“Although Zionists make it appear complicated, Palestine is a simple issue of occupation and anti-colonial resistance,” wrote Anthony Issa in Volume 45, Issue 11 of Concordia University’s student newspaper, The Link.

“Your definitive Palestine Media Toolkit,” published on March 18, 2025 as an opinion piece, was not written by a current student. Anthony Issa is a media analyst for Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), an anti-Israel pressure group, and he proclaimed in the column that he has “been monitoring the genocide in Gaza and [has] witnessed the alarming disregard for Palestinian lives in Canadian journalism.”

Issa categorized the different “common journalistic breaches” in media reporting covering anything related to Palestine, from the “exclusion of Palestinian voices,” to the use of “impartiality and passive voice,” language bias in “the use of the term ‘terrorist,’” the “censorship of key information,” and the avoidance of “the ‘G’ word,” genocide.

Issa took issue with a variety of items ranging from the “selective application of the word ‘terrorist’” – that Palestinian groups rather than Israeli civilians in Judea & Samaria (“West Bank”) are referred to as such – as well as to references of Gaza and its health ministry as “Hamas-run” to “defame [it] as unreliable.”

Issa’s column also recommended that readers evaluate news reports, and ask themselves whether “the article perpetuate(s) anti-Palestinian racism,” and whether reports include “biases” such as a failure “to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine” and condemnation of Palestinians and their allies for antisemitism because they are “critical of Zionism and/or Israeli colonialism.”

At the centre of his opinion column is an understanding of media as a tool for advocacy and narrative, rather than for reporting of facts, context and figures — telling the audience what to think, rather than giving them the information to formulate their own thoughts. The context Issa demanded from “unbiased” reporting on “Palestine” is in essence a demand for the media to conform to the narrative that “Israel is an occupying power (…) Palestinians are stateless and occupied.”

This column came out of what CJPME described as a partnership between the anti-Israel pressure group and The Link, which is part of CJPME’s “Media Accountability Project (MAP).” CJPME described the toolkit as a “critical resource for young journalists, outlining (…) the exclusion of Palestinian voices.”

The “young journalists” of The Link have been doing much of what Issa recommended in the toolkit even prior to its publication.

A March 12 article by India Das-Brown entitled: “In Gaza, ‘We will cultivate it with seeds of love and irrigate it with blood and tears,’” exhibited this well. Right at the opening, Das-Brown described Hamas’ massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023 as when “the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise attack on the occupied territory known as Israel.” Das-Brown repeatedly used the “G-word” throughout the article, as well.

An earlier article by Youmna El Halabi entitled: “Faith and Palestinian resistance,” published on January 28, conformed with Issa’s recommendation that Palestinian representation is neither silenced, nor excluded. This included a Palestinian perspective on “Palestinian resistance,” particularly “armed resistance,” which an interviewee described as “is not an act of aggression but a necessary defence of the oppressed.”

An older case is Farahdiba Hadeylar’s January 30, 2024 article entitled: “Reframing Genocide,” which proclaimed that “at every opportunity, the Israeli narrative, the Israeli evidence, the Israeli victim is viewed as trusted, factual and believed. However, the same sentiment is not extended to Palestinians.” Citing CJPME, Hadeylar took issue with Canadian coverage of the Israel-Hamas war as “predominantly sympathetic” to Israel, criticizing the “decontextualization” of events surrounding the war and the platforming of “pro-Zionist coverage.”

HonestReporting Canada has exposed The Link and its content for a significant amount of time now. It may not come as a shock to readers that the outlet — whose investment policy has the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and “investments in Israeli-based companies” listed primarily in its entities it “will avoid directly investing in” list — has partnered with an anti-Israel group like CJPME.

But The Link is student funded. According to financial statements from 2023, The Link almost entirely receives its funding from student fees. That year, total revenue was $160,407, with $131,941 of it coming directly from student fees and $14,434 of it from advertising. The student fees are from fee-levy groups fees, student-elected through a referendum process, and funds are from “a per-credit Concordia student fee levy.” A student can opt out of the fees at the beginning of each semester, but must do so manually to receive a refund.

The Link has aligned itself with ‘journalism’ wherein the primary goal is advocacy, not education. This is a choice it has made, and a stance it openly and shamelessly takes. The supposed ‘toolkit’ provided by Anthony Issa through The Link’s partnership with CJPME frames the humanization and legitimization of Israel and its citizens as bias, censorship, distraction from the “structural systems of oppression at play.” This “simple issue” demands, according to Issa, not challenging biases, but replacing them with a singular narrative.

Given the The Link’s ideologically-driven stance on Israel’s legitimacy and the Palestinian cause — as conveyed in its editorial direction, investment stances, and now its partnership with CJPME — a question remains for students: if journalism is meant to inform rather than instruct, how should a media outlet that has already decided the answer be perceived?

HonestReporting Canada has filed an official complaint with Concordia University and The Link about the publication’s continued and egregious misuse of student funds to further their extreme anti-Israel agenda.