"The information in the paragraph above is incontestable and well established by all major news and wire services: it cannot fairly be suppressed. We insist on immediate action to correct your biased, inaccurate, inflammatory story."
October 19, 2023
To:
Dan Taylor, Managing Editor, CTV News
Andrea Baillie, Editor-in-Chief, Canadian Press
Tim Cook, Managing Editor, Canadian Press
Stephanie Taylor, Reporter, Canadian Press
Dear Dan Taylor, Andrea Baillie, Tim Cook, and Stephanie Taylor,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME, cjpme.org) to insist on correction of the misreporting in your October 19 article, “Thin line between freedom of speech and freedom of hate, says Israeli ambassador.”
Your suppression from this story of crucial and incontestable hate-politics realities requires immediate correction.
Your principal source in this story, Iddo Moed, is the representative of a government whose ministers are icons of legally designated hate groups in Canada. This point is not subtle. Its exclusion from your coverage deceives your readers, and is professionally unjustifiable.
If your reporters and editors do not know these details, it is your responsibility to learn them. For instance, one of the racist terrorist organizations that is proscribed as “terrorist” under Canadian law is called Kahane Chai (Kach). It is represented in Israel’s government.
The Washington Post, using standard language and facts, writes of current Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that “he has his roots in the overtly racist Kach party, . . . [then] banned by Israel for its racist and violent incitement. Ben-Gvir was once dubbed ‘the David Duke of Israel’ and lionized Baruch Goldstein, the American Israeli terrorist who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.” Only under recent pressure did Ben-Gvir remove a Goldstein portrait from his living-room wall.Locally, the Globe and Mail records the plain fact that “Ben-Gvir . . . has been indicted 46 times for attacking Arabs, gays, and police, for incitement to racism, and for support for a terrorist organization.” Another Israeli cabinet member, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, proudly calls himself a “fascist homophobe.”
It is utterly false to present Iddo Moed, the formal representative of terroristic hate figures like Ben-Gvir, as a source about the politics of hate: it is counter-factual and absurd.
At a bare-scraping minimum, you must include the following background information:
Iddo Moed is a controversial figure to be speaking against the politics of hate. The Israeli government that he represents includes ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir, who first made his name as a representative of an anti-Arab hate group proscribed as “terrorist” under Canadian law, and Bezalel Smotrich, who has himself boasted that he is a “fascist homophobe.” Critics also compare the Israeli death toll from this month’s crisis, which stands at a grim 1,400, with the number of Palestinian civilians that Israel has killed during this crisis, which is now estimated at more than 3,750 and grows daily. That Palestinian death toll and Israel’s blocking of food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza correspond to an Israeli attack on Palestinian civilians that many attribute to the governing Israeli politics of hate.
The information in the paragraph above is incontestable and well established by all major news and wire services: it cannot fairly be suppressed.
We insist on immediate action to correct your biased, inaccurate, inflammatory story. Feel free to reach me at 438-380-5410 should you wish to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely,
Dan Freeman-Maloy
PhD, University of Exeter
Postdoc, Canada Research Chair in Québec and Canadian Studies
Director of Strategic Operations
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East/
Canadiens pour la Justice et la Paix au Moyen-Orient