"Consistently giving priority to statements provided by Israel’s military and deliberately excluding testimonies provided by witnesses or Palestinian officials is a blatant double standard and perpetuates Canadian media’s tendency to assign the burden of proof to anyone but Israel."
March 25, 2024
To:
Wafaa Shurafa, Reporter, Associated Press
Samy Magdy, Reporter, Associated Press
Julie Pace, Executive Editor, Associated Press
Dear Wafaa Shurafa and Samy Magdy,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to express concern regarding a widely circulated article titled “Palestinians describe bodies and ambulances crushed in Israel’s ongoing raid at Gaza’s main hospital,” published on March 24 in Associated Press.
I am mainly preoccupied with your selective inclusion of information in this article. The article begins by recounting Israel’s claims that 170 militants have been killed, and almost 500 suspects have been detained since the start of the military’s raid on Shifa hospital. Beyond the exclusion of Hamas’ response to Israel’s claims, there is no mention of the 30,000 Palestinians inside the hospital, either sheltering, treating patients, or being treated by medical staff. Some hospital buildings were stormed with tanks and heavy gunfire, shelled, and lit on fire. There are reports of Ismail Alghoul, a journalist for Al Jazeera Arabic, being severely beaten and seized from the hospital before being taken to an unknown destination, along with other journalists. Jamila al-Hissi, a Palestinian woman who was besieged near al-Shifa hospital, recalls the torture, execution, and rape of women inside the hospital in a recent testimony.
Indeed, some of these accounts remain unverified. But so do Israel’s.
And yet, the Associated Press still begins its article listing the supposed fruits of Israel’s operation: 170 militants killed, and 480 suspects detained. The perceived military “victory” of the operation is presented to readers before Israel’s actions are even described. Writing that Israel “stormed the building” and “forced residents to leave” barely reveals a fraction of what testimonies from Palestinians at al-Shifa have reported. Consistently giving priority to statements provided by Israel’s military and deliberately excluding testimonies provided by witnesses or Palestinian officials is a blatant double standard and perpetuates Canadian media’s tendency to assign the burden of proof to anyone but Israel.
I’d also like to bring attention to an instance of poor word choice in this article. You write:
The fighting highlights the resilience of Palestinian armed groups in a heavily destroyed part of Gaza where Israeli troops have been forced to return after a similar raid in the war’s earliest weeks.
To be ‘forced’ is to do something because one has no other option. Is Israel, or its troops, being forced to raid al-Shifa hospital? Is it their duty to be there? Are they left with no other choice but to shell, shoot, and ignite a hospital containing 30,000 people? Some would answer yes to these questions, but to do so would require a moral judgment, which is inappropriate for a news article. Please remove “been forced” from your sentence for it to instead read: “…where Israeli troops have returned after a similar raid in the war’s earliest weeks.”
To end your article, you write:
Over the border from Gaza on Sunday, Jews celebrated their most joyful of holidays, Purim, the biblical story of how a plot to exterminate Jews in Persia was thwarted as an affirmation of Jewish survival.
Is this anecdote implying that there is a parallel between Israel’s military occupation of Gaza and the thwarting of a plot to exterminate Jews in Persia? If so, it’s outrageous and offensive. If not, perhaps a statement on Ramadan, its significance, and the conditions under which Muslims in Gaza are fasting would have been more appropriate and relevant.
Sincerely,
Rose Mardikian,
Media Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East