CANCON CON?

 

Demo at Parliament Square, London, August 2025

IN SEPTEMBER OF 2024, the former

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, 

stated:

 “First and foremost, our policy has been clear since January 8, [2024] we and I have not accepted any form of arms export permits to be sent to Israel… We will not have any form of arms or parts of arms be sent to Gaza, period.” (The Maple)

 

   

So, everything’s copacetic, right? No arms to Israel. That’s good, isn’t it? Canada is part of a growing number of countries suspending the sale of weapons to the out-of-control Jewish state. These include Italy, Japan, Spain, Columbia and several others. A growing list and one we hope represents reality. It should be the moral thing to do, an automatic admonition and sanctioning by our better selves. But the levels of obfuscation, propaganda, and outright lies available to our political and economic elites to hide the truth of things, like selling guns and munitions to genocidaires, is endless. One hopes Canada is transparent in this matter. One hoped, anyway.

 

A 2024 REPORT by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) found that while Canada is no longer issuing new permits for sales of military hardware to Israel, those permits in place prior to 8 January 2024 remain active. Furthermore, the watchdog group, Arms Embargo Now reports that direct military sales to Israel increased sharply during the months immediately following 7 October, 2023. They note that: “Data from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) revealed nearly $30 million dollars worth of new [Emphasis mine] export permits for military goods and technology had been authorized for Israel in just the first two months of the genocide.”

 

      Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) Proposals         

IT IS INTERESTING that, even as Canadian exports of military goods to Israel increased significantly between October and December 2023, government accounts of the transferred materiel became more opaque. One small, but telling, example is the change GAC made in labeling military exports in its records. The original and straight-forward label:  “Exports of Military Goods and Technology” changed in  2025 to “Strategic Goods and Technologies Pursuant to Section 27 of the Export and Import Permits Act”—the later, I'm sure you'll agree, is a title so vague that it could be misconstrued as ‘benign’ and therefore less apt to be closely scrutinized by export regulators.

 

“The data presented in this section, drawn directly from Israeli import records, paints an undeniable picture: a steady and substantial flow of Canadian military and strategic goods to Israel continued, and in some categories accelerated, long after the Canadian government announced its “pause” [in January 2024] on new export permits.” (Arms Embargo Now)

 

Another obfuscation used is to claim sales of Canadian military goods to Israel, either shipped directly or via the United States, come with a "rider" stating the exports cannot be used in Gaza. This loophole means that  Israel can legally import materiel from Canada for its other conflicts (the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran) and move munitions from those theatres to Gaza as needed. The authors of the report go on to say that the January 2024 policy “has proven to have little material effect on stopping these transfers, as the record-breaking volume of permits issued just prior [emphasis mine] to the announcement ensured the pipeline of military exports remained wide open.” Additionally, those sales negotiated in such haste between Israel and Canada in late 2023 will have totaled over ninety-million-dollars when the final sales are completed by the end of 2025. 

When questioned about Canada’s military exports to Israel, then-Foreign Affairs Minister Joly used the standard talking point of claiming such-and-such shipment contained “non-lethal” (whatever that means) military hardware. So, Canadian-made night-vision goggles used by an Israeli sniper are okay, even if the device helps murder innocent Palestinians? Goggles good. Rifles bad. Is that what we’re supposed to accept? GMAB!  

👉Any shipment of military goods facilitates Israel’s genocide, no matter how ‘benign’. Frankly, any trade with Israel facilitates, supports, and ultimately condones Israel’s actions in Gaza.

 

South African Delegation to the ICJ December 2023

Even South Africa’s hands are not entirely clean in this matter. The brave South African jurists who, in December 2023, brought forward to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a charge of genocide against Israel, must contend with a difficult fact: their country still exports coal to Israel, helping, literally, to fuel the genocide they went to The Hague to prevent. Without a secure electrical grid from its thermal (coal, gas) generating plants, Israel could not aggress as it does against the Palestinian people—or anyone else for that matter. Its extensive communications and surveillance apparatus, its drones, facial recognition programs, AI-generated targeting systems, monitoring and remote control systems, etc., all use lots of electricity, not to mention the electrical needs of a modern society.

 

 IT SHOULD BE NOTED: this past August there were protests in South Africa around that country’s coal exports to the Jewish state and the hypocrisy on the part of the South African government that charges Israel with committing war crimes on the one hand, while on the other enables Israel to carry out its despicable deeds using their coal. 

 

“As a country, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), we cannot again supply coal to Israel, which keeps its electricity grid on, supporting the industrial military complex it uses in carrying out the genocide.” (Mametlwe Sebei, president of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa.)

 

  

THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXAMPLE calls our attention to understand how complex webs of vested interests—political, social, institutional, corporate, and private—act at different times and places and intensities, to hobble and compete with even the most obvious and necessary humanitarian actions.

  

👉There are supposed to be checks in the system to ensure Canadian armaments and munitions do not go to third parties like Israel where “arms or items would be used in the commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected as such, or other war crimes” as per the UN sponsored 2013 "Arms Trade Treaty" of which Canada is a signatory. According to GAC, Canada has not made new trade contracts with Israel since 8 Jan 2024. It remains to be seen whether further military export deals are made between Canada and Israel once the old ones are completed.  

Canada also has a trade treaty with the United States called the “Defence Production Sharing Agreement” which cuts through red-tape and facilitates sales of Canadian weapons and materiel to the US Department of Defence War to the tune of one-billion dollars annually, and  does not require export permits, so we have less understanding of what's being sold to our great southern neighbour and what they do with our stuff afterwards. We don’t know definitively how much Canadian kit is being forwarded on to Israel. Tracking the Canadian footprint in all that is like tossing a hundred or so fluffy, white kittens into an automatic dryer and adding a black or grey into the mix as it's tumbling. Hard to track, in other words. 😒 This lack of oversight and rigorous export controls with respect to third-party use of our military exports suggests our weapons trade regime needs more comprehensive monitoring and regulatory procedures. [How about not selling weapons, period?! Just sayin'. Ed.]

 

To recap: Military exports get to Israel from Canada as direct sales, as indirect sales or donations via the United States, and also as “diplomatic cargo”. For example, 16,883 tons of container shipments were classified as 'diplomatic cargo' by the Israeli Consulate in New York and destined for Israeli ports between 2011-2014 without any inspections of the shipments. (I imagine the shipping containers contained memo pads and paperclips. You can never have too many paperclips.)

IN CANADA, recent “export data reveal that air shipments labeled as ‘diplomatic cargo’ originated from the Israeli Consulate in Montreal, Quebec. Which raises the question about the content of these diplomatic shipments.” (Arms Embargo Now) So, something similar may be happening here, too. 

Israel's military also gets financial help from wealthy Canadian donors and 'charitable' organizations that provide funds or services directly to the the IDF (Israeli Defence Force)*  

 

Isn't it about time we stop making excuses and actually do something?

 

CHEERS, JAKE.  ____________________________________

 

 View of Gaza 'Targets' Through Sniper Scope

FUN FACT: IDF policy has it that for a single Hamas fighter targeted by Israeli intelligence, one-hundred non-combatants, i.e., ‘collateral damage’, can  be killed, if necessary, by Israeli bombs and missiles. A 100-to-one kill ratio is deemed acceptable to Israel’s military and political leadership. If that isn’t a recipe for mass murder, I don’t know what is!

(p.s., I have no idea how many Hamas there are, but, given the murderous rampage Netanyahu and his Sturmtruppen are conducting, with the acquiesce and even the approval of most Jewish Israelis it must be said, there should be plenty of volunteers signing up at the local Hamas recruitment centre in the near future.

 

* Jewish organizations like JNF Canada, Friends of Israel Defence Forces,  Mizrachi Canada, etc., are registered in Canada as charities. They offer tax deductions to donors whose funds go to support the IDF, a foreign military. In general, Canadians are allowed to send money to the IDF, but they cannot claim their donation as a tax deduction on their income tax returns, unless they go through Jewish charities here in Canada. The rules seem pretty clear and it's a wonder how this loophole remains active even now. In fact, these Jewish organizations are not charities. They are agents of a foreign government and should have their charitable status revoked and a "foreign lobby" label attached to their incorporation papers.

IF A DONOR gets a charitable tax receipt from one of these so-called 'charities', the rest of us are on the hook for the amount of the deduction. In addition, the CRA, by allowing this charitable loophole to remain active, makes the Canadian taxpayer indirectly complicit in funding a genocide. 😕 And that's a very unpleasant thought, indeed.

 

👉Wyatt Reed of the Grayzone says of other Canadian charities: "A separate report published by Just Peace Advocates found that in 2023 up to $100 million went completely untaxed as it was funneled  to Israeli universities from their ‘charitable’ arms in Canada. The money went to a variety of schools with strong ties to occupation forces." [i.e., the IDF] Several Israeli universities received Canadian charitable donations to conduct research, provide occupational and technical training for IDF soldiers, promote as legitimate Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, as well as providing reports and research tools and technical expertise for the IDF.

👉Again, it is illegal for Canadian charities to make donations to a foreign military. Individuals are free to do so, but they cannot claim charitable tax exemption status for their donation. Why this loophole continues to exist is another very good question. 😠 

 

 

"From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide." Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967:

 

“By supplying Israel with coal, gas, oil and fuel, companies are contributing to civilian infrastructures that Israel uses to entrench permanent annexation and weaponizes in the destruction of Palestinian life. The same infrastructure services the Israeli military while it obliterates Gaza, including the network supplying the resources that these companies have provided.  The ostensibly civilian nature of such infrastructure does not exonerate a company of responsibility.” (Francesca Albanese)

 

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/