News Media Failure of Clear Professional Publication Standards

The New York Times building. (Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images)

 

"Together, these patterns support a narrative in which total casualty figures are treated as civilian losses."

"[The findings demonstrated dependence on aggregate numbers from Hamas limited citations of data on terrorist deaths and] disproportionate doubt directed at different sources." 

Tatiana Glezer, Fifty Global independent research group 

 

"Estimates indicating a high proportion of civilian deaths may contribute to reframing a conflict from war to genocide."

"In this sense, quantitative representations of harm are not neutral; they carry interpretive consequences that shape both public discourse and institutional judgment."

"[The Gaza health ministry] became the primary source of statistical information about the war casualties."

"Overall, this essential disclaimer about the composition of the casualties appeared in only about 15 percent of all analyzed publications."

"[Reporting absent a fuller picture where data comes from can lead to one side being viewed as victims and the other side as] criminal or genocidal [especially in online discourse]."

Selective Sources, Scrutiny, and the Absence of Standards in Military Conflict Coverage study  

Dash cam footage shows an armed Hamas terrorist at the Supernova music festival, near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by ANONYMOUS/AFP

 

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Digital Hate Review on September 15, the study, Selective Sources, Scrutiny, and the Absence of Standards in Military conflict Coverage, pointed out that major media outlets which included The New York Times, The Guardian and Associated Press, when reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, placed their reliance on casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health, an associate arm of the Hamas terrorist organization.

 

Study researchers concluded through this study that journalists cited numbers provided by the ministry in 100 percent of the publications reviewed in the study. Israeli-provided data was cited, in comparison, by only three percent of all articles under review. Triggered by an attack by Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas when thousands crossed the border from Gaza into southern Israel on 7 October 2023, slaughtering 1,200 mostly civilians in Israel, taking 251 children, families, women, men, foreign farm workers and Israeli soldiers back into Gaza, Israel responded by its defense forces entering Gaza to rout out the terrorists.

 

Security footage at the Kibbutz Be’ri showing Hamas shooting point blank at passengers in a car. Handout

 

By 2025, as part of a U.S.-negotiated peace agreement, the Israeli Defense Forces began withdrawing troops, despite which violence and unrest continue in the region, as Hamas uses the break in the conflict to rearm, recruit and reassert its violent agency in the Gaza Strip, that part not policed by still-present Israeli troops. Hamas remains defiant to the orders given it by a 'peace committee', to surrender their arms. In the interim, any Palestinians in Gaza remaining under Hamas rule, who chafe at the continued domination and persecution, are summarily shot. Rival clan groups in Gaza have attempted to unseat Hamas, inconclusively.

 

It was the focus of the study to research their topic by investigating 1,378 articles that saw publication from March to June of 2024 in eight English-language news outlets, specifically, CNN, BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters and Associated Press. This was a period when Israeli hostages were still being held in Gaza. These members of the legacy media under study were found not to have made distinctions between terrorists and civilian deaths in their reportage, just as the Gaza Ministry of Health did not.

 

During the war, the study suggests a more comprehensive understanding of deaths could have been achieved through the inclusion of both primary sources: the Israel Defense Forces, providing estimates of terrorist casualties and the Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not. In 2024, the IDF stated that terrorists are classified by them as individuals who were killed while in possession of weapons. Which of the news outlets made mention of the fact that the ministry's figures fail to distinguish between civilians and terrorists were also examined by the study. 

 

Fighters with the Ezz-Al Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas terrorist organization, rest on a sidewalk during a patrol in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on January 26, 2020. Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP

 

The BBC was found to be the outlet that most frequently made note of the ministry's affiliation with Hamas; some 95 percent of its articles. On the other hand, only 5 percent of CNN articles made mention of that fact, and articles appearing in The New York Times and The Washington Post made that mention in merely 2 percent of their articles. As for which outlets made mention that the ministry's figures fail to distinguish between civilians and terrorists, The Associated Press and The Washington Post made that mention in roughly 40 percent of articles; the BBC and Reuters did in 1 to 2 percent of articles.

 

GazaGenoLIE

"The term 'genocide', along with other international legal terms, has been deliberately and systematically hijacked, redefined, inverted and weaponized to demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to 'the Jews' among nations."

"This well-orchestrated campaign to spread a modern blood libel accusing Israel of 'genocide' began before any Israeli response to Hamas' genocidal war crimes and crimes against humanity of October 7." 

Michal Cotler Wunsh, CEO, International Legal Forum  

Gaza GenoLIE logo.  (photo credit: Courtesy)

 

A campaign has been launched naming itself the "Gaza GenoLIE", supported by over 35 organizations worldwide in a campaign they have joined for the purpose of debunking "Hamas genocidal propaganda" surrounding the war in Gaza. Organizations beside the International Legal Forum include the Anti-Defamation League, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the World Jewish Congress. 

 

The claims of genocide were initiated on October 8, 2023, a day following the invasion of southern Israel from Gaza by Palestinian terrorist groups led by Hamas, when 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilian, were slaughtered. A somewhat precipitate accusation, given the reality that Israel's ground operation into Gaza began on October 27. 

 

According to Amnesty International, a number of United Nations bodies and other international groups --their investigations have uncovered evidence that they claim validates the assertions that Israel committed genocide during the Gaza War. Bearing in mind that these very organizations are anything but neutral with respect to their accusations against the Jewish state. 

 

For its part, Israel has repeatedly explained that its military has gone to extraordinary lengths that no other country in a war situation has ever committed to, in striving to limit civilian casualties. This is a war where it is well proven that Palestinian terrorist groups consider the Palestinian public expendable to their plans of attacking Israel and preparing for the response by using their civilian population as shields.

 

People take part in the National March for Palestine - hands off Gaza, a pro-Palestinian protest calling for the government to ''end the genocide and stop arming Israel'', in London, Britain, January 31, 2026. (credit: REUTERS/Jack Taylor)

 

There is a double purpose in that tried-and-true strategy; the first being that using human shields results in the actual terrorists having the protection of soft bodies, and the second that those civilians -- all the better when women and particularly children are killed in the line of battle -- are welcome fodder for public relations campaigns that move the hearts and minds of Western democracies.

 

While acknowledging that some 70,000 people have perished in the war situation deliberately created by Hamas schemes to not only lethally assault Israeli civilian populations -- but to successfully sketch out a scenario naively believed in the West amenable to having its latent simmering antisemitism aroused by the accusations of Israeli 'genocide' against the forever-victims of Palestine -- their terrorist leaders celebrate scoring in their campaign of slander and isolation of Jews from the rest of society. 

 

According to the Gaza GenoLIE website, its purpose is that of an educational initiative relating to the "generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks in the United States, Europe and around the world". The campaign argues the most crucial element in claims of genocide is the word "intent"; the 1948 Genocide Convention drafted following the Holocaust refers to certain acts inclusive of killing, causing serious harm, inflicting destructive conditions of life, committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such."

 

A Toronto pedestrian walks past signage stating "End The Genocide In Gaza" as a truck with digital displays of the Israeli citizens taken hostage by Hamas terrorists with signage stating "Bring Them Home" drives by back in November 2023. (Photo Peter J. Thompson/National Post)

 

The convention, they contend, asks whether the perpetrator acted for the specific goal of destroying a protected group. Israel, they argue, waged war to dismantle Hamas and bring the release of the Israeli hostages; the civilian death toll a consequence of urban combat against an enemy that "purposely and cynically embed(ed) itself among its own population."

 

The war Israel fought was to target Hamas, not the Palestinians. When, on October 8, Israel declared war, four aims were made clear: recover the hostages; dismantle Hamas's military capacity; remove Hamas as Gaza's governing authority; ensure Gaza could never again carry out such a horrendous attack.

 

Israel, moreover, issued evacuation warnings in advance of military operations, dropped millions of Arabic-language leaflets and placed tens of millions of phone calls, texts, and recorded messages in Arabic to urge civilians to leave identified combat zones. "None of the aims reference Palestinians. They refer to an armed terror organization -- its fighters, weapons, and rule." 

 

List of all 40 organizations involved in the campaign.

 

"[Hamas's claim of Israel's 'genocide' against Palestinians threatens foundational principles of law by hijacking the term genocide to spread] a modern blood libel [in accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people]." 

Michal Cotler Wunsch 

 

 

The Jew-Baiting Islamists at Canadian Universities

"[University campuses] are the places where there's been an ideological picture that incorporates anti-Zionism into the fold, so it emerges from -- I think it's driven by -- a lot of faculty who have very strong ideological positions on this stuff."

"We're [Network of Engaged Canadian Academics [NECA] 400 members across 53 campuses concerned about the safety of Jewish faculty and students and staff and combating antisemitism."

"[What's going on in campuses across the country is] really taking us away from the things that a university is supposed to be about."

"Basically, what we find is there are two groups of faculty; those who have experienced no antisemitism or very low, and those who have experienced really high levels."

"It seems to work through feeling that you have to support yourself, your Jewish identity; that you're vulnerable, and that you're  betrayed by your institutions, and your colleagues."

"In a very strategic and intentional way our universities are being used as a source of ideological propaganda. And there are bad actors who we know are doing that. [It makes sense if you are trying to get some] intellectual ideological capture; [ focus on university campuses -- where you have the most academic freedom]."

Carey Kogan, psychology professor, University of Ottawa

B'nai Brith

 

Professor Kogan co-founded the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics in 2022. He did so because even before the atrocity of Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas slaughtering 1,200 Israelis and taking another 240 as captives for barter back to Gaza, unleashing a storm of antisemitic vitriol against Jews in Canada by a number of Palestinian student 'activist' groups, the Jew-hating atmosphere in  Canadian universities was beginning to sear the lives of Jewish students and academics.

 

Following the barbarism of 7 October 2023, incitements to discrimination against Jews took to the streets of Canadian cities and on university campuses where tent cities sprang up with students as well as outsiders garbed in keffiyehs and masks harassing Jewish students, barring entry to their classes, chorusing epithets against Zionism, and chanting 'from the river to the sea Palestine will be free!' ad nauseum, while demanding that university administrations boycott Israeli academics and divest university investments from any links with Israel.

 

Jews, points out Professor Kogan, represent a mere one percent of the Canadian population yet 70 percent of religious-motivated hate crimes target Jews in Canada. Jews are 25 times likelier to experience a hate crime than anyone from within the general population. "We need to move to action, where people are taking a stand, being vocal about this. We can have people talking about, even protesting war. That's fine. We can have people asking for rights for Palestinians. Absolutely fine. But we can't have this kind of identity-based hate movement being taught in classrooms, being propagated through motions at university, faculty unions, student unions and all of that".

 

The Network of Engaged Canadian Academics Dr. Kogan is part of represents a defence against campaigns that target Canadian universities "with a high proportion of Jewish students and faculty, like the University of Toronto" or campuses where media attention is likely to be drawn for publicity. Canada has more than adequate laws to deal with these situations, but has yet to enforce those laws and rules. There is insufficient transparency on foreign donations to universities, there needs to be an improved collaboration with federal intelligence agencies in an era when leadership is wanting, not leading. 

Anti-Israel protesters march at McGill University on Oct. 7, 2025. Photo by Allen McInnis/Postmedia/File

 

"I mean, faculty were helping students with these encampments, helping students write these reports, make these statements, and I think there are unions, both student and faculty unions, supporting this ideological position. It became harder for certain leaders to actually make clear statements, and there was a double standard in terms of implementing policies, more than in any other minority group experience.The biggest or the most painful thing for Jewish students is the double standard. 

 

"They're avoiding campus, taking courses online, they're hiding their Jewish identity.  Their behaviour is changing as a function of the hostility. They won't talk about their opinions on things They're put on the spot asked to speak for the Israeli government, like absurd, absurd kinds of things that we would never see other minority groups be subjeted to."

 

Matters may yet escalate with ongoing negotiations with Hamas, and journalists reporting on the level of destruction in Gaza. Dr. Kogan points out that the entire area of Gaza was honeycombed with tunnels where underground military bunkers housed and protected Hamas operatives and weaponry. In bombing the tunnels and targeting Hamas terrorists, the Israel Defence Forces had little option, after instructing civilians to leave the areas before assaulting the structures, but to destroy the tunnels. 

 

Between January 1944 and 1945 the Royal Air Force and the U.S. air force conducted air raids over Germany where American planes alone made 744,000 sorties and dropped 1.4 million tons of bombs with inaccurate aerial bombing, dropping loads indiscriminately in and around major German cities. The result was Allied bombing that killed up to five hundred thousand German civilians. Allied raids destroyed between 4.5 and 5 million homes. How's that for perspective?

 

As for the level of institutionalized and casual Jew-hate, the former the result of an enormous intake of Muslims into Canada in the past several decades, the latter the always-present but generally underground antisemitism that always hovered in the air among the general Canadian population: "It's deep, it's structural, it's embedded, it's years old, it's informed by religion, it's informed by culture. And so it's not going away any time soon. But I think we can bring the temperature down, if we have strong leadership", ventured Professor Kogan. 

 

2024.0720 DC Street, Washington, DC USA 202 74155 by Ted Eytan https://flic.kr/p/

 

Seeing Is Not Always Believing

"The political tide has turned against Israel"

"[Largely the result of] images of starving Gazan children have[ing] ricocheted across the globe."

Professor Daniel W. Drezner, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, tufts University

 

"[Too many journalists have been uncritically citing the Hamas-operated Gaza Health Ministry on conditions in Gaza]. The result is a narrative that masks its source and misleads the public about who is to blame."

"The default frame -- that of U.S., Israeli, and GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] culpability -- is repeated in headlines both explicitly and implicitly, even when the reality is unresolved or points elsewhere."

"This pattern of laundering narratives, particularly from unvetted or partisan sources, appears widespread in Western media. [The result has been] a distorted portrayal of humanitarian conditions in Gaza, misleading policy-makers, misinforming the public, and exploiting vulnerable individuals for political gain." 

The Network Contagion Research Institute / Rutgers University Social Perception Lab report 

Hidayat Al-Motawaq holds her 18-month-old son, Mohammad Al-Motawaq, in their tent in the Gaza Strip on Aug. 3.  Anas Baba/NPR 

In the wake of the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Gaza directly following on the Hamas terrorist group's October 7, 2023 atrocities carried out by thousands of Hamas operatives along with those of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine when Israeli girls and women were raped, mutilated and murdered, and kibbutzim raided, their inhabitants killed, leaving 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilian, butchered, and another 250 taken hostage, the Palestinian public relations operation went into full overdrive. 

 

Heart-rending stories and photographs of gaunt, skeletal, vacant-eyed Palestinian children were distributed by Hamas to Western media who unhesitatingly took them up and gave them wide, front-page publication, setting the wider stage for a global popular revulsion of the nation defending its population from marauding masses of terrorists, transformed into the merciless aggressor, placing the Palestinian population which fully supported Hamas in Gaza and its categorical aspirations for the destruction of Israel, as the victims in an unjust war.

 

Mainstream Western media unquestioningly published the photographic 'evidence' of Palestinian children starving in Gaza, resulting from Israel's conflict with Palestinian terrorists. The very same terrorists known for installing themselves along with their weapons caches, rocket launchers, militia operations headquarters within the densely populated areas for the purpose of shielding themselves from Israeli responses, offering up the Palestinian civilian population in their stead. Those civilians who are wounded or killed as collateral damage in the conflict with Hamas become the useful propaganda fodder for Hamas.

 

And even knowing this to be the Hamas modus operandi, as despicable as it is, the resulting propaganda is published without verification or suspicion with respect to its source, in a free-for-all legacy media assault on Israel as the aggressor once again victimizing Palestinians. The international community, influenced by what they read and hear and see in those damning photographs turn against a nation desperate to defend itself from its implacable death-dealing enemies. The photographs of pathetic starving children in Gaza that fire up anger against Israel, bear examination.

 

The Free Press did investigate a dozen of those photographs of 'starving children' revealing that each of them "were already facing grave situations because of their health, irrespective of any third-party action". Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova pointed out that a photograph of an emaciated Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub alMatouq forced the New York Times to admit the child "had pre-existing health problems affecting his brain and his muscle development", when the falsity of Hamas-generated images of him as a typical starving child was revealed.

 

The Associated Press, CNN and other U.S. major news outlets published photographs of children portrayed as starving, when they were in actual fact, suffering from medical conditions ranging from cystic fibrosis to cerebral palsy, to genetic wasting conditions. This reflected a pattern of Western press publishing utterly false allegations on stories and photographs supplied to them by a terrorist group. And it is not that the corrupt practices of Hamas propaganda was unknown to these Western media enablers.

 

The Wall Street Journal had published an analysis of October 7's mastermind Yahya Sinwar's correspondence revealing his purpose in using Palestinian Gazans' suffering as a weapon against Israel. "He's shown a cold disregard for human life and made clear he believes Israel has more to lose from the war than Hamas", wrote two journalists for the Journal in analyzing his messages to negotiators and Hamas members. Sinwar, they wrote, also stated to an Italian interviewer: "We make the headlines only with blood ... No blood, no news".

 

The myth of Palestinians suffering under famine has captured coverage in the West, all the more so, through photographs of starving children. The inconvenient detail that the children portrayed suffer not from starvation but from chronic medical conditions is hardly of concern to Hamas, but it should be to the uncritical Western media that appear to favour Hamas and in contrast, disfavour Israel. That Hamas was the instigator of the conflict and deliberately sacrifices its own population of civilian Palestinians seems less newsworthy to the Western press than presenting reality. 

 

Samah Matar poses for a photo with her sons Yousef, 6, in her arms, and Amir, 4, who suffer from malnutrition and cerebral palsy, at a U.N.-run school in Gaza City, Saturday, July 26, 2025. In Gaza, malnutrition is often worsened by preexisting conditions and compounded by illnesses linked to inadequate health care and poor sanitation. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

The United Nations also clearly favours Hamas. Its refusal to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in distributing food aid to Palestinians has meant that hundreds of trucks loaded with food have been virtually abandoned by the UN, the food left to rot. Those trucks that did enter Gaza saw many of them commandeered by armed Hamas terrorists and taken to Hamas depots where they were unloaded and stored for the use of Hamas, not distributed to Palestinian civilians as they were meant to be. Yet Western media has yet to ask of Hamas why it has secured humanitarian aid in their own warehouses, off limits to Palestinians, while Hamas claims starvation stalks Gaza and kills its children.

"[NCRI addresses the issue of the falsely-imputing photographs alleging] multiple cases of potential journalistic malpractice by major Western media outlets in their portrayal of alleged famine in Gaza." 

"[NCRI] uncovered clear evidence that the depicted individuals had long-standing, confounding medical conditions such as cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury, or chronic illness [that were generally revealed in the original Arab-language sources of the images but omitted when republished in the West]."

Network Contagion Research Institute 

No aid has reached people in Gaza, a UN aid official says, two days after the Israeli government lifted an 11-week-old blockade. The Israeli military said five aid trucks entered Gaza on Monday and 93 on Tuesday, but supplies haven't been distributed, say local officials. Still from video

Jihadis Among Us

"The Israelites in Victoria [British Columbia] are a large and  highly respectable body."

"Many of them have resided in the city from the date of its earliest existence, and their conduct and bearing has invariably been such as to earn for them the good wishes and esteem of their fellow citizens of other persuasions."

Victoria Colonist newspaper editorial June, 1863

 

"The Jews have an ancient and dark history of bloodshed and breaking covenants and treaties."

"If Allah had willed, He could have taken vengeance upon them Himself. But He ordered armed struggle."

"Listen! He ordered armed struggle to test some of you by means of others."

Muslim hate preacher Younus Kathradra, Victoria, 2025

 

"We have seen a disturbing permissiveness toward these [Islamist-jihadist] groups in Canada."
"Pro-Hamas protesters shut down our streets with chants, threats and hate, unchecked, unchallenged, and increasingly normalized."

"The messages invoked age-old and violent antisemitic blood libels, falsely accusing Jews of murdering children and calling for revenge. These are not just hateful words, they are dangerous incitements."

"That the act of antisemitic vandalism was discovered the weekend of Tisha B’Av, a day that commemorates centuries of Jewish persecution, is no coincidence. It was a calculated act of hate, exploiting a sacred moment to send a vile message."

"We call on civic leaders, law enforcement and the broader public to treat this for what it is: a hate crime and a threat to community safety. This is a moment for solidarity. A moment for courage. And a moment for all Canadians to take a stand against hate, in all its forms, wherever it appears."

Nico Slobinsky, vice-president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs 

A  hateful message was written on an exterior pillar of ­Congregation Emanu-El, the synagogue in downtown Victoria. After documenting the ­graffiti, police worked with the city to have it removed. Photo credit: Solomon Siegel

 

Jews have enjoyed a long, reciprocal relationship with the capital city of British Columbia. In 1858 the city's Jewish community decided it was time to build a synagogue and the following year witnessed the emergence of the Victoria Benevolent Society, which laid a foundation stone for the synagogue in June of 1863, with a grand celebration and parade led by the St.Andrew's Society, the Germania Sing Verin choir, the French Benevolent Society, among other ethnic groups residing in the city.

 

That was then, almost two hundred years ago. Now, in Victoria marches and rallies take place, with a weekly "Free Palestine" protest taking place a the provincial legislative buildings, led for the most part by the Muslim Students Association of the University of Victoria. Joining the Muslim students is a contingent of aging white antisemites who find common cause with them, in assigning blame to Jews for the fallout of Palestinian terrorist atrocities against Israeli citizens, excusing acts of psychotic savagery as just due for the 'occupation' by Israel of ancestral Jewish land that Arab Palestinian claim as theirs.

 

The Muslim Students Association aligns itself with the crude and highly inflammable vitriolic incitements by Islamist-jihadi Younis Kathradra, on record calling for the annihilation of Jews and denouncing Canada as “evil and filthy” for its tolerance of homosexuality. He had been invited by the UVic Muslim Students Association to conduct a lecture last year, entitled The Importance of Connecting with the Muslim Community -- which was ultimately cancelled by the university itself.

 

Sheikh Younus Kathrada in a 2018 video. Photo by MEMRI.org

 

The weekend desecration of Congregation Emanu-El synagogue represents the latest incident in a series now commonplace in Canada since the Gaza War of nearly two years, instigated by the terrorist group Hamas's invasion of southern Israel targeting its farming communities, raping and mutilating, abducting Israeli children, girls and women, the elderly, foreign farm workers, and a number of IDF soldiers; altogether 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, leading to an invasion of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces for the distinct purpose of ferreting Hamas terrorists out from their presence among the civilian population.

 

From early Victoria in the 19th century a Jewish merchant was sent by Victoria to Ottawa to represent their interests the year B.C. entered Confederation in 1871; Henry Nathan becoming Canada's first Jewish member of Parliament. A vice-president of Congregation Emanu-El, Samuel D. Schultz became the first Jew appointed a judge in 1914's Canada. The first Jew elected to a legislature in Canada was Selim Franklin in 1859. Victoria stood as a beacon of racial and religious toleration; seen in the fact that among subscribers to the synagogue's construction fundraising drive in the 1860s, there were as many non-Jews as Jews.

 

 Still from video   Victoria News

 

Back then, although there was both official and social antisemitism in play in various parts of Canada, where Jews were not permitted to become members of social clubs, were restricted in their numbers applying to Canadian universities, and Jewish communities were forced to build their own hospitals when Jewish doctors were refused residency at municipal hospitals, no one might have foreseen a day when raging antisemitism would raise its ugly head to the extent that is now seen, with an influx of Muslims into Canada and 'activist' Muslim university students would erect their own barriers against Jewish faculty and students entering to study and to teach, with encampments and signage condemning Israel and threatening Jews.

 

The Palestine Youth Movement held a downtown rally from Yonge and Dundas Sts. to the Israeli Consulate on Tuesday, March 18, 2025, before shutting down the intersection to traffic. Photo by Caryma Sa'd /Special to the Toronto Sun

 

Not only is Congregation Emanu-El Canada's oldest synagogue, but like other synagogues elsewhere in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto that have been threatened, some firebombed, defaced, shot at, it like many others is a 'progressive' synagogue at a time when the progressive-left in Canada is allying itself with Muslim-Palestinian 'victimhood', finding due cause to condemn Israel as the aggressor in the turmoil that has resulted from Palestinian terrorism's sinister threats, violent savagery and the propaganda of Israel's 'genocide'.

 

The proud history and heritage of Jewish life in Canada has been besmirched even as it is being threatened by the infiltrated presence of foreign students at Canadian universities, of Muslim immigration, refugee intake, migrant refuge claims, to completely alter the social life, academic credentials, political orientation and values of justice and equality in Canada. That these same groups -- some of which like Samidoun -- that are considered terrorist entities in Canadian law are permitted to operate openly in Canada, damns the current government.

 

The reality is that these Muslim groups in their vehemence against Israel and their threats against Canadian Jewish life, also look a little further afield in their agenda against Western heritage and values; they threaten the democratic way of life, they openly express their contempt for Canadian verities and values, laws and heritage, as they continue to display hostile aggressive behaviours that challenge governments and policing agencies at every level, who fail to respond by upholding law and order. 

 

The Victoria Police Department released this photo of a man suspected in the vandalism of a synagogue on Aug. 2, 2025.  CTV News

  

"You cannot divorce the disgusting antisemitic graffiti found on a synagogue in Victoria, B.C. on Shabbat, from the Prime Minister's announcement last week. By declaring its intention to prematurely recognize a Palestinian state, the federal government has further emboldened the vitriolic minority that has been targeting Canada's Jewish community for almost two years."

"This is what happens when our leaders placate those who incite hate and sow division."

"Synagogues are defiled and Jewish Canadians are threatened."

B'nai Brith 

Hamas Propaganda

A Palestinian pays for goods at a street market in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

"It was all staged."

"There was food in the next room -- the hostages who escaped from tunnels told us this."

"The captors are not starving. Our people are."

"We do not deny the humanitarian need in Gaza. But we ask the world not to fall for Hamas's lies."

"Condemn Hamas and tell them: You want to move forward? Release the hostages."

"In the last week alone, we've brought in 30,000 tons of aid -- 30 tons by air yesterday alone. The UN has almost 800 trucks they could distribute -- and failed to do so."

"So a lot could have been done."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog 

 

"Why are German and international news agencies continuing to use his [photographer working for Turkey's state-operated Anadolu Agency] images when many are clearly biased or staged?"

German newspaper Bild

 

"[Be forewarned of] manipulation attempts through professionally produced press photography."

"All parties involved in this war -- including media and intelligence services -- are using the power of imagery like never before to shape public perception." 

German Journalists' Association

 

 

According to a special report produced by The Press Service of Israel, citing United Nations' own numbers, 85 percent of the aid entering the Gaza Strip by truck since May 19, has been stolen. Black market profiteers and inflation have resulted in much of the international aid taken by force ending up in Gaza markets, at mark-ups making them unaffordable for most Palestinians. The food and medical supplies meant to be distributed freely among Palestinian civilians have instead been forcefully diverted to become pricey goods unavailable to the very people the aid was meant to help. 

"Where is the photographer? Who is standing around him? What do the people depicted in the picture see? Do they see what we suspect, for example a food distribution? Or are they facing photographers?"

"The images also have an additional function. They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Many people don't even remember these pictures."

"Hamas is a master at staging images."

"I assume that many of these pictures with starving and sick children are simply staged or come from other contexts." 

Emeritus history professor and photography expert Gerhard Paul, University of Flensburg, Germany 

The Suddeutsche Zeitung recently published an expose on the use of staged imagery by Hamas to convince international opinion that Israel has embarked on a genocidal program to prevent food and medical aid from reaching Palestinians in Gaza, suffering under the Israeli Defense Forces' invasion to destroy the terrorist group's capacity to carry on its intentional destruction of Israel. Hamas, infamous for its strategy of installing themselves among the general population, for placing its weapons in schools and hospitals, placing its rocket staging areas in dense population areas, uses civilians for cover.

 

The Hamas propaganda machine rests its case to the international community on the numbers of Palestinian citizens it claims become victims of Israeli bombs; those very citizens of Gaza whom Hamas deliberately places in harm's way, counting on them as sacrificial lambs to the Hamas agenda portrayed as victims of Israel's ruthless bombing campaigns which could readily be halted should Hamas surrender to the forces that engage in stopping it from conducting further carnage in Israel among Israeli citizens.

 

President Herzog, in his press appearance held up the two photographs of Israeli hostages Eviatar David and Rom Breslavsky, emaciated on the verge of death through deliberate withholding of food. While Israel is expected by the international community to provide humanitarian aid to the very population in which the greater majority expressed support for Hamas, for its barbaric savagery during the October 7 invasion that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, Hamas gleefully publishes videos of its sadistic torture of Israeli hostages.

 

 

 

The international press treats these revelations of Palestinian terrorism and the results of their death-cult pledges to destroy Israel and kill all Jews as humdrum non-news, but the very country that is engaged in protecting its population from mass lethal psychopathy is damned and condemned for the condition in which Palestinian Gazans find themselves, while the terrorist group that governed Gaza and which uses its population as a living shield is described as 'resisting their oppressors'. 

 

The photographer whose work is being labelled as deceptive by Bild and Suddeutsche Zeitung regularly posts anti-Israel content on social media, while his photographs staged and otherwise, are published by the BBC and CNN along with other legacy mainstream media. Germany's press circles have revealed the manipulation of war photographs, condemned by The German Journalists' Association. 

 

As for the food appearing in the markets selling at prices inflated up to 300 percent, Palestinian sources within Gaza informed The Press Service of Israel that much of that food originated from international aid, including U.S. shipments for months on end. That food is stamped as humanitarian aid, visible to anyone within Gaza with the wherewithal to make that purchase. 

 

Al-Sahaba market in the Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025.  (photo credit: TPS-IL)

 

 

 

Slandering Israel Comes Easy

"Hundreds of aid trucks have entered Gaza with Israel's approval, but the supplies are standing idle, undelivered."

"The reason? The UN refuses to distribute the aid. Hamas and the UN prevents the aid to reach the civilians in Gaza."

"The world deserves to know the truth."

"But BBC, CNN, Daily Express and The New York Times spread a misleading story using a picture of a sick, disabled child to promote a narrative of mass starvation in Gaza -- playing into the hands of Hamas's propaganda war."

"Without proper disclosure. Without medical context. Without journalistic ethics." 

Israeli Foreign Ministry  

Humanitarian aid packages waiting to be picked up on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing on July 24, 2025. “The UN refuses to distribute the aid,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry says. Photo by  by Amir Levy/Getty Images

 British investigative journalist David Collier wrote an explanation that one of the children used as a shaming condemnation against Israel purportedly failing to ensure that sufficient humanitarian aid reaches the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, a child with the surname al-Matouq "suffers from cerebral palsy, has hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder", data extracted from a 2025 medical file.

 

A BBC documentary titled "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone" was discovered by Mr. Collier to have been narrated by the son of a senior Hamas official. That revelation led to embarrassment on the part of the British public broadcaster and a retraction of the documentary. The photograph of the emaciated child saw sensational use by international media testifying to the devastation brought by Israel's war in Gaza and the resulting aid crisis there.

 

Last Thursday, the New York Times digital story was entitled "Gazans are dying of starvation", over the image of the skeletal child. "A horrifying image encapsulating the maelstrom of human misery gripping Gaza" was how the Daily Express captioned the heart-rending photograph of Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub Al-Matouq.  

 

Unlike his brother standing by his side, Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq suffers from cerebral palsy.

 

And then there is the image of five-year-old Osama al-Rakab, yet another child whose photograph saw use as an illustration of the threat of child malnourishment resulting from Israel's 'blockade' of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. Al Jazeera  featured the little boy's skeletal torso throughout a number of Italian media outlets to extract maximum disgust from news readers, holding Israel responsible for the pitiable condition of the child.

 

Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), divulged that al-Rakab "suffers from a serious genetic illness unrelated to the war", and with his mother and brother had been transported out of Gaza to an airport in Israel destined for treatment abroad. "This is what a modern blood libel looks like: A sick child. A hijacked photo. A lie that spreads faster than truth", wrote the Israeli Foreign Ministry on its X account.

 

A third infant, 11-month-old Sila Barbakh was featured on Israel's official X account, who "isn't starving", but rather "suffers from a pre-existing chronic gastrointestinal illness, unrelated to the war". In none of these pathetic photos of children suffering from dread diseases were they captioned 'for illustrative purposes only', unrelated to Hamas's wildly successful public relations' campaign aimed at the gullible West.  

 

His name is Osama al-Raqab. He has cystic fibrosis, a serious genetic illness. He’s been in Italy receiving treatment since June 12. Israel enabled his medical transfer from Gaza.

 

The Times of London found it useful when featuring tiny Barbakh's suffering from starvation to expand y explaining that the baby weighted a mere "seven-and-a-half pounds". According to data published by the Hamas-operated Gaza Health Ministry, 56 Palestinians had died in July of starvation. About half the total number reputed to have died of starvation since the war began on October 7, 2023 when Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas stormed into southern Israel to launch its campaign of rape, pillage, torture and mass slaughter. 

 

Humanitarian supplies handover was shifted away from the United Nations in May, with an U.S.-backed, Israeli-supported group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), taking the initiative. Civilians in Gaza had then to travel into areas controlled by Israeli military to receive the supplies. That solved the issues involved in Hamas armed operatives taking control of aid-delivery trucks to have the goods they carried stuffed into Hamas warehouses, and withheld from the civilian population. Some of that aid ended up at open-air marketplaces selling for exorbitant prices. Most of it was sidelined for the exclusive use of Hamas operatives.

 

Today, the IDF invited dozens of international journalists to the Kerem Shalom crossing inside Gaza, to see for themselves. Israeli Foreign Ministry

 

Reportedly, GHF distributed close to 90 million meals to civilians while facing significant opposition from Hamas, which had attacked and murdered a dozen Palestinian employees of GHF who had been working with the group to help distribute the aid. According to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Hamas offered bounties to any of their followers who kill American contractors or any Palestinians assisting their endeavours in providing aid.

 

The United Nations has accused Israel of reportedly killing hundreds of Gazans seeking aid in what is  essentially an active war zone. Many more have died resulting from stampedes in the chaos of crowds of Palestinians vying among one another to receive aid. A week ago Israel announced its intention to once again commit to airdrops of humanitarian aid, alongside Arab nations, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Airdrops had been suspended in view of properties being destroyed and civilians being hit by the airdrops.

 

People carrying aid parcels from the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) walk along the Salah al-Din road near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip (Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images)

 

The New York Times claimed that the "Israeli military never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations, the biggest supplier of emergency assistance to Gaza for most of the war". In response, the Israel Defense Forces released a video showing Hamas militants with rifles "looting an aid truck", while civilians gathered about.  These same images were shared by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian-American academic, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. Showing Hamas operatives stealing aid during an earlier ceasefire.

 

"Right here before your eyes! But according to NGOs & media, there's still 'no evidence' of theft", charged Alkhatib who has been a vocal critic of Hamas and the Netanyahu government, both. Alkhatib shared a video in another post, showing Hamas police officers who stripped, arrested and beat Palestinians who had gone out to the GHF aid distribution site, and paid the consequences, with the aid they had gathered taken from them, for their pains. 

 

 A truck loaded with food on the Israeli side of the border crossing heads back into Gaza. However, the food is sitting for days or weeks before it can be distributed. The U.N. and aid groups say they face a host of problems that include a shortage of trucks and fuel due to the war, as well as criminal gangs that are looting the supplies.    Maya Levin for NPR

Until Justice is Done

"The report presents the truth as it is -- shocking painful, but vital and necessary." 

"On behalf of all those who were harmed, we are committed to continuing to fight until their cry is heard everywhere and until justice is done." 

"There was an expectation that women around the world would understand and support us, like in other conflicts. The feeling of their backs turned on us was painful."

"As Israeli women, we need to scream for those who cannot anymore and bring them justice."

Israeli First Lady Michal Herzog

 

"We say this [that sexual violence in conflict is systematic rather than random] in a clear voice: sexual violence in conflict is a weapon. It is not random, it is not directed only at the individual and it is not done without direction from above."

"It is time for the international community to treat this phenomenon as such."

Professor Ruth Helperin-Kadri 

The authors of the Dinah Project's report on sexual violence on and since October 7 are pictured with First Lady Michal Herzog (center) at the President's Residence, Jerusalem, July 8, 2025. (Itzik Biran)

 

On Tuesday a legal report was presented to the wife of Israel's president.  That ground-breaking report presents as the first comprehensive framework to enable the prosecution of Hamas and other Palestinian  terrorists for their systematic pre-planned use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, as seen by the agonized savagery on display during the October 7, 2023 invasion by Palestinian terrorists into southern Israel, where thousands of terrorists led by the Hamas ruling group committed mass rape, sadistic torture and massive bloodshed, taking the lives of 1,200 Israeli children, women, the elderly and foreign farm workers, along with a smaller number of Israeli soldiers.

 

The report in its 84 pages -- written by professor Ruth Halperin-Kadri, retired district judge Nava Ben-Or, and Col. (res) Attorney Sharon Zaggi Pinhas, former chief military prosecutor of the Israel Defense Forces -- is the most extensive legal and factual documentation at this point, of sexual crimes committed during the assault on Israeli border communities adjacent Gaza. The report is part of "The Dina Project", analyzing dozens of sources, establishing clear patterns of systematic sexual violence.

 

Outlined are clear and consistent patterns of sexual violence committed by Palestinian terrorists both at murder scenes and upon Israeli hostages in captivity. Gang rape, public humiliation, forced nudity genital abuse and direct shooting of intimate body parts -- all are documented. Accounts from abductees describing repeated sexual assaults, threats of 'forced marriage', and attempts to erase sexual identity are accounted for, including violent sexual attacks perpetrated on men.  

 

Memorials at the Nova music festival site in May 2024.  Leo Correa / AP

 

 Investigators discovered recurring descriptions of half-naked female bodies some of whom had been tied up to buildings and trees. Reports from personnel identifying casualties from military bases were also included. The unequivocal conclusion of the authors was that Hamas made use of sexual violence representing an integral portion of an overall plan of terror, collective humiliation and dehumanization of Israeli society. During interrogations, several Palestinian terrorist captured by Israel, admitted having raped and sexually abused women.

 

Testimony from Ilana Gritzewsky who survived 55 days of captivity in Gaza was included in the presentation. She spoke of her experience of sexual abuse: "On October 7, I was in my house, in Kibbutz Nir Oz, with my partner, Matan (Zangauker). And suddenly -- noise. Explosions, Screams. Then a door was broken open. We were kidnapped." 

 

Security forces at the Nova music festival site in Kibbutz Re'im, Israel, on Oct. 12, 2023.  Leon Neal / Getty Images file 

"When I woke up, I was half-naked. Surrounded by terrorists. They beat me, touched me. I didn't know what happened to my body in those lost minutes. But my soul already knew: nothing would be the same."

"I was released after 55 days. But I'm not really free. Because true freedom only exists when no one has to go through what I went through."

"Almost two years later, there are those who still ask if this really happened. I’m here to tell you that it did and it’s still going on."

"My Matan is still there. I don’t know what they’re doing to him, but I know what they did to me. I wake up every morning with the fear that he is experiencing what I did."

Ilana Geritzewsky  

"Sexual crimes during war are — forgive me — a ‘perfect crime."

"[Amid the chaos of war], perpetrators can rely on the silence of their victims, either because they murder them, which was the case for most of the victims who were assaulted on October 7, or for the survivors. There is so much trauma and shame unique to the crime that they often won’t talk about it."

IDF Col.(ret) Attorney Sharon Zagi-Pinhas