The Media Accountability Project  

However, in the last paragraph of your article, you write “Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war.” Referring to these territories as “captured” gravely obscures the reality that they are militarily occupied. This is not an opinion but a matter of a settled consensus at the international level, as confirmed by the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Your segment also fails to mention that the Israeli raid on occupied Nablus left many Palestinian causalities. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, four people were transferred to the hospital for treatment and at least 150 people suffered from inhaling tear gas, including schoolchildren.

I insist that this necessary context is included in your future coverage of events in the occupied West Bank in order to ensure balanced, fair and accurate reporting.

In 2023, Israeli forces conducted repeated military raids into various neighbourhoods and towns in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. These operations are frequently carried out in the middle of the night – where heavily armed Israeli forces forcefully enter Palestinian homes to search, interrogate, photograph, beat, and arrest Palestinians, including young children and the elderly.

As such, I insist that you make more explicit mention of the Palestinians, and the reason they are on the sidelines, literally and figuratively. You mention the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and how they are sitting out the protests, but you don’t mention why. You also don’t mention the 2.5 million Palestinians living under military occupation and apartheid in the territories, and why the protests in Israel are effectively irrelevant to them, even though their every action is controlled by Israel.

"To refer to the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe in Arabic) as a “Palestinian exodus” overlooks the fact that approximately 750,000 to 1 million Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militias and made refugees. Many are still refugees today, along with their families. They were forced to make a life for themselves elsewhere in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and in Mr. Najjar’s case, Jordan."

"By deleting “occupied,” you misrepresent T’ruah’s own self-description, and you exclude context regarding Israel’s 55-year military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem."

"Israel’s preferred use of the politicized term “Arab” (or “Israeli Arab”) – which your article parrots – is intended to downplay the “Palestinian” identity of the vast majority of the members of this group. It also intentionally downplays the Palestinians’ connection with their land, suggesting that they are indistinguishable from Arabs elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa."

"In short, Brehaut’s article 'foodwashes' Israel’s crimes against humanity. Just as Israel is increasing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, displacing thousands of Palestinian families from their ancestral homes, it is erasing Palestinian heritage and culture by appropriating indigenous Palestinian food."

"It is deeply problematic and inaccurate to refer to Palestinian citizens of Israel as 'Palestinian Israelis,' a label they simply reject. In your headline, you employ the term 'Israel’s Palestinians,' and in the second paragraph, 'Palestinian citizens of Israel,' both deemed acceptable by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA) and the International Press Institute (IPI) as they emphasize the population’s Palestinian Identity. Yet, you adopt the term 'Palestinian Israelis' throughout the article, a label which wrongfully imposes the 'Israeli' identity on the country’s Palestinian citizens."

"While the above lines from the readout may amount to implicit or indirect criticism of current actions by the Israeli government, this requires a significant degree of subjective interpretation. Ultimately, nothing in the readout (nor in the quotes from a GAC source) suggests that Joly’s comments were intended to “call out” Israel’s actions, or that she is “pushing” for them to stop. Instead, they appear to be included as an indirect acknowledgement of controversies which she is obliged to reference, the absolute bare minimum that one might expect."