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Still No Justice for Canadian Killed By Israel

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: November/December 2026

On July 25, 2006, Canadian Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener, a U.N. peacekeeper in Lebanon, died after an Israeli jet bombed his U.N. observation post.

The government of then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepted the Israeli explanation that the strike was an error, and no further action was taken. Later, Harper defended Israel’s massive 2006 bombing of Beirut, calling it “measured and justified,” although hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands wounded.

Prior to his death, Major Hess-von Kruedener and other U.N. peacekeepers had reported numerous Israeli artillery and aerial bombardments uncomfortably close to their observation bunkers even though Hezbollah was not present.

The Israeli bomb arrived after the peacekeepers began reporting the violations, in spite of the fact that Israel had given assurances to the U.N. that its positions would not be targeted by Israeli forces.

Major Hess-von Kruedener was an elite soldier whose courage and bravery was extinguished by an anonymous Israeli pilot, a supposedly expert aviator trained to avoid mistakes.

Current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s timid rhetoric regarding Israel protects no one, so our U.N. peacekeepers still risk death and serious injury if deployed to the Israel-Lebanon border zone.

The case of Canadian Major Paeta Derek Hess-von Kruedener will likely remind many readers of the impunity with which Israel killed 34 members of the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967. Impunity breeds greater and greater crimes, as the ongoing genocide tragically proves. It is long past time for the U.S., Canada and every other country to hold Israel to account and enact real punishments for its flagrant violations of international law.