"The human cost, as of April 8, is that at least 33207 Gazans have been killed by Israel, including 14500 children, 489 health workers and 243 aid workers, and 75933 have been wounded."
April 9, 2024
To:
David Hutton, Senior Managing Director, CBC News Manitoba
Melanie Verhaeghe, Managing Editor, CBC News Manitoba
Dear David Hutton and Melanie Verhaege,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME.org), Saskatoon Chapter, to comment on your article: "Canadian-Palestinian journalist recounts devastation in Gaza Strip 6 months after Oct. 7 attacks", published in CBC News on April 7, 2024.
I would like to start by thanking you for reporting on Mansour Shouman's crucial role in informing people of facts on the ground in Gaza, facts that mainstream media tend to avoid reporting.
However, your article doesn't use strong language or provide enough details to give a complete picture of the situation in Gaza for which Israel is responsible.
Firstly, your title reads "...journalist recounts devastation" , yet your article gives no details of this devastation. Israel has, as of January 2024, damaged or destroyed more than 60% of residential buildings, 229 mosques, three churches, 155 health facilities, 161 UNRWA installations, and all universities, according to OCHA.
Secondly, you write that Shouman "reached millions of English speakers during his daily social media updates on the war."
In fact, he was doing much more than "giving updates": he was documenting what the ICJ ruled as a "plausible genocide" and what UN experts more recently said met the threshold for genocide.
In his social media posts, Mansour Shouman did not hesitate to use strong, clear language.
Explaining why his team had to leave all electronics behind, in his video posted on Instagram on Feb.6 after an absence of two weeks, he says, "We are up against an enemy with no morals or ethics ready to target anyone." This statement is hard to contest: according to Israeli intelligence officials their army uses AI-based programs, which often deliberately mark civilian structures and people as targets, accounting for the unprecedented number of civilians killed.
In the same video, Shouman says: "Once in the vicinity of the tents, armed drones appeared at low altitudes, snipers started to shoot, tanks attacked civilians on the ground" and refers to F16 bombs. This is very different from your language, which leaves it up to the reader to decide who is carrying out these actions: when you describe what happened when the team left the hospital, you simply write: "They later came under sniper fire and were hemmed in by tanks." It is disappointing that, even in a story about a fellow journalist who risked his life to "get the story out there to media outlets around the world," you still insist on using soft, passive language to describe Israel's actions.
Thirdly, you do not provide enough context to give a complete picture of Israel's actions.
You quote Shouman saying: "You get used to seeing the women, the children, the elderly, the civilians ripped apart, their legs and their arms amputated, losing their movement through spinal injuries, losing their eyesight," but you leave much detail out.
The human cost, as of April 8, is that at least 33207 Gazans have been killed by Israel, including 14500 children, 489 health workers and 243 aid workers, and 75933 have been wounded.
Finally, Mansour Shouman is quoted saying: "You were in an area where you were waiting to die." Again, context is missing. Israel has imposed starvation, there is overcrowding due to Israel's repeated illegal population forced transfer, Israel has destroyed sanitation infrastructure, and diseases have started spreading. Combining all of this with Israel's continued bombing and shooting and the destruction of the health system, the possibility of being killed or dying is very high indeed.
While I appreciate your giving a voice to a Canadian-Palestinian and acknowledging his contribution as a journalist, I hope to see less obfuscation of Israel's actions in Gaza in future reporting.
Renée Nunan-Rappard