The Media Accountability Project  

Overall, your article is a much needed, human portrait of Canadians relationship to the ongoing impacts of violent imperialism in the Middle East.

"CJPME commends you for your dedication to balanced reporting and for giving a voice to the voiceless. Thank you for raising awareness and humanizing the very difficult plight of the Palestinians in Gaza."

Writing “want to leave Gaza” makes it seem like Palestinians have a choice of leaving or not when they don’t because of the reality they are going through. Palestinians are either getting killed, waiting to die or getting killed, or witnessing family members or other Palestinians getting killed. In such circumstances, anyone would flee their land because it’s a matter of life or death.

"Considering the majority of houses in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, gathering previous passport information becomes nearly impossible. This disparity in requirements exacerbates the challenges faced by Palestinian applicants, highlighting the urgent need for reform in the immigration process."

"Considering this is the first instance of you vaguely alluding to 'violence' in the article, it should be precise and descriptive. Instead, I implore you to consider using 'Israel’s military assault and blockade on Gaza' as a substitute for the 'ongoing wave of violence in Gaza'."

I request that in order to make your description fairer, you add another sentence of context making clear that many Jewish groups use and defend the chant. I would also insist that you correct the misleading claim that Hamas “co-opted the chant.”

"Put like this, readers could easily assume it is Hamas who is solely responsible for the lack of freedom instead of Israel, which is misleading and false. As I mentioned above, Israel is considered an occupying power under international law, and it has effective control over Gaza. As such, reporting needs to be clear and leave no doubt as to which party is responsible."

"According to reports starting in January, when they began accepting applications, there has been constant criticism related to Canada’s 1,000-person quota and the application’s stringent demands, like incredibly invasive and detailed questions. Considering these questions pertain to civilians in Gaza, for families in Canada to access this information from people experiencing constant airstrikes and communication blackouts is nearly impossible."

"Given that allowing the mass influx of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt could assist in Israel’s forced displacement and, thus, ethnic cleansing of the population, Egypt’s motivations for rigid border control could not be more different than Israel’s genocidal ones. History has shown that Israel has prevented Palestinians from returning to their land, so Egypt is necessarily treading carefully."

Thank you for highlighting how difficult it is for Palestinians to apply as refugees by providing information about Qudaih’s path to Saskatoon and a discussion about the Canadian temporary visa program’s limit.