In mid-December, a number of Canadian news outlets reported that twin sisters from the Gaza Strip, 26-year-olds Sally and Dalia Ghazi Ibaid, were both killed by an Israeli airstrike in the territory.
An article from CityNews reported that they died “in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza,” a message repeated by CTV News Kitchener. Other news outlets did not make that claim themselves, but attributed it to the University of Waterloo, including the Globe and Mail, Canadian Press, Toronto Star, Waterloo Record, CBC News and CBC Morning Edition Kitchener-Waterloo.
For its part, the University’s December 17 bereavement notice/press release announced as fact that the sisters’ “lives were taken in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza last Thursday, December 5, 2024.” The sisters were scheduled to begin a PhD program at the school.
No further context or background was provided by the university in terms of where the sisters were in Gaza and under what circumstances they were killed. However, readers would be given the impression that the University of Waterloo was surely confident in the statement it had made based on supposed evidence.
However, despite the university making that announcement, it is unclear what evidence, if any, there is to prove that an Israeli airstrike was responsible for killing the sisters.
In fact, in a January 2 email sent to HonestReporting Canada, Rebecca Elming, the director of Media Relations and Issues Management, confirmed that the school did not actually have any direct proof that the young women tragically died in an Israeli airstrike, but was basing their statement on mere allegations, writing that “the family shared this information with the girls’ supervisor.”
Importantly, the school could not provide pertinent details about the date/time/location and circumstances of the incident in question. In the fog of war, there’s every possibility that the sisters were tragically killed in a Hamas attack, a boobytrap that went off, secondary explosions caused by terrorist weaponry, unexploded ordinance that exploded, or yes, an Israeli airstrike against terror targets that perhaps the girls were situated close to, but there has been no evidence to draw conclusions one way or the other and no context provided.
While the death of any young and promising person is a lamentable tragedy, that does not open the door for a highly-respected and publicly-funded university to present unverified accusations as if they were proven facts, nor for some news media outlets to do likewise.
To its credit, CBC News, in its report on the story, attributed the claim to the University of Waterloo, and told readers that “while the University of Waterloo says it was an Israeli airstrike, CBC has yet to confirm that and is awaiting a response from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).”
While this one incident may seem isolated, it is part of a long string of examples where unproven allegations against Israel were widely reported as fact, creating a situation where Israel was demonized for an action it did not carry out.
Perhaps most famously, just days after Hamas’ massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023, an explosion hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. News media outlets around the world, including in Canada, reported that an Israeli missile struck the hospital, killing upwards of 500 people. The response was as quick as it was ferocious, leading to widespread condemnation, including from Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, who said “bombing a hospital is an unthinkable act.”
While it soon became clear that the culprit behind the attack was not Israel, but an errant rocket from Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists, the damage was already done; Israel was demonized and framed as a merciless murderer at worst, and a careless marauder at best.
While circumstances differ, the story of the two Ghazi Ibaid sisters similarly illustrates the need for all disseminators of claims in wartime, be they news media outlets or university administrations, to definitively verify allegations before they are publicized, particularly given that Israel is frequently accused of actions for which it never took.
Despite this absence of evidence, far too many journalists simply accepted the University’s statement as true, without bothering to verify it at all. Worse yet, the University itself failed to correct its own statement despite knowing that it has no evidence to support its own claims.
