To so crudely question the well-documented famine and the Palestinian death count is cruel, offensive, and shoddy. If one is to raise such serious allegations, that virtually the entire international human rights community is conspiring to invent false claims about Israel’s genocide, a journalist ought to investigate the questions meaningfully, not only cite baseless Israeli government and military denials.
To the CBC Newsroom,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East regarding your article titled: “We don't have the time to cry': Besieged local reporters are still the only media with eyes on Gaza war” published on October 6, 2025.
The article includes the following statements:
“Is there really widespread starvation in Gaza, as UN experts and NGOs report? Israel denies there is a famine, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling claims to the contrary a "blood libel.”
“How do we know if 66,000 people have died since Oct 7, 2023, as Gaza health officials claim? Israel dismisses any numbers coming from such officials as unreliable Hamas propaganda.”
To so crudely question the well-documented famine and the Palestinian death count is cruel, offensive, and shoddy. If one is to raise such serious allegations, that virtually the entire international human rights community is conspiring to invent false claims about Israel’s genocide, a journalist ought to investigate the questions meaningfully, not only cite baseless Israeli government and military denials.
Can you imagine the utter outrage if CBC asked “How do we know if over 1,000 Jews died on October 7?” Much less following it up with only the claim of a conspiracy theorist. That is the equivalent here. If it happened, CBC would be flooded with calls that Saša Petricic lose his job. But of course, that won’t happen, because much like the “dead Gaza baby” remarks by Van Jones show us, Palestinian lives matter less in Canadian newsrooms.
- Famine in Gaza: As of August 15, 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that Gaza is in Famine (IPC Phase 5)
- Palestinian death toll: The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) relies on and data from the Palestinian Ministry in Health, confirming that over 66,000
To cast doubt on Israel’s man-made famine in Gaza and on the Palestinian death toll is not journalism; it is the normalization of propaganda in the face of overwhelming evidence.
We urge CBC to correct this oversight and remove language that introduces unfounded skepticism. Responsible reporting requires grounding coverage in verified facts not in the uncritical repetition of Israeli propaganda that has a documented history of spreading misinformation to conceal its war crimes and crimes against humanity.
As a concluding note, to accept the author’s premise—that “the world’s been left with few independent witnesses and many questions”—one must first accept the dehumanizing assumption that Palestinians, Palestinian journalists, and those standing in solidarity with them are inherently suspect and untrustworthy. By this logic, the volunteer doctors who bear witness to famine and mass slaughter cannot be believed because they are helping Palestinians. The independent experts and humanitarian workers who have reached Gaza are dismissed for the same reason: their accounts are too aligned with Palestinian suffering. If one rejects this premise, as we do, then the questions posed by the author cannot be seen as neutral or journalistic—they are, at best, in profoundly poor taste and, at worst, a reproduction of Israel’s propaganda narrative that systematically casts all Palestinian testimony as suspect.
Lynn Naji and Jason Toney
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East