Imperial Zionist thinking dominates most facets of Canadian institutional life. A judge awarding huge sums for purported past Iranian repression as the US and Israel attack that country highlights stark double standards.
Recently the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded $200 million in damages to Zahed Haftlang who says he was tortured by Iranian officials over thirty years ago. Justice Lee Akazaki determined that the 25-year resident of the Vancouver area’s treatment was motivated by the Islamic Republic’s politics and ideology and was thus “terrorist activity”. As such, Haftlang could sue under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which lifts state immunity for countries labeled “state sponsors of terrorism”. Under the 2012 law a foreign state listed by Ottawa as a supporter of terrorism can be sued in Canadian courts by victims of terrorist activity. Iran is the only country Canada lists as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.
According to Global News, the recent ruling is the “first time a court in Canada had found that terrorist activity included Iran’s atrocities against its own citizens, and could potentially open the door for many more such lawsuits.” In theory anyone who claims ill treatment by the authorities in Tehran could sue Iran.
Already, there have been a series of large awards against Iran and Ottawa has (likely) violated international law in seizing Iranian government assets. In 2019 Canada seized and sold $30 million worth of Iranian properties in Ottawa and Toronto to compensate individuals in the US who had family members killed in a 2002 Hamas bombing in Israel and others who were held hostage by Hezbollah in 1986 and 1991. The Supreme Court of Canada and federal government sanctioned the seizure under the same Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. In response to Canada targeting Iranian properties, Tehran instituted (ongoing) proceedings against Ottawa at the International Court of Justice.
At the time I noted that “in a right side up world, the Iranian asset sale would lead to various more legitimate seizures. Relatives of the Lebanese Canadian el-Akhras family Israel wiped out, including four children aged 1 to 8, in 2006 are certainly at least as worthy of Canadian government-backed compensation. Ditto for Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener, a Canadian soldier part of a UN mission, killed by an Israeli fighter jet in Lebanon in 2006.”
Or how about the Windsor native, Mohamad Hassan Haidar, killed in April by an Israeli drone in the Lebanese village of Qana. Or Canadians Hussein and Daad Tabaja killed by Israel in Lebanon in September 2024. Or how about the 33-year-old Canadian humanitarian worker Jacob Flickinger killed in Gaza sixteen months ago?
In Haiti there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of individuals whose family members were killed at peaceful protests by a police force paid, trained and politically supported by Canada after US, French and Canadian troops overthrew the country’s elected president in 2004. Ten months after the coup I met a young man in Port-au-Prince who fled the country after armed thugs searching for him came to his house and killed his aunt. Before the coup Jeremy had been a journalist with the state television, which was identified with the ousted government. Should US or Canadian assets be seized to compensate him?
There are hundreds of Canadians and countless individuals elsewhere who have been victimized by Israeli, Canadian and US-backed terror more deserving of compensation than Zahed Haftlang or the Americans paid with Iranian assets for what Hamas and Hezbollah purportedly did decades ago. Should Israeli, US and Canadian government assets be seized to pay them?
A judge expanding the definition of “terrorism” to justify a massive payment to an opponent of the Iranian government highlights the stark imperial/Zionist double standards in Canadian institutional life. The judge is following a deeply hypocritical Canadian government that has released two dozen statements criticizing Iranian violence over the past three months while completely ignoring the principal aggressors.
How else to explain a country claiming to uphold international law that ignores the US killing 160 schoolgirls in Minab while its courts award a massive sum to a victim suing a country targeted for overthrow by Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump?
You must be logged in to post a comment.