The Media Accountability Project  

To the Globe and Mail Newsroom,

I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (www.cjpme.org) regarding the recent op-ed by Deborah Cowen, Naomi Klein, Kyo Maclear, and Madeleine Thien titled: "Canada needs to follow through on its promise to help people in Gaza."

Thank you for providing a forceful indictment of Canada’s inaction in evacuating Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip. I especially appreciated how the op-ed situated Canada’s failures within the broader history of exclusionary immigration policies and racialized border controls, invoking past injustices such as the Chinese Head Tax, Japanese-Canadian internment, and Canada’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

I also want to thank you for using the term genocide. It has taken nearly two years for much of the world to acknowledge that Israel is carrying out a genocidal campaign against Palestinians—a campaign rooted in abhorrent apartheid policies and practices dating back to Israel’s very creation.

If I may offer some constructive feedback, however: The op-ed’s title, “Canada needs to follow through on its promise to help people in Gaza,” reflects a pattern we often see in media coverage, where the word Palestinian is omitted. Too often, the media avoids naming Palestinians directly, effectively erasing Palestinian identity—a practice that contributes to anti-Palestinian racism. I do not know if this omission was intentional, but I kindly urge you to consider revising the headline to read “Palestinians in Gaza” instead of “people in Gaza.”

Unfortunately, much of Western media has abandoned core journalistic principles when covering Palestine, echoing Israeli talking points and burying Palestinian voices. By repeating Israeli propaganda and sanitizing the language of occupation, mainstream outlets have become complicit in genocide—normalizing Israel’s ongoing bombardment, ethnic cleansing, mass imprisonment, and detention of Palestinians. 

I urge The Globe and Mail to take a moral stance and change the headline so as not to erase Palestinian identity.

I await your response and send my kind regards in the meantime.

Warmly,

Lynn Naji
Media Analyst
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

"Unfortunately, much of Western media has abandoned core journalistic principles when covering Palestine, echoing Israeli talking points and burying Palestinian voices. By repeating Israeli propaganda and sanitizing the language of occupation, mainstream outlets have become complicit in genocide—normalizing Israel’s ongoing bombardment, ethnic cleansing, mass imprisonment, and detention of Palestinians."

"It aligns with a long-standing pattern in Western media that fragments Palestinian identity into “Gazan,” “West Banker,” or “Arab-Israeli,” while deliberately avoiding the term Palestinian. Such erasure is not accidental; it reflects and normalizes a colonial narrative that fragments Palestinian identity and treats Palestinians as stateless, nameless, and ahistorical."