Amnesty International is demanding Canada and other countries support the full cessation of violence between Israel and Hamas and allow humanitarian aid into the besieged Gaza Strip. Amnesty made the call in a petition launched October 26. Sign the petition.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry stated on October 24 that 6,446 Palestinians have been killed and more than 17,000 injured by Israeli airstrikes since the war began on October 7. Amnesty International estimates 45 per cent of the homes in Gaza are destroyed.

“In the face of such unfettered devastation and suffering, humanity must prevail,” the Amnesty petition states.

The Canadian government condemned the Hamas-led brutal October 7 assault on Israel, which included mass killings, indiscriminate rocket attacks and the kidnapping of more than 200 Israelis. More than 1,400 Israelis were killed.

But Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet have refused to condemn Israel’s devastating and violent attack on Gaza, or to call for a ceasefire. In a statement on October 24, the Prime Minister would only support “a humanitarian pause” in the bombing.

In the first six days of the war, Israel dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza, a strip of land the size of Montreal, or about 33 per cent larger than Saskatoon. (The Gaza Strip is 365 kms; Saskatoon is 228 kms.)

In an Open Letter to Prime Minister Trudeau on October 14, Amnesty International expressed its “utmost concern about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the Gaza Strip,” due to Israel’s relentless bombing of civilians and refusal to allow water, fuel and essential services into the territory, home to more than 2.2 million people.

“Inexplicably, Canada has yet to denounce Israel’s indiscriminate air strikes, full blockade of the Gaza Strip and forced displacement of more than one million civilians,” the letter states.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates at the Cairo Peace Summit on October 21, “nothing can justify the reprehensible assault by Hamas that terrorized Israeli civilians. And those abhorrent attacks can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Ahmed Qudaih, a Palestinian refugee Nest sponsored to Saskatoon earlier this year, has watched with despair at the Israel bombardment of Gaza. “My family no longer has a home or anything. Everything is gone. Many of my relatives and friends have been killed.”