By Palestine Working Group of the Women, Peace and Security Network-Canada, October 16, 2024
One contributor to the report is Rachel Small, Canada Organizer for World BEYOND War.
The following section is called:
The WPS Agenda Requires an Arms Embargo Now
For the past eleven months, millions across Canada have watched in horror as Israel has attacked Gaza relentlessly from the air, land, and sea. The magnitude of the destruction defies our efforts to convey it, so we resort to numbers and facts, already well-publicized: Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, and at least 10,000 more are missing, thousands buried under the rubble. Over 20,000 children are estimated to be lost, disappeared, detained, buried under the rubble or in mass graves. At least 91,000 people have been injured or maimed.
Israel has leveled upwards of 60% of the residential buildings in Gaza, destroyed 85% of school buildings, laid siege to and razed hospitals, bombed critical transportation, sewage, and water infrastructure, mosques, and churches. It has targeted women and children seeking shelter, doctors, nurses and medics, university professors and journalists, and humanitarian aid workers for extrajudicial assassination.
90% of the population – 1.9 million people – have been displaced from their homes, some multiple times over, and many are now taking shelter in tent camps with inadequate sanitation infrastructure and the serious risk of disease. These camps are in turn being burned to the ground by Israeli bombs, such as in Rafah where UN officials decried strikes in “flagrant violation of international law” that were “indiscriminate and disproportionate, with people trapped inside burning plastic tents,” highlighting harrowing scenes of “infants torn apart and people burnt alive,” “an attack on human decency and our collective humanity […] leading to a horrific casualty toll”. The provision of humanitarian aid and basic access to sanitation has been so obstructed that famine has now taken hold across the entire Gaza strip while polio has been identified in Gazan sewage.
Canada is complicit in these crimes. Over the first two months of Israel’s assault on Gaza, and the most deadly, the Trudeau government authorized a record $28.5 million in new arms export permits to Israel. Hundreds of thousands across the country called for the Canadian government to do what it could to stop the indiscriminate killing, including impose an arms embargo on Israel. They wrote, phoned, and petitioned their elected Members of Parliament, held teach-ins, community meetings and town halls, flyered, marched, picketed, and rallied in every city and at dozens of government offices.
But the Canadian government obfuscated and misled the public about the nature and extent of Canadian exports to Israel. Liberal officials, Ministers and MPs falsely claimed that Canada does not export weapons to Israel, or that no export permits had been issued for Canadian arms transfers to Israel since October 7th, or that Canada only exports “non-lethal” equipment to Israel.
However, the term “non-lethal” has no legal meaning, does not appear in the domestic or international laws governing the arms trade, and Global Affairs Canada has avoided giving examples of “non-lethal” arms exports to journalists who have asked what it means. The term seems to be a way to describe weapons components, including components that are built into lethal weapons systems.
We cannot know exactly what weapons systems such components approved for export to Israel are destined for, due to the secrecy and opacity of Canada’s weapons export regime. However, we do know that in 2023 $10,458,545.34 worth of these exports were used by Israeli companies in “Bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, other explosive devices and charges and related equipment and accessories, and specially designed components therefor” according to Global Affairs Canada’s own data. Another $4,368,437.83 worth were used in “Aircraft”, “lighter-than-air vehicles”, “unmanned aerial vehicles” (“UAVs”), aero-engines and “aircraft” equipment, related equipment, and components, specially designed or modified for military use.”
Since the start of 2024, many thousands more people across Canada have added their voices to calls for an arms embargo, and joined organizing efforts to make it a reality.
In March the NDP advanced a motion in Parliament that called for Canada’s arms trade with Israel to be suspended. Trudeau’s Liberals, hoping to avoid a split in their own caucus, negotiated a watered-down version of the motion, including a clause that would “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance with Canada’s arms export regime…” The motion passed. Though it was non-binding, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly stated publicly that she intended to honour it. Yet six months later — during which Israel has continued to conduct air strikes and commit atrocities, and killed aid workers while children starved to death — there is no evidence that she has formalized the cessation of arms export authorizations.
The seriousness of these violations is at this point well-known and well-documented, and frankly undeniable. In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it plausible that Israel is committing acts of genocide in Gaza. The ICJ ruling should have served as a warning to Canada that as a signatory to the Genocide Convention, it had to take every measure within its power to prevent genocide in Gaza.
In February, United Nations human rights experts warned that sending weapons, ammunition or parts to Israel that would be used in Gaza is likely a violation of international humanitarian law.
In March, Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, published a report concluding that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the following acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to groups’ members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” She reminded states of their “obligations to enforce the prohibition of genocide,” and recommended that they implement an arms embargo on Israel.
At the beginning of April, the United Nations Human Rights Council called on all states to stop “the sale, transfer, and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Gaza”.
On May 7, unions and civil society organizations across the country launched Arms Embargo Now— a cross-sectoral campaign calling on the federal government to impose a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel. Since launching, the campaign has garnered the support of 200+ unions and civil society organizations, and has secured the support of 46 Members of Parliament from across party lines.
In June UN experts reiterated their demand to stop the transfer of all arms to Israel, highlighting that “the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel may constitute serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws and risk State complicity in international crimes, possibly including genocide.”
But the government of Canada has dragged its feet, blatantly ignoring international law, international legal experts and its own laws and constituents. It has continued to extend support for Israel’s genocidal acts. It has refused to act decisively to save Palestinian lives and impose a full and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.
For instance, while the Liberal government says that it has not approved any new arms export permits to Israel since January 8, 2024, Global Affairs Canada has not formalized the suspension by publishing a notice to exporters on the GAC website used for this purpose as is customary.
What’s more, the office of Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly has specifically said that arms export permits approved before January 8 remain in effect. It’s worth remembering that between October and December 2023, the most deadly period of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Global Affairs Canada approved $28.5 million dollars in arms export permits to Israel, more than any other year recorded in Canadian history.
Thus, while the government may have paused approving future weapons permits to Israel, weapons and components continue to be transferred to Israel under more than 200 permits approved before January 8 2024.
However, on September 10 2024 Minister Joly responded to increasing pressure for an arms embargo on Israel by announcing that she had suspended 30 arms export permits to Israel. This news is welcomed, but the government has yet to divulge any information on the suspended permits or why these 30 were chosen, nor to address the remaining active weapons export permits.
Unfortunately, any pause in approvals of new weapons permits to Israel, or suspension of some of the existing permits, do not impact a majority of Canada’s arms exports to the country, which use a loophole to go to Israel via the U.S., untracked, unreported, unregulated, and without even requiring a permit. After news broke in August that 50,000 explosives worth $83 million were to be produced at General Dynamics in Quebec and sent to Israel in precisely this way, via the U.S., Minister Joly was forced to respond to the outcry that followed by promising that the government would oppose this transfer.
It is rare that information is released on indirect exports to Israel such as these, and while it is a positive step that the government has committed to blocking the planned export of made-in-Quebec explosives, this is just one of many instances of weapons going from Canada to Israel via the US. For instance, Canadian companies and subsidiaries supply a wide range of components to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet program, from machined parts, fuselage sections, and electro-hydraulic actuation system components, to power & thermal management system controllers. Every F-35 used by the IDF to drop 2000 lb missiles on Gaza is made in the US using millions of dollars in Canadian technology.
A true arms embargo on Israel would close this major loophole. In contrast, simply suspending the authorization of future arms exports to Israel, suspending 30 of over 200 active arms export permits, and responding to public outcry on only one instance of indirect weapons transfers via the U.S., does not go nearly far enough, given the urgency and scale of the devastation in Gaza, and the gravity of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.
According to the Government of Canada itself, an arms embargo is a sanction that “aims to prevent weapons and military equipment from leaving or reaching a targeted country.” Imposing a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel requires that the Government of Canada must immediately stop the transfer of all previously approved arms exports to Israel, including the record-breaking number approved in the last quarter of 2023. It must halt the export of vast quantities of Canadian arms and components to Israel via the United States.
An arms embargo also requires that Canada must ban the import of weapons, military equipment and surveillance technology from Israel. Canada is Israel’s sixth largest arms customer. In December 2023, when Israel had already massacred nearly 20,000 Palestinians, the Canadian military announced a new deal with Israeli state-owned weapons giant Rafael to purchase $43 Million of their Spike LR2 missiles, missiles that the Israeli military is currently using in their attacks on Gaza. This means that the government is purchasing weapons advertised to them as “battle-tested” against Palestinian civilians, and that Canadian tax dollars are funding the Israeli war machine. A full arms embargo will also include prohibiting the import and export to Israel of a range of “dual-use” technology and equipment. The government has a range of laws and policy tools that it can use to enact these measures. It must not delay any further.
