Group calls for Parliament to label Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide

A Canadian advocacy group wants parliamentarians in Ottawa to declare Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip a genocide.

"This is our call today: do not falter now; do not stand mute while a people are destroyed; words must become truth," said Taha Ghayyur, executive director of Justice for All Canada.

"We demand, here on Parliament Hill, that members of Parliament pass a motion recognizing Gaza for what it is: a genocide."

While Justice for All Canada held its media event in Ottawa, Ahmed Ramadan, the group's advocacy and government relations officer, told CBC News that no MPs have yet stepped forward to publicity support the call.

"Declaring genocide would reinforce Canada's reputation as a middle power, a defender of international law," said Ramadan.

The group's motion, provided to CBC News, cites a provisional order from the International Court of Justice in January 2024, which said "Israel's action in Gaza could amount to genocide" in line with the UN's Genocide Convention.

The motion says Canada's parliamentarians should join other individuals and organizations that have declared Israel's military campaign in Gaza a genocide including: Canadian ex-diplomats, international law experts, a United Nations special committee, Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, Médecins sans Frontières, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights.

The request comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney's cabinet holds a retreat before MPs return to the House of Commons, and prior to Canada's planned recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this month.

Amnesty International came to the conclusion that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in a report it published in December 2024, about 14 months after the conflict in Gaza erupted.

More recently, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, Omer Bartov, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times where he argued the same. So did Melanie O' Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, in a different article.

The Canadian government recognizes several crimes against humanity as genocides — the Holocaust, the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, the Srebrenica genocide, the Romani genocide and the Yazidi genocide.

However, others have been recognized as genocide by Parliament, without the government following suit.

In 2021, most MPs voted in favour of recognizing China's persecution of Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims as genocide, though former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a majority of his cabinet abstained from the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau rose to explain he was abstaining "on behalf of the Government of Canada."

"We have our obligation as a human rights organization to do the work that we are going to do. And then we leave it up to our politicians. Hopefully they reflect the mood and the will of the people in a democracy," said Ramadan.

Israel and its defenders have cast the country's actions as a war of self-defence after the brutal Hamas incursion close to two years ago.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, for instance, insists that the country takes care to only target military assets, and calls use of the word genocide "libellous."

Israel began its latest military operations in Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, most of the roughly two million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes, and more than 60,000 killed, according to figures by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.

In August, a joint investigation by The Guardian, the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call found five out of six Palestinians killed by the Israeli Defence Force were civilians, after looking into an Israeli military intelligence database.

The world's foremost authority on food insecurity declared a famine in Gaza City last month, after aid groups warned for months that not enough aid is reaching starving civilians in the enclave.

Some MPs from the governing Liberal caucus have already called the events in Gaza a genocide in individual statements.

Fares Al Soud, a rookie MP for Mississauga Centre, said Israel was committing a genocide in a social media video.

Others include Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, a former cabinet minister, who wrote an open letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand in August.

Adam Van Koeverden, who is currently the secretary of state for sport, used the word genocide when he visited a mosque during last spring's election campaign, prompting the Conservatives to accuse the Liberals of mixed messaging.

The Conservative Party of Canada, in contrast, has repeatedly said Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group under Canadian law.

The NDP has called Israel's actions a genocide in official statements, while the Bloc Québécois has not taken up a party position on the matter.

Justice for All Canada said it believes a recognition of genocide by the Government of Canada would place it under legal obligations.

Ramadan said the country may have to stop sending all arms to Israel.

"While it's not the Canadian government itself, there are still loopholes. There are still contracts that are being given out and arms are making their way into Israel," he said.

Global Affairs maintains it has stopped granting permits to Israel to ship arms since January 2024. Activist groups have used shipping data to expose shipments of goods described by Israel as military weapons parts and ammunition have continued well past that date.

The call from Justice For All Canada comes as NDP MP Jenny Kwan held a media event to announce her intention to introduce a private member's bill in the upcoming parliamentary session to close any existing loopholes in Canada's arms export laws.