The Media Accountability Project  

On October 26, 2025, CJPME media analyst Anthony Issa was published in the Globe and Mail in response to an op-ed titled "The dream of a better Lebanon remains afloat," by Dany H. Assaf. The response was published as a letter to the editor in The Globe and Mail, helping to challenge misleading “both-sides” framing and re-centre accountability in coverage of Israel’s war on Lebanon.

Issa challenged the article’s framing of Israel’s ongoing attacks on Lebanon as a “war between Israel and Hezbollah.” He argued that this language creates a false symmetry between a powerful state military and a non-state actor, obscuring Israel’s overwhelming responsibility for the scale of devastation in Lebanon.

He also challenged the article’s call for disarmament as a path to Lebanese "national renewal," arguing that such framing disregards Israel’s continued occupation of Lebanese territory and Lebanon’s right to sovereignty.

We thank the Globe and Mail for giving us the ability to challenge mainstream narratives that often overlook alternative perspectives on Lebanon. 

CJPME will continue to confront biased narratives and demand fair, fact-based reporting on Lebanon.

My main concern is with the article’s framing. By emphasizing symbolic statements of condemnation, particularly from the Israeli President, the article whitewashes the material reality, especially given the well-documented role of the Israeli army in directly participating in, enabling, and protecting these attacks.

There is a serious lack of context that removes accountability from Israel, the occupying power that has been denying the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and most importantly which has been causing the “human catastrophe” in Gaza in the first place.

It is misleading to describe Israeli settlers as merely “taking over much of the territory,” as though this were a natural or benign process. Israeli settlements constitute a clear violation of international law (specifically, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention) and represent the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a historic ruling on July 19, 2024 that found multiple and serious international law violations by Israel towards Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including, for the first time, finding Israel responsible for apartheid. 

Since May, Israel has been controlling the deadly and chaotic, and highly limited, distribution of food through the so-called US-Israel backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, with the Gaza Ministry of Health reporting that there have been 2,018 fatalities and more than 14,947 injuries between May 27 and August 21, 2025 among people trying to access food supplies.

Calling it the “Israel-Hamas war” suggests two equal sides, when in reality Israel is an occupying power with one of the most advanced militaries in the world, and Palestinians are a stateless, besieged population living under apartheid. This framing erases the power imbalance and diminishes the reality of Palestinian suffering under a genocidal campaign.

There is not a single mention of the designated terrorist groups actually operating inside of Canada and impacting the lives of Canadians, like the Proud Boys, Blood and Honour and Combat 18 — all white supremacist, neo-Nazi groups.

Israeli politicians have also openly called for a second Nakba, expressing genocidal intent to dispossess the Palestinian people. One letter distributed in the occupied West Bank read: “Emigrate to Jordan or be exterminated” (October 26, 2023).

Treating the results as directly comparable is a polemic tactic designed to create a damaging narrative of guilt-by-association, which the Israeli government and its allies in the media have been using as an excuse to indiscriminately killing civilians en masse for almost two years.