"I kindly request that the article be amended to raise skepticism around Israel’s supposed military goals and statements in response to committing war crimes. By repeating Israeli talking points, your reporting risks whitewashing Israel’s war crime of indiscriminately bombing Palestinian civilians and places of worship in occupied Gaza."
July 17, 2025
To the Globe and Mail newsroom,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (www.cjpme.org) regarding the Globe and Mail article titled: “Israeli strikes kill 22 in Gaza, including two in attack on region’s only Catholic church” published on July 16, 2025.
I take issue with the article presenting Israel’s statement without skepticism: “The IDF makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and civilian structures, including religious sites, and regrets any damage caused to them.”
Gaza is also home to some of the oldest churches and mosques in the world. As of December 31, 2024 117 religious sites which were reportedly damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces. The BBC verified 74 cases: 72 are mosques and two are churches.
Additionally, Israel has damaged or destroyed approximately 62 percent of all homes in Gaza, according to the World Bank and the United Nations—equivalent to 290,820 housing units, and more than a million people are without homes.
It is simply outrageous to be offering that Israeli talking point to your readers without critique. Additionally, given Israel’s long and well-documented history of manufacturing lies to justify the killing of Palestinians, such statements should never be reported without context or skepticism.
The article goes on to state that: “Israel has been trying to eradicate Hamas in Gaza in a military campaign that began after the group’s deadly attack on Israel in October 2023.”
After 21 months of dropping 2,000-pound bombs on a tiny strip of occupied land, a campaign of mass starvation and shooting at civilians lining up for food aid, you’ve used the word “deadly” to describe the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, but only described what Israel has been doing since as an attempt to “eradicate” Hamas.
Even if the death toll in occupied Palestine were accurate, you could not call what happened in Israel deadly compared to what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. A recent Harvard Report reveals at least 377,000 people in Gaza have been ‘disappeared’ by the Israeli military, with half of that number believed to be children. There is no balance in your reporting without calling what Israel is doing the worst ever conflict for journalists, and the deadliest conflict for children in the past 18 years according to Oxfam.
I kindly request that the article be amended to raise skepticism around Israel’s supposed military goals and statements in response to committing war crimes. By repeating Israeli talking points, your reporting risks whitewashing Israel’s war crime of indiscriminately bombing Palestinian civilians and places of worship in occupied Gaza.
I await your response.
Kind regards,
Nikki Mutch
Media Advocate