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Approaches to security issues in Canada today need to learn from the dire histories of what happens under the banner of national security.

Ontario’s recent order-in-council adopting the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism has been lauded by some. However, critics fear that it could be used to curtail criticism of the Israeli government.

The passage of laws in Alberta and Saskatchewan granting police greater powers and weapons are seen as a direct attempt to stifle protests by Indigenous Peoples.

The decision to charge an incel youth with terrorism reinforces worrying trends in counterterrorism.

Using Palestine as its case study, this chapter posits that judicial trustworthiness represents an important ameliorating factor for transitional justice to take hold and that judicial education constitutes an ameliorating factor that can nurture judicial trustworthiness. Distinguishing trust, distrust and trustworthiness, we explain the importance of judicial institutional trustworthiness as an ameliorating factor. Drawing on literature that identifies institutional trustworthiness as a function of three features: ability, integrity and benevolence, we then explore how the Karamah model of judicial education helped build judicial institutional trustworthiness. Karamah was developed in Palestine and adopted dignity as its overarching theme. Working with an interdisciplinary and international team through Karamah, Palestinian judges invoked dignity as a legal principle, a statement of shared political values and an aspect of their professional identity. In the process, they articulated a framework for thinking about the ability, integrity and benevolence of the Palestinian judiciary. Finally, we chronicle the ways in which the Karamah model of judicial education impacted the judiciary and the judiciary system in Palestine. We end with a note of caution: if rule of law programming, judicial reform and judicial education are substituted for transitional justice measures, conflicts can become even more intractable.

Justin Trudeau’s use of blackface and Arab costumes has raised questions about his authenticity on diversity issues. It also highlights the ongoing discrimination faced by Arab and Muslim Canadians.

A co-founder of Idle No More was put on trial for ‘trespassing’ on her family’s ancestral lands. Canada has much to learn about institutionalizing respectful relationships with Indigenous peoples.

Canadian aid to Palestine will continue to do little good if the Canadian government continues to ignore Israel’s role in destroying the Palestinian economy and violating basic human rights.

This paper analyzes the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Quebec (Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse) v. Bombardier Inc. (Bombardier Aerospace Training Center). Almost 12 years after Captain Javed Latif’s ordeal began, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed a decision by the Quebec Court of Appeal overturning a finding by a Quebec Human Rights Tribunal that Bombardier had discriminated against him. While there is much to celebrate in the Court’s reasons, the decision ultimately exposes and perpetuates a deep unwillingness to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists in Canada. In response, this paper seeks to excavate Latif’s fuller story largely through a reading of silences. The Tribunal advanced two discrete but intersecting theories in its finding of discrimination. The Court focused, artificially, on one and found “no evidence” of discrimination. The Supreme Court not only ended Captain Latif’s quest for a remedy, it re-wrote his narrative by moving attention away from key facts involving his interactions with Bombardier. The Court’s chosen narrative also regulated the collective fears and aspirations of Muslim communities in Canada to the realm of the unsaid. At a time when Muslims are struggling to counter popular and official stereotypes that construct them as incorrigible barbarians and outsiders who are prone to terrorism and violence, it is important to create spaces for counter-narratives to be heard and lived experiences to be validated. Moreover, litigants who dedicate years of their lives to advancing social justice causes deserve the dignity of recognizing their own stories when relayed back to them by the legal process. The comparison of the Court’s reasons with that of the Tribunal thus represents a political act of hearing counter-narratives while also critically analyzing the Supreme Court’s claim that the Tribunal had little or no evidence before it to ground its finding of discrimination.

Taking Palestine as the focus of inquiry, and drawing on our experiences as co-directors of Karamah, a judicial education initiative focused on dignity, we reflect on the attributes of colonisation and the possibilities of decolonisation in Palestine through development aid. We conclude that decolonisation is possible even within development aid frameworks. We envision the current colonial condition in Palestine as a multi-faceted, complex and dynamic mesh that tightens and expands its control over the coveted colonial subject but that also contains holes that offer opportunities for resistance or refusal. We turn to Karamah to illustrate how some judges have insisted on a professional identity that merges the concepts of human dignity and self-determination and ultimately rejects the colonial condition inherent in both occupation and development aid. We conclude that in this process of professional identity (re)formation, members of the Palestinian judiciary have helped reveal the demands of decolonisation by demonstrating their commitment to realising human dignity through institutional power, and bringing occupation back into international development discourse.

Taking Palestine as the focus of inquiry, and drawing on our experiences as co-directors of Karamah, a judicial education initiative focused on dignity, we reflect on the attributes of colonisation and the possibilities of decolonisation in Palestine through development aid. We conclude that decolonisation is possible even within development aid frameworks. We envision the current colonial condition in Palestine as a multi-faceted, complex and dynamic mesh that tightens and expands its control over the coveted colonial subject but that also contains holes that offer opportunities for resistance or refusal. We turn to Karamah to illustrate how some judges have insisted on a professional identity that merges the concepts of human dignity and self-determination and ultimately rejects the colonial condition inherent in both occupation and development aid. We conclude that in this process of professional identity (re)formation, members of the Palestinian judiciary have helped reveal the demands of decolonisation by demonstrating their commitment to realising human dignity through institutional power, and bringing occupation back into international development discourse.

Almost seventy years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the birth of Israel, and the beginning of the Palestinian naqba (all in 1948) it is now clear that international law has fallen short of its promise to alleviate suffering, hold transgressors to account, and to encourage peace in the Middle East. Even John Humphrey, a drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, came to despair the efficacy of international law in Israel and Palestine. “He went there thinking that the proper application of the rule of law and respect for human rights could resolve the situation and came back thinking nothing could (since the debate was not a rational one)” (Hobbins 2006). Taking Humphrey’s despair over international law’s ability to guide behaviour in Israel and Palestine as its starting point and drawing on Stanley Cohen’s landmark book, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering, this chapter argues that international law has fed into a process of denial maintenance in Israel, creating the backdrop against which Israeli leaders deny Palestinian suffering.

This chapter identifies the intersecting ways in which Israeli approaches to international law are structured around Cohen's three main modes of denial-factual, interpretive, and implicatory-to silence or deflect responsibility for Palestinian suffering. It argues that international law has fed into a process of denial maintenance in Israel, creating the backdrop against which Israeli leaders deny Palestinian suffering. Israel's attitude towards the use of phosphorus as a military weapon compared with its attitude towards stone throwing is striking. The military court's response appears sincere when it emphasises the great risks posed by Palestinian children and youth with stones. The chapter suggests that international law, with its emphasis on domestic implementation, self-reporting, and shaming proves largely ineffective in states of denial. Cohen observes that interpretive denial, in part because it requires familiarity with law and legal concepts and in part because it suggests concern for human rights, can prove more difficult to counter than literal or factual denial.

Access to Information in an Age of Intelligencized Governmentality was published in Brokering Access on page 115.