"The term 'genocide', along with other international legal terms, has been deliberately and systematically hijacked, redefined, inverted and weaponized to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to 'the Jews' among nations."

"This well-orchestrated campaign to spread a modern blood libel accusing Israel of 'genocide' began before any Israeli response to Hamas' genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity of October 7." 

Michal Cotler Wunsh, CEO, International Legal Forum  

Gaza GenoLIE logo.  (photo credit: Courtesy)

 

A campaign has been launched naming itself the "Gaza GenoLIE", supported by over 35 organizations worldwide in a campaign they have joined for the purpose of debunking "Hamas genocidal propaganda" surrounding the war in Gaza. Organizations beside the International Legal Forum include the Anti-Defamation League, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the World Jewish Congress. 

 

The claims of genocide were initiated on October 8, 2023, a day following the invasion of southern Israel from Gaza by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas, when 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian, were slaughtered. A somewhat precipitate accusation, given the reality that Israel's ground operation into Gaza began on October 27. 

 

According to Amnesty International, a number of United Nations bodies and other international groups --their investigations have uncovered evidence that they claim validates the assertions that Israel committed genocide during the Gaza War. Bearing in mind that these very organizations are anything but neutral with respect to their accusations against the Jewish state. 

 

For its part, Israel has repeatedly explained that its military has gone to extraordinary lengths that no other country in a war situation has ever committed to, in striving to limit civilian casualties. This is a war where it is well proven that Palestinian terrorist groups consider the Palestinian public expendable to their plans of attacking Israel and preparing for the response by using their civilian population as shields.

 

People take part in the National March for Palestine - hands off Gaza, a pro-Palestinian protest calling for the government to ''end the genocide and stop arming Israel'', in London, Britain, January 31, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/Jack Taylor)

 

There is a double purpose in that tried-and-true strategy; the first being that using human shields results in the actual terrorists having the protection of soft bodies, and the second that those civilians -- all the better when women and particularly children are killed in the line of battle -- are welcome fodder for public relations campaigns that move the hearts and minds of Western democracies.

 

While acknowledging that some 70,000 people have perished in the war situation deliberately created by Hamas schemes to not only lethally assault Israeli civilian populations -- but to successfully sketch out a scenario naively believed in the West amenable to having its latent simmering antisemitism aroused by the accusations of Israeli 'genocide' against the forever-victims of Palestine -- their terrorist leaders celebrate scoring in their campaign of slander and isolation of Jews from the rest of society. 

 

According to the Gaza GenoLIE website, its purpose is that of an educational initiative relating to the "generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks in the United States, Europe and around the world". The campaign argues the most crucial element in claims of genocide is the word "intent"; the 1948 Genocide Convention drafted following the Holocaust refers to certain acts inclusive of killing, causing serious harm, inflicting destructive conditions of life, committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."

 

A Toronto pedestrian walks past signage stating "End The Genocide In Gaza" as a truck with digital displays of the Israeli citizens taken hostage by Hamas terrorists with signage stating "Bring Them Home" drives by back in November 2023. (Photo Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

 

The convention, they contend, asks whether the perpetrator acted for the specific goal of destroying a protected group. Israel, they argue, waged war to dismantle Hamas and bring the release of the Israeli hostages; the civilian death toll a consequence of urban combat against an enemy that "purposely and cynically embed(ed) itself among its own population."

 

The war Israel fought was to target Hamas, not the Palestinians. When, on October 8, Israel declared war, four aims were made clear: recover the hostages; dismantle Hamas's military capacity; remove Hamas as Gaza's governing authority; ensure Gaza could never again carry out such a horrendous attack.

 

Israel, moreover, issued evacuation warnings in advance of military operations, dropped millions of Arabic-language leaflets and placed tens of millions of phone calls, texts, and recorded messages in Arabic to urge civilians to leave identified combat zones. "None of the aims reference Palestinians. They refer to an armed terror organization -- its fighters, weapons, and rule." 

 

List of all 40 organizations involved in the campaign.

 

"[Hamas's claim of Israel's 'genocide' against Palestinians threatens foundational principles of law by hijacking the term genocide to spread] a modern blood libel [in accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people]." 

Michal Cotler Wunsch 

War Crimes in Civil War-Ravaged Sudan

 

"[I am] deeply alarmed [by reports of civilian casualties and forced displacement from El-Fasher]."

"With fighters pushing further into the city and escape routes cut off, hundreds of thousands of civilians are trapped and terrified — shelled, starving and without access to food, health care or safety."

"[There is a dire need for an] immediate ceasefire [throughout the region]."

"[The UN has life-saving supplies ready, but due to the intensified attacks in the region, it has made it impossible for workers to get aid in]."

"Safe, rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access must be allowed to reach all civilians in need."

Tom Fletcher, emergency relief co-ordinator, United Nations

 

"Our liberation of [El Fasher] is the liberation of Sudan, all the way to Port Sudan...."

"We are coming and we are coming heavy." 

"The new Sudan goes forward, the old Sudan gets destroyed."

RSF second-in-command Abdelrahim Dagalo 

 

"[The Rapid Support Forces [RSF] committed heinous crimes against innocent civilians in the city of El-Fasher, where more than 2,000 unarmed citizens were executed and killed on October 26 and 27, most of them women, children and the elderly."

Joint Forces, allies of the Sudanese military  

Camp for displaced families who fled from al-Fashir to Tawila, North Darfur, Sudan. Photograph: Mohammed Jamal/Reuters

 

Sudanese army chief General Abdel Fattah al Burham stated his forces had withdrawn from El-Fasher "to a safer location". In so doing, he acknowledged that his defense operations had lost the battle for the strategic city, leaving the Rapid Support Forces now in full control of all of Darfur. Even so, he made a pledge to continue to fight "until this land is purified". Despite which, analysts conclude that Sudan has now been partitioned along an east-west axis. The RSF has set up a parallel government from a territory that will prove extremely difficult for the military to extract them. 

 

This is a bloody civil war, with the RSF, formerly in partnership with the Sudanese army, since April of 2023 challenging the Sudanese government for total control of Darfur. Formerly known as the Janjaweed, horsed Arab militia in conjunction with the previous government of Omar al-Bashir who was found by the ICC to have been guilty of war crimes in Darfur, the power struggle between the two forces led to their violent separation and the challenge that followed. Since then, over 150,000 people have been killed, with over 14 million displaced in the fighting.  

"The shelling was so intense on Saturday that we had no choice but to flee El-Fashir."

"Along the way, the RSF filmed us and we were beaten and insulted - and they stole what we had on the journey."

"A number of people were captured and ransoms were demanded for their release. Some of those who were taken were later executed."

"During the journey, many people were arrested, and we suffered greatly from hunger and thirst."

Displaced Darfurian  

People arriving in Tawila have been describing the extreme violence they faced as they fled el-Fasher. AFP/Getty Images

 

 Ethnically-motivated atrocities in the western Sudanese city of El-Fasher have been reported since it fell to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, concluding the years-long siege that made life an utter misery for those city dwellers who were unable to flee, with the city surrounded by RSF forces. Over 18 months of siege warfare had created fear and threats of starvation for those forced to remain in the city, trapping 260,000 people without external aid being able to reach them. 

 

The Rapid Support Forces now has control over every state capital in the sprawling Darfur region comprised of mostly non-Arab, Black farming communities. NGOs, along with local groups had given warning that mass atrocities would be triggered by El-Fasher's fall to the RSF and those predictions are ringing true. Open-source intelligence and satellite imagery have confirmed the dire state of affairs now reigning for the residents of the city. 

 

According to Volker Turk, UN rights chief, there is a growing risk of "ethnically motivated violations and atrocities", as his office was "receiving multiple, alarming reports that the Rapid Support Forces are carrying out atrocities, including summary executions". According to pro-democracy activists, El-Fasher residents endured "the worst forms of violence and ethnic cleansing" since control of the area was claimed by the RSF.

 

A fighter known for executing civilians in RSF-controlled areas was shown in a video released by local activists shooting a group of unarmed civilians seated on the ground. They were killed at point-blank range. As many as 15,000 civilians from non-Arab groups in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina have been reported to be killed by the paramilitaries, with their track record of atrocities. The Sudanese army itself has also been accused of war crimes.

 

The paramilitary RSF Forces have taken over el-Fasher prompting fears of the lives of thousands of civilians   Image: UNICEF/Xinhua/IMAGO

 

 El-Fasher was considered to represent one of he grimmest places in war-torn Sudan -- thanks to a war labelled by the UN as among the world's worst humanitarian crises. Located outside the city, displacement camps were declared to be in famine. Within El-Fasher, the quarter-million population in desperation turned to eating animal feed to stay alive.  

"[The city] appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution."

"[This includes what appears to be] door-to-door clearance operations."

Yale University Humanitarian Research Lab 

 

 

"[The crisis is] the final stage of the Darfur genocide."

"I have seen videos of ditches and trenches entirely full of friends, neighbours and family members’ bodies."

"There have been reports of entire families hanging from trees."

Emi Mahmoud, Darfur Internally Displaced People Network  

 

 

Syrian Druze in Sweida Targeted in Sectarian Killing Spree

"We reached a formula that allows us to defuse the crisis by evacuating the families of our compatriots from the Bedouin and the tribes who are currently in Sweida city."

Sweida internal security chief Ahmad Dalati

 

"The dead bodies sent a terrible smell through all the floors of the hospital."

"The situation has been terrible. We couldn't walk around the hospital without wearing a mask."

"[The dead and wounded included women, children and the elderly]." 

Hisham Breik, nurse, Sweida national hospital

 

"We have imposed a security cordon in the vicinity of Sweida to keep it secure and to stop the fighting there."

"This will preserve the path that will lead to reconciliation and stability in the province."

Syrian Interior Minister Ahmad al-Dalati 

Syrian Bedouin families ride in a convoy led by Red Crescent vehicles in Busra al-Harir, heading to Daraa after being evacuated from Sweida following more than a week of violent clashes, July 21, 2025. (Malek Khattab/AP)

 

 Bedouin families were evacuated by Syrian authorities on Monday from the city of Sweida during a ceasefire in the southern province following a week of sectarian/tribal bloodshed during which time over a thousand people were killed, both militants on either side, and civilians. The dead were mostly Druze, not  only fighters but civilians, including women and children. When the regime's military was dispatched ostensibly to put an end to the fighting and restore order, what it really did was to support the Bedouin side of the conflict, joining them in a killing spree of Druze in the Druze-majority city of Sweida.

 

Atrocities were recorded for posterity in barbaric scenes of beheadings, mutilation, and unrestrained rape and butchery, reminiscent of the October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel by Hamas terrorists on a bloody spree of monumental proportions in sadistic savagery. The Bedouin Sunni Muslims and the Shia-linked Druze played out ancient enmities in which human restraint against the passion of murderous impulses were forgotten, leaving corpses of women, children and the elderly lying in the streets, in their homes, in a macabre scene of hate and vengeance.

 

In the wake of the ceasefire that finally took effect to stop the killing rampage, convoys of buses and other vehicles entered Sweida, exiting finally, packed with Bedouin civilians, entire families, women and children to be taken out of the majority Sweida city, heading for reception centres in Daraa province next door, and on to the capital Damascus, with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent coordinating the evacuation. An entirety of 1,500 people from Bedouin tribes were to be evacuated.

 

Syrian Bedouin families ride in the back of trucks carrying their belongings, in a convoy led by Red Crescent vehicles in Busra al-Harir, heading to Daraa after being evacuated from Sweida following more than a week of violent clashes, July 21, 2025. (Malek Khattab/AP)

 

 The ceasefire served to put an end to the sectarian violence after the week of unremitting horror that left 1,100 mostly Druze fighters and civilians dead, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights monitoring body. Among the  dead were hundreds of government security personnel as well. Druze and Bedouin tribes began their violent clash on July13, the fighting bringing intervening Sunni Arab tribes to converge in support of the Bedouin. Government forces were identified by witnesses siding with the Bedouin and themselves committing summary executions on entering Sweida last week. 

 

The situation intensified externally when Israel became involved, concerned for the welfare of the Druze, reflective of Israel's own sizeable Druze population, loyal to the State of Israel. The plight of the Syrian Druze convinced Israel to send fighter bombers into Syria, where Israeli warplanes hit the Syrian Ministry of Defense, as well as targeting a location nearby the Presidential palace in Damascus to drive home its message of support and protection of the Syrian Druze, as well as a need for a buffer zone at the Golan Heights.

 

Druze from southern Syria under attack fled to Israel for haven, while Druze with Israeli citizenship moved in the opposite direction -- into Syria to fight with their Druze brethren in Sweida, ignoring the warning to remain in Israel and not enter Syria. On the other side, Sunni Arab tribal militias flooded into Syria to converge on Sweida in support of the Bedouin. Druze groups regained control when the Bedouin and tribal fighters withdrew from areas of Sweida on the implementation of the ceasefire.The U.S. took credit for having negotiated a ceasefire between Syria's Islamist government and Israel.

 

Israel launched dozens of airstrikes in the Druze-majority Sweida province, targeting government forces who had effectively sided with the Bedouins.  Still from video

 

Beyond the checkpoints where security forces had erected sand mounds blocking some entrances to Sweida, Sunni tribal fighters armed with machine guns remained in place on the roadside beyond the checkpoints. In Sweida city, dozen of bodies awaited identification at the main hospital where a forensic medical official revealed "we still have 97 unidentified corpses". 

 

Over 128,000 people were displaced by the violence. Collecting and identifying bodies carries on. Over 450 bodies were brought to the Sweida national hospital, more being recovered from streets and homes. Hospitals and health centres in Sweida province were out of service amidst "reports of unburied bodies raisin serious public health concerns", according to the United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

 

Humanitarian access to Sweida "remains highly constrained", the UN reported late Sunday. That day, a first humanitarian aid convoy entered the city where power and water cuts and shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies -- including body bags -- prevail. Despite isolated gunfire in areas north of Sweida city, the ceasefire is holding.

Syrian government security forces block Bedouin fighters, foreground, from entering Sweida province, in Busra al-Harir village, southern Syria, July 20, 2025. (Omar Sanadiki/AP)

 

 

The Anguish of The Wait...

"Hamas said last week that it needed seven days to locate all the hostages and then another week to prepare them for release."

"Such offerings are the Hamas way of extending an olive branch. Compel Israel to cave to their terms because of domestic public fury."

"Every Hamas video taunts and the tortures the country. It knows that."

"Since the U.S. election, Hamas has posted three videos, two of which showed signs of life of hostages."

"The terrorist group has issued statements on Telegram, including one last Friday that hostages are now guarded by suicide squads."

Vivian Bercovici, journalist, Israel

Israelis react to the ceasefire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

 

Guarded by suicide squads; yet another not very subtle message for Israel: try to mount rescues and however few of your precious Israelis are left in our hands alive will no longer be among the living. This is Hamas, extracting every ounce of bitter anguish from the families of the captured innocent civilians; infants, adolescents, girls, boys, the elderly and the ill, women and men, and oh yes, Israel Defense Forces' service-men and -women among them.

Toying with the fragile emotions of Israelis; of the families whose loved ones are held by Palestinians who love dead Jews and abhor live ones. Playing with the minds of Israeli authorities mulling strategies to somehow discover the whereabouts of the hostages and mount rescues to reunite them with their families suffering the agony of loss. Teasing the poor lost souls held in their dank, airless underground prisons by forcing them to deliver videoed pleas of rescue.

In Israel, hospitals are in preparation mode to receive the hostages, broken in spirit, mind and body. Hostages out of Gaza after having suffered dread privation, torture, fear and hopelessness. Is there, could there ever be a cure for relentless infliction of pain on helpless people? Of clearing the confusion from the minds of captured children whose vacant eyes abandoned the search for their parents?

Captured terrorists under interrogation revealed details of the conditions of the hostages. The supposition is that the hostages, men and women, girls and boys, and fragile infants are all in failing health. How could it be otherwise? Imprisoned deep in tunnels from the time of their capture 15 months earlier. Given scant food and water, and no opportunity for hygiene. There are reports that many among them are incapable now of standing on their own.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas in Tel Aviv, Israel, on October 18, 2023.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

Imagine a crowded, dank and airless dungeon, the air putrid with human waste, and barely breathable, lacking sufficient oxygen. A total absence of natural light. Among them are those who have been bound or chained for prolonged periods. And those who have been repeatedly raped -- both men and women, and of course, adolescents. 

Among Israelis, most oppose any agreement where all hostages are not simultaneously freed. And certainly they are not agreeable to a ceasefire agreement under any conditions. Yet saving the hostages is of primary importance. Even so, Israeli negotiators speak of the reality of the situation, only one deal has been eked out and that is the hand they and others must work with. To secure the freedom of the hostages, even as the dire need is acknowledged to destroy the capabilities of terrorists to continue mounting deadly attacks, as they are sworn to do.

The conditions stipulated in the agreement are not by any stretch of the imagination optimum for those waiting in agony to see their loved ones, for those being held in these inhuman conditions to breathe free and scent a glimmer of  hope for their future. It will take three months, at release intervals, for the first stage of the release of 33 hostages to play out. Israel is holding its collective breath for baby Kfir and Ariel, now two and five, with their mother Shiri Bibas, to be released.

Early in their capture, Hamas had told the children's father that his wife and children were dead, struck in an Israel airstrike, though never confirmed. The video of that little drama was one of the first ones released by Hamas. In return for the 98 Israeli hostages --both dead and alive -- released bit by bit, Israel has pledged to release no fewer than a thousand Palestinian terrorists, some of whom were convicted of dreadful crimes.

Relatives and friends of people killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, react to the ceasefire announcement as they take part in a demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Terrifying Evidence of Inhumanity

"Everyone must react, every leader. Do not expect that it will be forgotten, that time will pass."

"[Russian solders are] beasts."

"We are not going to forget anything. Neither are we going to forgive the murderers. There will be legal responsibility for everything. The defeat of terror is necessary." 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

 

"[Wagner was] reportedly continuing to commit war crimes by beheading Ukrainian servicemen in Bakhmut,"

"[Referencing a photo shared on pro-Russian social media sites showing what appeared to be a severed head, which they claimed belonged to a Ukrainian soldier, mounted on a spike]."

Institute for the Study of War

 

"[The videos are part of a psychological operation] aimed at intimidation.”

"It completely dehumanizes and demonstrates the essence of a terrorist country."

"But it is important to understand the purpose. This is an PSYOP [psychological operation] aimed at intimidation. The target audience is not only Ukraine, but also Western societies."

"It doesn’t work on us, though. The Russians are afraid of this, but not us."

 Dariia Zarivna, adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine

Investigations have been launched both in Ukraine and in Russia into two gruesome videos showing the beheading of Ukrainian soldiers. The videos appear to have been taken at or close to Bakhmut the Ukrainian city that Russian troops along with the Wagner Group have besieged for months without being able to dislodge the defensive Ukrainian troops determined to hold the seemingly militarily insignificant city. In the process a horrendous death toll has taken place, where Wagner fighters in particular have been dying in droves.

The videos have spread online. Causing aghast condemnations from Kyiv along with condemnation from international human rights organizations. The Kremlin has responded to the footage as visually "horrible", and is awaiting the opportunity for verification before commenting further. Not only have the soldiers been executed by beheading, it appeared their hands had been amputated. In one of the videos, a sound track hints that one of the executed Ukrainians was still alive while his neck was being sawed by an ordinary knife.

Russian soldier decapitating Ukrainian prisoner

Starkly reminiscent of the Islamic State videos that horrified the world with their gruesome gloating over the reaction to their brutish atrocities. One video appears to show a man in green fatigues, a yellow armband prominent, typically worn by Ukrainian fighters. He can be heard screaming before another man dressed in camouflage decapitates him with a knife.

While this is happening a third man holds to view a flak jacket belonging to the Ukrainian soldier. All three men speak Russian. "In the world of fakes we live in, the authenticity of the footage must be checked", responded Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Attempts are being made to identify those in the videos committing the atrocities, along with the victims. On pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram channels posters did not dispute the videos' authenticity while at the same time not confirming them. There were some justifications; claims that combat hardened the Russian troops.

The videos' release was "fairly opportune" for Ukraine, speculated Andrei Medvedev, a Russian state TV journalist, member of Moscow city legislature. It had the potential to "fire up personnel ideologically" before the planned major spring Ukrainian counteroffensive. The videos' release, according to Mykhalilo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian President, was meant to "demoralize the public mood or at least change the psychological perception of the war right now."

According to the UN and rights groups, since Russia's February 2022 invasion, the Russian military has committed widespread abuses and war crimes. Among them the targeting of apartment buildings and other civilian structures and equipment including hospitals in Russian air strikes. Images of hundreds of dead civilians in the streets and in mass graves in Bucha following the withdrawal of Russian forces provided horrifying testimony of Russian atrocities.

The Shameful Conduct of the Canadian Military

"Do we have a clear expression of CAF policy toward this group [the Azov Battalion]?" 

"This may or may not prompt questions, but we need to be ready and not come across as being taken by surprise.”

Chris Henderson, then assistant deputy minister for public affair

 

"In Ukraine, the Azov Battalion has recruited foreign fighters motivated by white supremacy and neo-Nazi beliefs, including many from the West, to join its ranks and receive training, indoctrination and instruction in irregular warfare."

Soufan Report

 

“Given the fact that the [Latvian SS] fought for a victory of the Third Reich, the most genocidal regime in history, and that among those serving in it were active participants in the mass murder of Latvian Jewry, as well as of German and Austrian Jews deported by the Nazis to Riga, such comments are incomprehensible, let alone deeply offensive, coming from a senior minister of a country with full membership in the European Union and NATO."

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

A news broadcast by German ZDF station showed soldiers of the Ukraine Azov Battalion with nazi symbols on their helmets. Photo by Files /ZDF station

 Once again the Canadian Armed Forces' top brass has been revealed to be strangely oblivious to the fallout of matters they engage in without due thought to appropriate behaviour and their consequences. The Canadian public has been treated to a full-throated cry of desperation from female CAF members who have suffered sexual harassment and violence and when they bring the situation to the attention of military authorities, the issue is set aside, the victims of sexual violence left to steam in frustration, their abusers free to continue their upward trajectory toward leadership.

More latterly, the public has been reminded once again of the unsavoury contacts the Canadian Armed Forces leadership, along with government diplomats engage in through casual and personal contact with self-declared admirers of fascism and neo-Nazis abroad. Canada has a 'special' relationship with Ukraine through Canada's membership in NATO which has pledged to protect Ukraine from the intentions of the Kremlin to re-forge a union with Ukraine which the current government of Ukraine has no interest in and which Moscow has pursued with a vengeance.

Another factor in Canada's commitment to military partnership with Ukraine is the lobbying presence of large number of Ukrainian-Canadians urging a more firm alliance between Canada and Ukraine. An incidental but telling issue took place a few years ago when the Russian Embassy in Canada brought to the light of day, Canada's then-minister of Foreign Affairs and currently deputy Prime Minister and heir apparent to head the Liberal government's Ukrainian heritage. Chrystia Freeland's grandfather, it was revealed, was an ardent Nazi collaborator as the editor of a Ukrainian newspaper during WWII.

In his newspaper, Nazi propaganda found its place, along with vicious anti-Semitic sentiments; in no small measure doing his part in aiding and abetting fascist Germany in its dehumanization of European Jewry on their way to total genocide. So the Ukrainian community in Canada, has great influence in the country. However, since Canada is a country comprised of immigrant populations, a great congregation of people from all over the world, so too do Chinese-Canadians, Indian-Canadians, Italian-Canadians and other ethnic/cultural groups have influence, as they should, as Canadians.

In the latest revelations it would appear that Canadian officials and members of the military met with and were briefed by leaders from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion; neither the officers nor the diplomats involved voiced any objection to the meeting although they were briefed befirehand that they would be meeting with overt Nazi sympathizers. Photographs were taken of the meeting, which were used for propaganda purposes by the Azov Battalion online, stating that the Canadian delegation had expressed "hopes for further fruitful cooperation".

 

The Canadian Forces have decided, as a result of public embarrassment when an Ottawa newspaper revealing the unsavoury aspects of CAF interactions with foreign military forces, to mount a review of the issue. A review undertaken in response to the latest revelations of Canadian diplomats and military personnel meeting with Azov Battalion members while in Ukraine; a decision that arrived just as a Jewish group in Ukraine circulated a new video of Ukrainian paratroopers singing a song to honour Stepan Bandera who was an infamous anti-Semite and Nazi collaborator whose group was linked to the mass murder of over 100,000 Jews and Poles during the Second World War.

 

These new revelations fold neatly into the near past when senior Canadian Forces leaders took a pass on condemning glorification of Nazi collaborators in Latvia and Ukraine, where Canadian troops are conducting training sessions. The Latvian Minister of Defence Artis Pabriks publicly praised members of the Latvian SS who fought for the Nazis, proudly stating them to be "the pride of the Latvian people and of the state" and that his country would not "allow anyone to discredit their memory".

As a friend of Pabriks, then-defence minister Harjit Sajjan refused to comment, much less to condemn glorification of the SS unit. Canadian generals saw no reason to break their silence, at the 2019 event and declaration. The Latvian SS included personnel who took part in the wholesale murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Members of the unit were among the last defenders of the Nazi regime in Berlin.

Members of the Azov Battalion attend a protest against local elections in separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine in Kyiv on May 20, 2016.   Reuters

 

Just coincidentally, as though underscoring the lax attitude and moral and ethical failings of the military hierarchy in Canada and government leaders disinterestedly overseeing their conduct in such matters, Canada’s training mission to Iraq was brought under scrutiny when it was revealed that Canadian soldiers complained in 2018 to their commanders that among the Iraqi troops they were training were war criminals who enjoyed sharing videos of their atrocities, including executing prisoners and raping a woman to death.

What Islam Has Wrought

"These guys are different. What they do to the people they capture and kill I have never seen anywhere in Africa, and I have been in a lot of places in Africa."

"When you mutilate people after you kill them, you cut their bodies in half, you skin them, you cut their heads off and then you cut their limbs off ... the brutality is unbelievable."

"The locals have been bullied by all kinds of people. So I think you need a concerted effort to clear an area, control it, and put in schools, hospitals, police stations, all those things you need."

"And hold them -- don't just put them there and desert them."

Lionel Dyck, Zimbabwean mercenary

"Nine percent of them are probably local recruits, around a very small hard core of real committed Islamists."

"Why was Palma a target? There are not many rich targets left, and loot and food and redistribution of goodies is important because I am sure religion is not the primary motivation for many of their fighters."

"It is about dialogue, so you have to accept that some of these insurgents you have to talk to."

Alex Vines, head, Africa program, Chatham House

A woman, called Elsa by UK-based aid group Save the Children, walks with a child in a displacement camp in the northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado on January 26, 2021. © Rui Mutemba/Save the Children/REUTERS

Last week the Mozambican town of Palma was assaulted by Islamist terrorists in an attack of appalling inhumanity, reports of which shocked the world community. Hundreds of well-armed terrorists took possession of the entire town, there is no longer any vestiges of law and order, civilians who manage to evade being murdered and dismembered are on their own to protect themselves and their families, even as the psychopathic attackers gorge themselves on slaughter, knowing there is no authority to bring an end to their atrocities.

This is in the nature of Islamist insurgencies, but this one in particular has distinguished itself by the level of its ghoulish brutality. The insurgency has managed to grow in strength for close to four years, despite government tasking the country's military forces to counter and combat it. The government signed a contract with a mercenary outfit, a private security firm hired to help the military quell the insurgency. The level of bloodthirsty atrocities encountered by the mercenaries has shocked even its experienced head, Lionel Dyck.

In Mozambique's remote Cabo Delgado province locals refer to the insurgents as "mysterious", as "Islamist", or "Islamic State-linked". They have, in fact, identified themselves as having adopted the principles and the ideology and the methodology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. And ISIL has returned the compliment, hailing itself as the benefactor and command-control of the insurgency, voluntarily linking its goals to that of ISIL.

 

The United States named one individual as a controlling member of the group which it officially labelled a terrorist organization on March 10; Abu Yassir Hassan, considered to be the leader of the movement, and a Tanzanian cleric. This is an uprising destabilizing Mozambique quite unlike similar insurrections occurring in other countries of Africa facing guerrilla war outbreaks. In October of 2017 30 youths armed with machetes surrounded the Mocimboa da Praia police station, where they slaughtered those within, ordering Sharia law on the locals.

The movement has been identified by academics as having had its genesis a decade earlier when a sect emerged that clashed with the local Sufis and Gulf-funded Wahabbi Muslim area leaders. The origins of the sect has been traced to a preacher called Sualehe Rafayel. Eric Morier-Genoud of Queen's University Belfast, writes that in 2007 Sualehe Rafavel returned to Cabo Delgada having spent several years in neighbouring Tanzania.

He founded a group that set about establishing mosques across the region, gaining a reputation for spurning the secular state and over the years to follow, Muslim leaders and the state grew increasingly tense relations in the wake of government efforts to suppress the activities of the sect. Access to manpower, money and weapons was extended by allying with miners, illicit traders and organized crime groups around 2016, who were forced out of business, evicted from a rich ruby field in favour of a legal mine.

Following that era, the group expanded steadily to attain an arsenal of weapons, raiding Mozambican police and military units and looting their weaponry. Rocket-propelled grenades and mortars have also recently come into their possession. Evidence exists that some members were trained in the Congo and in Somalia. South African extremists joined the group, which in 2019 declared its allegiance to Islamic State. 

An estimated 700,000 people have now been displaced by the ongoing conflict, fleeing their homes in a desperate search for refuge from the violence. The increasingly emptying countryside has resulted in surging food shortages and attacks against army-escorted supply convoys, while a severe lack of potable water has contributed to an outbreak of cholera. Amnesty International last month accused the insurgents, the Mozambican government, and the Dyck Advisory Group of war crimes.

The insurgency can no longer use Tanzania as a rear area base, since a clampdown by Tanzanian security forces last year. The militants were pushed back from threatening the provincial capital of Pemba by Col.Dyck's force of 18 helicopter-borne mercenaries deployed by contract a year ago. Mozambique president Filipe Nyusi has offered amnesty to Islamist insurgents who have surrendered. 

 

And it is Col.Dyck's experienced impression that re-establishing order in the province can be achieved only through dialogue, attributing many of the more recent members of the insurgent group to impoverished locals joining up, whose needs the central government has seen fit to ignore.

"On March 10, the State Department announced the designation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Mozambique (ISIS-Mozambique) and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-Democratic Republic of the Congo (ISIS-DRC) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) while also designating respective leaders of those organizations, Abu Yasir Hassan and Seka Musa Baluku, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs)."

"In the case of Mozambique, this decision is a response to the growing threat posed by Ahlu Sunna wa Jama (ASWJ), known as ISIS-Mozambique in U.S. government circles, which operates in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. Violence escalated dramatically in 2020; the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) reported more than 570 violent attacks, including attacks in Tanzania. There have been widespread allegations of human rights abuses by ASWJ, Mozambican forces, and private military contractors (PMCs) operating at the behest of the Mozambican government. The violence has led to the displacement of over 670,000 people, caused major food shortages and market disruptions, and led to a pervasive sense of insecurity. Nearly 700,000 people in Cabo Delgado are in need of some form of basic assistance."

CSIS - Center for Strategic and International Studies