A group of international human rights lawyers are urging Canadian police to investigate and issue arrest warrants for two former Israeli politicians set to take part in a Munk Debates event taking place in Toronto on Wednesday evening.
The communication, viewed by The Grind, states that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel Tzipi Livni are responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 2008-2009 Gaza War.” These acts, the lawyers point out, are prohibited under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.
“When suspected war criminals come to your city, they shouldn’t be celebrated or applauded,” Henry Off, a lawyer with the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLIHR), tells The Grind. “They should be investigated and arrested.” CLIHR is an NGO working to promote international human rights within and in connection to Canada.
Both Olmert and Livni, who held powerful roles in the Israeli government during Operation Cast Lead, have already been the subject of criminal complaints internationally, the legal brief points out.
“Canada cannot become known as a safe haven for suspected war criminals,” Off adds.
The Grind was unable to reach Olmert or Livni for comment.
Filed Wednesday morning, the request was spearheaded by CLIHR and was supported by the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation and the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The news arrives amid pre-existing calls from advocacy groups to protest and boycott Wednesday’s edition of the Munk Debate, which is set to take place at Meridian Hall at 7:00 p.m. The event features four Israeli politicians (and zero Palestinians) speaking on the subject of the “two-solution” solution and the future of Israel–Palestine.
All four speakers in this event, critics say, are directly involved in the decades-long system of violent domination over Palestinians. “Without Palestinians, this is not a debate,” Gur Tsabar of Jews Say No To Genocide said in a statement. “It’s a PR exercise for a genocidal apartheid regime staged while Israel is more than two years into its ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.”
What are the allegations against Olmert and Livni?
A long-time member of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), Olmert was elected prime minister of Israel in 2006, and served until March of 2009, when he was succeeded by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2014, Olmert was sentenced to six years in prison for accepting bribes and for obstruction of justice during his terms as mayor of Jerusalem and as trade minister.
Tzipi Livni was one of the most powerful politicians in Israel, and served eight cabinet positions between 2001 and 2014. She retired from electoral politics in 2019.
Both Olmert and Livni were key political figures during the 2008-2009 Gaza War, also known as Operation Cast Lead or the Gaza Massacre, with Olmert serving as prime minister and Livni serving as foreign minister.
The war took place following the breakdown of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Israel’s subsequent military invasion of Gaza lasted 22 days, killing between 1,100 and 1,400 Palestinians, including some 300 children, and displacing tens of thousands more. Around 80 per cent of the victims were civilians, according to human rights organizations. Thirteen Israelis were also killed, including three civilians.
In the aftermath of the invasion, a United Nations fact-finding mission and several human rights organizations said that Israel may have committed war crimes and violated the Fourth Geneva Convention in Gaza.
The allegations against the Israeli military and Olmert and Livni in particular were detailed at length in the new 23-page legal communication filed to the RCMP. These include but are not limited to: the failure to take precaution necessary to prevent civilian harm; deliberate and disproportionate attacks on civilian and civilian property; the use of Palestinians as human shields; collective punishment; and the willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment of Palestinians.
Operation Cast Lead was “riddled with alleged war crimes,” Off tells The Grind. “And a lot of the crimes we saw there — attacks on civilians attempting to leave their homes, subjecting them to degrading and inhumane conditions, denying them food, water, or sanitary facilities, activities where people are handcuffed, blindfolded, forced to strip — are a sort of precursor to what we’re seeing in the current ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Though these alleged crimes were carried out by the Israeli military, both Olmert and Livni are potentially liable given their positions as both government officials and members of Israel’s Security Cabinet at the time of the crimes.
In international law, this is known as a “breach of superior responsibility,” in which a civilian superior can be held liable for crimes committed by a subordinate where there is a failure to prevent or punish those crimes.
In 2017, Livni was forced to cancel a trip to Brussels after the Belgian prosecutor’s office announced its intention to arrest and interrogate her concerning her alleged role in Operation Cast Lead.
Though Olmert has been subjected to criminal complaints in international jurisdictions before, Off is not aware of any investigation opened into his liability.
Canada’s obligation
As a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Canada has an obligation to seek and prosecute those suspected of war crimes.
Moreover, international crimes were codified into Canadian law in 2002 through the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, or the CAHWCA, which provides for universal jurisdiction. That means that Canada police can question suspected war criminals, and, with approval from the department of justice, and proceed to prosecute alleged perpetrators within its borders, regardless of where the crimes occurred or the nationality of the perpetrator or victim.
Given the abundance of evidence of war crimes in Operation Cast Lead, Off says, it would be unreasonable if Canadian authorities failed to even question Olmert or Livni.
Off notes that there are Canadian precedents to draw on, including prosecutions against two Rwandans accused of crimes against humanity for their role in the Rwandan genocide, and the upcoming prosecution against a member of ISIS for alleged war crimes in northern Iraq.
In addition to questioning Olmert about his role in Operation Cast Lead, Off says the RCMP should also question him about war crimes that have taken place in Gaza since 2023
According to reporting by the Toronto Star, the RCMP is investigating potential war crimes related to the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The investigation, which falls under CAHWCA, is intended to deny safe haven to war criminals, as well as seek accountability for alleged atrocities either by sharing evidence with other authorities or trying individuals in Canadian courts, the justice department said.
Given Olmert’s former role as prime minister, and given the fact that he has publicly weighed in on Israel’s recent conduct in Gaza — in May, Olmert described Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a “war of annihilation,” and said that the Israeli military is committing war crimes — Off says it would be highly relevant for the RCMP to question him.
Off admits that it is unlikely that the RCMP or department of justice will indeed stop to question or investigate Olmert or Livni, though he says “it’s not completely impossible that they could be arrested.”
But the unlikelyhood, he says, should not be a deterrent. “These past crimes can’t be swept under the rug,” he says. “They shouldn’t be allowed to enter Canada without any kind of repercussions.”
The RCMP nor Canada’s Department of Justice responded to The Grind’s requests for comment.
Backlash to the upcoming Munk Debate
The Munk Debates have hosted semi-annual events in Toronto since 2008.
The organization is part of the Centre for Civic Engagement, which is funded by the Aurea Foundation. Aurea is associated with the Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation, which was launched in 2006 by Peter Munk. Munk was a Hungarian-Canadian businessman and industrialist who founded Barrick Mining Corporation, a global gold and copper mining giant that has been accused of a wide range of human rights abuses.
The December edition of the event was met with heavy backlash after it was announced that the debate, centred on the subject of the “two-state solution” — a term that describes a political approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that aims to create two separate, independent states in the region — would only feature Israelis, and no Palestinians.
In a statement, Jews Say No To Genocide said that the topic of the debate is “political theatre,” arguing that the “two-state solution” was never a viable path to ending military occupation or apartheid, but “was designed to preserve Israeli control, not Palestinian freedom.”
The advocacy group also pointed out the lineup of speakers — which includes former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren and former Israeli justice minister Ayelet Shaked — do not in fact represent a diversity of opinion. (Oren has promoted the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, while Shaked has been accused of inciting violence against Palestinians, including children, and has been denied entry to Australia).
In response to these critiques, Rudyard Griffiths, co-founder and chair of the Munk Debates, said on a podcast that it was a “conscious decision” to only include Israelis in the conversation.
“Before we can even enter into negotiations … Israel itself needs to figure out if, when, how, where a Palestinian state could and should exist,” Griffiths said.
Tickets to Wednesday’s debate were not originally made available to the general public, but were promoted at a discounted rate to followers of pro-Israel groups, including Honest Reporting Canada.
The Munk Debates did not respond to The Grind’s request for comment.
This is not the first year that the event has attracted controversy over its chosen speakers.
In 2018, the organization invited Steve Bannon — the far-right media executive and former chief strategist for U.S. President Donald Trump — to a debate about liberalism and populism with David Frum — a political pundit and senior editor at The Atlantic. Critics were quick to point out that as chairman of the alt-right news organization Breitbart, Bannon was responsible for fomenting racist, antisemitic and xenophobic rhetoric. And as the speechwriter for then-U.S. President George W. Bush, Frum promoted the disastrous invasion of Iraq, reportedly coining the term “Axis of Evil” to help justify it. Both have been accused of fueling Islamophobia and anti-Arab rhetoric.
