The Media Accountability Project  

Surely the CBC does not believe that the lives of Israelis are worth more than the lives of Palestinians. Your reporting must provide context necessary to reflect the power dynamics at play between the Israeli army and militant groups in the occupied West Bank. As such, I insist that you update the article to provide the information on civilians, children, and the Huwara fatality that I provide above.

I appreciate that you published an article about new virtual reality classrooms in the occupied Gaza strip. It is important for publications like Toronto Telegraph to provide Palestinian stories to Canadian audiences. Although you do describe Gaza as an “impoverished coastal enclave” at one point in the article, you provide absolutely no context as to why the region is “impoverished” or under duress. You have a journalistic responsibility to provide such context to the reader. 

"Although the news segment in question is very brief, it is incredibly biased that you fail to mention that the West Bank is militarily occupied by Israel since 1967. In your news segment, you claim that “the militants opened fire on troops near the city of Nablus.” This statement reflects the fact that Israeli soldiers are stationed in the Palestinian city of Nablus as an occupying force. You should also be aware that the UN General Assembly has recently asked the International Criminal Court to determine whether Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories is illegal, given that it has become a de facto annexation. By omitting such important information, you are failing to meet basic journalistic standards."

"There is a significant error in this segment which requires an on-air correction. When describing the Israeli settler attack on the Palestinian town of Huwara (Hawara), you reported that “a mob attacked Palestinian homes and businesses,” but did not mention that 37-year-old Sameh al-Aqtash had been killed by Israeli fire during that attack."

A citation of ACLA’s definition of anti-Palestinian racism and the various forms it may adopt would be pertinent in calling attention to racist attitudes that Palestinians must frequently confront.

In an article focused on Israeli Minister Smotrich’s call to “erase” Hawara and Netanyahu’s response, it is alarming that the description of events leading up is so one-sided. The two Israeli brothers who were killed in the leadup are mentioned, but the Palestinian casualties are omitted. In a story about erasing a town, this is essential 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.'"

Who politicians meet with matters. It's becoming increasingly apparent that far-right politics are gaining a foothold in Canada. While this article mentions a recent meeting between Conservatives and far-right Israeli real estate developer Silberstein, this only scratches the surface of connections between Canadian officials and Israeli extremists.

It is important that Canadian audiences are aware about such instances of anti-Palestinian racism in our education system and how they affect the Palestinian-Canadian community. I hope to see continued coverage of anti-Palestinian racism and how it affects the lives and perceptions of Palestinians in Canada. 

"This article misrepresents the legality of Israel’s occupation and settlement enterprise as a matter of subjective opinion, writing that “most world powers view as illegal the settlements Israel has built on land it captured in a 1967 war with Arab powers.”