I also didn’t realize that Israelis could hear it. What you have highlighted here is that Israelis don’t have to listen to the sound of their war crimes any longer — except Israel has already violated the ceasefire of this so-called “peace deal” several times. I would imagine they are still hearing it and are able to go about their day all the same.
Dear Global News Morning,
I am writing to express my deep concerns regarding a segment that aired on Global Regina (CFRE) — Global News Morning (Thursday, October 16, 2025, 06:40), which lacks balance, makes misleading statements and fails to provide context that could have presented an account of life in occupied Palestine and for Canadians after two years of genocide that is more grounded in reality.
A less informed viewer, upon hearing you present these statements sequentially, could infer a correlation and conclude that Hamas bombed the Kibbutz on October 7th killing seven Israelis:
“At this Israeli village near the Gaza border, the familiar drumbeat of bombs has been replaced with hammers. The entire community is under construction. This kibbutz was one of the first attacked by Hamas on October 7th. Seven Israelis were killed here.”
However, there are no reports of Hamas having had or used bombs on or after October 7, 2023. I think what you are actually referring to is the bombing in Gaza by the IOF. It is actually quite sickening to hear you refer to the sound of Israel slaughtering hundreds of Palestinians men, women and children each day for over two years as the “familiar drumbeat of bombs”.
I also didn’t realize that Israelis could hear it. What you have highlighted here is that Israelis don’t have to listen to the sound of their war crimes any longer — except Israel has already violated the ceasefire of this so-called “peace deal” several times. I would imagine they are still hearing it and are able to go about their day all the same.
The statement, “He eventually snuck out a window and watched as Israeli soldiers fired back, shelling his home with several Hamas fighters inside,” is a prime example of reporting a dramatic event while failing to provide the critical, systemic context that gives it its true significance. The journalist had a clear opportunity to elevate this from a mere anecdote to a revealing a clear case of the controversial and officially acknowledged Israeli military policy: the Hannibal Directive.
The standard framing of "firing back" at "Hamas fighters inside" suggests a straightforward battle narrative. However, the logical conclusion is stark: the Israeli military made a conscious decision to deploy heavy, destructive force (shelling) against a structure they knew, or had strong reason to believe, contained Israeli civilians.
This is not a minor detail; it is the central, shocking truth of the event. This reporting glosses over this truth and avoids the difficult questions it raises. Furthermore, in circling back to my first point about the “seven Israelis killed in the Kibbutz on October 7th, there is strong reason to believe that Israel’s own forces killed those Israelis. The carefully calculated language used suggests you know this but have chosen to mislead the viewers.
It is also quite disturbing that you have chosen to air a story about, Ora Bar, a young woman who chose to pick up her life in Montreal and settle in occupied Palestine after October 7, 2023, presenting her as some sort of victim and hero for living in complete safety as a white woman in an apartheid state that controls every aspect of Palestinian life through brutal military force. As with most Israelis who are dual citizens, she is free to come and go as she pleases when it suits her mood. It is absurd for her to say she is living in “survival mode” when Palestinians are literally being starved to death just kilometres away from her.
By contrast, no ethnically cleansed Palestinian can ever return to their home. Your piece should have included testimony from one of the 6.1 million members of the Palestinians diaspora who can tell you about the cruelty of the Israeli settler colonial project where the possibility of “winning” and “rebuilding their lives” has been denied again and again by Western governments for over 75 years.
If you were aiming for balance, you could have interviewed one of the many Canadians whose family members have been murdered by Israel, like Louay Alghoul of Winnipeg, who has lost 139 family members to Israeli attacks in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.
Moreover, it is important to note that Ora Bar has been directly involved in pro-Israel lobby networks in Canada. This is a conflict of interest and transparency issue that make the segments journalism biased. As reported by The Maple, Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) and Hasbara Canada launched the Canadian Campus Media Program in 2022, now operated jointly by HRC and Allied Voices for Israel (AVI). The program pays post-secondary students $1,000 for six months of participation on the condition that they monitor and “correct” campus media coverage, submit pro-Israel op-eds, and produce pro-Israel social-media content.
Bar herself is listed as a 2024 participant in this program and previously studied journalism at Concordia University. She was prominently featured in several national media segments, including a November 2023 CBC interview titled “It’s unsettling to be a Jewish student right now.” Additionally, according to editors of independent student newspapers in Montreal interviewed by The Maple such as The Link and the McGill Tribune, participation in such paid programs constitutes a serious conflict of interest and violates fundamental principles of journalistic integrity and transparency.
Former editor-in-chief Zachary Fortier has also gone on record stating that Ms. Bar would actively monitor coverage of Palestine by The Link and reported it back to Honest Reporting Canada. The pro-Israel group would then issue action alerts against the student paper. Mr. Fortier received easily over 5,000, 6,000 emails from Honest Reporting Canada and the people signing these petitions.
HRC often issues action alerts identifying what it perceives as a problem with a publication’s content, and calling on its mailing list to email the outlet in question with a complaint and a request. HRC generally provides a script for its more than 60,000 email subscribers to use, making it easy to identify emails sent as a result of HRC action. By platforming Ora Bar as an impartial or sympathetic voice, your newsroom has effectively platformed a pro-Israel media-training initiative funded by advocacy organizations with a vested interest in shaping public discourse on Israel-Palestine. This lack of disclosure misleads your audience and undermines the credibility of your reporting. Given the ethical standards outlined by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the National NewsMedia Council, which emphasize independence, transparency, and fairness, this represents a clear breach of journalistic responsibility.
Israeli Canadian Yonatan Zeigen’s story deserved to be fully examined and could have provided an opportunity to dig deeper into the history of the brutal occupation, as well as some much-needed critique of the Trump peace plan. Instead, it was sanitized and abbreviated to provide as little opposition to Israel’s government as possible.
Journalism's primary duty is to inform the public, which requires providing the framework needed to understand events. This piece fails on so many levels it is almost pointless to recommend changes. It should never have aired at all. The Global News team needs to do better.
Lastly, for the sake of transparency and public trust, I urge Global to clarify whether it was aware of Bar’s participation in this advocacy program and to disclose this information to viewers. Your failure to do so has resulted in an unbalanced portrayal that humanizes a settler while erasing the ongoing suffering and dispossession of Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and genocide.
Sincerely,
Nikki Mutch
Media Advocate
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East