The New Nakba
On October 7, Israel launched a devastating retaliatory war after 1,200 Israelis were killed in a surprise attack by Hamas militants. Gaza, with its two million residents now under a “complete siege,” is once again soaked in blood and chaos. A textbook case of genocide is now unfolding. The failure to intervene to halt the carnage threatens to ignite violence throughout the region.
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A new wolf in an old sheep’s clothing
A new spectre has arisen on the pro-Israel Jewish right. And it is all the more dangerous as it purports to sit in the progressive heart of the labour movement in Canada and the United States. It consists of Jewish union members claiming that they are currently the targets of antisemitism within their respective unions.
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It is Israel that must be deradicalized, not Palestine
The recent recognitions of a Palestinian state and the October 10 ceasefire have been followed by a flurry of calls to “deradicalize” Palestinian society. The New York Times editorial board went so far as to compare this deradicalization project to the denazification of Germany after the Second World War. These calls have the situation backwards to the point of farce.
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Blood in the endowment
The University of Manitoba proclaims commitments to human rights and academic integrity, yet invests in arms manufacturers supplying Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Jonathan Jenner exposes the contradiction, framing it as a trilemma between ethics, investments, and intellectual seriousness—and argues that only divestment can resolve the university’s moral failure.
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The rewards of terror
Almost two years after October 7, Gaza lies in ruins. Western governments have condemned the slaughter but continue to shield Israel, while Trump and Netanyahu push a “peace plan” critics see as surrender. With global opinion shifting and cracks widening among allies, the future of Palestine—and the credibility of the international order—hangs in the balance.
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Settler colonial solidarity and me
Larry Haiven reflects on how childhood lessons in empire, whiteness, and settler-colonial loyalty shaped his subconscious sympathies during the Siege of Vienna. Using historical and personal narratives, he explores why Western nations support Israel, revealing the intertwining of race, empire, and inherited biases in both individual perspectives and global politics.
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The changing tide of public opinion threatens Israel’s crumbling legitimacy
Public opinion across the West is shifting decisively against Israel as polls show growing recognition of its campaign in Gaza as genocide. Once dismissed as fringe, sympathy for Palestinians is now mainstream. This historic turn raises questions about Israel’s future legitimacy—and whether changing sentiment can reshape entrenched policy.
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On Gaza, Canada’s public broadcaster betrays its mandate
By refusing to deliver accurate, comprehensive, and contextually rich reporting on Israel’s assault, Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, has denied Canadians the information they need to act on conscience and to pressure their government to help end the savagery. In effect, the CBC has made Canadians complicit in genocide.
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Oh Canada, where art thou?
Canada once stood apart by challenging apartheid and asserting an independent foreign policy, even against US pressure. Now, as Washington sanctions Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost for pursuing Israeli war crimes cases, Ottawa stays silent. Once a supporter of international justice, Canada appears to prioritize trade and diplomacy over moral leadership.
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A graveyard of liberal illusions
The West may now be finally waking up to the full enormity of the horrors Israel has inflicted in Gaza. It needs also to wake up to the evils it has nurtured not just for the last two years, but for over a century. It is time we started listening to Palestinian voices, while there are still Palestinians left alive to speak truth to power.
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Manitoba is no friend to Palestine
As the Palestinian death toll surpasses 60,000 human beings, Manitobans deserve to know which side their leaders are on: the side of the oppressor, or the oppressed. For those paying attention, anything short of the premier’s clear and unequivocal condemnation of the genocide unfolding in Gaza is cynical, calculated pandering.
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Endgames in Gaza?
What’s unfolding in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis—it’s a deliberate, systematic campaign to destroy a population. Mass killings, starvation, and attacks on aid efforts are part of a broader strategy. Western governments, through their support and silence, are complicit. This is not only Israel’s genocide. It is enabled, justified, and sustained by the West.
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Canada’s legal duty to end trade with Israeli settlements
Canada must act. This means enacting an immediate ban on the import of goods from illegal settlements, in line with Ireland’s example, and working toward a broader policy that rejects economic support for violations of international law. If Canada is serious about human rights, the rule of law, and peace in the region, it cannot remain a silent partner in occupation.
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CIJA should not influence public policy on hate crimes
Zionism is the underlying ideology that is heaping unfathomable misery upon Palestinians. For this reason, Zionist organizations should not play a role in shaping public policy in Manitoba. For Zionist ideology to maintain influence in Canada, voices supporting Palestine are often silenced, frequently through accusations of antisemitism.
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Things fall apart: the centre will not hold
Western support for Israel during its war with Iran and continued assault on Gaza reveals deep double standards in applying international law. Despite rising global protests and civilian casualties, leaders still back Israel while silencing dissent. The situation points to a broader crisis of legitimacy and the erosion of democratic norms across the West.
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The Iranian people are confronted by enemies within and enemies without
Today, the vast majority of Iranians see their government as a corrupt, mafia-like regime that is the main cause of their daily misery. Through decades of uprisings, the Iranian people have sought to overthrow this enemy within. But overthrowing the regime is the exclusive right and prerogative of the Iranian people—not of foreign powers.
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For the Palestinian people, it is one minute to midnight: Canada must radically change its approach
If it does not want to remain complicit in Israel’s crimes, Canada must immediately apply all means of political and economic pressure at its disposal. There are many things it could do, including recognizing the State of Palestine, joining in actions before the international courts, terminating economic and military agreements, and breaking off diplomatic relations.
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US-Israeli bid for regime change in Iran would devour the Middle East
While warmongers worldwide are jubilant at the thought of profiting from the geopolitical upheaval, a spiral of violence would be devastating for the Iranian people and the entire region, as were the US-led regime change wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan. A wider conflict would devour the Middle East and could spread beyond that region in terrifying ways.
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Gaslighting the way to World War III
Are we so morally bankrupt that we will allow Netanyahu’s cynical maneuver, an act of naked aggression in flagrant breach of international law, to divert us from our responsibilities to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza? From the first responses of Western political leaders, it would appear that the answer to this question is unfortunately an unhesitating and emphatic yes.
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Where are Canada’s pro-Palestine rabbis?
How can the Canadian Jewish left urge faith leaders and institutions to publicly stand against Israel’s genocide? As more and more Jews are realizing that Israel’s unrelenting war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is not being waged to keep Jews safe, either in Israel or around the world, they are supporting the growing calls for aid and a ceasefire.
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Chris Hedges: the last days of Gaza
This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse.
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Bursting the bubble (zone): Resisting Toronto’s anti-protest bylaw
Toronto’s new bubble zone anti-protest bylaw is both more and less dangerous than it may appear at first glance. Less because the bylaw’s enforceability and constitutionality are shaky, more because this provision needs to be understood as an example of the lawfare being wielded against pro-Palestinian solidarity and other left movements.
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One day, everyone will have always been against this
One of the most remarkable—not to say shameful—features of the last 20 months of carnage in Gaza has been the near-unanimity of support for Israel’s assault from Western governments and political parties of otherwise sharply opposed persuasions, regardless of how criminally Israel has conducted its “war.”
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Roadmap for an arms embargo
Last week, virtually every attendee arriving at CANSEC—North America’s largest annual arms trade show—was met with the piercing cry of “war criminal,” as over 300 protesters gathered to denounce war profiteering and Canada’s complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli armed forces and political authorities since October 7, 2023.
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Who can be a fascist? Let’s look to Mussolini’s Italy, then let’s look to Israel
Who can be a fascist? Or a better question is: is any group of people inoculated against fascism, who can’t “catch” or succumb to it? Like Jews, perhaps? As the child of a survivor of Auschwitz, I am especially interested in this question. And my answer has always been the same: Suffering under fascism in no way immunizes any group against falling for it.
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Antisemitism is merely one of the forms of bigotry now proliferating
Not only does the focus on antisemitic incidents draw Canadians’ attention away from the death toll in Gaza and the muzzling of Canadian voices condemning it, it also amplifies calls by representatives of CIJA, B’nai Brith Canada and other mainstream Jewish leaders for more severe repressive measures against peaceful opposition to Israel’s genocide.
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Israel and the US resume their war of extermination in Gaza
It is obvious that Israel does not allow itself to be bound by ceasefire terms, the UN, international law, or humanitarian law. It exists in a bloodthirsty state of exception, unrestricted by any law or agreement, its violent expansionism fuelled by ordnance from the very countries that claim to endorse a fair and transparent “rules-based order.”
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The paradoxes of an Oscar win in a West Bank under siege
In the wake of its Oscar win, No Other Land has been criticized for normalizing the Occupation and violating BDS guidelines. Yet, for a community that has fought so hard for the very right to exist, this film and the accompanying global discussion, opens up possibilities. The movie is important because it tells their story to the world.
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Free Yves Engler
Those who stand up for just social and economic causes have long faced repression by the Canadian state. In this moment, the struggle for Palestinian liberation is the most unifying cause for people who want to build a better world. For this reason, it is no surprise that anti-genocide activists like Yves Engler are being targeted.
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Trump’s Abraham Accords incited Hamas attack
Donald Trump’s failed 2020 Abraham Accords led directly to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. This agreement, initially signed by Israel, the US, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, was ostensibly designed to “recognize the importance of maintaining and strengthening peace in the Middle East and around the world based on mutual understanding and coexistence.”
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The shame of what we’ve done
Peter Beinart’s new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, says the maudlin story we Jews tell ourselves of our virtue and heroic endurance inoculates us from seeing Israel’s agency in creating the resistance it faces: “We must now tell a new story to answer the horror that a Jewish country has perpetrated… We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims.”
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Genocide is the new normal
This Via Dolorosa leads to a global death spiral, especially as the climate crisis reconfigures the planet and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, become hollow appendages. We are sowing the Middle East with dragon’s teeth and, as in the ancient Greek myth, these teeth are rising from the soil as enraged warriors determined to destroy us.
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Genocidal president, genocidal politics
When news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following reports last month concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.
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Israeli historian accuses Canadian media of enabling Gaza war crimes
Canada’s hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed even in Israel itself. Nevertheless, activists in Canada have been labelled antisemitic by university administrations, media outlets, and politicians for saying what Mordechai, a Jewish historian in Israel, documents clearly: that Israel is committing genocide, and Canada is complicit.
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One law for the West and another for the rest?
For over a year now, the West has been tearing up the legal and institutional fabric on which the post-war international order and its increasingly threadbare claims to moral authority rest—in much the same way as Biden has overridden the US judicial system to grant his son a pardon and Trump promises to weaponize the same system to settle scores with his political enemies.
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The role of the pro-Israel lobby
The Canadian establishment doggedly enables Israel and finds it advantageous for supporters of the Palestinian struggle to be contained. However, the lobby’s role in equating Jewish identity with Zionism and labelling opposition to this colonialist ideology as antisemitic is a potent factor that we should not underestimate.
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Why we demand an arms embargo on Israel
Like our Palestinian allies in this struggle, we refuse to be patronized by Canadian policymakers. We refuse to be told that we are making a mountain out of a molehill. And we refuse to be told that we lack understanding by politicians who are in fact contradicting themselves. Our demands are simple and we will not stop pressing for them until they are realized.
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I’m speaking! (and you’re not)
We might ask whether, if Harris had been less adamant in her insistence that “I’m speaking!” and more willing to move on Israel, she might have persuaded enough of Biden’s 2020 voters—not only Muslim Americans, but progressives who campaigned for the Democrats in 2020 but were nauseated by Biden’s policies on Gaza—to support her. Instead, they flipped or stayed home.
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Stephen Harper’s ‘moral clarity’ in defence of Israeli exceptionalism
In spite of his prime ministerial law-and-order rhetoric, citizen Harper has no time for the International Court of Justice’s conclusions on Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza and Amnesty International on Israeli apartheid. The former PM still considers Israel a credible ally in spite of the IDF’s ongoing campaign of destruction and territorial expansion across the Middle East.
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Another NDP candidate bites the dust after specious accusations of antisemitism
Israel and many of its supporters insist that a wide range of international organizations and bodies are antisemitic. And then Israel doubles down and the outrage against it grows and the outraged are denounced as antisemites. And on and on it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows. Perhaps until the “new” antisemitism turns into the “old” antisemitism?
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Winnipeg plant one of largest F-35 parts producers in Canada
Of the more than 100 companies in Canada that produce components for the F-35 combat aircraft, Mississauga-based Magellan Aerospace is one of the largest. Notably, it is also majority owned and chaired by billionaire N. Murray Edwards, the 35th richest person in Canada, who controls mining company Imperial Metals, responsible for the catastrophic Mount Polley tailings disaster.
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Another blow struck against Canada’s largest pro-Israel charity
In August, the Canada Revenue Agency notified JNF Canada that its charitable status was being revoked due to the organization’s contravention of Canadian charity law. This week, the JNF’s application for a judicial review of the revocation was denied. While this story is far from over, the ruling holds great significance for Palestine solidarity activists in Canada and around the world.
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The destruction of the UN is the destruction of the world
The destruction of Palestine means the destruction of the UN, and the destruction of the UN carries with it a grave risk of the destruction of life on this planet. The climate movement needs to fight to keep the UN alive at the same time as we demand that it adopt a more robust framework to confront the challenge head-on. Right now, that means opposing genocide and rejecting our government’s complicity in it.
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Attempt to censor Francesca Albanese part of larger Israeli campaign to hobble UN
Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, just wrapped up a speaking tour of eastern Canada. But pro-Israel lobby organizations tried every trick in their well-thumbed playbook to bar the renowned human rights jurist and scholar from doing the job she was assigned by the UN for a three-year term in 2022.
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Einstein opposed Zionist colonization in Palestine and predicted the current catastrophe
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are being accused of antisemitism or fired from their jobs because they dare to criticize the State of Israel, call it an apartheid state, and denounce the genocide of the Palestinians. May they rest assured: they are in good company, because if Einstein were alive today he would be on the front lines demonstrating with them.
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Not even the main event
After a year of bombardment, and with all eyes on the US presidential election, Gaza has become exactly what Naomi Klein and Jonathan Glazer feared—part of the soundtrack to everyday life, background noise we can all too easily tune out. But while life goes on as normal on our side of the walls, the genocide continues, barely within earshot.
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Israel’s war on journalism
The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. At least 128 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.
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Do you condemn Hamas?
The dust has still not settled on October 7 and there are many conflicting reports of what did and did not take place, but let us for the sake of argument take the reports of Hamas’s alleged acts at face value. Does it not stand to reason that Israel would find itself in the position of being beyond condemnation for the crimes it commits? It would not.
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Anatomy of a soccer scandal
Even as the Canada Soccer drone spying scandal dominated news at the Olympics and apparently raised the most fundamental questions about ethics and harm, the Israeli national soccer team was still permitted by FIFA to compete in the Games. This, despite the fact that Israel was then (as it is now) conducting a genocidal assault against Palestinians in Gaza.
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Is the West finally seeing sense on Gaza?
According to a recent report by Axios, for the first time, the Biden-Harris administration is explicitly threatening to suspend military aid to Israel unless some very specific conditions are met. These conditions amount to “the most wide-ranging and comprehensive list of US demands from Israel since the beginning of the war.”
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Arundhati Roy: ‘No propaganda on Earth can hide the wound that is Palestine’
Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize 2024, an annual award established by English PEN in memory of playwright Harold Pinter. Shortly after having been named for the prize, Roy named British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah a Writer of Courage, with whom she would share her award.
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Making accusations of antisemitism with hardly any facts
Somewhere in Western newsrooms and political backrooms, there must be an instruction manual or playbook entitled “How to make accusations of antisemitism with hardly any facts.” I imagine that Steve Paikin got hold of it and employed it to write his latest column. I am afraid that the piece is seriously lacking in intellectual honesty.
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The Giller Prize and the ‘Indigo 11’
We cannot afford to treat the role art has in “politics” as some abstract or existential dilemma. In Toronto, the delegitimization of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian speech has taken on many forms, including high-profile firings, acts of censorship, cancellations and arrests. Indigo and the Giller’s assaults on language have had material, and potentially irreversible, consequences.
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Reports of beheaded Israeli babies were bound to be propaganda
Anyone who has studied the history of propaganda must have rolled their eyes as I did upon hearing reports of babies being beheaded by Hamas militants after their incursion into Israel a year ago. History has repeatedly shown that such reports are inevitably fabricated or at least wildly exaggerated in order to influence public opinion in favour of war.
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The state of our moral disengagement
There is no greater example of human agency at this moment than the resilience of Palestinians against Israel’s attempt to erase life, culture and history in Gaza. If there is any lesson to draw, it is from this resilience, which has reshaped our perceptions of the liberal international order and inspired young people around the world to resist the damage we have created and condoned.
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One year of genocide in Gaza
The mass killing operations of Israel are there for all to see but the military objectives of the Zionist onslaught have not been met. Even in the confined quarters of the Gaza enclave, a year of unrestrained criminality hasn’t subdued the armed resistance. Even if all out regional conflict takes place with direct US involvement, imperialism will reap what it sows.
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The global order and the value of human life
We live in a world in which wealthy imperialist countries dominate and exploit the nations that are poor and oppressed. It is not surprising that this great international injustice involves the devaluing of human life. The conduct of political leaders in the West attests to this but it is also in evidence if you examine the track record of the corporate media.
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Our dead don’t seem to count the same way
On September 27, Israel dropped US-supplied 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the Dahiya residential area of Beirut, flattening six apartment blocks and killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The cost of Nasrallah’s scalp was likely several hundred Lebanese civilian lives. The Palestinian journalist got it right. Their dead don’t seem to count the same way.
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To build solidarity with Palestine, Canada’s labour movement must look to the past
One of the key challenges facing us today is not only that unions neglect international solidarity outright, but that there are increasingly fewer spaces where members can talk about international issues and practice solidarity. Advancing the struggle for Palestine in our unions then is also critical to building a more democratic labour movement.
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As the JNF continues its rampage in the West Bank, CRA ruling offers Palestinians hope
With JNF Canada vowing to appeal the CRA’s decision to revoke its charitable status, Canadian activists must use this victory to continue to fight and condemn the organization’s other fundraising initiatives. While it can no longer issue charitable tax receipts, the JNF is still free to raise money in Canada and send it directly to those who carry out ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories.
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The term PTSD fails to capture the Palestinian experience
In its many forms, the global protest against the continued genocide of Palestinians—the refusal to be silenced, even against threats of arrest, deportation, and physical violence—not only challenges the national collective myth of the Israeli settler state, but also enacts a refusal to be complicit in violence carried out in its name.
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There are some ‘new mitzvot’ that many Jews follow—and they aren’t pretty
The concept of a mitzvah goes well beyond good deeds and, given current circumstances, has come to encompass some very ugly deeds. How and whether Jews observe these obligations are intricately bound up in one’s sense of what it means to be a Jew. And in fact, as the tragedy in Gaza and the West Bank intensifies, no less than the soul of Judaism is at stake.
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States of exception
As a response to a terrorist attack from an occupied territory, Israel’s Gaza campaign is wholly exceptional, at least among Western democracies that claim to be governed by international law. Israel exists in a state of exception, to use the German jurist Carl Schmitt’s concept, in which the rule of law is suspended and the normal rules don’t apply.
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Biden’s convention speech made absurd claims about his Gaza policy
Underscoring the grotesque moral obtuseness from the convention stage was the joyful display of generations as the president praised and embraced his offspring. Joe Biden walked off stage holding the hand of his cute little grandson, a precious child no more precious than any one of the many thousands of children the president has helped Israel to kill.
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The measure of our evil
There are many ways of measuring the evil that Israel has done to Palestinians. But the true measure of our evil lies in the West’s complicity in maintaining Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and in particular, in the support it has offered Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza in response to October 7.
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JNF’s loss of charitable status a win for international law and Palestinian rights
In a small but significant step for defenders of Palestinian rights, the Canada Revenue Agency has revoked the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund, an organization that violates Canadian law by funnelling tax deductible charitable donations to the Israeli military. According to CRA policy, funds intended to benefit the operations of a foreign military cannot be tax deductible.
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Palestine and the fight for the soul of anti-racism
How does activism and policy that opposes systemic racism get redefined as its exact opposite—namely antisemitism or anti-Jewish racism? How does the language of anti-racism get deployed in defense of the actions of an apartheid ethnostate? Vincent Wong on how the redefinition of racism is a cardinal threat to all racially subordinated and dehumanized groups the world over.
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The old evil
Israel’s settler colonial project is protean. It changes its shape but not its essence. It grinds forward with its deadly, perverted, racist logic. And yet, the Palestinians endure, refusing to submit, resisting despite the overwhelming odds, grasping at tiny kernels of hope from bottomless wells of despair. There is a word for this. Heroic.
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A single image’s many stories
Time and again, the McGill University administration, along with provincial government officials, has refused dialogue with student protesters, preferring to make a violent show of power over activists who remain steadfast in their aim: to make this summer a freedom summer aimed at contributing to ending genocide, occupation and colonialism.
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Lancet: 186,000 Palestinians or more killed in Gaza
A new online publication posted by the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet estimates that the current death toll from Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip—which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has described as “plausible genocide“—is at least 186,000. This would translate to nearly eight percent of Gaza’s population.
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Righteous student activism and evolving anti-Palestinian reprisal in Canada
The fight for Palestinian freedom—as well as for Canadian democracy—will be long and arduous. And it will require our collective resistance to evolving tactics of censorship. The TMU law students, and all the students setting up encampments around the world (including in Israel), have had an immense impact.
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‘They attacked us after we packed up’: Calgary students speak out on police brutality
Our encampment did not have to end in violence. Students from other institutions continue to maintain peaceful encampments on campuses across Canada. We cannot allow police impunity to embolden further acts of violence against student encampments. We demand accountability for the inexcusable acts of police brutality that took place that night.
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Israel is stoking all-out war, and Canada is complicit
If the Hezbollah-Israel conflict spirals out of control, Canadians must remember that their government had myriad opportunities to end its military and diplomatic support for Israel and instead promote genuine efforts for regional peace. Instead, Canada has backed Israel to the hilt, helping push the region to the brink of all-out war.
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The pro-Palestine encampment on my university campus is no safety threat
Students protesting worldwide aren’t a threat to anyone’s safety, writes University of Waterloo student Nadia Khan, they are simply standing up for the Palestinians in Gaza who’ve been denied it. We deserve a say in where our tuition dollars go, and until our institutions take our demands seriously, we’re not going anywhere.
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One-year-old Ahmad Al-Najjar was beheaded by Israel—with a US bomb
On the night of May 26, one-year-old Ahmad Al-Najjar became a symbol of the unspeakable horror of genocide in Gaza after Israel bombed his family tent in north Rafah, killing him along with his mother, Faten, his sister Houda, and his brother Arkan. Though he was bombed beyond recognition, Ahmad was the most recognizable victim of the now notorious ‘tents massacre.’
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Open letter: Stop subsidizing genocide
On June 4, 2024, an open letter was released by the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and Just Peace Advocates, challenging Canada’s contributions to Palestinian dispossession. “Stop Subsidizing Genocide” is signed by Gabor Maté, Yann Martel, Linda McQuaig, Roger Waters, Monia Mazigh, Desmond Cole, Libby Davies, Alex Neve Richard Falk, Michael Lynk, Sarah Jama, and many others.
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Students lift veil on university financing and demand end to genocide complicity
The politics of power and resistance are raging on Canadian university campuses. As Judi Rever reports, through occupations at post-secondary institutions across the country, students protesting against Israel’s mass crimes in Gaza are demanding their schools disclose and review all holdings in companies profiting from Israel’s onslaught.
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You can’t turn back the clock on genocide
Being born amid the rubble, amid a horrifying offensive, will undoubtedly scar future generations—if, that is, they’re lucky enough to survive the constant bombings and the denial of basic necessities. And as yet, despite mounting international pressure, threats of war crimes charges, and claims of genocide, Israel has shown no signs of relenting.
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Israel’s tent camp massacre in Rafah is a heinous war crime
For over eight months, Palestinians in Gaza have been sharing live videos of their daily executions, pleading with the world to stop the carnage. But the Western political class has remained silent, piping up only to offer platitudes about human rights and international law, while refusing to rein in Israel’s unhinged barbarity, let alone impose sanctions on a genocidal state.
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On CBC media capitulation and HonestReporting Canada
CBC’s repeated caving to a highly biased pro-Israel advocacy group like HonestReporting Canada takes up a place within the larger context of right-wing populism on the rise in Canada today. According to a perceived bargain, CBC’s decision to appease Israel’s defenders is a trade-off for a de-escalation of existential threats to the public broadcaster. Yet, in this, CBC is making a dire miscalculation.
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History contradicts claims that October 7 attacks unprovoked
Mainstream editors claim that Israel’s ongoing Gaza campaign is completely justified by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack. The Hamas attack killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and resulted in over 200 hostages taken and retained. Unfortunately, this “unprovoked” assault was entirely predictable given occupied Palestine’s tragic history.
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Reclaiming solidarity
In the wake of the Hamas assault of October 7, journalists indignantly called out feminists for not addressing this violence sufficiently. The same critics have had little to say about the countless overlooked and ignored examples of sexual violence perpetrated against Palestinians in Israeli prisons and by IDF soldiers before and since that day.
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McGill admin: Listen to the cops and talk to students
Instead of negotiating with pro-Palestinian protesters whose demands have broad support among the university community, the administration wants to force the police to intervene. As Yves Engler writes, perhaps the McGill administration should listen to the cops: talk to the students. Negotiate. Compromise. Settle peacefully.
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The dead end of liberal American Zionism
Jews are going to have to make a painful reappraisal of the project that imposes a “Jewish” state in Palestine. Understanding our willful blindness and self-deception that facilitate the abuse of the non-Jews of Palestine will mean giving up the evasive palliative of pseudo-humanistic posturing from groups like J Street.
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A lawyer’s perspective on the pro-Palestine encampments
Liberal law purports to give everyone the right to think what they like, say what they like. Capitalism makes sure that this admirable goal can never be fully attained. John Galsworthy, writing in the The Forsyte Saga, captured this very nicely: “If a man had money, he was free in law and fact, and if he had no money he was free in law and not in fact.”
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Israel’s willing executioners
We may feel insignificant in Israel, but here, in Gaza, we are King Kong, a little tyrant on a little throne. We stride through the rubble of Gaza, surrounded by the might of industrial weapons, able to pulverize in an instant whole apartment blocks and neighborhoods, and say, like Vishnu, “now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
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The student Intifada rises at Montréal universities
Students from all four Montréal universities came together over the last week to express their solidarity with the Palestinian people and pressure their institutions to cut ties with Israel. Following the lead of the camps protests in the United States, they set up an encampment on the grounds of McGill University on April 27.
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First we take Manhattan
The genocide in Gaza is the moment of moral conscience for this generation, as Vietnam was in the 1960s. As Derek Sayer writes, Israel’s violence and the repression on American university campuses are intimately connected. It is time we lifted our heads from our everyday evasions and diversions, our compromises and complicities, and started to listen to the kids.
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Elites in the Global North are scared to talk about Palestine
Over the past six months, newspapers and television shows in the US have generally written about Israel’s genocidal violence using passive voice. Even on social media, the ax fell on key phrases; for instance, despite his professions of commitment to free speech, Elon Musk said that terms such as “decolonization” and phrases such as “from the river to the sea” would be banned on X.
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Academic freedom for me but not for thee
We are seeing opposing world views play out in clashes between police and professors and their students across American college campuses. It is a harbinger of encampments that have already started to sprout here. Let us hope that authorities and institutions do not see fit to trample upon free speech and academic freedom, mistaking a call for life for its opposite.
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Keffiyeh bans and the fragility of apartheid supporters
Israel’s Western backers know they are losing. They know that, despite the carnage the Israeli military is unleashing on Gaza, it is not any closer to defeating Hamas. They know that Israel is quickly becoming a pariah state, and as its global reputation sinks like an anchor, it’s dragging down Western credibility with it.
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Revolt in the universities
There are many shameful periods in American history. The genocide we carried out against Indigenous peoples. Slavery. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. The genocide in Gaza, which we fund and support, is of such monstrous proportions that it will achieve a prominent place in this pantheon of crimes. History will not be kind to most of us. But it will bless and revere these students.
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All the perfumes of Arabia
The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taking over, as in The Matrix films. The story of Lavender suggests, on the contrary, that the real danger arises when the awesome data-crunching capacities of AI are put in the hands of human beings. Derek Sayer on Israel’s human targeting software and the banality of evil.
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Powerful stories
Even if Hamas did commit every one of the atrocities of which it has been accused, this would not justify Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, either morally or in international law. The comparison that needs to be made by the international community is rather with the infinitely greater horrors Israel has inflicted on Gaza since October 7.
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Latest transfer of 2,000-pound bombs from US to Israel not newsworthy to the New York Times
The saying that “justice delayed is justice denied” has a parallel for news media and war—journalism delayed is journalism denied. The refusal of the Times to cover the story after it broke was journalistic malpractice, helping to make it little more than a fleeting one-day story instead of the subject of focused national discourse that it should have been.
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Zionism: the root of the crisis in Israel-Palestine
As important as it is to bring an immediate end to the slaughter in Gaza, writes Sid Shnaid, the long-term solution to the ongoing crisis in Israel-Palestine requires that we address the root of the problem: the institutionalization of Jewish supremacy, based in Zionist ideology, upon which the state of Israel has been built.
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When 1,000 in Hollywood proclaim support for Gaza slaughter
Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest Oscar speech.” The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers’ own loved ones.
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The threshold of intent
The impending famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate, conscious, informed choices, and nobody in the Israeli or American governments can be in any doubt as to where they are leading. As Derek Sayer writes, we are on the threshold of a ‘final solution’ to the Palestinian problem. Ladies and gentlemen, this way for your ambient genocide.
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NDP motion on Palestine a step forward, but not nearly enough
On March 18, the House of Commons passed an opposition day motion put forward by NDP MP Heather McPherson. It called for a reconsideration of Canadian policy toward securing Middle East peace in the midst of Israel’s onslaught in the Gaza Strip. The initial NDP proposal was significantly stronger than the final version—though not nearly as strong as it should have been.
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Canada’s UN ambassador supports Israeli expansion by peace process
Bob Rae recently stated that “the ultimate responsibility for the conduct of the [Gaza] war lies with the parties who are fighting.” In so doing, Rae, a former Rhodes scholar, ignores the United States’ pivotal role in providing Israel with weapons, money and diplomatic support. Of course, Rae’s official rhetoric must reflect Canada’s deference to US Middle East policy.
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A moral crossroads for the West
If Netanyahu is facing his Rubicon, the West has finally arrived at its own moral crossroads. After months of uncritical support for Israel’s assault on Gaza and weeks of equivocation as the magnitude of its inhumanity has become undeniable, there is still time to draw back from the abyss and defend the post-war order whose highest legal authority is the ICJ.
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Open letter: Stop manipulating sexual assault
In its current war against the people of Gaza, the Israeli government has chosen to weaponize the issue of sexual violence for political gain. This statement will be delivered to Israeli officials who have mounted a public crusade manipulating this issue to both legitimize—and divert attention from—their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
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Direct action confronts Canada-Israel arms trade
For a country currently grappling with its own legacies of genocide and colonialism, direct actions like the one in Peterborough help to expose how the values of setter-colonial states are not so different, and emphasize the urgent need for decolonization at home and abroad. Respect for international law, and an end to military violence, should be a priority for us all.
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An extreme act of protest
Aaron Bushnell’s supreme sacrifice cuts like a knife through the Orwellian doublethink—mass slaughter of innocent civilians is “self-defense,” the IDF is “the most moral army in the world”—that allows us to continue to live with what the highest court in the world has described as a plausible genocide.
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Is the tide turning on Israel?
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.
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Israel lobby and its media enablers threatening academic freedom on campus
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.
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Israel may have the least ‘moral army’ in the world
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.
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The NDP is incoherent on Gaza genocide
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.
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There is no place for the Palestinians of Gaza to go
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.
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Selina Robinson didn’t just abuse her position—she abused the legacy of the Holocaust
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.
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Eyeless in Gaza
By positioning October 7 as Israel’s Ground Zero, Hamas’s assault becomes the self-evident point of origin of the current conflict in Gaza and the obligatory reference point for all critical analysis and moral judgment regarding subsequent events. No matter what Israel does, any criticism of Operation Swords of Iron is forestalled by this eternal return of the ever-same.
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Open letter: Civil society coalition urges Canada to stop arms transfers to Israel
Canada’s export of military weapons and arms to Israel is fueling one of the deadliest and most destructive wars in modern history. The continuous bombardment of Gaza is a complete and utter injustice and obstructs any possibility of distributing life-saving humanitarian aid. Canada must immediately stop all weapons, parts and ammunition transfers to Israel.
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Scandal grows around BC NDP minister Selina Robinson
Beside exceeding the bounds of her position, and beside interfering in the democratically-run internal affairs of a post-secondary institution, and beside capitulating to the demands of an external propaganda group, NDP MLA Selina Robinson revealed both abysmal ignorance and a fundamentally racist and colonial conception of an oppressed people.
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A clarifying moment: Canada and the ICJ ruling on genocide in Gaza
On January 26, the International Court of Justice delivered an interim ruling in response to South Africa’s charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is a clarifying moment in modern history—the day the “rules-based international order” was given the coup de grâce, not by its enemies but by its authors. The gloves were off and so were the masks.
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Ottawa shrugs off ICJ genocide verdict while cutting funds to Palestinian refugees
What will follow this historic ICJ ruling? Unless the US exerts leverage on Israel to rein in its genocidal military campaign against Palestinians, little will happen. While ICJ rulings are legally binding, Israel has never let international law moderate its violence, whether the massacre of civilians or the expansion of illegal settlements.
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From vilification to criminalization
Since the current genocidal assault on Gaza got underway, we are seeing a redoubling of efforts to take the McCarthyist process further still, with even moderate criticism of Israel now treated as anti-Jewish hatred. Those mounting the charge are extending their efforts into the realms of criminal law and the policing of public protests.
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Letter from a Jewish person (this side of the screen)
A poem in memory of Hiba Abu Nada and Dr. Refaat Alareer. Abu Nada was a beloved figure in the Palestinian literary community and the author of the novel Oxygen is Not for the Dead. She was killed by an Israeli airstrike on October 20. Alareer was a poet, writer, literature professor, and activist. He was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike on December 6.
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Ruling by UN’s top court means Canada and the US could be complicit in Gaza genocide
Statements of political support by the US and Canada that Israel is abiding by the laws of war—contrary to the facts—cannot shield Israel or its allies from their legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. Those obligations—including to prevent genocide—are created via treaty and are interpreted by courts, the highest of which is the International Court of Justice.
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The dream of a Palestinian narrative
For legitimate reasons, the mainstream media today is struggling to maintain an audience and set political agendas as it did in the past. Young people no longer read establishment newspapers or watch CNN or CBC in the evenings. They now rely on social media for their news; they are interested in watching Palestinians document their lives.
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It may be genocide, but it won’t be stopped
It is clear from the ICJ’s ruling that it is fully aware of the magnitude of Israel’s crimes. This makes the decision not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza all the more distressing. But the court did deliver a devastating blow to the mystique Israel has used since its founding: it made the word genocide, when applied to Israel, credible.
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Gaza and Canada’s refugee double standard
The different treatment of Ukrainian and Palestinian refugees exposes a clear double standard. The Trudeau government’s response to Ukraine was swift and comprehensive. There was no cap on how many could apply and they did not need to have Canadian relatives. Ottawa eventually received 1,189,320 applications from Ukrainians and approved 936,293, with 210,178 arriving in Canada.
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The four horsemen of Gaza’s apocalypse
Joe Biden’s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East—Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk—have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements. They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East.
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The case for genocide
Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.
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Canada has gone from complicity through silence to active participation in genocide
The international community has two paths towards normalizing shipping through the Red Sea: intervene to stop an ongoing genocide, or intervene by punishing a country already devastated by decades of Western interventionism and war in the hopes that it will force their military to disengage. That choice seems like an obvious one.
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Hezbollah still a useful bogeyman for Israel and the US
The Israeli state is rightly concerned about the possibility of large-scale attacks from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. Much is made of the group’s links to Iran, Israel’s former ally and current Middle East competitor. In the subjective world of realpolitik, good and evil are defined by whether or not a given state supports the actions of another.
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A poem by Leila Marshy: ‘Kinship’
A new poem by Leila Marshy, a Montréaler of Palestinian-Newfoundland heritage. Her stories and poetry have been published in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and the United States. Marshy works as a freelance writer and editor. The Philistine (Linda Leith Publishing, 2018) is her first novel.
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Despair is the currency of massacre
The neglect of Palestine’s humanitarian crisis and the continuity of Israeli apartheid in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, has never been more urgent. The inability to address the racist and classist policies of repressive states is only adding fodder to reactive extremism and eroding ideological diversity in anti-imperialist resistance.
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It’s time for Canadian environmental groups to talk about war as an act of climate denial
Acknowledging that a number of environmental organizations have quietly joined a growing coalition of civil society groups calling for ceasefire in Gaza, why is this community not speaking out more about war crimes that have the world’s attention, or educating others on the interconnectedness of war with climate change, climate justice, and planetary health?
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Canada should support ICJ ruling on Israel’s genocide
Last week, South Africa requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague make an urgent order declaring Israel in breach of its obligations under the Genocide Convention. As Canadian Dimension columnist Yves Engler argues, Canadians should support this non-violent bid to curtail the apartheid state’s well-documented and undeniable war crimes in Gaza.
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Israel’s drone age
Israel’s drone assassination of Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri is a straightforward study in the fly-by-night legality of drone warfare, and shows that Israel is both a leader and transgressor of rapidly changing legal norms. As Cam Scott writes, for more than two decades, drones have assumed a very nearly governmental role in, and above, the Occupied Territories.
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Israel’s genocide betrays the Holocaust
The Holocaust was weaponized from almost the moment Israel was founded. It was bastardized to serve the apartheid state. If we forget the lessons of the Holocaust, we forget who we are and what we are capable of becoming. We seek our moral worth in the past, rather than the present. We condemn others, including the Palestinians, to an endless cycle of slaughter.
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Gendering genocide
A new generation of women around the world is learning from and speaking out against this cruel and catastrophic Israeli violence. For these women, the assault on Gaza will be among their formative political experiences, a vital lesson in how racial-gender violence organizes the international order, how it shapes the workings of international politics and law.
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11 ways for Canada to end complicity in Israel’s crimes
The unspeakable horrors Israel has unleashed on Gaza since October 7 has stirred the most sustained anti-war and internationalist mobilization since the Vietnam War. This popular uprising has pressured Ottawa to shift its usual stance and vote against Israel at the UN. Yet, symbolic gestures only go so far. Here are 11 ways for Canada to materially end complicity in Israel’s crimes.
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Gaza and the fault lines of empire
US hegemony is by no means as robust as it used to be, threatened as it is by the rising power of China. Though the global empire can rely on an unrivalled military power and a great capacity for economic coercion, a functioning Washington Consensus requires a minimum level of acquiescence and stability and this is being threatened by the present situation.
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Refaat Alareer: Literature as resistance
In addition to his writing and activism, Alareer taught creative writing and literature at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through his work with We Are Not Numbers and the publication of literary anthologies, Alareer aimed to educate the world about the horrendous conditions Palestinians have been forced to endure under Israeli occupation.
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The death of Israel
Israel is a pariah state. This was publicly on display on December 12 when 153 member states at the UN General Assembly voted for a ceasefire, with only 10 abstaining. Israel’s campaign in Gaza means there will be no peace. There will be no two state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define Israel. This presages a long conflict, one Israel cannot win.
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Believing women, believing Palestinians
Why is it so difficult for university administrators to express sympathy with all students, staff, and faculty who have been impacted by the events of October 7? To acknowledge that there are diverse Jewish views about Israel, Palestine, and what is unfolding now? Laurie Adkin writes on the tactics being used to silence critics of Israel and curtail free speech on campus and beyond.
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The ‘no-state solution’ becomes more and more real as Israel’s permanent Nakba continues
Since 1948, Palestinian political movements and intellectuals have argued that the logic of the Israeli state has been to expel the Palestinians from the region between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. This policy of expulsion to create an ethno-religious Jewish State of Israel is what is meant by the “permanent Nakba.”
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Batchoun: US ceasefire veto devoid of humanity
With the United States vetoing a call for a ceasefire at the United Nations Security Council, the collective West has stood by and condoned Israel’s continued barbarity. This amounts to complicity in war crimes. The callous disregard for Palestinian rights and human lives paints a bleak view of humanity, one that is devoid of hope and redemption. We must fight for better.
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Toronto rallies for Palestine
Photojournalist John Pinel Donoghue was in downtown Toronto on December 10 to attend a pro-Palestine demonstration demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. The protest started outside the US Consulate before moving to Yonge-Dundas Square and then to Toronto Police 52 division headquarters after a protester was arrested for allegedly assaulting a police officer.
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In the name of all Jews
Zionists see Israel’s fight in Gaza as an existential battle for Jewish existence. And if you don’t support this fight, you’re against the Jews. That makes you irredeemable and not a Jew, even if you are legally Jewish by Israel’s maternal bloodline obsessed rabbinical court. That’s what I mean when I say Zionists want to act in the name of all Jews.
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In search of the ‘oneness of humanity’
The great Palestinian poet and author Mahmoud Darwish once wrote “to be human is to love, to create, and to resist.” Darwish’s thought carries an important message for Canada: foster a culture of love and humanism, and strive to build a just and peaceful world by opposing all manifestations of structural and physical violence.
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Israel reopens the Gaza slaughterhouse
The savagery of the air strikes and indiscriminate attacks, the cutting off of food, water and medicine, the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli government, make this a war whose sole objective is revenge. This will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians. It will fuel a conflagration throughout the Middle East. This war is not over. It has not even begun.
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Confessions of a hatemonger
Over these last weeks, as Israel’s military machine has mounted an industrialized killing operation against hundreds of thousands of trapped people in Gaza, I have echoed the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” I don’t agree for a moment that this is an expression of antisemitic hatred or an incitement to genocide.
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Guernica, now and then
I stand before Guernica, the familiar canvas of dismembered bodies, dead babies and soldiers; a weeping mother, a shrieking horse; once remembered for its chronicle of carnage, warnings of mass murder to come, enough to move the dial from tragedy to statistic, now forgotten. Silence has settled upon the world, snuffed out by apologists for the sacred State’s need for human sacrifice.
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‘From the river to the sea’ and the trouble with political slogans
What does “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” actually mean? And when it comes to political slogans, should impact matter more than intent? As Carleton University professor Mira Sucharov explains, the controversy the chant generates suggests there is work to be done in better communicating with and understanding one another.
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Protesting against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians isn’t antisemitic
As those of us in Toronto watch the devastation occurring in Gaza, where Israel’s bombing campaign this month is estimated to have killed over 8,000 Palestinians, including over 3,000 children, and displaced 1.4 million residents, we are also witnessing Mayor Olivia Chow and other politicians condemning Palestinian activism here as antisemitic.
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Israel-Palestine: Where is Canada?
A call for an immediate ceasefire is a call to stop this massacre. Nothing more, nothing less. Several states, non-governmental organizations, and international legal experts support this call, and global civil society is mobilizing to urge all governments to demand a ceasefire. So, we ask: where is Canada?
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Israel is shutting down its human laboratory in Gaza
The global ruling class will counter the destabilizing forces of inequality, curtailment of civil liberties, collapsing infrastructure, failing health systems and increasing shortages caused by an accelerating climate crisis, by branding all who resist as “human animals.” As Chris Hedges writes, this new world order began in Gaza. It ends at home.
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Western students must stand up for Palestine
My greatest wish—as a student and a human being—is to live in a world where all peoples, regardless of race, creed, or faith, can live in peace and dignity. A world where children can grow up free from the horrors of war. We must fight, when all seems dim, so that the world of our dreams can be born. We must fight on, for hope.
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On not teaching Palestine
How do you tell a student who earnestly feels that they are in danger that you think their fears are unfounded or exaggerated? That was the question that came to me in the classroom, and the one that animated this essay. Maybe it’s unnecessary. A group chat of fellow adjuncts and late-term PhDs who share my politics have advised me to keep my head down.
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Letter to the children of Gaza
We have failed you. This is the awful guilt we carry. We tried. But we did not try hard enough. We will go to Rafah. Many of us. Reporters. We will stand outside the border with Gaza in protest. We will write and film. This is what we do. It is not much. But it is something. We will tell your story again. But we are not there. Not this time. We cannot get in. We are locked out.
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The intensity of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza is barbaric and shocking, but its methods are not new
For nearly 75 years, the agony of the Palestinians has been unfathomable to an international audience. The exodus, the dispossession, the daily indignity of Israeli occupation and the extreme violence against innocents have largely been hidden to outsiders. This latest campaign dispels any lingering doubt that Israel’s real intent is to destroy the Palestinians’ will to live.
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Publishers for Palestine: Statement of solidarity
Now is the time to stand with Palestinians and step into a new era of anti-colonial resistance: an era that refuses the Oslo concessions and the normalization of ties with the Zionist state. Now is the time to remember and uphold other historical victories against settler-colonial regimes. This statement was first posted on the Verso Books website
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How is the Canadian labour movement responding to Israel’s attacks on Gaza?
Since Israel began its brutal siege of the Gaza Strip, Canada’s labour unions have come out in vocal support of the Palestinians. Ranging from calls for an immediate ceasefire, to opposition to Canadian arms sales to Israel, and statements opposing violence “on both sides,” unions have increasingly lined up to call out Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.
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Canada has become indifferent to Palestinian suffering
In a Global News segment this past week, a journalist asked a Canadian diplomat if there were any Palestinian death toll in Gaza that would be too much—a “red line.” It’s a sickening and perverse question, as if there’s a penance in Palestinian blood that needs to be paid. But it is a question that Canadians need to ask of their government, because the answer doesn’t seem clear.
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The exaltation of Israel, the power of Palestinian resistance
The Israeli state has proved utterly ineffectual in colonizing the collective consciousness of the Palestinian people, of erasing their historical memory, of destroying their spirit to resist by militarily convincing them that resistance is futile. That spirit of resistance, that historical memory, has only gained in intensity and strength during these past three weeks.
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As politicians enable genocide, Canadians protest
Over the past three weeks since it launched its brutal military bombardment of Gaza, Israel has killed more than 8,000 Palestinians and injured 20,000 more. While our government and political establishment continue to enable Israel’s extreme right-wing government, more and more Canadians are saying no to genocide.
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Ontario NDP’s expulsion of Sarah Jama is a flagrant betrayal
We should support the demand for the reinstatement of Sarah Jama; but were she to decide to continue sitting as an independent MPP and to run for office independently of the party that has cast her aside, she would deserve full support. The voice that Doug Ford and—even more shamefully—Marit Stiles want to silence must be heard loudly and clearly.
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The everyday violence of life in occupied Palestine
Since the expulsion of the Palestinian Christians and Muslims and the arrival of European Jews, otherwise known as the Nakba, Israel’s legal apparatus has worked alongside paramilitary and military violence against the Palestinians to create a fantasy of an exclusionary ethno-nationalist state project.
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The Israel-Palestine war: Consider the boy in the rubble
Let’s look at what’s happened in the weeks since Hamas’s horrific attack, which took the lives of more than 1,300 Israelis. Israel responded by putting the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza under what it called a complete siege. “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” Collective punishment? Consider the boy in the rubble. An enemy combatant?
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Ontario NDP and Conservatives unite to punish Sarah Jama for criticizing Israeli violence
The Ontario New Democrats cannot be allowed to forget that, as a genocide loomed in Gaza, they expelled a critic of Israeli violence while their party leader, Marit Stiles, spoke alongside a man who compared Palestinians to cockroaches. As Owen Schalk argues, we must remember whose alliances the NDP values, and whose it discards.
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The bankrupt morality of Canada’s political class
The situational morality of our leaders at home and aboard is not just worth noting, it is the very terrain on which we must launch our struggles for the remaking of this world. That means thinking differently about what constitutes living a life, what constitutes caring as a refusal of others’ marginalization, exclusion, death, and genocide.
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Let them eat cement
Israel, with the backing of its US and European allies, is preparing to launch not only a scorched earth campaign in Gaza but the worst ethnic cleansing since the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The goal is to drive tens, most probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians over the southern border at Rafah into refugee camps in Egypt.
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Banning Palestine support rallies. Could it happen in Canada?
In the wake of the recent events in Israel-Palestine, conservative and even centrist politicians all over the West have denounced rallies organized in support of the Palestinians and many have suggested prohibiting them and some have done so. Does the political will exist to support relevant governments banning pro-Palestinian gatherings?
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Official enemies and Western ‘Newspeak’ on Israel-Palestine
Creating ‘us’ and ‘them’ narratives is a staple for many governments—a convenient way of keeping things crudely simple and trying to unite a population at home that might be willing to focus negative feelings on external enemies rather than domestic concerns. Only by resisting such ploys can we play a small part in creating a more stable and just world.
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Canada’s weak stance on Gaza crisis gives green light to Israel’s war crimes
The Trudeau government’s unequivocal support for Israel’s right to “self-defence” is exposing the hypocrisy behind Canada’s magnanimous brand. There is simply no nuance to Ottawa’s statements: it fully stands behind the forces that are destroying hospitals, uprooting hundreds of thousands, and espousing genocidal rhetoric.
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The British roots of the conflict in Palestine
While the proximate causes of Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide clearly lie squarely at the feet of Israel, the United Kingdom has a special responsibility to make right its historical sins in Palestine—and everywhere else. A minimal first step would be to work to stop the current genocide instead of waving an Israeli flag.
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Hamas attacks on Israel inevitable
Israel strictly controls Gaza’s land borders, airspace and coastal zones with a combination of conventional military hardware and high-tech surveillance devices. It has also enforced a harsh import and export blockade since 2008. As Morgan Duchesney argues, the human costs of Israel’s brutal occupation always meant that a terrible retaliation by Hamas was inevitable.
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This way for the genocide, ladies and gentlemen
Israel taught the Palestinians to communicate in the primitive howl of hatred, war, death and annihilation. But it is not Israel’s assault on Gaza I fear most. It is the complicity of an international community that licenses Israel’s genocidal slaughter and accelerates a cycle of violence it may not be able to control.
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Stop the genocide in Gaza
It feels like 1939. A far-right regime is in the early stages of killing potentially hundreds of thousands of people or more. But instead of debating whether or not to enter the war, the ‘Allies’ are sending weapons and aid to that same regime—Israel—that is mobilizing its military to carry out a genocide, and criminalizing those at home who would speak out.
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Jeff Halper: Zionism has destroyed two peoples
In the end, Zionism has destroyed two peoples, the Palestinians and the Jews. But tonight we must all vow to do whatever is necessary to save the Palestinian people and restore their national rights. Forging a shared and inclusive and egalitarian state and society sounds absurd tonight, even a cruel, inappropriate joke. But that is where we must go.
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Reaping the whirlwind
Nothing excuses the murder of innocent civilians. But if that is true for Hamas, it is also true for the IDF. The numbers of dead prior to Hamas’s violent incursion speak volumes. Palestinians who live in Gaza and in the West Bank have been systematically murdered by a state that is determined to cleanse its lands of Palestinians and build a nation only for the Jews. Who will stop Israel?
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The savagery of the war against the Palestinian people
Gaza is a ruin populated by nearly two million people. After Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, the UN reported that “people are literally sleeping amongst the rubble; children have died of hypothermia.” A variation of this sentence has been written after each of these bombings and will be written when this one finally comes to an end.
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What do you expect?
If the diaspora really wants to take a shot at making things “normal” in Israel, it has two paths: to either fully back genocide or give up on Zionism and push Israel towards reconciliation and integration. I know it’s useless to type all this out. I don’t have much faith in the second option happening. My Zionist diaspora isn’t into it at all.
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Palestinians speak the language of violence Israel taught them
The indiscriminate shootings of Israelis by Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations, the kidnapping of civilians, drone attacks on a variety of targets from tanks to automated machine gun nests, are the familiar language of the Israeli occupier. Regimes implanted and maintained by violence engender violence.
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Hamas campaign recalls Tet Offensive: Could this also be a turning point?
As in Vietnam in 1968, the lessons are there to learn, if people are prepared to learn them. When history presents us with parallels, albeit imperfect ones, we need to pay heed. One thing is for sure: Israelis and their allies can no longer ignore Palestine, pretending that the brutal occupation can continue with impunity.
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Foreign Affairs admits Israel has destroyed the ‘two-state solution’
By allying with extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the country so far to the right that he appears to be causing tensions with Israel’s most powerful backers in the West. The recent article in Foreign Affairs shows how this tension is influencing the thinking of an element of the US foreign policy elite.
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Campaign to prohibit illegal Israeli military recruitment in Canada gets big boost
The campaign to oppose illegal Israeli military recruitment has broken new ground. The Liberal government recently responded to a parliamentary petition calling for an investigation into those who have recruited or facilitated recruiting for the Israel Defense Forces. Last week, charges were laid on an organization allegedly violating Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act.
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The NDP must withdraw from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group
In recent months, prominent human rights authorities and advocates have all concluded that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is therefore incoherent for the NDP to echo these findings and simultaneously participate in a group promoting “co-operation” with Israel. It’s time for the party to formally disassociate from the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary Group.
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Where’s Canada as Israel escalates attacks on Palestinian NGOs?
In a series of alarming events over the past week, Israel has escalated its attacks on human rights defenders. After outlawing six leading Palestinian NGOs in October last year, on August 18, Israeli occupation forces led militarized raids against their offices in Ramallah, damaging property, confiscating files, and attempting to seal their doors shut permanently.
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The ‘terrorist’ smear: a settler-colonial ploy
This is all about a brutal regime attempting to nullify any attempt by its subject population to resist its military occupation and push back against the country’s institutionalized discrimination. Besides the day-to-day humiliations and violent suppression of resistance, one of the most effective weapons in Israel’s arsenal is the application of the label “terrorist” to as many forms of resistance as possible.
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Canada’s arms exports to Israel at a 30-year high
A new report published today by the non-profit organization Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) raises serious human rights concerns posed by Canada’s arms exports to Israel. The report, titled Arming Apartheid: Canada’s Arms Exports to Israel, finds that Canada’s arms exports to Israel have been accelerating in recent years—reaching a 30-year high in 2020.
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Amnesty report on Israeli apartheid demands debate on Canada’s role
An honest reckoning with Amnesty’s analysis would force a serious re-examination of the Canada-Israel bilateral relationship. Canada may even be compelled to take a leadership role in a coordinated, international response against Israel’s system of apartheid, as Mulroney helped to coordinate action against South African apartheid (even if his role is often exaggerated).
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Canada should strip charitable status from groups funding the Israeli army
CRA rules state that “supporting the armed forces of another country is not” charitable. Yet newly released files confirm that the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, a registered charity based in Toronto, supports the Israeli military. Canadian taxpayers should not be subsidizing an apartheid state, nor an Israeli military that is actively oppressing Palestinians.
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Free speech on Palestine: Time to push back
There is a need for bold and wide-ranging approaches to Palestine solidarity at this time. However, we must also confront a major barrier that stands in the way of such forward movement. In the last few years, Israel’s enablers have made progress in attacking the legitimacy of support for the Palestinian struggle by falsely equating it with antisemitism.
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For Canadian taxpayers, why is Israel still a charity case?
Over the past two weeks, Canada has seen a significant outpouring of support for Palestinian rights, with tens of thousands taking to the streets to denounce Israel’s violence. But if we want to turn the tide against Israeli apartheid, we need to focus on ending Palestinian dispossession by targeting a little-discussed aspect of Canada’s ongoing complicity: tax deductible charitable donations.
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Sheikh Jarrah, the permanent Nakba
Will history remember Benjamin Netanyahu as the wrecker of Zionism or the revealer of its racist underbelly? By courting the settlers and the ultra-religious parties, Netanyahu has spread the gangrene of fascism in the heart of a society that thought itself virtuous. History will at any rate confirm his role in the disintegration of a colossal fiction: that of Israeli democracy.
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It’s time for Canada to end arms sales to Israel
It is time for Canada’s unions and the national labour movement to call on the Government of Canada to suspend bilateral trade of all arms and related materials with the State of Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights are upheld. Our movement’s commitment to peace, human rights and international solidarity demands it.
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Why is a Montréal school pushing students to join the Israeli military?
Canadian law makes it illegal to recruit soldiers within the country for a foreign state, but the line between enticing impressionable young people to consider joining the IDF and formal recruitment is blurred. Legal questions aside, should a Montréal school funnel youngsters into a foreign military engaged in a brutal 50-year occupation? And should taxpayers foot the bill?
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How the IHRA definition of antisemitism is shielding Israel from criticism
The Ontario government first adopted the IHRA definition by introducing Bill 168. Though the rise of hate crimes against Jewish people have led many to call for such legislation, the main issue critics raise with the IHRA’s 38-word definition of antsemitism is that it shuts down criticism of Israel while undermining anti-racism and decolonization initiatives.
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A reply to B’nai Brith, and Canada’s UN vote
B’nai Brith Canada claims to represent the vast majority of Canada’s approximately 330,000 Jews. I don’t think they do—and I can’t believe it’s so. On matters related to Israel-Palestine, their positions and pronouncements strike me as morally shrivelled and mean-spirited, and liable to cast Jews, Jewishness and the Jewish people, of whom I am one, into disrepute.
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Why is the Israeli military still recruiting in Canada?
There’s a Canadian law that makes it illegal for the armed forces of any foreign state to recruit soldiers within our borders, but you’d never know it the way Israel and its supporters operate within this country. For three quarters of a century Canadians have been recruited inside this country to fight in Israel’s military. Finally, however, there is an organized effort to stop this practice.
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Canada is wrong to welcome the UAE-Israel deal
Instead of easing diplomatic restrictions on Israel, the international community should be imposing economic and diplomatic sanctions on Israel as an incentive to dismantle the occupation and come to the negotiating table. The UAE’s opportunistic path is not likely to end division and conflict in the region and may in fact intensify and prolong it. This is not something that Canada should encourage.
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The left must fight the IHRA definition of antisemitism
The left can’t allow itself to be bullied by the false and cynical allegation of anti-Semitism. To acquiesce in the face of the disruptive and dangerous IHRA definition is utterly unacceptable. It’s high time to confront the slanders and, in a spirit of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, accuse the accusers.
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The new Israel lobby in action
This is not about Jews. It is not about race, ethnicity or religion. It is about power. The new Israel lobby in Canada—the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA)—has enormous power, derived from abundant resources, corporate connections, political associations, elaborate and able organization and a cadre of dedicated activists
