"While Hanes makes the important distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, quoting former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel is committing war crimes,an implicit bias is evident as she quotes only Israel boosters like Warren Kinsella. Why are Palestinian Canadian voices or anti-Zionist Jewish Canadian voices absent from this piece?"
June 20, 2025
Dear Editor,
When Allison Hanes writes that the word genocide “has been weaponized,” impeding the work of the Foundation for Genocide Education, is she referring to statements by the UN, the International Court of Justice, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch? All these bodies have used the term genocide to describe Israel’s campaign of mass killing and destruction in Gaza since the Hamas attacks of October 2023.
Heidi Berger launched the Foundation for Genocide Education to honour her mother who survived the Holocaust. She laments that a Rwandan survivor quit working with the Foundation because it “didn’t say Israel is committing a genocide,” adding, “ because we don’t believe it.” She doesn’t say why Israel’s killing at least 55,700 people in Gaza and hundreds in the West Bank in less than two years, a toll that rises daily, is not genocide, what evidence she has that contradicts the appeal by UN experts that, “[states] must act swiftly to end the unfolding genocide…”
Or the declaration from Human Rights Watch that, “The Israeli government’s plan to demolish what remains of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and concentrate the Palestinian population into a tiny area would amount to an abhorrent escalation of its ongoing crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and acts of genocide.”
Or Amnesty International’s declaration that their research “has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip”
Berger’s unwillingness to entertain the possibility of genocide by Israel, suggests a fatal flaw in the Foundation. Genocides are extreme acts of ethnic nationalism, and educational efforts against genocide cannot be selective about which atrocities to acknowledge based on ethnic bias. Nazi Germany and Israel have committed genocide.
While Hanes makes the important distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism, quoting former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel is committing war crimes,an implicit bias is evident as she quotes only Israel boosters like Warren Kinsella. Why are Palestinian Canadian voices or anti-Zionist Jewish Canadian voices absent from this piece?
Richard Fung