When the smoke clears over Gaza, history will remember not only those who dropped the bombs but those who supplied the fuel, the aircraft, the votes, and the silences that made them possible. Francesca Albanese’s latest UN report, Genocide as a Collective Crime (October 2025), is an indictment not just of Israel’s actions, but of the global network of states that enabled them. Among the names inscribed in that ledger of complicity are two familiar Western democracies: Canada and Italy.
Canada: The Peacekeeper’s Mask
For decades, Canada has cultivated an image of the moral middleman — a country of peacekeepers and mediators. Yet, behind this mask, Ottawa has walked lockstep with Washington in defending Israel’s “right to self-defence” while Gaza was being reduced to dust.
The report details how Canada’s diplomatic choreography — together with Australia, New Zealand, and the UK — watered down ceasefire resolutions, replacing “immediate cessation of hostilities” with the anemic phrase “sustained ceasefire.” A sleight of language that cost lives.
Canada withdrew funding from UNRWA, the one agency standing between Palestinian civilians and starvation, under unsubstantiated allegations. It then stood before the world insisting it sought “balance.” This balance, it seems, lies in weighing human lives against political loyalty.
In the military sphere, Canada’s fingerprints are equally visible. The country is part of the F-35 fighter jet program, supplying components for aircraft used in Israeli strikes on Gaza. Ottawa continued approving arms export licenses even as international law experts warned of genocide. Canadian companies, such as Gastops, are listed as indirect contributors to Israel’s war machine.
A token gesture arrived in 2025 when Canada joined a handful of allies in sanctioning two Israeli ministers responsible for settler violence. But as Albanese writes, these symbolic measures “condone the system as a whole.” Canada sanctioned the fringe while arming the core.
Italy: The Merchant of War
Italy, too, emerges as a key accomplice — not through rhetoric, but through commerce.
According to the report, Italy ranks among the top three arms suppliers to Israel, after the United States and Germany. Even as Rome assured the world it was “reviewing” export licenses, its ports remained open to shipments of weapons, jet fuel, and dual-use goods destined for Israel’s military.
Between 2020 and 2024, Italy exported millions in arms, and between 2023 and 2025, its trade with Israel actually increased by $117 million. While Gaza’s hospitals collapsed and its children starved, Italian ports — Genoa, Naples, and Taranto — served as gateways for the machinery of annihilation.
Italy’s collaboration extends beyond commerce. It participated in joint military exercises with Israel, including the INIOCHOS 2025 drills, training side by side while the International Court of Justice confirmed the “serious risk of genocide.”
When asked to explain, Italian officials insisted they were upholding international law — a claim as hollow as the bombed shells of Gaza’s schools.
The Collective Crime
What Albanese’s report lays bare is that genocide does not happen in isolation. It is internationally enabled, politically rationalized, and economically profitable. Canada’s diplomacy provides the moral cover; Italy’s exports deliver the material means. Together, they form two vital arteries in the circulatory system of impunity.
Both nations are signatories to the Genocide Convention and the Arms Trade Treaty. Both claim commitment to human rights and the “rules-based international order.” Yet both, in practice, have violated those very rules — not by what they say, but by what they do and refuse to stop doing.
Beyond the Smoke
This is the age of televised atrocities and polite complicity. Governments issue statements of concern while hosting arms fairs. They call for humanitarian corridors while blocking the path to justice.
If Canada and Italy wish to reclaim any moral ground, they must do more than whisper condolences into the ruins. They must end all military cooperation and trade with Israel, enforce sanctions on its leadership, and recognize the full sovereignty and humanity of the Palestinian people — not as a political gesture, but as a legal and moral imperative.
The world’s silence is the accomplice of power. And as Gaza’s dust settles, what remains is the question that will haunt both Ottawa and Rome:
