The Media Accountability Project  

An omission like this amounts to blatant dehumanization of Palestinians and serves the interests of Israel rather than the truth. This is precisely the kind of reporting that deceives Canadians and enables complicity in a horrific genocide. 70,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered, children have been starved to death and 2 million Palestinians are living in tents and rubble with barely enough food and water. In the face of this all, CityNews continues to report heavily on Israelis and their concerns.

The aim of this essay is to examine the misleading use of the term “prisoner” to describe Palestinians who are illegally abducted by Israel and subjected to severe human rights abuses inside Israeli prisons. 

It is unfair and an affront to the dignity and rights of Palestinians to end the article in this way, without referring to abundant evidence of  “systematic and widespread perpetration of sexual and gender-based violence, torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment inflicted on Palestinian detainees by Israeli military and security forces” as detailed in a recent UN Special Committee report. 

There is a double standard and lack of context in this passage. While it is mentioned that 20 Israeli hostages were released as part of phase one of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, it fails to mention that the same agreement included the release of around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli prisons.

While the author allows Canadian politicians to vent outrage at the “heinous terrorist attacks” of Oct. 7th, there is not a syllable acknowledging the two years of genocide endured by Palestinians. For 735 days we saw 735 relentless massacres of innocents in Gaza. This fact cannot be left out of the article if you are going to mention October 7th multiple times.

"The term “prisoner” suggests a conviction following a fair trial—yet thousands of Palestinians, including children, activists, and journalists, are held without charge or legal recourse. Furthermore, calling Palestinian detainees “prisoners” erases the illegality of their detention and implies guilt where none has been proven."

"Since Mr. Brown’s article, CBC has—as far as I can tell—carefully avoided this unfair language by avoiding referring to Palestinians in administrative detention as “prisoners,” and from not referring to Israelis, especially soldiers, as “hostages.” Whether this is an official policy of CBC or a common practice by editors is impossible for me to know. Nonetheless, this AP article in question perpetuates the exact problem that Mr. Brown so succinctly identified."

"Your framing of the hostage-prisoner/detainee exchange fails to highlight the asymmetry of releasing 33 Israeli hostages versus 2,000 Palestinian detainees, while also neglecting critical context on Israel’s use of administrative detention which allows Israel to imprison Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trial."