On Israel-Gaza, Canada must rise to the humanity of the moment

François Crépeau, Leilani Farha, Alex Neve, Kim Pate*

We recently joined over 300 lawyers and legal scholars in an Open Letter urging the Canadian government to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, in line with international law. The ongoing refusal to do so is an utter failure to understand the humanity of the moment.

What is unfolding in Gaza and Israel is precisely what international humanitarian and human rights legal standards – when implemented – are meant to avoid. Human beings inflicting egregious and unspeakable harms on other human beings. Calling only for humanitarian pauses is a colossal misunderstanding of what’s happening and what’s at stake.  

Since sending our letter, the unimaginable continues to unfold: Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed over 11,000 people, more than 4,000 of whom are infants and children. Entire family lines have been extinguished. Half a million more people are facing death by starvation and dehydration due to Israel’s tactics. Necessary medicines are unavailable to treat serious injuries and medical conditions, and hospitals repeatedly bombarded and deprived of fuel are shutting down.

According to Save The Children, more children have been killed in Gaza in just three weeks than the annual total of all the world’s conflicts combined since 2019. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls it a “graveyard for children,” and points out that there is, “something clearly wrong in the way military operations are being done.”

All of this is happening in real time.

The Canadian government has rightly unequivocally condemned the Hamas attacks – widely decried as war crimes – and insisted that all hostages be released. We joined in that call.

But the government has failed, through words and actions, to equally champion the rights of Palestinians. The failure to acknowledge the context in which the October 7 Hamas attack took place – Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestine, including institutionalized practices of apartheid – and the refusal to condemn the unlawful actions taken by Israel in response to the attacks, dehumanizes Palestinians and makes a mockery of the universal nature of human rights.

As the numbers killed escalate and conditions on the ground worsen day by day, the list of war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by Israel in Gaza, as documented by human rights organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN experts, grows longer. That includes unlawful attacks against civilians; targeting of hospitals; indiscriminate use of incendiary munitions such as white phosphorous; and collective punishment, such as the use of starvation as a weapon of war via blockade. Compiling this list bears little meaning, however, if governments, including Canada, are not prepared to insist that Palestinians are part of the human family that international law intends to protect.

Abuses committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups are unquestionably war crimes and belong before the International Criminal Court. As egregious as these acts are, they do not extinguish Palestinian humanity and excuse Israel’s extensive violations of numerous international laws.

Supporting, at worst, or turning a blind eye at best to Israel’s violations of international law has only added fuel to this fire. As the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism pointed out last year, the “escalating … daily gross violations of [Palestinians’] human rights” has been enabled internationally by the “suppression of legitimate criticisms of the State of Israel, a State that must, like any other in the United Nations system, be accountable for human rights violations that it perpetrates.”

Yet since October 7, the repression of even legally-accurate critiques of Israel’s actions has further intensified, including in Canada, and we are witnessing rapidly intensifying hateful and even violent anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.

The situation in Gaza grows more dire by the hour. UN experts as well as a group of 800 genocide and international law scholars have warned that the situation is now approaching genocide.

While this is overwhelming, there is so much that can be done. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must call for an immediate ceasefire in line with Canada’s legal obligations and the raison d’être of international humanitarian and human rights law. His government must also support legal proceedings and investigations underway at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court; impose a ban on arms transfers to the region; and scrupulously uphold freedom of expression and protections against hate in Canada.

The Canadian government’s actions will be judged by history and are under scrutiny today. Now is the moment to breathe life – Palestinian life – into Canada’s commitment to the international legal system.

* François Crépeau is Full Professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University; Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing; Alex Neve is Senior Fellow with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Kim Pate is an Independent Senator for Ontario.

 This was originally published as an opinion piece in the Hill Times on November 15, 2023.