We always see in the media opposition to Zionism being conflated with antisemitism, and we therefore thank you for giving space for Elsayed to debunk these claims.
To the Investigative Journalism Foundation,
I am writing to you on behalf of Candians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to thank you for your article titled: “Group wants tighter rules on Sask. campus activism, criticism of Israel” published on September 1, 2026.
The article is balanced overall; something we rarely see in our monitoring of media coverage of Israel’s war of extermination in West Asia. The article gives space for May Elsayed, founder of Students for Justice and Peace at the University of Saskatchewan, to mention that “contradicting the state of Israel and being anti-Zionist does not mean we are antisemitic or anti-Jewish by any means.”
Indeed, antisemitism is a serious form of hate that must be confronted wherever and whenever it occurs, but as Elsayed explains, opposition to Zionism is not rooted in an inherent hate against Jews. Opposing Zionism means opposing Israel’s ongoing occupation, expansion of illegal settlements on occupied Palestine, rampant settler violence, detention of political prisoners, and a system of legal segregation that subjects Palestinians and Israeli settlers to entirely different legal systems - and more specifically, where Palestinians are subject to human rights abuses in occupation prisons and detention camps, including sexual assault, torture, and humiliation.
We always see in the media opposition to Zionism being conflated with antisemitism, and we therefore thank you for giving space for Elsayed to debunk these claims.
We also especially appreciate that the article specifies that in 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. This is context we always ask the media to include, as Israel is no longer waging a war anymore. It is committing genocide, and the intent is fundementally different than war: it is genocidal. As Amnesty explains, Israel is acting “with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza – acts including killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
All of this to say, thank you for your balanced article. Please continue to amplify Palestinian voices in the future.
Regards,
Media Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East