The Media Accountability Project  

"Unless the CBC considers injuries to five Israelis more important than the killing of one Palestinian, this omission is inexcusable. You should have also mentioned that Israel has maintained a brutal military occupation over Palestinians for 56 years. Such context is essential for listeners to understand that Palestinian violence is a direct result of raids, arrests, and violence by Israeli forces, not to mention destructive and violent rampages by illegal Israeli settlers."

By omitting the fact that Al-Aqsa is in Israeli-occupied territory, you exclude important context about the dynamic between Palestinians and Israeli forces and the raised tensions that have resulted from Israeli violence and their discriminatory policies. Moreover, the omission of occupied in context to East Jerusalem is inconsistent with your description of the West Bank as “occupied,” implying that the former is not occupied. 

On February 15, 2023, CBC News published an article by the Associated Press with the problematic headline, “Israeli parliament approves law that could strip some Arab attackers of citizenship.” (Click here to see the archived version with the original headline).

CJPME wrote to the CBC taking issue with three problems in the headline: First, the headline incorrectly used the term “Arab,” even though it refers specifically to Palestinians. CJPME noted that “Israel’s preferred use of the politicized terms ‘Arab-Israeli’ or simply ‘Arab’ is intended to downplay or erase the ‘Palestinian’ identity of the vast majority of the members of this group.” Second, the headline used the term “attackers,” even though the law applies to a range of offences which is much broader than violence, including various actions which allegedly constitute “a breach of trust to the State of Israel.” Third, the headline did not specify that the law was racist, even though it is only directed at Palestinian citizens of Israel and not Jewish Israelis.

CJPME is pleased that CBC News agreed to act on the first two out of the three issues, and on March 17 changed the headline to: “New Israel law allows stripping residency of Palestinians convicted of 'breach of trust.'” For the third point, CBC declined to take our suggestion, pointing out that the perspective that the law is racist is included prominently in the subheading and text of the article.

On March 6, 2023, the CBC published an analysis by Asia Correspondent Saša Petricic about a pogrom by Israeli settlers against the Palestinian town of Huwara in the occupied West Bank, and the link between Israeli settlers and Israel’s far-right government.

CJPME notified CBC about a factual error, in which the article claimed that a Palestinian man was “killed by rioting Israeli settlers.” However, as CJPME wrote, investigations from journalists have not been able to determine whether 37-year-old Sameh Aqtesh was killed by settlers or if he was actually killed by Israeli soldiers, who were present at the scene. CJPME requested a correction to the article “to accurately reflect that Sameh Aqtesh was killed by Israeli fire, although it is uncertain whether the shot came from settlers or soldiers.” This is significant because Israel has been trying to minimize its role in the violence. Further, CJPME insisted that the article “should also make clear that Israeli forces were present in the area when he was killed, and that there are credible allegations that they were responsible for his death.”

The CBC partially corrected its error on March 7, 2023, noting that a Palestinian man was “killed amid rioting by Israeli settlers,” which is technically correct but less precise, and omits key details which point to the possibility that Israeli soldiers may have been directly responsible for the killing of Sameh Aqtesh. CJPME has asked for the article to be updated further to reflect this information.

"My organization has also pointed out that Canada’s Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade of Canada, Mary Ng met recently with Ofir Akunis, a minister in Israel's far-right government. In addition to serving in Israel’s most right-wing government ever, Minister Akunis is himself an anti-Palestinian extremist and a supremacist. While the international community (and all of Canada’s federal parties) support an independent state for Palestinians, Akunis supports Israel’s full annexation of the Palestinian West Bank, stating, 'I will never agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] and I will continue to promote, with all my might, the application of sovereignty [annexation], which is an historical process that cannot be prevented.' In 2017, he claimed that 'Israel in its entirety is the country of the Jewish People, and the right to it belongs only to the Jewish People.'"

"We believe that your news article does a good job of detailing the consequences of this racist law for Palestinians. However, the headline is misleading and inaccurate for several reasons, and we are requesting an immediate change.

First, your use of the term 'Arab' in the headline is problematic, as it refers specifically to Palestinians. Israel’s preferred use of the politicized terms 'Arab-Israeli' or simply 'Arab' is intended to downplay or erase the 'Palestinian' identity of the vast majority of the members of this group. We, therefore, urge you to follow the widely used and respected Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) guidelines on covering issues related to Israel and Palestine, which encourage journalists to avoid the language of 'Arab-Israeli' or 'Arab' and instead use the more appropriate term 'Palestinian citizens of Israel,' or simply 'Palestinian.'"

"Throughout the program, Jericho is described simply as being in Palestine or the “Palestinian Territories,” but does not specify that it is occupied territory. Similarly, a map shows Jericho within an outline of the West Bank, but does not identify it nor specify that it is occupied. Instead, the segment uses the language of “enduring border disputes” and of two parties “claim[ing] and “fight[ing] over the same territory.”