Israel has been deliberately killing the voices of truth - the brave journalists on the ground documenting its massacres - from the assassination of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022, who was shot by the Israeli forces while covering an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, to Israel’s deliberate assassination of Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoaib in an Israeli airstrike in Jezzine, southern Lebanon, in which Al-Mayadeen correspondent Fatima Ftouni was also killed.
To the Winnipeg Free Press,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (www.cjpme.org) to thank you for publishing the letter to the editor titled: “Israeli organization threatens lawsuit against CMHR over ‘one-sided’ Palestinian exhibit” on May 15.
The exhibit titled “Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present,” as the letter mentions, is a Nakba exhibit documenting the forced uprooting of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948.
The letter rightly mentions that the Israeli Law Centre’s threat to sue the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is “consistent with the Israeli government's strategy to smother truth and dictate their false narrative.” We have seen this time and time again: Israel has been deliberately killing the voices of truth - the brave journalists on the ground documenting its massacres - from the assassination of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022, who was shot by the Israeli forces while covering an Israeli military raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, to Israel’s deliberate assassination of Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoaib in an Israeli airstrike in Jezzine, southern Lebanon, in which Al-Mayadeen correspondent Fatima Ftouni was also killed.
The letter also rightly mentions that “anyone who criticizes Israel is tarred as an antisemite and becomes Israel's enemy.” The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a trend we see all the time, where criticism of the apartheid state of Israel committing war crimes and crimes against humanity - from occupied Palestine to South Lebanon, while unleashing a war of extermination across the region - is conflated with the inherent hatred of Jews, weaponizing the very real fight against antisemitism to shield the state of Israel from criticism.
All of this is to say: thank you for platforming this letter to the editor, which rightly debunks the kind of talking points we so often see advanced by Israel and its supporters, from its long and well-documented history of spreading misinformation to conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Please continue to platform Palestinian perspectives and stories, particularly at a time when Palestinian voices are so often relegated to the final lines of articles or marginalized altogether in mainstream coverage.
Media Analyst
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East