Since the Canadian government is under fire for lies and deception over the Minister of Foreign Affairs telling Canadians we aren't sending weapons or weapons parts to Israel to commit genocide in Gaza, when in fact, this has been happening up until last month. I have a story. This is about the Canadian government, through its political arm, exerting pressure on non-governmental organizations and the civil service to silence the truth about the Gaza genocide. The same genocide that's being committed by Israel, funded, armed, and supported by Canada.

Updates coming through via @GazaFFlotilla now.

1️⃣ Adalah Update | 27 July 2025, 20 PM Jerusalem time

Adalah’s lawyers have met with 17 of the 21 detained activists, either at Ashdod Port or in an Israeli police station. According to the lawyers, all are in relatively stable condition.

Israel is handling the custody of the volunteers as though they had entered the country illegally—even though they were forcibly taken from international waters and brought into Israel against their will. The authorities presented them with two options: either agree to so-called “voluntary deportation,” or remain in detention and appear before a tribunal, to have their continued detention pending deportation reviewed. 2️⃣ For a full explanation of the legal process and Adalah’s legal position, see our detailed Q&A:

The following activists have agreed to deportation and are expected to be deported from Israel in the coming hours: Antonio Mazzeo (Italy), Gabrielle Cathala (France), Jacob Berger (United States).adalah.org/uploads/upload…

Here is the text of the remarks I shared last night at an organizing call with @vote_palestine. Let us all do what we can to end this horrific and monstrous reality of Canadian complicity in Israel's genocide of Palestinians. End the occupation. Free the people of Palestine. Thank you to the organizers for this important campaign, and for all of you attending this virtual rally in taking the time to participate and to do what you can to help end Canada’s complicity in this ongoing genocide in Gaza. The genocide in Gaza is taking place on the backdrop of an existing 18 year Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip, and 77 years of the ongoing Nakba - a process and structure of Zionist settler colonialism, funded and supported by the colonial and imperial West, including Canada.

As universities and medical schools have remained painfully silent in the face of Israel’s systematic and deliberate attacks on healthcare in Gaza, and ongoing efforts to silence and suppress speech in support of Palestinian human rights through acts of anti-Palestinian racism, here is an example at @DalhousieU of how to organize within institutions to protect academic speech and advance dialogue on Palestine.
Dr. Osama Loubani is a critical care physician and assistant dean at the medical school at Dalhousie university. He recently sent this letter to medical students who had reached out months ago expressing fear and worry about how to talk about Palestinian human rights.

It’s been a full year since I resigned from the board of directors for the Canadian medical association (@CMA_Docs) which represents doctors in Canada. What has happened in this year after I resigned because of anti-Palestinian racism and bullying and harassment I experienced?

https://twitter.com/yipengge/status/1738228416145711173

I have witnessed the full on assault by Israel (backed by countries like Canada through arms trade and diplomatic cover) on the Palestinian and Lebanese people and their healthcare systems which have seen targeted and direct attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and health workers.

I attended a court hearing in Ottawa this morning at 11:30 am for Sarah, a well-known organizer for Ottawa PYM (Palestinian Youth Movement), who is now the sixth protestor arrested in the past week for protesting to end Canada's complicity in Israel's genocide and apartheid. This is a clear attempt to intimidate protestors and an overreach by the police and the Crown to silence rightful protest. Sarah is facing charges of obstructing police work, committing public mischief, advising to commit mischief and participating in an unlawful assembly.

I attended the weekly protest for Palestine/Lebanon this afternoon and evening in Ottawa, and I’m trying to make sense of the level of police brutality and repression I saw with my own eyes. I’m still processing, but what happened tonight was a display of fascist violence. The protest started around 4pm as usual at the human rights monument on Elgin st. And the atmosphere already felt eerie and wrong. The number of police and police cars were plenty, much more than I have seen in all previous marches I have been to in Ottawa.

One year ago, on this day November 5, I received a phone call from @uOttawaMed about my immediate and indefinite suspension due to social media posts related to Palestine. The university has still yet to acknowledge the harm they caused. There are many ripple effects, including allowing anti-Palestinian racism to perpetuate and fester within this institution completely unchecked. Shame on you @uOttawa. Your students, learners, staff and faculty have continuously raised concerns with no real action in return.

I attended the federal court hearing yesterday where Indigo (a bookstore company with a CEO who is a director of HESEG foundation which recruits mercenaries to the Israeli military which has been killing innocent children) is aiming to silence @NotoIndigo through court orders. I have been reflecting on how the lawyers for Indigo continue to push a narrative of copyright infringement for using the “Indigo kills kids” logo design and citing damaging their reputation with said slogan, but doesn’t refute the statement (because it is a statement of fact).

These past few days my heart has been especially heavy, my mind both hyper-focused and scattered, while my soul is weeping. My body keeps moving through this world constantly exhausted and sore. Bearing witness and holding onto that agony takes a toll. I will never be the same. I hold onto the contradictions of being in disbelief and distress of bearing witness to genocidal colonial violence, but also knowing that nothing happening today is by accident rather it is an outcome of the system which was always built this way on white supremacy and Zionism.

I have been thinking a lot about poliovirus lately. I learned about it years before medical school in the context of using the 'iron lung' in Canada to treat patients with respiratory failure due to polio from paralysis of the muscles we need to breathe. Poliovirus is preventable with vaccines. However, if you acquire the virus without receiving the vaccine before, there is no cure or treatment other than supportive management. In many cases of infection, it is actually asymptomatic meaning no clear symptoms or signs of illness.

We held a rally outside the AMO Conference this afternoon in protest against the Ford government's policy change to safe consumption sites that effectively closes 10 out of the 17 publicly funded sites in Ontario. It is a death sentence for patients that depend on these life-saving services. Here are my remarks. Throughout my medical training, I have learned from and worked with people with lived and living experience of substance use. Including learning from and working with patients and healthcare providers in multiple provinces like B.C. Saskatchewan, and in Ontario where I currently work. Including visiting safe consumption sites in B.C., and in Toronto and in Ottawa.

The bombing of hospitals, the torture and killing of healthcare workers, and the massacring of thousands of children did not move you. Silence. But what moved you was Capital Pride wanting to be a BDS compliant event. Absolutely shameful behaviour by @CHEO and @OttawaHospital. This is a moment of clarity. For these institutions for health and healing to have completely lost their way. Palestine has made this so clear to us all. These Canadian hospitals and healthcare institutions do not care about complicity in genocide.

Today, as a collective, 19 physicians and healthcare workers based in Canada who have worked in Gaza during this ongoing genocide have written to @JustinTrudeau to demand that Canada must do what is within its power to protect Palestinian people in Gaza. This genocide must end.





“It is time that Canada moves to the right side of history, and plays an important role in ending this genocide.”

Signatories to the letter and references can be found below. A full pdf version of the letter can be found here: icjpalestine.com/wp-content/upl…

To clarify a few things for folks. The @CMA_Docs is evolving to be a rogue obsolete organization that does not represent or effectively fulfill its own objective to "aid in the furtherance of measures designed to improve the public health and to prevent disease and disability".

https://twitter.com/yipengGe/status/1815600417750811032

They started out as such in 1867 by 167 doctors in Québec City to improve and elevate the standards of care in the medical profession. Over time with the creation of licensing and credentialing authorities @Royal_College and @CFPC_e, the @CMA_Docs had to redefine itself.

I am honestly so confused and disillusioned by @CMA_Docs. You say you care about health equity and social justice. Your actions contradict this entirely. You have remained silent on the genocide and also perpetuated blatant anti-Palestinian racism. My eyes are wide open. You are a wealthy and financially healthy organization that doesn’t rely on membership fees or donors. And yet your leadership chooses to spend time silencing people who care about the ongoing genocide and targeted and systematic attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure.

"The Rafah crossing was the last entry point into Gaza not under full control of the Israeli Government, and was the main access point for humanitarian teams and critical life-sustaining supplies entering Gaza in significant volumes. Since the invasion of Rafah on May 7th, 2024, this last consistent lifeline has been closed." "In addition to the immediate deaths and devastating injuries of war, the population of Gaza– now almost entirely displaced from their homes– is suffering the predictable consequences of the systematic destruction of sanitation and life-sustaining infrastructure: widespread starvation, dehydration, and deadly epidemics of infectious diseases."

I am currently on my way back to Canada. There continue to be significant delays for humanitarian healthcare workers to enter and exit Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem border crossing. There is no reliable humanitarian corridor for aid and medical supplies to enter the Gaza Strip. The Rafah border crossing remains closed. It is now 8 months of overt genocide on the background of 17 years of blockade on the Gaza Strip restricting movement of people including aid and food, and 76 years of the ongoing Nakba - the forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of Palestinians from their traditional homelands.

I have been in Cairo, Egypt for the past week. I had a planned entry date to Gaza on May 13 with the @Glia_Intl team to help rotate out our colleagues on a humanitarian medical mission. There continue to be significant delays and cancellations in our requested entry as humanitarian healthcare volunteers. Since May 6, due to the occupation and closure of the Rafah border crossing by the Israeli forces, there has been no humanitarian aid (food, water, medications and supplies) that has entered the Gaza Strip. It’s been over two weeks now.

There is no good way to put into words what bearing witness feels like today, as we continue to witness genocide unfold by the photos & videos coming from the ground at Al Shifa hospital where over 400 bodies are being discovered & recovered after a two week long siege by Israel. Doctors have been executed for simply staying behind to continue caring for their patients. The heaviness & weight of these moments can be simply too much to hold. The cruelty and depravity of these crimes against humanity are incomprehensible and unimaginable for so many of us.

I had the opportunity to discuss with Hallie Cotnam on CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning, what I saw as a doctor in Gaza. After describing one of the patients I cared for, who was severely malnourished from being forcibly starved, Hallie paused, teared up, and was unable to speak.

https://twitter.com/samhersh01/status/1762278571437912412

After the interview, I thanked Hallie and the crew for the opportunity to share in the studio. I thanked them for their compassion in acknowledging the humanity of the Palestinians in Gaza, and for having a normal human reaction to the unimaginable suffering of forced starvation.