Letter to Prime Minister Carney and Minister Anand (July 2024)

July 4, 2025                                    SENT BY EMAIL

The Right Honourable Mark Carney

Prime Minister of Canada

Office of the Prime Minister

Mark.Carney@parl.gc.ca

The Honourable Anita Anand

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Anita.Anand@parl.gc.ca

Subject: The Ongoing Crisis in Gaza

Dear Prime Minister Carney and Minister Anand:

We are nearing the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7^th that specifically, though not exclusively, targeted Israeli civilians. The attack is an outrage, and it demonstrates the callous disregard that Hamas has not only for Israelis but also for Palestinian lives, because Hamas knew—how could they not—that Israel would immediately launch a massive retaliatory assault against Gaza and that it would be the civilians in Gaza who would bear the brunt of the Israeli response. Hamas leaders are sadistic but they are not stupid, and they had to know that the Americans would, as always, provide unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel. All that has come to pass since, as anyone familiar with Israel and the Occupied Territories, could have predicted.

Israel with its hi-tech 21^st century military has easily destroyed Gaza to the point that President Trump during the exhilarating first 90 days of his return to the White House floated the trial balloon that Gaza should be completely gutted and emptied of Palestinians and subsequently rebuilt as a vibrant Mediterranean resort area (a Levantine Riviera). Last year, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to President Trump, spoke of the valuable waterfront property in Gaza. Buried in this delirious optimism of a massive commercial opportunity to rebuild with some vague U.S. guarantees on real estate development are the inhabitants who crouch in the shadows beneath the rubble of their cities and towns hoping the U.S. bombs and bullets delivered by the IDF will somehow miss them just one more day. In the meantime, the shuffling around of the civilian population from one danger zone to an only slightly less dangerous zone may be nearing an end—one that should not be surprising to anyone paying attention. That end is the exodus—not the Old Testament exodus but the here-and-now forced departure of Palestinians, a second Nakba, from their homeland to refugee camps in whatever countries will have them. This should not be news. But for a refresher, this is what Max Rodenbeck, Project Director for Israel/Palestine at the International Crisis Group and formerly Bureau Chief for The Economist in the Middle East, reminds us in ‘Gaza Without Gazans’ published on www.foreignaffairs.com on June 25^th, referring to Israel’s endgame.

Hamas chose its path and gambled the lives of upwards of two million Palestinians in order to win a public relations war with the international community. Certainly Palestinians (even members of Hamas, bizarrely enough) have received enormous moral and tangible support (when it has been allowed by Israel) from people around the world. And Israel’s image in the world has been horribly eroded by the manner in which Prime Minister Netanyahu and his radical right wing war cabinet have conducted this war. (Incidentally, the relationship between Netanyahu and his far right followers closely, and frighteningly, resembles the relationship between President Trump and his MAGA cult following.) Israel’s defense is and always has been self-defense, the right of a sovereign state to use violence to defend itself against enemies external and internal. The great danger is when all means are justified. (This bit of wisdom still eludes America after its two most recent failed wars in Asia post-9/11 and its abridgement of civil liberties at home.) Barbara Tuchman, in The Guns of August, quotes Mehmed Talaat, de facto head of the Ottoman Empire, from an editorial he wrote in a German newspaper in 1916:

We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.

The words may be somewhat different from what we hear and read from Netanyahu’s government, but the reasoning and the conclusion are practically identical. Today, the genocide against Armenians is not that well known in North America. It is not familiar in the way the Holocaust still is. And so many others that occurred in the 20^th century are falling away from our collective memory. What is happening in Gaza should not slip away and be forgotten, especially considering all of the conventions that have been signed since World War II regarding international humanitarian law.

In a cruel irony, the genocide label has been used against Israel on account of how it has waged war on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Prime Minister, you have been urged to regard Israel’s conduct during the war against Gaza as genocide, which to date you have not been willing to do. On January 23^rd, 2024 I wrote to Prime Minister Trudeau and Foreign Minister Joly and expressed the hope that Canada would perform due diligence in considering the genocide charges that have been filed against Israel in the International Court of Justice. The Americans have prejudged the case, but I hope that Canada will demonstrate its full and complete sovereignty by breaking with the U.S. if the evidence supports the genocide charges. President Trump will pressure you to ‘go along.’ Canadians have witnessed how that works. But, while the U.S. may have done with the international order, Canada has not and cannot afford to. By now, I think that intelligent and informed Canadians realize that the Americans do not intend to annex Canada—what a foolish idea. What they will do is continue to chip away at Canadian sovereignty even more aggressively than in the past. The political and economic subordination of Canada to the U.S. will be sufficient.

In the meantime, in the interest of representing Canada on the world stage and defending the international order, imperfect as it is, you and Foreign Minister Anand can and should work harder with Canada’s allies to restrain the IDF from engaging in vengeful war crimes (whether committed by lethal munitions or the denial of food, water, sanitation, electricity and medical care) and oppose the forced displacement of Palestinians to camps outside the Strip. This much should have been obvious on October 8^th, and I challenged CUPE, the union that represents my workplace, to lobby the Trudeau government along these lines instead of praising Hamas.

Furthermore, as the leaders of Canada’s foreign policy, you should promote the idea among Canadian allies and the Canadian public that the misery of starving, maimed, bloodied, homeless and unarmed Palestinians points directly to President Trump’s personal failure to bring the war to end. As much as Hamas and Netanyahu are responsible for the horror show in Gaza, the blood is now on President Trump’s hands for every U.S.-manufactured bomb, bullet and weapons delivery system used by Israel against Palestinian civilians.

Sincerely,

Peter McMillan