On July 9, 2024, CJPME sent a letter to CBC News to ask them to reformulate a sentence that implied that Israel stopped occupying the Gaza Strip after 2005 in an article about the reality of getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
While CJPME has also taken issue with CBC referring to Palestinians in Gaza as Gazans as it erases not only Palestine but Palestinians as a people, CBC made the change about the two other issues raised in the following paragraph:
Although Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after occupying it since the Six-Day War in 1967, they maintained a blockade of Gaza’s access points by air, land and sea; human rights groups called that blockade a form of collective punishment in defiance of international law.
CJPME argued that the sentence implies that the occupation of the Gaza Strip since 1967 is unrelated to the blockade, while the blockade is in place because of the occupation of the Gaza Strip. CJPME clarified that Israel only removed its illegal settlements and withdrew its ground military forces.
CJPME also asked to refer to Gaza as the “Gaza Strip.”
Following our ask, CBC changed the paragraph which reads as follows:
Although Israel withdrew its military and dismantled Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, having occupied it since the Six-Day War in 1967, they maintained a blockade of Gaza's access points by air, land and sea. Human rights groups called that blockade a form of collective punishment in defiance of international law.
While the issue of using the term Gazans to refer to Palestinians in Gaza was not addressed, others were, which is a step in maintaining a journalistic standard of accuracy.