Under the banner of “promoting peace”, Canadian forces are sharing their expertise in crushing movements of the oppressed with Palestinian Authority Security Forces.
Through Operation PROTEUS, personnel from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the RCMP work as advisors and help shape training programs for PASF recruits. The mission? To “promote peace”, of course, while increasing the level of “professionalism” in the Palestinian Authority’s betrayal of its own people.
The PASF acts as armed prison guards for Israel, working under imperialist guidance. All their recruits are vetted by Israel, and their funding comes from the U.S.A. A report from 2010 on U.S. Security Assistance to the Palestinian Authority states that, “All troops, new or existing, are vetted before they are admitted… The names are checked against data maintained by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and Israel Police…” American General Keith Dayton admitted to the Associated Press in June 2009 that, “We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the State of Israel, and they agree to it.”
We can see the role played by the PASF during the protests in Ramallah in 2021. They violently beat and arrested activist and Palestinian Legislative Council candidate Nazir Banat, who then died in PA custody. The PA then cracked down on protests against Banat’s murder.
During the current siege on Gaza, their role has been largely to make sweeping arrests of alleged Hamas supporters in the West Bank. The PA has also been known to stop protests against the forced displacement of Palestinians, allowing settlers to move in unimpeded. This has been their role for decades, particularly since Hamas officials were ousted from the PLC in 2006.
Both the RCMP and CAF have a wealth of experience in training reactionary forces, and in crushing resistance to oppression. It is the RCMP that has been brutally cracking down on Wet’suwet’en Pipeline protests here at home, while Canadian forces helped train the neo-Nazi Azov battalion in Ukraine, and counter-revolutionaries in Venezuela. Now Canadian forces can add training Israel’s guard-dogs to their resume.
Standing just behind that tattered, blood-soaked banner of “promoting peace”, the same forces that continue to oppress workers and Indigenous people around the world and in Canada, are aiding the forces of oppression in Palestine. While professing to maintain peace in word, they violently stamp out resistance in deed. This once again demonstrates that Canada is complicit in the oppression of Palestinians in more than words.
