"For Palestinians, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 constituted a Nakba or ‘catastrophe,’ where families were forcibly expelled from their homes to make way for Jewish immigrants coming from Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The massacres of Palestinian villages by Zionist militias, the most well-known being the Deir Yassin, is what drove Palestinians to flee."
June 5, 2023
To:
Edith M. Lederer, Journalist, Associated Press
Josef Federman, News Director Jerusalem, Associated Press
Donovan Vincent, Public Editor, Toronto Star
Anne Marie Owens, Editor-in-Chief, Toronto Star
Dear Ms. Lederer, Mr. Federman, Mr. Vincent and Ms. Owens,
I’m writing to you on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME, https://www.cjpme.org) to request a correction to your article titled “UN agency for Palestinian refugees raises just $107 million of $300 million needed” published by Toronto Star (Associated Press) on June 3, 2023.
I greatly appreciate that your article brings attention to the lack of funding for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. However, I take issue with the language used in the following sentence:
“UNRWA was founded in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 to provide hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes with education, health care, social services and in some cases jobs.”
For Palestinians, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 constituted a Nakba or ‘catastrophe,’ where families were forcibly expelled from their homes to make way for Jewish immigrants coming from Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. The massacres of Palestinian villages by Zionist militias, the most well-known being the Deir Yassin, is what drove Palestinians to flee.
Your article passively claims that Palestinians “fled or were forced from their homes” and fails to contextualize the forces that led them to flee.
As such I ask that you change your sentence to note “Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias…”
Thank you in advance for making these changes. Should you wish, you can contact me at 438-380-5410 for more information.
Sincerely,
Reem Majid
Policy Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East