After four months of war, some Western leaders seem finally to be waking up to the monstrosity of the horrors Israel has unleashed upon Gaza, in which our governments and civil societies—our corporations, our news organizations, our social media, our educational and cultural institutions—are unarguably complicit.

The next time the National Post comes calling with its accusatory “questions,” university spokespersons should take the opportunity to explain what academic freedom means, and why they will vigorously defend it. In the meantime, university leaders might do some thinking about how their own priorities and actions either reproduce or resist racial capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.

Julian Assange’s nearly 15-year legal battle began in 2010 when WikiLeaks published classified military files from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He took refuge in London’s Ecuadorian embassy, before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police in 2019 who were permitted by the Ecuadorian embassy to enter and seize him. He has been held for nearly five years in HM Prison Belmarsh.

Ten years since the Maidan massacre, nobody is in prison for the murders and attempted murders of activists and police officers, or for shooting at foreign journalists. The silence on the part of those who deny the false-flag event, or who call these claims a “conspiracy theory” and whitewash the mass murderers of the far-right, is both deafening and revealing.

For-profit media ownership has decimated journalism in Canada and continues to gouge us with some of the highest prices in the world for telecommunications services such as cellular phones, cable TV and Internet access. The private equity players and US hedge funds that own most of our largest newspapers are now harvesting them for hundreds of millions in cash.

It is a sign of desperation that Israel and its supporters go on making the outlandish claim that the IDF is a beacon of morality. This is an indication of how isolated from world opinion, particularly in the Global South, Zionism has become. That the project is that detached from reality is a sign of its vulnerability.

Canadians deserve to know the extent of our government’s complicity in the destruction of Gaza, but the NDP is talking out of both sides of its mouth. While criticizing military exports to Israel, New Democrat leaders have largely adopted Israel’s framing of the war and condemned voices speaking out in support of Palestinians. This has occurred at both the federal and provincial level.

In Gaza, more than 70,000 housing units have been totally destroyed, and 290,000 partially damaged. In these three months of Israeli fire, a shocking 60 to 70 percent of structures in Gaza, and up to 84 percent of structures in northern Gaza, have been damaged or destroyed. Due to this domicide, there is no place for the Palestinians in Rafah to go if they go north.

At a time when the Ecuadorian government’s social disinvestment has wrecked the country’s economy and security sector, Canada is arguing for its right to deprive Ecuador of even more public money. Ottawa’s main concern is Ecuador’s resources: how to access them, and how to ensure Canadians can bring home as much profit as possible while exploiting them.

What was done to our relatives, our families, and our culture must not be allowed to happen again. But it would be disrespectful to the memory of all those lost to suggest that edict be limited to Jews: it must not happen again to anyone. Our people’s history of oppression isn’t a license to oppress, it’s a call to dedicate our lives to creating a world without oppression.