The characterization of Israel’s blockade of Gaza is supported by authoritative international bodies, not critics. Framing it this way reduces established international legal conclusions to the level of subjective criticism.
To the Toronto Star and Associated Press,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (www.cjpme.org) to raise concern regarding the article titled: “Israel says it has deported hundreds of Gaza flotilla activists amid international backlash” published on May 21, 2026.
There is a boilerplate line being propagated repeatedly across several articles in Canadian media stating that critics say Israel’s blockade amounts to collective punishment of Gaza’s Palestinian population.
The issue is that the same boilerplate language is repeatedly being pasted from AP wire reports into Canadian media outlets such as the Toronto Star, contributing to a misleading framing of Israel’s illegal and brutal blockade of occupied Gaza.
The characterization of Israel’s blockade of Gaza is supported by authoritative international bodies, not critics. Framing it this way reduces established international legal conclusions to the level of subjective criticism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently subject to International Criminal Court arrest warrants for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the use of starvation as a weapon of war by blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
In fact, Israel’s blockade on the occupied Gaza Strip constitutes a crime against humanity, defying one of the six provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, which explicitly requires Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza (Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip [South Africa v. Israel], Order of 26 January 2024).
United Nations experts have repeatedly stated that Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, compounded by ongoing military aggressions involving war crimes and crimes against humanity, has made the Gaza Strip “unliveable,” creating conditions for genocide - deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part.
In 2012, 50 international aid agencies, including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and Oxfam, released a statement calling on Israel to lift its illegal siege and blockade: “For over five years in Gaza, more than 1.6 million people have been under blockade in violation of international law. More than half of these people are children. We the undersigned say with one voice: ‘end the blockade now.’”
In 2016, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 condemned Israel’s blockade as illegal, stating: “As a form of collective punishment imposed upon an entire population, the blockade is contrary to international law.”
We understand that this does not constitute a breach of the core pillars of responsible journalism; however, in the interest of accuracy, and in light of the international legal consensus regarding Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, we kindly ask that you amend the article by replacing “critics” with language that reflects the weight of international legal and human rights consensus, including UN experts.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Media Analyst
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East