The persecution against Rima Hassan has reached Canada. And it should not surprise us, even if it remains deeply unsettling. For some time now, Israel’s borders —those it does not even recognize— have been exported across the Western world. Canada is no exception: it is part of the apparatus.

What is truly serious is not only the fact itself, but its political meaning. We are talking about an elected representative, with democratic legitimacy, being treated as if she were an administrative suspect, forced to comply with conditions more fitting for someone begging for migratory status. This is not a bureaucratic error: it is a political decision.

These kinds of actions reveal something deeper: the gradual hollowing out of democratic guarantees when certain geopolitical interests are at stake. The Canadian government does not act here as a neutral arbiter, but as an aligned actor, willing to restrict rights if it means protecting a certain narrative and shielding strategic alliances.

The complacency of Western political elites toward Zionism is not new, but in the current context it takes on an even more troubling dimension. We are speaking of a political project that, in recent years, has been associated with an escalation of systemic violence: massive destruction in Gaza, expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and a dynamic of regional confrontation that threatens to further destabilize the Middle East.

What is worrying is not only what happens there, but how that conflict translates here. When governments like Canada’s adopt this agenda without hesitation, they also import its logic: surveillance, censorship, criminalization of dissent. And that affects us directly.

Because when it becomes normalized to limit the mobility, voice, or legitimacy of elected representatives for political reasons, what is at stake is not an isolated case. It is the democratic framework as a whole.

And that framework, if not defended, deteriorates. It always begins with exceptions. It never ends with them.