Problematic language in article about the Israeli government’s judicial reforms
By referring to Palestinian citizens of Israel as “Israel’s Arab minority,” you downplay the Palestinian identity of the vast majority of the members of their group and their connection with the land, suggesting that they are indistinguishable from Arabs elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
Read moreThanks for quoting Palestinian sources about the failure of Israeli military investigations into crimes committed against Palestinians
"I am glad that you quote the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Israeli military investigations, and their failure to prosecute crimes committed against innocent Palestinian civilians, especially children."
Read moreThanks for shedding light on the experiences of Gazans under Israeli airstrikes
"It is rare to read a story from a civilian perspective on war in Canadian mainstream media. Even if far outside the personal experience of the reader, Mr. al-Mughrabi allows us to see Gazans for once not as statistics but as people, who try to keep the family safe in a place where there is no shelter and no safety, while coping with frightened children who can’t sleep because of the noise and shaking."
Read moreNo mention of blockade on Gaza in coverage of food aid shortages for Palestinian refugees
"Gaza has been living under a brutal 15-year-long illegal blockade and siege by Israel, preventing basic goods and medicine from entering the occupied territory. In fact, since 2007, Israel has imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the strip. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Occupied Palestinian territory, Israel’s blockade on Gaza amounts to a 'denial of basic human rights in contravention of international law and amounts to collective punishment.'"
Read moreThanks for mentioning a documentary in commemoration of Nakba Day
Palestinian and pro-Palestinian perspectives are often ignored or excluded from Canadian public discourse. Highlighting a film like The Tree is a positive start to sensitizing the Canadian public to Palestine, especially devastating events such as the Nakba.
Read moreFailure to contextualize the occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem and Palestinian Christian identity
This article aims to provide readers with an understanding of events in Jerusalem, and in particular new restrictions that Israel has placed on Christian worshippers. However, it fails to convey two essential pieces of context: 1) that the Old City of Jerusalem is under Israeli occupation, and 2) that the “local Christian community” is largely Palestinian.
Read moreSaltwire corrects misleading headline for letter on anti-apartheid bus ads, following a CJPME complaint to the National NewsMedia Council
On March 8, 2023, Saltwire published a letter to the editor by Frank Holden in support of bus advertisements in St. John’s which pointed to human rights reports on Israeli apartheid. The letter discussed the Palestinian indigenous connection to the land and the dispossession Palestinians have experienced through settler colonialism. However, the letter was published with the false and misleading headline, "Anti-semitic advertisements back on Metrobus," which reflected the exact opposite of the points made in the letter.
CJPME wrote to Saltwire to request a headline change, and after receiving no response, submitted a complaint to the National NewsMedia Council. On April 6, 2023, CJPME was informed that the NCC had discussed the matter with Saltwire, which had made an editorial decision to change the title to "LETTER: Bus adverts a reminder to be concerned for safety and equality of all," which better reflects the contents of the letter.
The Guardian (Charlottetown) and Saltwire publish CJPME letter rebutting defense of Israeli minister’s genocidal remarks
On April 4, 2023, The Guardian (Charlottetown) and Saltwire published and widely syndicated a letter to the editor from CJPME, rebutting a letter which had attempted to defend Israel’s far-right Finance Minister, Betzalel Smotrich, after his inflammatory comments about ‘erasing’ the Palestinian town of Huwara. The letter reads:
A recent letter by Robert Walker criticizes another writer for misrepresenting the context around Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s comments calling for a town in the occupied West Bank to be “wiped out.”
Walker's letter repeats the error he complains about, that of “missing some information.” Only in this case, most of the information is missing.
In acting as Smotrich’s apologist after his genocidal remarks, Walker accepts Smotrich’s pathetic excuse that it was somehow an emotional “slip of the tongue.”
When Smotrich made this comment, he was responding to a question about why he had liked a tweet from an Israeli deputy mayor calling for Huwara to be “erased.” As such, this was his second public engagement with the idea, making it hard to believe that this was part of an emotional flare-up.
Furthermore, Smotrich even complained that the media was trying to create a “distorted interpretation” of his words rather than owning up to them.
To underscore the superficial core of his apology, just weeks later Smotrich would take the stage in Paris and say, “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people.” The destruction of a Palestinian village was scarcely extreme for Smotrich. He would prefer to erase the idea that Palestinians exist at all. I'm not sure why Robert Walker feels compelled to defend the indefensible.
Missing context regarding international consensus of Israeli apartheid
"B’Tselem, Israel's largest human rights organization, also issued a report in 2021 that positioned Israel as an apartheid state. The list of international organizations and figures who have expressed concern for Israeli apartheid is long and encompasses all the major international and Israeli human rights organizations."
Read moreMissing context about Ben-Gvir's militia by Saltwire
Haaretz, an Israeli publication, quotes the human rights group Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in describing the national guard as “a private, armed militia that would be directly under Ben-Gvir's control,” and warns that “this is a police force that will first and foremost act in mixed cities, first and foremost against the Arab population [read: Palestinian citizens of Israel].”
It is critical that this element of the story is included in your reporting so that the coverage highlights the immediate consequences for Palestinians as a result of the legislative pause.
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