Dear Editor,

Six months ago, my wife gave birth to our first child — a healthy baby boy. Our biggest challenge so far has been mild eczema on his forehead. When it flares up, we wrap his head in gauze and cover his hand to stop him from scratching. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude that this is our biggest health issue, but as I watch him sleep, my thoughts drift to Gaza, where children his age sleep restlessly with amputated limbs and other critical injuries.

According to Save the Children, 10 children a day in Gaza have lost limbs — most without anesthesia — because hospitals have been bombed and supplies blocked. Canadian Doctor Fozia Alvi has treated toddlers with bullet wounds to the head and chest. Testimonies by many other international physicians tell the same horrifying story: children are being targeted by IDF snipers.

These acts follow years of genocidal rhetoric from Israeli officials. In 2018, Avigdor Liberman said, “there are no innocents in Gaza.” During the current conflict, Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked Amalek: a biblical tribe the Israelites were told to “put to death men, women, children, and infants.” Since then, over a third of those killed in Gaza have been children. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin even stated, “every baby in Gaza is an enemy.”

Gaza’s youth once had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Now, nearly 90 per cent of schools have been damaged or destroyed and a UN expert calls it “scholasticide.” Gaza, where gauze was once famously woven and exported, now lacks gauze entirely. Doctors rip up their gowns as wounded children bleed out on hospital floors.

All 36 hospitals in Gaza have been bombed. According to Doctors Without Borders, a new acronym has been coined: WCNSF — wounded child, no surviving family. Children are suicidal. Many have grey hair from trauma. Famished civilians have been gunned down while trying to collect food, including in the Flour Massacre of Feb. 2024.

This is not a “war.” This is the live-streamed slaughter of a deliberately starved population using high-tech weaponry, supported by some of the world’s most powerful nations. The International Court of Justice has ruled that genocide is plausible. Canada’s role in this horror is shameful.

Despite claims of a pause on military exports, Canada approved $18.9 million in arms to Israel in 2024 alone, including bombs and missiles. We don’t track the weapons exported to the U.S. that are then sent to Israel, but this figure is estimated to be much higher. With the scale of destruction, it is almost certain Canadian weapons have been used to kill civilians, which is a violation of both international and domestic law.

So what are we waiting for?

Canada must immediately sanction Israel and enact an arms embargo, including existing contracts and indirect transfers through the U.S. Canadian citizens who have carried out war crimes must be investigated and brought to justice. We cannot claim to uphold human rights while arming a genocide. Silence isn’t neutrality, it’s complicity.

Gareth Hamilton, Waltham