For the information of non-Canadian readers, Massey College is the “Oxbridge of Canada”. Alex Neve is the former President of Amnesty International Canada and prolific spreader of the “Gaza genocide libel” in social and legacy media. He has been invited by the College to deliver the prestigious 2025 Massey Lecture. To be clear, this letter is written in my own name and represents my own personal views. It does not the represent views of any organisation or employer I am associated with. The letter itself, delivered on 19th July 2025 at 12:10, states that it is an Open Letter available on my Substack. If you wish to be associated with the contents please contact Dr Orbinski directly via email quoting my name.
Dear Dr Orbinski,
Re the decision of Massey College to invite Alex Neve to deliver the 2025 Massey Lecture
It is with profound displeasure and great sadness that I write to you today regarding the 2025 Massey Lecture. In particular, I note with genuine shock the decision to invite former Secretary-General of Amnesty International Canada Alex Neve to deliver the said lecture, in the process doing great harm to the institution you lead.
Massey College has a great calling. It shares this calling with all august higher education institutions throughout the Western world. It can be summarized in just one word: truth. As academically minded people, we are fully aware that the truth is a complex issue. Although the evidence may point towards white swans alone, there may be a black swan just across the ocean. Nonetheless, there are certain propositions which are self-evident and any institution dedicated to the truth must defend them. The world is round. There is no oxygen in space. 2 + 2 = 4.
Free speech may permit cranks to proclaim the inverse, but all good faith people of learning must deny them a platform, above all at the most prestigious educational institutions on Earth.
Genocide is a word with a clear meaning. In plain English, it is the attempt to wipe another group off the face of the Earth and to substantially succeed in that effort. As we are both aware, the Nazi Holocaust and the extermination of the Tutsis in Rwanda are the ultimate embodiment of genocide. In memory of these victims, we guard - or should guard jealously - this sacred, but awful, term.
War, however horrific, does not amount to genocide. The fire bombing of Tokyo and the utter destruction of German cities during World War II constituted war crimes - grave, grievous war crimes - but there is no suggestion of genocide. It is abundantly clear that the British, Americans and their allies did not intend to wipe out the German and Japanese peoples.
Closer to our current time, the United Nations states that the average civilian to the combatant casualty rate in contemporary conflict is 9:1. In the American invasion of Afghanistan that rate fell to 5:1, while in Iraq it fell further still to 3:1. Again, although many, including the author of this letter, opposed the Iraq invasion, none of us would suggest that these interventions amounted to genocide. Quite clearly they didn't. They were war. Bloody, horrific, and in the latter case mentioned, avoidable war. Yet war is not equivalent in any way to the events of the Holocaust.
The current Gaza conflict is rightly the subject of intense debate. It is not my intention to litigate the issues here. Nonetheless, one matter is clear: even if one were to accept the “Hamas Health Ministry’s” figures as gospel truth, the combatant to death ratio in this conflict is roughly 1.5:1 (if not lower), which is to say (far) lower than in WWII, Iraq, Afghanistan or any modern military conflict. Moreover, the population of Gaza has increased over the period since October 7th 2023. In this factual matrix, the proposition that Israel has committed genocide is manifestly false to the extent that there is not even a prima facie case. It is akin to saying that the Earth is flat.
It is therefore highly regrettable that the College has accorded Alex Neve the honor of delivering the Massey Lecture. As a long time follower of Mr Neve on social media platforms, I can confirm that he has an obsessive fascination with this one conflict alone and barely a posting of his is complete without claiming as fact that Israel is committing genocide. It is the intellectual equivalent of stubbornly maintaining that humans have three legs.
As a human rights professional, Mr Neve has two responsibilities. In the first place, and when talking about this or any other conflict, he must report the facts. Where he does not know the facts, due to the fog of war, he must admit his ignorance. This being so and whatever one's personal views on the prosecution of the Gazan war, the genocide claim is false and his decision to persist, even when called out for his error, reflects poorly on his professionalism and scholarship.
His second responsibility is to report equally from all the conflicts in the world; to bring to light the manifold human rights abuses taking place throughout our planet. Although the man in the street may be excused from focusing on all but the most fashionable wars, a human rights professional must be the voice of the voiceless, be they Christians in Northern Nigeria, Africans in Sudan, Uighers in China, minorities in Syria or displaced Afghanis expelled by Pakistan and Iran. Mr Neve’s consistent failure to accord equality to the lives of all victims, by focusing on the Palestinians almost exclusively, suggests a desire for activism over the discovery of the truth. It also suggests a psychological need to disproportionately blame Israel for all the evils in the world, while giving Palestinian leaders a free pass for their failure to pursue peace.
As a defender of free speech, I defend Mr Neve’s right to speak manifest falsehood, so long as his words don’t lead to violence against Canadian Jews. Yet the right to speak does not imply the right to a platform, above all the most prestigious possible platform at Canada's premier educational institution. We rightly treat Flat Earthers and conspiracy theorists as cranks and fools to be ignored. What we don't do is invite them to address the cream of Canadian Society.
The democratic world is at a hinge moment where the citizens of our nations are unaware of who to turn to for accurate information. Where leading figures in Amnesty International and special rapporteurs to the United Nations tell us that black is white and civilian deaths, however tragic, amount to genocide - and these figures are invited to speak by august institutions such as Massey College - wither truth? Where can it be found, tested, debated and defended?
If truth is submitted to power in the name of (alleged) justice and the past ceases to exist as an objective reality, then we have entered the world of 1984; a world where history and facts are burnt on the pyre of intellectual submission.
In this open letter, published for public view on my popular Substack, I formally call on Massey College to rescind the invitation to Alex Neve. Far more is at stake than the current events in the Middle East or even the blessed memory of the victims of the Nazi and Rwandan genocides. What is at stake above all is truth, the very foundation of our democracies and our freedom.
Finally, I fully expect that this letter will be ignored and that the 2025 Massey Lecture will go ahead as planned. So why do I make all this effort? Why do I spend an entire morning of my time dedicated to raising awareness of this appalling error of judgment?
It is because of history. This letter is history. The past exists and the truth matters. When future historians look back at these events, they will know that they were some brave souls who stood up against the intellectual fashion of the age in the name of the integrity of language and genuine human rights. There were some who were prepared to risk their own careers so that most serious possible crime of genocide would remain genocide and the duty to prevent real genocide would be upheld as a universal obligation.
If you act today, Dr Orbinski, then you will be vindicated by history. If you fail to act today, then the academic institutions of the Anglo-West may well be condemned to the same terminal decline as those in Germany before the war. Either way, we will continue the brave, peaceful “fight” to protect the concept of history, the past and facts.
This isn't about being “pro-Israel”. You are free to condemn Israel for its actions in the strongest possible terms if you so choose. What Massey College may not do is invite an unrepentant abuser of language to address a hitherto august bastion of truth. The choice is yours.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Clarke-Serret
Thank you, Daniel! Massey College is proving once again how badly academia in the western world has lost its way. Alex Neve has no business speaking at Massey. He's a total hypocrite who doesn't care about the very principles he claims are so dear to him and Amnesty International. He's a hack fraud with a subtle political agenda of his own. Alex Neve has never said a word about Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, China putting the Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, the slaughter of minority groups in Syria, the genocide of the Masalit, Fur and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Sudan, the massacre of Christians in Northern Nigeria, the plight of Afghan refugees expelled from Pakistan and Iran, or the Apartheid against Palestinians in the Arab world. But he never shuts up about Israel's faux "genocide" in Gaza. Mr. Neve is playing fast and loose with words. There is a difference-a big difference-between collateral damage in war which is nasty, brutal and bloody, and intentional genocide. The examples Daniel gave were excellent, but I will also add a couple of my own. The dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II was NOT genocide. It was a difficult measure the United States had to take during wartime to end the war, which otherwise would have dragged on for at least another year. Furthermore, millions of Allied and Japanese soldiers and civilians would've perished in an amphibious assault on the home islands. 170,000 Japanese civilians perished in the bombings. That is a terrible tragedy. But it was done to prevent an even greater loss of life, end the war quickly, bring American boys home, and liberate oppressed and occupied people all over Asia. It was NOT an intentional plan by the Allies to wipe out the Japanese people as a whole. Second example, we have the claim the United States committed genocide against the Native Americans. First off, there can be no doubt the Native Americans were treated horribly by the U.S. government. They were the victims of forced displacement, land confiscation, forcible assimilation, injustices, atrocities, enslavement, indentured servitude, and second-class citizenship.
But there was no plan by the U.S. government to exterminate them wholesale as there was with the Jews in Nazi Germany or the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The U.S. government wanted to get them off their land and seize it for white settlement, put them on reservations and assimilate them to white society. While this was unjust and morally wrong, it can't be classified as genocide. Furthermore, as Daniel pointed out, even if we except the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry's numbers at face value, the combatant to civilian killed ratio is still lower than the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan or any modern military conflict period. Alex Neve is a serial liar who has made it clear he has no integrity and is targeting Israel for libelous attacks exclusively. Amnesty International as an organization is a massive failure that doesn't do what it was created to do, fight for human rights for all. If they did, they wouldn't be so focused on the nonexistent genocide Israel is committing in Gaza. Human Rights Watch and the UN are the same way. If Massey College wants to preserve their integrity, they need to disinvite Alex Neve and issue a sincere apology to the Canadian Jewish community. Will they do so? No, I don't think so but that just proves that they are no longer the great bastion of intellectual learning they once were. Mark Carney I'm sure loves what they're doing and can't wait to meet Mr. Neve himself so he can slather him with praise for his work fighting the made-up genocide in Gaza. PM Carney will probably nominate Neve for the Nobel Peace Prize knowing him. You know who actually deserves a Nobel Peace Prize? The IDF. They've saved millions of lives in Gaza and defended the Syrian Druze community from the Islamist demons trying to wipe them off the face of the Earth. Neve on the other hand is no better than Dr. Goebbels or Father Charles Coughlin with all the vile, slanderous rhetoric he's spewing on social media. It is clear to me the staff at Massey College and Mr. Neve needs some education on what genocide actually is, here's a little reading list for them:
* The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees
* The Gestapo: A History of Horror by Jacques Delaure
* Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial by Joseph E. Persico
* East Timor: Genocide in Paradise by Matthew Jardine
* The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide by Gerard Prunier
* War is Dead, Long Live the War: Bosnia by Ed Vulliamy
* Voices from Srebrenica: Survivor Narratives of the Bosnian Genocide by Ann Petrila & Hasan Hasanovic
* The Guatemalan Genocide of the Maya People by John A. Torres
* The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rogue, 1975-79 by Ben Kiernan
* The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965-66 by Geoffrey B. Robinson
* Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning
* The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals by Richard Plant
C'est parfait!