The court ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and also ensure that its troops do not commit any genocidal acts in Gaza. Israel must also report to the court within a month on what it’s doing to uphold the order.
I’ll be patient for a bit (maybe a week) for Trudeau’s team to make up their mind on things, but since they made a statement that they support the ICJ, they need to take a strong stance against Israel upon any new reports of harm towards civilians, famine caused by aid being blocked, settler raids, journalist killings and detentions, killing within camps of displaced people, killing doctors and educators.
It’s time to stop licking American boot, but if the Liberals are not going to do that then I ask Trudeau and his foreign affairs team to lick it confidently and shamelessly rather than quietly.
Western countries are currently withholding funding to UNRWA (which provides aid to Gaza, where 80% of the hungriest people in the world are right now) because some of its staff are accused by an unnamed party of helping Hamas. The tiny number of Palestinian refugees allowed into Canada as compared to Ukrainian refugees, and the bizarre and life-threatening requirements (such as submitting all their social media usernames to the IDF for unknown reasons) worry me.
We should have grave concerns about where things are going right now, considering how quick our governments have been to cut off funds for victims of a genocide while being so slow to cut off military and other aid to the perpetrator targeting them.
Silence has failed the world.
My suspicion is that diplomatic support for Israel is a price that Joe Biden is demanding in return for diplomatic support in our own standoff with India.
Prior to Stephen Harper, Canada’s UN voting record wrt to Israel-Palestine was a lot less weighted in Israel’s favour, and even since then the current Liberal government has been willing to break with the US over significantly less violence on Israel’s part than today.
So what’s different now?
Canada’s economy is being held up by a wicker basket and it would take a very tiny shift in US policy to make big problems for us. Canada is a machine for pumping oil, metals, electricity, and cars across the border.
We’ve bucked American foreign policy interests in the past. Vietnam, Iraq, UN votes relating to Palestine previous to Stephen Harper plus the one I mentioned previously. Yes we are sensitive to US actions but we aren’t total doormats if we have leadership inclined in that direction.
I would hate to have to wait this tightrope.
