Selective outrage in Canada

The killing of any innocent person is a tragedy. It is not enough for the pepetrator to unilaterally decree the person’s guilt for the tragedy to disappear.

Starvation and slaughter cannot be justified

Thus, the Israeli government’s starvation and slaughter of Palestinian people has no justification, despite claims by Deputy Knesset speaker Nissim Vaturi: “There are no uninvolved people … we must go in there and kill, kill, kill. We must kill them before they kill us”  (6th May 2024, reported in The Guardian)

Yet the Global North – countries such as Canada – is only mildly bothered by genocide (for how else should one denote the slaughter and starvation of a people ?). Institutions, such as McGill, attempt to stifle discussion and criticism of Israeli policies in the name of even-handedness and of protecting the feelings of those who dislike such criticism.

Murder of innocent people cannot be justified

The murder, yesterday, of two Israeli embassy staff is also a tragedy, and has no justification.

Fortunately I have heard no politician – nor anyone else – claim these people deserved to die: they didn’t.

The level of public outrage that has been permitted with respect to these murders is high, far greater than that tolerated with respect to the Israeli government’s genocide: the murders have made news headlines all day, and leaders from across the Global North (and beyond) are condemning them.

Canada’s passive normalisation of genocide

All murders are reprehensible, whomever the perpetrator and whomever the victim. Allowing outrage for some whilst discouraging it for others is unethical, a moral failure.

However, there is an extra dimension to state-perpetrated slaughter and starvation: not only is it murder, but it is murder institutionalised, systematised, and rendered banal.

Unfortunately it is not only the Israeli government that has dehumanised Palestinians, bureaucratised murder, and normalised genocide: in a passive way (through arms sales, investment, diplomatic soft-peddling, controlling dissent, muting criticism and softening vocabulary) our government and institutions have done the same.