Cooperation and support of nations engaging in genocide is a war crime itself. Canada needs to respect international law and fulfill its obligations under the UN Convention on Genocide.
The weapons were purchased before any ICJ rulings or UN decisions had been made against Isreal. I’m a huge proponent of divesting entirely and I strongly believe that going forward the world needs to isolate Isreal the way we did apartheid South Africa, but I’m not sure how the CAF was supposed to respect rulings of international courts that hadn’t yet been made or even considered when these purchasing decisions were made. The case hadn’t even been brought before the ICJ when we inked the deal.
Edit: To those replying that the genocide didn’t start on Oct 7, yes, I’m well aware, but the comment I replied to was demanding that Canada uphold our obligations under international law. No international law or body had properly and legally recognized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide at the time, nor had that process of recognition even begun.
Expecting the CAF to unilaterally declare that a genocide was being enacted when no international court or body had done so, and even the Canadian government had not done so, is so utterly ridiculous a notion that I had assumed it did not need to be addressed in my original comment. You do not want your military unilaterally making decisions about what does and does not constitute a war crime / crime against humanity. That would be a very bad idea. They have to fall in line with the government on these matters.
If you want to reach back in time and say that Canada should have been calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide decades ago, I agree, but it’s simply not germane to the events discussed in this article, and we can’t judge the decisions of a group of people working in military procurement on that basis.
Cooperation and support of nations engaging in genocide is a war crime itself. Canada needs to respect international law and fulfill its obligations under the UN Convention on Genocide.
The weapons were purchased before any ICJ rulings or UN decisions had been made against Isreal. I’m a huge proponent of divesting entirely and I strongly believe that going forward the world needs to isolate Isreal the way we did apartheid South Africa, but I’m not sure how the CAF was supposed to respect rulings of international courts that hadn’t yet been made or even considered when these purchasing decisions were made. The case hadn’t even been brought before the ICJ when we inked the deal.
Edit: To those replying that the genocide didn’t start on Oct 7, yes, I’m well aware, but the comment I replied to was demanding that Canada uphold our obligations under international law. No international law or body had properly and legally recognized Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide at the time, nor had that process of recognition even begun.
Expecting the CAF to unilaterally declare that a genocide was being enacted when no international court or body had done so, and even the Canadian government had not done so, is so utterly ridiculous a notion that I had assumed it did not need to be addressed in my original comment. You do not want your military unilaterally making decisions about what does and does not constitute a war crime / crime against humanity. That would be a very bad idea. They have to fall in line with the government on these matters.
If you want to reach back in time and say that Canada should have been calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide decades ago, I agree, but it’s simply not germane to the events discussed in this article, and we can’t judge the decisions of a group of people working in military procurement on that basis.
The genocide has been going on for decades.
The genocide did not start on Oct 7th.