"The claims in the article are poor enough, relying on false and misleading allegations about images to present sloppy innuendo to defame charities connected to Palestine. This is intended to cause harm to these organizations and promote skepticism against all supporters of Palestinian rights. It should also be noted that the IDRF is considering legal action, deeming Kinsella’s claims 'defamatory.'"
August 23, 2024
To:
Warren Kinsella, Toronto Sun
Adrienne Batra, Toronto Sun
Brian Lilley, Toronto Sun
Dear Warren Kinsella, Adrienne Batra, and Brian Lilley,
I'm writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to express my alarm concerning the article "Ottawa turns a blind eye to questionable pro-Palestinian charities,” written by Warren Kinsella and published in the Toronto Sun on August 10, 2024. The article claims to expose pro-Palestinian charities but fails by several journalistic measures, threatening to unfairly do significant harm to the charities discussed.
Misleading images & captions
The web version of the article begins with a screencap from a 12-year-old video published by the Palestinian NGO Inash El Usra. The caption claims that the screenshot shows “small Palestinian children being applauded by parents for carrying machine gun replicas.” The implication for the reader is that Inash El Usra celebrates violence and teaches violent ideologies to children. However, this is a significant misrepresentation. Reviewing the video, you can see that the children were putting on a series of Mother’s Day performances that lasted well over an hour. In a brief scene, children are seen singing a song on stage. On the left is a woman dressed like a Palestinian mother making dough for her family. On the right is what seems to be a child dressed up like an Israeli settler holding a gun. The song itself has nothing to do with Israel, Jewish people, or anything of the sort. It is a short play led by children. The gun appears very briefly. The caption’s claim that parents were applauding explicitly “for carrying machine gun replicas” is wrong in two ways. First, in this scene, there is only one machine gun replica. The plural “replicas” is factually incorrect. Second, the parents clapped as the play came to an end, not because of the presence of a gun. To describe the scene in that way is an undeniable misrepresentation of what happened and must be corrected.
The third photograph in the article, and the main image used in the print version, shows several children holding toy guns on a stage. Again, this presents the idea that this charity is indoctrinating children by celebrating violence, which is not a fair characterization. This was another screenshot from a separate video by the same organization as above, Inash El Usra. The screenshot is from an 8-year-old video. The verse they are singing in the video is part of a song called إجا الديب, which in English is “The Wolf and the Children.” The song is by Lebanese artists Marcel Khalifa and Oumeima Khalil from their album in 1980 called “Borders.” The song involves a teacher telling students to protect themselves from a wolf. As the children sing on stage, there is someone dressed in an animal costume. At some point, they pick up guns and chase the animal away. The screenshot of this performance uses the same caption as the first image. This time, the plural “replicas” makes sense. However, here again, children were not applauded “for carrying machine gun replicas” but rather applauded at the end of the performance. Again, the description of this image in the caption is false.
The second image shows a chart produced by the CRA named “IRFAN-Canada and JFHS – Ties to Hamas – Link Chart.” The highly pixelated version of the chart published by the Toronto Sun is illegible, so the reader can only rely on the caption to understand. The caption reads, “This chart, titled ‘Ties to Hamas,’ shows IRFAN-Canada, a now-banned Canadian charity, funneling money to Hamas through Inash El Usra [emphasis added], which has received thousands of dollars from the Canadian Palestinian Foundation, a still-registered Canadian charity. (Source: CRA/Department of Justice).” The chart can be viewed clearly here: Canadian Charity Law website.
When viewing the chart, one can see that the claim made in the caption is highly misleading, if not outright false. The link between Hamas and the Inash El-Usra charity in the chart is made with a dotted line with accompanying text that reads, “Support the children of martyrs and detainees.” The chart does not present a link between Hamas and Inash El-Usra as a fact; rather, it uses a dotted line to represent that any possible link is speculative. Moreover, the speculative link being alleged is not that the charity is funneling money to Hamas. Instead, they allege that Inash El-Usra may provide financial support to children with incarcerated or slain parents, and some of those children may have parents who were affiliated with Hamas (a significant political organization in Gaza with notable support in the West Bank as well). This is an indirect link at best and is related generally to a common welfare practice in Palestine for the families of people imprisoned or killed by Israel. Moreover, Inash El-Usra is not a “listed” organization by the Canadian government, meaning it has not been accused of any terrorist activity. Therefore, the chart does not show that IRFAN-Canada was “funneling money to Hamas through Inash El-Usra.” This factual error must be corrected.
Other demonstrably false and misleading claims
1. Kinsella writes, “In one video, a child is dressed up as a Hasidic Jew – complete with payot or side curls – and he shoots a toy machine gun at girls wearing Palestinian flags.” In the video, the character he describes is holding a toy guy, but he does not pretend to fire it at the girls. He stands there, holding it, never even pointing it directly at them. The toy gun is not capable of shooting, nor does he even gesture that he is shooting. This should be corrected.
2. Next, using the disreputable and unreliable NGO Monitor as a source, Kinsella writes, “The Canadian Palestinian Foundation in 2022 provided more than $400,000 to Community Abdel Shafi, which watchdog NGO Monitor says was founded and is directed by leaders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a listed terrorist entity in Canada [emphasis added].” However, as NGO Monitor also reports in the same document, Haider Abdel Shafi, founder of Community Abdel Shafi, always denied membership in the PFLP. This is the essential context that must be included. Otherwise, this is a highly misleading claim. Further, Haider Abdel Shafi was detained by Israel based on the accusation that he was a member of the PFLP, but he was released soon after without charges.
Toronto Sun’s abuse of the “Opinion” category and deceiving readers
The claims in the article are poor enough, relying on false and misleading allegations about images to present sloppy innuendo to defame charities connected to Palestine. This is intended to cause harm to these organizations and promote skepticism against all supporters of Palestinian rights. It should also be noted that the IDRF is considering legal action, deeming Kinsella’s claims “defamatory.”
What aggravates these errors is how the article presents its claims as journalism. Writing on X, Warren Kinsella’s fellow Toronto Sun columnist, Brian Lilley, congratulated Kinsella for a “Great piece of investigative journalism” – and this post was retweeted by Kinsella. For months, I have complained repeatedly to the Toronto Sun and the National NewsMedia Council about the Toronto Sun’s practice of inappropriately categorizing its articles, especially on its website. These complaints have been met without any meaningful accountability. The NNC has gently suggested that the paper be clearer on its website in terms of indicating that articles are works of Opinion. The Toronto Sun not only obscures that many of its most rabidly anti-Palestinian articles are actually works of opinion, but here we have one of the foremost voices at the paper congratulating his colleague for “investigative journalism” regarding work that is opinion. These categories matter. From a media accountability and ethics perspective, it is a glaring issue that the Toronto Sun presents harmful narratives about Palestinians, written in the form of an investigative piece but subtly labeled as “Opinion” (or not labeled correctly at all) and can evade any accountability or be held to widely held journalist standards because those standards do not apply to columns.
Because of Brian Lilley’s Tweet, we see just how manipulative these tactics are. Readers cannot meaningfully distinguish between journalism that abides by rigorous standards promoted by the NNC versus shoddy works of Opinion that should be taken with a grain of salt. Brian Lilley is either confused about categorizing Kinsella’s work or deliberately playing into this deceitful tactic. Those who click on Lilley’s link are arriving at Kinsella’s work under the false belief that they are about to read a rigorous “investigation” that should meet the standards supposedly upheld by the NNC.
What will it take for the Toronto Sun to take accountability and stop misleading readers about what they are reading? I will urge the NNC to make a formal decision about the Toronto Sun’s failure to clearly label works of opinion and use Brian Lilley’s Tweet as evidence of the seriousness of this issue.
Sincerely,
Jason Toney
Director of Media Advocacy, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East