By Rachel Small, World BEYOND War, September 12, 2024
This week Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly announced that she had suspended 30 arms export permits to Israel and that the government would oppose the transfer of 50,000 mortars to be produced at General Dynamics in Quebec and slated to flow to Israel via the US.
Once again our movement has forced the government to do what it was determined not to — cut back the Canada-Israel arms trade, bit by bit, and move one step closer to an arms embargo.
For months, World BEYOND War has brought hundreds of organizations together through the #ArmsEmbargoNow campaign to demand that the government stop the flow of all weapons to and from Israel – not only pausing the approval of new weapons export permits, which we successfully forced them to do back in the winter, but also cancelling the 200+ previously approved permits that are still being used to send Canadian weapons to Israel.
The suspension of 30 of those 200+ permits announced this week is a big deal, but it’s just the first step. This week’s win shows exactly why we need a full arms embargo on Israel. All these permits must be cancelled.
On top of the weapons exported directly from Canada to Israel, there are countless arms exports that use a loophole to go to Israel via the US. These exports aren’t tracked, reported, or regulated, and they don’t even require a permit.
Last month, we raised the alarm about one such planned transfer of 50,000 explosives to be produced at General Dynamics in Quebec and sent to Israel via the US. This week we successfully forced Joly to publicly oppose the shipment.
Now we need to keep up the pressure to make sure these explosives are actually blocked from going through. And this is just one instance of weapons going from Canada to Israel via the US. Every F35 currently dropping 2000 lb missiles on Gaza is made in the US using millions of dollars in Canadian technology.
We need a full arms embargo to close the US loophole and make sure that no Canadian weapons or military components make it to Israel via the US.
Our movement successfully pushed the Canadian government to take further steps towards an arms embargo on Israel. We are powerful, and we are having an impact.
With Parliament resuming next week, this is a critical moment to ramp up the pressure. We must make sure that all of the permits are cancelled, that the US loophole is closed once and for all, and that Canada stops funding the Israeli war machine by importing their weapons.
We won’t stop until we cut off the flow of all weapons both to and from Israel — a full arms embargo.
Stay tuned for new calls to action coming soon.
