OP-ED: Are claims of assault on Canadian human rights and genocide in Gaza credible?

Hymie Rubenstein writes, "What is happening in Gaza is tragic. But it is not genocide. And it is not illegal."

Source: Wikimedia Commons

By Hymie Rubenstein

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, a cabinet bill to restrict disruptive street protests outside synagogues will “curb the civil liberties of millions” of Canadians. At least this was the October 23 opinion of the legal director for the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

When MPs on the Commons justice committee questioned counsel Nusaiba Al Azem on criminal limits to anti-Semitism, she said, “The bill has many shortcomings that are alarming for our organization. Much of this bill looks like it is attacking the freedom of the 64 percent of Canadians who believe Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza and have taken to the streets over the last two years to protest Canada’s complicity.”

She provided no evidence of either genocide in Gaza, “Canada’s complicity” in this alleged genocide, or the source for the “64 percent” statistic.

Nor was she able to offer convincing answers to other questions raised during her testimony to the committee.

Bill C-9, An Act to Amend The Criminal Code, would restrict public displays of terrorist symbols like the Hamas flag and outlaw “obstruction” for intimidation at any place of worship, school, assembly hall or other “religious or cultural institution.” The Department of Justice, in a September 19 Backgrounder, said unlawful activities would include “blocking doors, driveways or roads that are used to get to religious or cultural centres.”

Criminalizing such behaviour would certainly not be an assault on fundamental Canadian human rights, even though the Council of Canadian Muslims’ Al Azem said the bill unfairly restricted free expression. “This is meant in order to curb the civil liberties of the millions of Canadians who have taken to the streets peacefully to oppose genocide,” she opined.

That the bill infringes on the freedom of expression of millions of Canadians who oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza is a grossly expansive interpretation: simultaneous massive public displays by “millions of Canadians” supporting Gaza or opposing Israel have never taken place.

Conservative MP Roman Baber (York Centre, Ont.) questioned the Council’s view of anti-Semitic street protests. “Hamas is a listed terrorist entity in Canada,” he said.

“Do you think it should be legal to fly a Hamas flag on a Canadian street?” asked MP Baber. “This bill goes much beyond that,” replied Al Azem.

“Just answer my question, please,” said MP Baber. “I’m not asking beyond, I am just asking about the flag.”

“Should it be lawful to fly a Hamas flag in North York?” asked MP Baber. “I think it really depends on a lot of different things,” replied Al Azem. “What is the intention of the person flying it?”

“If a person is chanting ‘intifada’ and they’re holding the flag of a terrorist entity like Hezbollah, should that be criminalized in your view?” asked MP Baber. “My view is this bill is not even scratching that surface,” replied Al Azem.

“Do you know what the phrase intifada means?” asked MP Baber. “Yes,” replied Al Azem.

“What does it mean?” asked MP Baber. “Intifada is a form of revolution,” replied Al Azem.

“It’s violent resistance, correct?” asked MP Baber. “There are a number of intifadas,” replied Al Azem.

“In the context of intifada against Jews in the State of Israel, intifada is violent resistance; are you going to suggest it doesn’t involve violence?” asked MP Baber. “I think it can involve violence but I think it can also not involve violence,” replied Al Azem.

“Are we really having a discussion about Arabic translation right now?” asked Al Azem. “I speak Arabic. Do you speak Arabic?”

“The term intifada is shouted every day on Canada’s streets, whether it’s ‘viva, viva, intifada’ or ‘globalize the intifada,’ which means bring the intifada here to Canada,” said MP Baber. “In your view, when that is being chanted in a North York neighbourhood, is that incitement to violence or not?”

Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin (Rivière-du-Nord, Que.) recounted a 2023 street protest in which a director of Montréal’s Assahaba Islamic Centre publicly wished death on Jews under the pretext of reading a Quran prayer: “O Allah, destroy the Zionist aggressors. O Allah, destroy the enemies of the people of Gaza. O Allah, count their number, slay them one by one and spare not one of them.”

“I would like to know what you think of this,” said MP Fortin. “Are these the types of declarations we should allow here in Canada?”

“I don’t believe religious texts, including the Bible and the Torah and the Quran, should be criminalized, no,” replied Al Azem.

“I’m not asking you whether the Bible should be criminalized,” said MP Fortin. “I’m talking about remarks that were made.”

“Do you think that’s an acceptable declaration to be made in public in Canada?” asked MP Fortin. “I am actually not familiar with that statement or the context around that statement,” was Al Azem’s waffling reply.

As for the issue of genocide, an August 2025 Angus Reid Institute poll argued that “the term genocide has been debated vehemently as the conflict [between Israel and Hamas] has continued…. The perception in Canada that genocide is taking place has increased significantly from 41 per cent in February 2024 to 52 percent now,” well above Al Azem’s assertion of 64 percent.

More importantly, neither this nor other polls like it question respondents about their familiarity with the contents of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

By way of comparison, another Angus Reid Institute poll also released in August 2025 focuses on the 2019 report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (NIMMIMG). The report argued that Canada’s treatment and policies toward indigenous women and girls constituted genocide. Then Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed this position immediately after the report was made public.

Coincidentally or not, like the Palestine poll, the results of the Angus Reid poll showed that 52 percent of respondents agreed with the indigenous genocide accusation.

Once more, however, respondents were not asked whether they were familiar with the UN genocide convention or the contents of the NIMMIMG Inquiry report.

Instead, all they were asked to respond to was:

“In 2019, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, went further and stated that Canada’s broader history of policies toward Indigenous peoples amount to “genocide” that is, the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people. Do you agree or disagree with using this term?”

As for the facts on the ground in Gaza, there is no basis for the genocide claim.

With so many images and accounts of human suffering in Gaza dominating headlines and social media, the accusation that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has gained traction since the murderous invasion of the Jewish homeland on October 7, 2023 when some 1,200 people were raped, tortured, or killed, while 251 were kidnapped.

Israel’s carefully organized defensive response did not deter a United Nations Commission of Inquiry from accusing Israel on September 16, 2025 of committing genocide in Gaza while claiming that top officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, orchestrated these acts, a characterization Israel has rightly dismissed as scandalously false.

Too often lost in this debate is the fact that the modern-day Jewish state was created after the Nazis committed the genocide of genocides known as the Holocaust, murdering six million Jews who had nowhere to go and no place to call home because there was no Israel.

Even worse, charging Israel with genocide gives a free pass to the Hamas terrorists who are deliberately engineering the immense harm that innocent Palestinians are experiencing today.

Also sidelined by those accusing Israel of genocide are the several grounds for dismissing that accusation.

Israel has taken extraordinary steps to limit civilian harm since October 8, 2023.

It warns of attacks before they take place through text messages, phone calls, leaflets, and broadcasts. It opens safe corridors and pauses operations to allow civilians to leave combat areas. It tracks civilian presence down to the building level. Missions have been delayed or cancelled because children were nearby. Israeli troops habitually come under fire but are still ordered not to shoot back because civilians might be harmed.

Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime. More than 94,000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the territory. Israel has supported hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and enabled over 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have coordinated millions of vaccine doses, supplied fuel for hospitals and infrastructure, and facilitated the flow of food and medicine through the UN, aid groups, and private partners. The U.S.–Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation alone has delivered more than 82 million meals – one to two million a day – while weakening Hamas’s control over aid. This is not genocide. It is altruistic and historic mid-war humanitarian policy.

Critics of Israel cite death tolls from Hamas health authorities without question. They claim 58,000 have been killed, including 17,000 children. But these numbers come from a terrorist organization. They mix civilians and fighters and count anyone under 18 as a child, even though Hamas uses teenagers and younger children as combatants. The figures are not independently verified and have been shown to contain false details, including names, ages, and sex. Civilian deaths are tragic, but in Gaza, they are also part of Hamas’s strategy.

No military operation is judged solely by body counts or destruction figures. If we used the logic of the critics, every major war would be called genocide. Two million civilians died in the Korean War, an average of 54,000 per month. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars killed hundreds of thousands. The fight against ISIS levelled multiple cities and killed tens of thousands. None of those wars was considered genocidal. Gaza is not either. War is evaluated based on the actions of commanders, the goals set by leaders, and how well the military follows the laws of war, not by statistics taken out of context.

War is hell. It is inhumane, destructive, and ugly. But it is not automatically a crime. Nations must not target civilians. They must follow the rules of distinction, proportionality, and take all possible care to avoid civilian harm. With few exceptions, Israel is doing that.

In Rafah this past summer, Israel spent weeks preparing evacuations. It opened new safe areas and waited until civilians had moved before striking Hamas targets. That operation killed Hamas’s top commander, recovered hostages, and kept civilian deaths very low. It was a clear example of Israel’s extraordinary intent and actions to protect civilians while targeting only Hamas, a part of the story ignored by those who reduce war to emotional feelings, inflammatory headlines, and unverified numbers.

Genocide requires clear, provable intent to destroy a people through sustained, deliberate actions. That burden of proof has not been met. What is happening in Gaza is tragic. But it is not genocide. And it is not illegal.

Likewise, the laws of war do not prohibit war itself. They require that military operations distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, that force be proportional to the objective, and that commanders take all feasible precautions to protect civilian life. The IDF does precisely that.

This is not a campaign of extermination. It is a war against Hamas, a terrorist army deliberately embedding itself in civilian areas.

Israel’s leaders have repeatedly asserted that their campaign in Gaza is solely against the terrorist organization Hamas. In fact, this type of military campaign is the exact opposite of attempting to eliminate the entire Palestinian population.

Law, precision, and truth all matter.

Hymie Rubenstein, editor of REAL Indigenous Report, is a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.