The Canadian Federal Court has ruled that the Government’s use of the Emergencies Act to shut down the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa two years ago was “not justified” and thus unlawful.
The protests brought central Ottawa to a standstill for three weeks in early 2022 in opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” stated Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley.
Mosley added that “there can be only one reasonable interpretation” of the Emergencies Act and CSIS Act, and that he believes “the legal constraints on the discretion of the GIC to declare a public order emergency were not satisfied”.
It was the first time the extreme legislation had been triggered since it was enacted in 1988 and it empowered banks to freeze the personal accounts of protesters without the permission of a court. The Government also extended “terrorist financing” rules to cover the protestors at the same time. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was heavily criticised as the time for such an unprecedented and heavy-handed response.
The Emergencies Act stipulates that it may only be used in an “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians”. Lawful protests do not qualify.
Speaking at the time, Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti said the Government believed these conditions had been met, saying the crisis was national in scope and exceeded the power of existing laws to respond.
Today the Federal Court disagreed.
Read the full ruling here. The Government has indicated it will appeal the decision.
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If the sustained killing of civilians in Gaza is not to be worthy of the 1948 definition despite seeming to meet the criteria, why not refer to it as “excess deaths”? The media will stop reporting on it and it will disappear from discussion if recent history is anything to go by.
Does that solve the genocide word-game issue without casting the Israeli regime in a negative light?
It doesn’t meet the criteria. Killing lots, does not qualify. It is killing with intent to wipe out a group.
a, b and c seem to be covered “in part”. This being accompanied by the dehumanising language by those within the Israeli camp.
They should have better caveated the term “genocide” in 1948 to avoid misuse.
What precisely constitutes killing with the intent to wipe out a group vs just killing cannot be objectively determined as intent cannot really be determined at all, only inferred. Ultimatively, this means it’s a question of power — someone has the power to declare that such-and-such event should be called a genocide and some other event shouldn’t. Which renders the whole term pretty meaningless: just another accusation some winner group employs against some loser group.
In your own terms, the winner group would seem currently to be the supporters of the Palestinians, and the loser group the Israelis.But you completely miss the point of the article.
I was replying to a comment and not commenting on the article. Further, probably somewhat to your chagrin, I still don’t care about semites massacring other semites in the middle-east. They’re always doing that.
“Excess deaths” certainly is accurate. Then again, the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel would also fit that bill as well.
Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, states:
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
So Israel are committing genocide in Gaza according to (c) and genocide in Israel according to (d). Double genocide.
The article asks whether the Palestinian attack on Israel was a genocide (it wasn’t) but doesn’t ask the more obvious question of whether the Israeli response was and is a genocide.
Here are a number of articles by lawyers, UN Human Rights experts and legal experts and even Israeli historians who acknowledge that Israeli action is a “genocide”.
“More than 800 scholars of international law and genocide have signed a public statement arguing that the Israeli military may be committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as the total siege and relentless airstrikes continue to inflict devastation on the occupied territory.”
https://twailr.com/public-statement-scholars-warn-of-potential-genocide-in-gaza/
“Lawyers say Israel’s acts against Palestinians in Gaza amount to genocide, call on West to refrain from abetting crimes.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/15/lawyers-for-gaza-victims-file-case-at-international-criminal-court
“Even Israeli experts call it “a textbook case of genocide.” Those are the exact words of Raz Siegal, an Israeli historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University.”
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
“Grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, particularly in Gaza, point to a genocide in the making, UN experts said today.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/11/gaza-un-experts-call-international-community-prevent-genocide-against
UN’s New York human rights director quits citing US, UK collusion in Gaza genocide, follow-up post condemns ‘decades of Israeli impunity’ for ‘war crimes’.
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/11/01/uns-new-york-human-rights-director-quits-citing-us-uk-collusion-in-gaza-genocide/
“There is no room to doubt that Israel’s bombing of Palestinian civilians and depriving them of food, water and other necessities of life are grounds to invoke the 1948 Genocide Convention.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/11/19/craig-murray-activating-the-genocide-convention/
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the UK in 2021.
“The Hamas ‘operational tunnel hub’ under al-Shifa hospital has served exactly the purpose Israel intended.
It’s a red herring. The media’s endless chasing after clues as to where the tunnel is located obscures the far more urgent (and real) story of Israel committing genocide.”
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/2023-11-15/biden-signed-up-genocide-gaza/
“Genocide is a crime. It is a legal framework. It is unfolding in Gaza. And yet, the inertia of legal academia, especially in the United States, has been chilling.”
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/harvard-law-review-gaza-israel-genocide/
Your selected links from various academics, UN functionaries and journalists simply underlines the proposition eloquently well put by Dr David McGrogan which is ” A society which does not understand the moral distinction to be drawn between the IDF’s campaign in Gaza (or even the firebombing of Tokyo) and the Holocaust, and which uses the same word – ‘genocide’ – to describe those events, is a society which is simply not serious about morality at all. It is a society which does not understand the difference between tragedy and hatred, or the moral implications of either “. I am less clear about what is happening in S Israel from those in place than I am, say in Ukraine, but reporting of both seem to be massively distorted by emotion which alone blurs moral and legal distinctions.
My links from “various academics, UN functionaries and journalists” eloquently rebut McGrogan’s claims.
Well at least you get the distinction between “rebut” and “refute” right, so congratulations for that. But your links just illustrate David McGrogan’s points about the failure to understand what genocide really means.
A timely article by Craig Murray from yesterday explains exactly what “genocide” means and why countries are reticent to invoke it.
“There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide……. It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/15/craig-murray-murder/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6e090b9a-d585-4dc3-b28e-f2a38e29936e
Even the highly respected John J. Mearsheimer has denounced Israel.
“What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose.”
John J. Mearsheimer.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza
It is the writer of the article who has lost his moral compass – if he ever had one. Shameful, but sadly predictable at Sayanim Central.
Thank you.
I’ve added another two.
“There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide……. It may sound astonishing, but to the world’s diplomats the enormity of a genocide appears less troubling than the enormity of doing something about it.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/12/15/craig-murray-murder/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=6e090b9a-d585-4dc3-b28e-f2a38e29936e
“What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose.”
John J. Mearsheimer.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza
What the author seems to be saying is that ultimately it’s a question of intent. The Allies knew that firebombing Tokyo and even the dropping of the atom bombs would kill thousands of Japanese citizens. But their intent was to win the war and force the Imperial Japanese government to surrender, not to wipe out the Japanese race.
In the case of Israel can we really know the intent? Yes, on the face of it, the Palestinian civilians are collateral damage in this war on Hamas. But the pronouncements of the extremists in the Israeli government suggest the intent may go beyond simple military objectives.
But hadn’t the Japanese government been trying to surrender since late 44?
No. They wanted a ceasefire/armistice.
Lets stop fighting chaps, no hard feelings, Yanks go home and leave us to continue our militarisation and butchering the Chinese – and no war crime tribunals.
Wars don’t end by ceasefires. They either end because one party surrenders and the other can than dicate whatever peace terms it desires. Or they’re ended by both parties being willing to enter into peace negotiations. A ceasefire is a usual but not a necessary precondition for that (the 30 years war ended with the negotiated peace of Westfalen/ Münster, but even while negotiations were already ongoing, warfare would continue to some degree in order to improve the negotation position of this or that party).
It’s a fundamental principle of Common Law “men’s rea” Latin for “the guilty mind” – the culpable state of mind the prosecution must prove as an element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
In English Law in prosecuting someone for incitement to hatred and violence – so called ‘hate speech’ – the Crown had to prove intent. This is difficult, so legislation was introduced to make speech causing offence a crime, or using certain words or phrases – so the Crown didn’t need to prove intent to convict. Tony Blair was the criminal responsible because he wanted to shut down debate about immigration.
Is it safe to say that JK Rowling and other so-called ‘gender-critical’ women who want to protect female sports and single-sex spaces, and deny penis-owners in dresses entry, are not guilty of genocide after all then? And talking of the screaming, blue-haired masktards, it all starts in the college/uni campuses. All of that expensive education and the propagandized, ‘useful idiots’ are too thick to even know which river and sea they’re chanting about;
”In the midst of the recent and nationwide demonstrators featuring students (and many others) denouncing Israel for its alleged crimes, Algemeiner reported that “students who care strongly about the ‘Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories’ do not have knowledge of basic facts surrounding the subject, and do not share similar concerns about other geopolitical conflicts.”
Forty-three percent of the students were most interested in Israel’s alleged “control of Palestinian territories,” while expressing much less interest in “other Middle East occupations, such as the Kurdish struggle for independence, the occupation of Western Sahara, or the occupation of Northern Cyprus.” That’s understandable. These indoctrinated bots aren’t inundated daily with self-righteous leftist rubbish about the massive, outrageous, world-historical injustice of the occupation of Western Sahara or Northern Cyprus. In all likelihood, they haven’t even heard of either one.
Why is that likely? Because they know virtually nothing regarding the conflict about which they claim to care very deeply: “Eighty-four percent of those in the most passionate cohort could not name the decade when Israel captured the West Bank, while 75 percent could not locate the Palestinian territories in question on a map.” Moreover, a full twenty-five percent of these programmed and propagandized student “placed the Palestinian Territories west of Lebanon, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.” Nor did just a few of them drive the Palestinians into the sea that they chant about wanting to fill with Israelis: “The class average for this blunder was 14%.”
https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2023/12/14/heres-the-real-reason-why-so-many-american-university-students-hate-israel-n4924761
Having also read Dr Gary Sidney’s article, it is absolutely clear to me that the UN’s use of the term ‘genocide’ is designed to condition perceptions of Israel as a genocidal regime.
Yet the UN and others refused to call it genocide at the time when the Hutu majority systematically and with determination sought to wipe out the.minority Tutsis in Rwanda.
Had they done so they would have had to intervene.
“ Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;”
Net Zero.
When do The Hague Trials start?
Never and the US has The Hague Invasion Act to ensure none of their people are included.
“genocide requires the intent to destroy an entire group as such”
But the definition says “in whole or in part”.
Wasn’t the bombing of Tokyo intended to kill that part of the Japanese population who lived in Tokyo?
It was the Americans so all good. This is just verbal toss like “collateral damage” so that legal folks have an easier time defending their employers or prosecuting their adversaries.
It was a show of strength to the Russians. Nothing more. Japan had already surrendered.
This is the official definition of Genocide in international law, from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
….
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/12/murder/
I was able to discuss with a large number of delegates in the corridors why the Genocide Convention has not been activated triggering a reference to the International Court of Justice.
The answer is now clear to me. It is not that people are worried that a claim of genocide will not be successful at the International Court of Justice. It is that everybody is quite sure it will succeed. There is no respectable argument that this is not a genocide in the terms outlined above.
The problem is that once the ICJ has determined that this is a genocide, it follows that not only are Netanyahu and hundreds of senior Israeli officials and military personally liable, but it is absolutely plain that “Genocide Joe” Biden, Sunak and members of their administrations are also criminally liable for complicity, having provided military support for the genocide….
Sure, bad things are no doubt going on out there – perhaps worse than I understand; but not one of these ‘it-is-genocide’ comments provides an answer to the question of what on earth Israel is meant to do in the face of events such as what happened in October, and in the face more generally of a concerted and often-expressed declaration that it needs to be driven into the sea. Can a ‘pro-genocidalist’ suggest something?
No-one is suggesting Israel is driven into the sea. This is drivel. All wars end with political agreements which last for 2 years (approx). Someone (and not Hamas) is trying to destroy Israel – its optics have been humiliating. Now it has murdered 3 Israeli hostages in Gaza who had a white flag and begged in Hebrew. Either they are lost in some kind of psychosis (likely post WWII trauma), or this is much, much bigger than Israel-Gaza – a minimum being the destruction of the US.
I generally agree with the argument put forward by the author in regard to the moral difference between genocide and ‘mere’ mass slaughter.
However, that should not be a basis for attempting to put Israel on the moral high ground.
In any, or all, of the conflicts in Israel/Palestine over the past 60 years the ratio of deaths has always been about 20:1.
The Israelis have treated Arab lives with contempt, and treated Jewish lives as being more important.
In other words, they have sown the seeds for the genocidal mentality that they have reaped.
Coupled with this is the Islamist cultural mindset, arguably similarly intransigent and uncompromising as that of the Japanese. After all wasn’t it the Japanese that invented suicide bombing, not the Islamists?
I’m genuinely intrigued to find out from the number of thumbs up and thumbs down to my comment on this article that it is approximately 50:50 (40:60 actually).
Unlike the Ukraine/Russia conflict, this seems to be a war that is genuinely dividing us Lockdown Sceptics.
Respect to those who disagree with me. Is there an overall oligarchic plot to divide and rule us? Who knows..
Oh, and if Toby Young happens to be scrawling through these comments tonight, I’d love to meet him for a pre-match drink tomorrow. His beloved QPR are away at my team, Sheffield Wednesday. We’re both in the relegation zone, and it would be a big three points for both teams.
Maybe just look at the score.
How many dead kids and women will it take before you, just maybe, condemn those in control of this genocide.
This is all well and good but the quiet part has already been said out loud. I wish it were possible to assert damage limitation at this point but I’m afraid it isn’t. You would have to be remarkably obtuse or paid off in order to claim otherwise. If I were on your side I would argue for a no-holds barred strategy. You could say, as some have, that all nations are born in blood and ours is no different. And sometimes a point comes where you have to assert your objective if you are to exist at all. Of course that would take some balls and would entail certain consequences but it would be a morally superior position.
It’s over baby. Grasp the bull by the horns or die. It is genocide. Either you accept it or you don’t. I would say in the maelstrom of your own hatred just be aware of what is happening around you.
Are you really asking the question or taking the piss? I am not naive about these affairs I grew up in that neck of the woods. I know your gameplan and I completely understand it. Please don’t try to dress it up as something else. From a public relations point of view this is what really engenders hatred. I get it I had a garden and had to deal with two small lads who intruded in it and I just dealt with it. You have to make the land of Gaza uninhabitable for two generations, that is your sworn policy objective. Just say it – I would rather live in post-war Hiroshima than live in Gaza – just say it. Don’t be shy.You are making a big mistake by trying to manage a propaganda war that you have already lost.
Fortunately, the Israelis are confirming their genocidal intentions and thereby provide plenty of sufficient evidence to make clear that they commit a genocide and for their trials: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/no_author/gaza-is-deliberately-being-made-uninhabitable/
“In an Op-Ed titled “Let’s Not be Intimidated by the World,” Israeli ret. Major General Giora Eiland argues that all Palestinians in Gaza are legitimate targets and that even a “severe epidemic” in Gaza will “bring victory closer.””
They really are do the devils work.
Military attacks targetting non-combatants and their property for no other purpose except killing the former and destroying the latter were already against the laws of war at the time of the first world war and part of the moral highground claims of the Entente propaganda was that the German barbarians would do nothing but this while the noble fighters for democracy and the freedom of the peoples obviously never would (incidentally, both claims were false).
During the interwar years, airplane technology had progressed very quickly and this gave birth to the strategic air warfare doctrine whose essential tenets were
1) Bombers are essentially invincible.
2) Attacks by fleets of bombers on enemy cities will end wars very quickly because they’ll eliminate the enemy’s capacity to produce military goods and will cause population revolts due to breakdown of civilisation in the hostile country (morale bombing).
An early proponent of this was the Italian general Giulio Douhet.
This was essentially a regression into outright barbarianism due to technical convenience all warring states succumbed to to varying degrees although the British and – to a somewhat lesser degree – the Americans were the undisputed champions of this ‘discipline’. The military technocrats wanted this because they believed it would work. Hence, all moral and legal considerations were swiftly brushed aside. The English government went to great lengths to hide the true purpose of its bombing campaign against Germany from the English people because the military and political leaders knew all too well that neither these nor the Anglican church would ever have supported it.
This makes a really nice real-world parable about mankind’s real dedication to abstract ideals like law or morality.
Israel is not a genocidal nation. It is a nation seeking to avoid it’s own genocide! It has repeatedly attempted to offer Gazan civilians a way of avoiding destruction, while Hamas has repeatedly placed obstacles along their escape route. Civilian casualties are therefore inevitable. Is Israel squeaky clean? Of course not. Is it cleaner than Hamas? Er, yes, it is. Israel has no choice but to defend itself. If this involves the unintended and unwanted killing of civilians, so be it. An awful thing to say, but an implacably logical one, and one murderously, cravenly dictated by Hamas itself.
ISRAEL IS THE OCCUPYING FORCE. Get that in your head. You think you’d just shrug if someone stole your house and land, murdered your relatives and pushed you into exile? Of course you wouldn’t. It is the Palestinians who have a right to defend themselves from the occupying force. Once Israel stops occupying Palestine, there will be no Hamas.
Hamas entered Israel with the deliberate intention of killing as many Israeli civilians as possible and they make it very clear that their aim is the eradication of Israel and slaughtering the Jews.
The Israeli army has entered Gaza with the deliberate intention of killing as many Hamas terrorists as possible but have done as much as is reasonably possible to avoid killing Palestinian civilians by warning them when and where bombing would take place and giving them an opportunity to move to a safer area.
Whilst all civilian deaths, on both sides, are very sad it seems to be that only one side supports a genocide and it isn’t the Israeli one.
Deluded. No, Hamas didn’t want to kill as many Israeli ‘civilians’ as possible. Hamas wanted live captives to swap. And no, Hamas doesn’t want the eradication of Israel – this was removed from their Charter in 2006 as listed on the UK Gov website under ‘Terrorist Organisations’ if you could be bothered to look. Israel gives (sometimes) warnings with bar codes – pretty useless when the internet is down – and then bomb the safe areas. Wake up sonny – this is further colonisation. As for genocide – the numbers speak for themselves.
So why did Hamas slaughter men, women and children if it wanted live hostages?
And I’m not sonny, so don’t make assumptions.
‘Genocide requires that the acts in question were intended to realise an ‘ulterior motive’ – I think stealing land-registry documents from Gaza, erecting Israeli flags, pre-selling gas from Gaza marine and planning new developments in Gaza can be described as having an ‘ulterior motive’. From the River to the Sea, doesn’t refer to the destruction of Israel, merely the equal rights of Palestinians. The same phrase is part of the Likud manifesto, referring to the removal of Palestinians. This man shouldn’t be teaching anything to anyone.
So the mass killing of innocent civilians belonging to a ‘group’ is somehow worse than the mass killing of innocent civilians who do not qualify as a group, even if they are of the same nationality and killed because of their nationality? I think that is a fairly unworthy argument which makes little difference to those killed.
Would the extermination of “Useless Eaters” with a toxic bioweapon be classified as genocide?