Help Sandy and Nora raise money for a reporter!

When I read the news in this country, sometimes it feels like I’m going crazy. I have heard direct, intimate accounts of what is happening in Gaza and in Lebanon. I have heard about the widespread and purposeful denial within Israel and the celebrations each time there are civilian casualties. We have seen video of Israelis attacking aid trucks. And yet, we’re apparently not allowed to write about these things without first genuflecting at the altar of Israel’s right to do these things.

I use the word genuflecting on purpose. It feels like a religious requirement that we do without thinking. The way “Israel has a right to defend itself” rolls off the tongue of politicians and pundits alike, as if this is self-evident. As if Israel’s genocide in Gaza is in the defense of any self.

When the Rebel News (the fucking Rebel News!) shared a video of Itamar Ben-Gvir hanged in effigy at a Montreal protest, Canadian media jumped on the story as if it were a sign of antisemitism, rather than focusing on who Ben-Gvir is and why hanging a man who wears a noose on his lapel in effigy makes a lot of sense. Cabinet ministers insisted that all Jews are represented by this disgusting pedophile. Disgraced podcaster Jesse Brown compared this act of protest to the Nazis’ persecution of Albert Einstein (Einstein, a socialist, would have probably made Jesse cry for that one). Montreal police are investigating whether the trio of effigies, which included noted fascist Donald Trump, constituted a hate crime.

Recently, the CBC slapped a correction onto an article about Benjamin Netanyahu that said, “This story has been corrected to say 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. The count by the Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and members of Palestinian armed groups. May 25, 2026 9:22 AM EDT.” CBC doesn’t note what the correction was correcting, if they had used a number that was too high or too low. But this note that the Gazan ministry of health doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians is the exact thing that we are hoping to investigate — why did CBC add that?

I had assumed that the correction was related to the number printed, and if so, neither of these two “corrections” are actually corrections. First, CBC has run Reuters copy that placed the death toll in Gaza at 75,000 back in February. Second, CBC has never seemingly reported deaths from October 7 2023 in the same way. According to Israel, the death toll of Israeli civilians alone from October 7, 2023 and since is “more than 800.” But if you look up “Oct. 7” on CBC, you will find hundreds of articles that say 1200 people were killed on October 7, 2023 and not one of them mentions combatant deaths (to say nothing, of course, of how many may have been killed by Israel.

I also found one instance where a clarification was made to an article three weeks after it was published, to add that protesters at the annual CANSEC conference in 2025 were protesting Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The original article seemed to be a sole-sourced article from the police that forgot to mention why there would be protesters at an arms conference. But the addition made me scratch my head: what was the narrative there, adding this information so long after the initial publication? Who does it serve for protests against the war industry, when Canada’s arms showing up in Sudan, off the shore of Venezuela, Yemen and, yes, Gaza, for anti-war activism to be shoved into a single conflict?

It serves the people who want to criminalize dissent and anti-war criticism. Those of us who have opposed arming Ukraine to the teeth rather than finding a diplomatic solution to Russia’s aggression. Those of us who have opposed Canadian arms being sent to the United States with no accountability for where those arms are going. Those of us who know better than to support sending young people to their deaths just so that global war profiteers can profiteer even harder.

But what if you could use a Get Out of Jail Free card? Call these protests antisemitism? Claim that those of us who are committed antifascists are the real antisemites, Jews included. It’s the silver bullet and the henchmen making it happen are groups like Honest Reporting Canada, who harasses editors out of hiring journalists who have the temerity to report the truth.

It turns out that Honest Reporting was lobbying CBC to have the “correction” added to the story about Palestinian casualties. They declared the correction a “success” on their website. They write, “We thank CBC News for taking immediate, corrective action regarding this matter.”

Honest Reporting’s sole reason to exist is to push Israeli propaganda and harass journalists. That’s it. The majority of their so-called Action Alerts target CBC/Radio0-Canada employees. And yet, our public broadcaster and their boss seems happy to bend over backwards to them. Why?

Sandy and I are raising money to investigate these attacks, this pressure, this bias in the press. We will build on the great work already done by Just Peace Advocates and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. Our goal is $12,000 to hire two people to dig into this, and we will publish the work to not only expose Israel’s quiet network of harassment, but to also document it so that it can never be forgotten.

If you have a few dollars, consider kicking into the fund: https://chuffed.org/project/182377-expose-the-harassment-campaign-against-canadian-journalists-over-coverage-of-war-crimes-in-gaza

And, as we have raised a good deal of our goal already, we’re also posting for the position(s). If you’re a journalist who wants to apply to work with us, please find out how to apply here: https://sandyandnora.com/a-political-podcast-just-listen/work-with-us/