A view from the sit-in at Parliament
That Israel is committing crimes against humanity on an industrial scale is no longer a matter of debate. In the past year, the Trudeau government has indirectly acknowledged as much, first by ceasing to issue new military export permits to Israel, and then by stating that it would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, now indicted by the International Criminal Court, should he enter Canada.
In spite of this, Ottawa continues to equip the Israeli military with the very weapons that it is using to slaughter Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. As Amnesty International has stated, Ottawa now “risks becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law—including war crimes—and a plausible genocide.”
For several months, the Trudeau government has responded to public concerns about complicity with tokenistic gestures that attempt to hide or downplay the scope of its ongoing military linkages to Israel. The result has been incoherence and hypocrisy. Canada now has approximately 200 active export permits with Israel, which are valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In September, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly suspended 30 of these. She did not specify which permits were suspended, nor did she suggest that any have been cancelled. The government weakly defends its position by arguing that its standing permits are for “non-lethal” goods—a term that has no legal definition and is at odds with the broader language of Canadian and international law. In fact, these permits are for aircraft, ground vehicles, and components such as imaging technology and specialized circuit boards, all of which may be used to lethal effect.
Moreover, Canada continues to export military wares to Israel via the United States with little restraint or transparency. (more...)
Why we demand an arms embargo on Israel
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