now collapsed entirely. The global South sees it. Millions across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas see it. Even within Israel, a small but courageous minority sees it.

This moment forces a reckoning. What does it mean for the future of the international system when the world’s most powerful democracies enable genocide? What does it reveal about the structures of law, morality, and global governance that were supposedly built to prevent such crimes? And what does it demand of nations like Canada, which helped make this atrocity possible?

The Gaza genocide has exposed the end of the post‑1945 human‑rights order. It has shown that accountability for powerful states is optional, that international law is applied selectively, and that the principles the West claims to uphold collapse the moment they conflict with geopolitical interests. A thousand days of genocide have laid bare a truth the world can no longer ignore: the system is broken, and those who enabled this crime must one day face a reckoning worthy of its scale.

Celebrating Canada Day (Part 2): A rightward political drift, post 9/11, and sleepwalking towards a cliff

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:02:48 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

As Canadians get set to celebrate Canada Day tomorrow, we all need to demand an honest assessment of the country’s political trajectory. Since the post‑9/11 era, Canada has been drifting steadily to the right, reshaping its laws, institutions, and public discourse in ways that erode civil liberties, normalize racism and Islamophobia, and legitimize far‑right political views. Many Canadians, comforted by the belief that “it can’t happen here,” are sleepwalking Canada towards a cliff and the rest of us are doing little or nothing to stop it.

The post‑9/11 security climate marked a turning point. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, Canada expanded surveillance, strengthened security agencies, and introduced legislation that disproportionately targeted Muslims, Arabs, and other racialized communities. Islamophobia became embedded in policy and practice, with Muslim communities treated as suspect and their institutions subjected to heightened scrutiny. This securitized mindset has never fully receded, it has simply shifted targets and language.

Recent commentary has documented how Islamophobia and anti‑Palestinian racism have become entrenched at the highest levels of Canadian politics. One analysis of the appointment of MP Anthony Housefather as special advisor on antisemitism argues that his record of pushing anti‑Palestinian narratives reflects a government willing to appease pro‑Israel organizations while ignoring the surge in hate against Palestinians and Muslims. This is not an isolated incident; it reflects a broader pattern in which those who protest genocide are smeared, surveilled, and punished.

Since October 7, 2023, this pattern has intensified. Palestinians and their allies have been vilified as “terrorists” and “antisemitic” simply for opposing Israeli state violence and pointing out that it is committing genocide in Gaza. Pro‑Palestinian protesters have faced harassment, doxing, job loss, and political condemnation. It can be safely said that Palestinians are “the most persecuted people in the world today,” in light of the fact that Western leaders—including Canada’s—have seemingly shed their humanity towards Palestinians by treating their deaths at Israeli hands as acceptable collateral damage. The refusal of both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments to intervene to stop genocide, doing nothing beyond PR platitudes, even as polls show overwhelming Canadian opposition to current Canadian policy, exposes the gap between democratic rhetoric and actual practice.

This widening gap is where Canada’s rightward drift becomes most visible. When hundreds of thousands of Canadians march against the Gaza genocide and their leaders respond by continuing arms sales, diplomatic cover, and launching smear campaigns against protesters, democracy becomes a façade. A detailed analysis of Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide argues that successive governments have maintained military cooperation with Israel despite clear evidence of genocidal acts, thereby breaching both domestic and international legal obligations. This is not just foreign policy failure; it is moral bankruptcy.

At the same time, Canada’s right‑wing parties have moved further into territory that can only be described as quasi‑fascist. The Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre has embraced rhetoric and talking points that mirror those of the Republican Party under Donald Trump—attacks on “woke” culture, demonization of refugees and immigrants, hostility toward journalists and academics, and a constant framing of political opponents as enemies of “real Canadians.” While the specifics differ, the underlying strategy is familiar—weaponize resentment, stoke cultural division, and present strongman politics as the solution to perceived chaos.

The People’s Party of Canada (PPC), led by Maxime Bernier, has played a crucial role in legitimizing far‑right discourse even without major electoral success. A 2021 analysis of the PPC argues that the party has normalized racist, xenophobic, and anti‑immigrant narratives, giving them a veneer of political respectability. By railing against “globalists,” attacking immigration, and flirting with conspiracy theories, the PPC has helped shift the narrative—making previously fringe ideas part of mainstream debate. Even if the PPC fails at the ballot box, its impact on political culture is undeniable.

This is how far‑right politics advances, not only through winning elections, but through changing what is considered acceptable to say in public. When parties like the PPC push fascist talking points—about “invasions,” “replacement,” or the supposed threat posed by racialized communities—they create space for larger parties to adopt softer versions of the same narratives. Over time, the centre of gravity moves rightward, and what once seemed extreme becomes ordinary.

Meanwhile, Canada’s media ecosystem has often amplified these shifts rather than resisting them. Right‑wing commentators and outlets have demonized pro‑Palestinian protesters, framed solidarity encampments as security threats, and echoed government talking points about “extremism” and “hate” against Jews, even though many Jews are part of the movement. Anti‑Palestinian racism and Islamophobia are not only present in political institutions, they are reproduced daily in Canada’s news media ecosystem, through coverage and opinion columns. Multiple published commentaries have argued that this media environment dehumanizes Palestinians and legitimizes state violence against them.

The convergence of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, the escalating attacks on residential school truth‑telling, and the vilification of pro‑Palestinian demonstrators reveals a political environment where dissent is increasingly criminalized and racialized communities are systematically targeted. The same forces that once justified the dispossession and dehumanization of Indigenous nations now rationalize contemporary efforts to suppress solidarity with Palestinians. Residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous propaganda have become tools for undermining truth‑telling and defending the settler‑colonial status quo, while politicians, right‑wing media, and pro‑Israel advocacy networks deploy similar tactics to delegitimize pro‑Palestinian voices — branding them extremists, security threats, or enemies of “Canadian values.” In both cases, historical and ongoing state violence is obscured through narratives that portray marginalized communities as dangerous or suspect, and those who challenge official narratives as destabilizing forces. As a result, protests against genocide and colonialism are met with police crackdowns, university sanctions, employment terminations, and political condemnation, reinforcing a broader pattern in which far‑right narratives seep into mainstream discourse and the machinery of the state is mobilized to silence those who resist it.

Canadians often comfort themselves with the belief that “we’re not like the United States or the United Kingdom” and that what’s happening to their politics can’t happen here. But the trajectories are increasingly similar. In the US, the far right has captured The Republican Party and reshaped national politics around authoritarian impulses and racial resentment. In the UK, xenophobia and anti‑immigrant hysteria have become central pillars of political discourse, with far‑right groups exploiting economic instability and cultural anxiety. Canada is not immune because it is simply at an earlier stage of the same process.

As Canadians get set to mark Canada Day they must remember that a nation complicit in genocide cannot credibly celebrate itself as a force for good. When Canada continues to sell weapons to a state accused of genocide, refuses to support international legal efforts to hold that state accountable, and punishes those who protest its actions, it forfeits any claim to moral leadership. Silence is not neutrality—it is complicity.

Canada is at a crossroads. It can continue drifting down the path towards a right-wing, authoritarian future, with the scapegoating of racialized peoples, and moral abdication, or it can choose a different future. But that choice will not be made by politicians alone. It will be made by Canadians who decide whether to accept the drift or resist it.

Millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day tomorrow and they are free to do so. But if they celebrate without reflection, without reckoning, without pushing back against the rightward political drift that has been happening for years, they may find that the country they once celebrated no longer exists. And by then, it may be too late to turn back from the cliff.

Celebrating Canada Day (Part 1/2): Colonial foundations and the myth of innocent celebrations

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:03:29 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

In two days—July 1st—millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. Yet few pause to ask what, exactly, is being celebrated. The familiar rituals—fireworks, barbecues, flags, and patriotic speeches—invite a comforting narrative of national unity and progress. But beneath this spectacle lies a reality that cannot be reconciled with easy patriotism—Canada was built on Indigenous genocide, white supremacy, and systemic racism. To celebrate Canada Day without acknowledging these foundations is to participate in a collective act of denial and an erasure of history.

Canada is a settler‑colonial state. Its creation required the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the destruction of Indigenous governance systems and societies, and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and identities. Scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have long argued that colonization is not merely about land theft—it is about the destruction of peoples, laws, and ways of life. Residential schools, the Indian Act, forced relocations, the reserve system, and the criminalization of Indigenous ceremonies were not unfortunate mistakes. They were deliberate tools of a project aimed at eliminating Indigenous nations as self‑determining peoples, and as a result are today seen as acts of genocide.

In recent years, Canada has been forced to confront this history more directly. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded in 2019 that the violence inflicted on Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people amounts to “deliberate race, identity, and gender‑based genocide.” Parliament has acknowledged genocide in relation to residential schools, and political leaders have used the term publicly. Yet recognition without transformation is hollow. The structures that enabled genocide—policing, courts, resource extraction, child welfare systems—continue to produce what scholars call “multisided violence,” where state action and inaction normalize conditions in which Indigenous people can be harmed or killed with impunity.

Canada Day, in this context, becomes a ritual of denying this nation’s ugly history. It invites Canadians to celebrate this country without reckoning with the fact that its very existence depended on the destruction of Indigenous societies. Even when Canada Day events include acknowledgements of Indigenous peoples, the underlying narrative often remains one of progress and benevolence: that Canada has “learned from its past” and is now on a path of reconciliation. Yet the rise of residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous politics on the far right shows that even the limited gains of truth‑telling are under attack.

Some communities have attempted to reshape Canada Day to reflect this reality. In Winnipeg, organizers renamed the main July 1st event “A New Day,” cancelled fireworks, and centred reflection on colonialism and residential schools rather than uncritical patriotism. Such efforts are important, but they remain exceptions. Across the country, the dominant message is still one of pride, promoting unity, and celebrating with a nationalistic fervour—often with only a brief, symbolic nod to Indigenous history and suffering.

The problem is not simply that Canada has a violent past. It is that this violence continues in the present. Indigenous communities still face disproportionate rates of poverty, incarceration, child apprehension, and police violence. Encampments of unhoused people—many of them Indigenous—are destroyed in the name of “public safety,” while solidarity encampments protesting genocide and colonialism are violently dismantled by police. The criminalization of poverty and dissent is not a deviation from Canadian values, it is a continuation of the logic that has always governed this country, one where some lives are expendable in the service of order and property.

Contemporary commentary has drawn connections between Canada’s colonial foundations and its foreign policy. One writer argues that Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide reflects a continuity between domestic colonial violence and international support for state violence abroad. The argument suggests that a nation built on genocide at home is predisposed to enable or excuse genocide elsewhere. This perspective reframes Canada Day not as a celebration of national virtue but as a reminder of unresolved injustice.

Canada’s self‑image as a human‑rights champion is fundamentally at odds with its record. A country that still struggles to provide clean drinking water to Indigenous communities, that has failed to implement the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and that remains complicit in ongoing violence against Indigenous women and girls cannot credibly claim to embody justice and equality. When Canadians gather on July 1st to celebrate “our values,” they are often celebrating an illusion.

This does not mean there is nothing worth preserving in Canada. There is beauty in its landscapes, richness in its diversity, and potential in its institutions. But potential is not achievement, and celebration is not owed—it is earned. A nation that has yet to fully acknowledge, let alone repair, the harms it has inflicted on Indigenous peoples has not earned the right to uncritical celebration.

Canada Day, then, should not be a day of simple celebration. It should be a day of reckoning. A day to ask, what does it mean to celebrate a country whose birth was a catastrophe for the peoples who already lived here? What does it mean to wave a flag that has flown over residential schools, police raids, and courtrooms where Indigenous rights are denied? What does it mean to celebrate a society that erased the original nations of this land?

On Wednesday, millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. But if they do so without confronting the genocidal and white supremacist foundations of this country, they are not celebrating a mature democracy—they are participating in a collective act of denial. The question is not whether Canada can be celebrated. The question is whether it has done the work necessary to deserve celebration.

Until Canada fully acknowledges its genocidal past and present, and commits to dismantling the structures that sustain colonial violence, Canada Day should be less about fireworks and more about reflection. Less about pride and more about responsibility. Less about what Canada imagines itself to be and more about what it has actually done.

Only then—if ever—will Canada Day be something more than a ritual that papers over injustice with celebration of the red and white maple leaf.

Part 2 will follow tomorrow.

How can we live with this? One man’s lament about the Gaza genocide

Fareed Khan-The View From Here — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:00:33 GMT

An archive of all of my public commentary and op-eds since 2013 can be found here.

I live 8,965 kilometres from Gaza, in a country that claims to be a defender of human rights and international law, and professes to be a moral leader on the world stage. Yet every day for more than two and a half years, I have seen images and read stories coming out of Gaza that have hollowed out something inside me. I have seen bloodied bodies, children with limbs torn away, parents carrying what remains of their babies in small plastic bags because an Israeli missile or bomb left nothing else to bury. The people of Gaza are not soldiers or combatants. They are Palestinian civilians—families—targeted by the military of a fascist, genocidal state that has long ceased to see them as human beings, a people who have been abandoned by Canada and other nations that claim to champion human rights, but refuse to intervene when the crime of crimes—genocide—is being committed by Israel in front of our eyes.

Despite all I’ve seen and read, despite my knowledge of the cruelty inflicted by Israel on Palestinians for decades, nothing prepared me for the story of the Palestinian father trapped beneath the rubble of a building bombed by and Israeli fighter jet.

I first saw the image last night on social media, of a man with only his head sticking out of the rubble, and read the short description that went with it. In the quiet of the night, I read about rescuers digging frantically through the debris trying to save him. Above a small gap in the rubble was a look of agony and terror on the father’s face. His body was pinned beneath the ruins of what had once been his home. His daughters were deeper below, their small hands still clinging to his fingers in the darkness. He could hear their fading breaths and their grip weakening. When the rescuers began to dig away at the rubble around him he looked at them with a gaze so full of exhaustion and horror that it pierced through the screen and lodged itself in my chest.

“Leave me,” he told the rescuers. He told them his daughters were also under the rubble, holding his fingers, and that he didn’t want to leave them alone.

These words haunt me. They echo in my mind and when I tried to sleep last night I couldn’t. So I decided to write about this Palestinian father, the nameless man in the social media post, whose face is now imprinted on my brain.

By the time you read this, and hopefully share it on social media, I will be trying to live a normal life again, as I have so many times since the Gaza genocide began, as I’ve heard or read a particularly horrific story. But what is considered normal in such a scenario? I wonder, what parent—what human being—could bear to survive while his children die beneath him? What words can capture the agony of someone who feels the life draining from the small hands they once held while crossing the street, while tucking them into bed, while promising them safety?

And as I sat with the weight of his plea to the rescuers—to be left under the rubble so he could die beside his daughters—I found myself thinking of the tens of thousands of Palestinian parents who have endured this same nightmare. Not only during the current genocide, but in the years before, every time Israel sent its warplanes to bomb homes, apartment blocks, and refugee camps. I thought of the parents who have carried the limp bodies of their children through the streets, their faces frozen in shock. I thought of the children who have clawed through rubble with their bare hands, screaming the names of their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. I thought of the Palestinians who have found only fragments of their loved ones—pieces so small they could fit into a shopping bag. And I thought of the fathers and mothers who have buried entire families in mass graves, not because they wanted to, but because they had no choice, because even in death, they could not risk gathering for a proper funeral without fearing another Israel bomb or missile would land on them.

This is not an isolated tragedy. It is a pattern, a system, a deliberate and calculated destruction of a people, in full view of the world.

As a human rights activist living in the safety of Canada, I ask myself: How can Western leaders live with this knowledge? What is so broken in them that they can’t take action to stop the non-stop carnage committed by Israel? They receive daily briefings. They see the same images the public sees. They know that the vast majority of those killed in Gaza are civilians. They know international human rights organizations have documented war crimes and crimes against humanity, and have declared Israel’s actions as a genocide. They know that Israeli soldiers themselves have admitted in recordings posted to social media that they “felt like Nazis” while carrying out operations in Gaza. They know all of this and yet they do nothing.

How do they sit in their offices, smile as they shake hands at political events, hold press conferences, and speak of democracy and human rights, while Palestinian children are deliberately shot, and babies suffocate under the rubble of a bombed out building? And how can we, living safely in Canada, go about our days as though nothing is happening? How do can we casually sip our coffee, scroll through our phones, and laugh at trivial things, while a father in Gaza begs rescuers to let him die so he will not abandon his daughters in their final moments?

I don’t ask this with without judgment. I ask it with grief, with bewilderment, with a sense of moral disruption that has become impossible to shake.

Because all of us who fight to uphold and defend human rights cannot live normal lives anymore. We carry the weight of every image and video we’ve seen, every scream and cry of grief we’ve heard, every story we’ve read. We carry the trauma of being witnesses to genocide in real time, played out on the screens of our devices. We carry the depression and anger that comes from shouting into a void where leaders pretend not to hear what we’re saying. We carry the despair of knowing that morality—once claimed as a Western virtue—is a lie and has been traded for political convenience and military alliances.

For the past two and a half years we have marched, we have written to our political leaders, penned op-eds, held media conferences, commented on social media, protested, pleaded for our leaders to find their humanity and take action. Yet still, those who lead our governments refuse to listen or act.

If this is now the norm—if this is how the world responds to a fascist state committing genocide—then what hope is there for how nations will respond to other conflicts where the innocent are slaughtered? What hope is there for humanity when the most powerful nations on earth, who have the power to stop Israel’s crimes, watch and do nothing as children, women and men are murdered simply for who they are? What hope is there when museums dedicated to human rights, like the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, face pressure to silence Palestinian history because the stories of Palestinians are deemed too “controversial” by Zionist groups who cannot tolerate the true story of their suffering and subjugation, or being portrayed as human beings? What hope is there when even our grief and the truth about history is policed?

The father under the rubble will haunt me for a long time because he represents more than one man’s tragedy. He represents the collapse of the world’s moral order and the degradation of international law. He represents the unbearable truth that Palestinian suffering has been normalized, minimized, and dismissed for generations, but especially now. He represents the question that should shake every conscience on this planet:

How much more Palestinian pain must the world witness, how many more bodies must be buried under Gaza’s rubble, before it hears the cry of the Palestinians who live there?

As a Canadian, I am both angry at and ashamed of my government’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal crimes. As a human rights activist, I am exhausted by the endless fight to make the people in power care. As a human being, I am shattered by the knowledge that Palestinians are still dying, despite a so-called ceasefire which Israel has violated thousands of times since last October, while the world debates their worth.

But as someone who refuses to give up, I say this. To Palestinians suffering under the longest and most brutal occupation of modern history—you are not forgotten. You are loved. You are never alone, and your courage in the face of ultimate evil will go down in history. There are millions around the world who stand with you, who carry your grief in their hearts, who refuse to let your stories be erased. Your suffering is not invisible. Your resistance is not in vain. And your humanity shines brighter than the darkness that seeks to destroy you.