HRC previously took issue with Globe and Mail reporter Mark Mackinonn’s repeated failure to acknowledge Israel’s claims to Judea and Samaria and how Israel disputes that its settlements are described as being “illegal” citing international law, UN resolutions, its pressing security concerns, along with its biblical, historical and political connections to the land.
With regret, the Globe and Mail and its reporter have failed to report on this matter accurately and this error was restated again in the following Tweet that Mr. Mackinnon wrote on May 17:
Israel has a new government – one that’s signalling it intends to push ahead soon with the planned annexation of parts of the Palestinian Territories https://t.co/FZnlsodpoS
— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) May 17, 2020
Irrespective of whether one supports Israel’s plans to apply sovereignty to 30% of the “west bank” and the Jordan Valley (of which, there is no monolithic view in Israel and abroad) it is completely offside for Mr. Mackinnon and implicitly for the Globe and Mail, to claim that these areas are “parts of the Palestinian territories”. As is commonly known, the status of the territories is disputed and should be treated as such. Furthermore, the Palestinians have never been sovereign rulers over this land (Jordan was the previous administer only following the War of Independence in 1948. Prior to that it was under British Mandate Palestine, so how can Mr. Mackinnon claim that Israel intends to annex “parts of the Palestinian Territories”?
Samaria and Judea (the “West Bank”) are not Palestinian lands or Palestinian Territory. At most, their status is disputed and even the PA agreed via the Oslo accords that it is to be negotiated as a final status issue. They were under Jordanian, British and Ottoman control previously, but they were never part of a Palestinian state, and they are not part of a Palestinian state now.
In sharp contrast, the Wall Street Journal made a similar error and on May 16 issued the following correction:
By way of his tweet sent to his 56,100 followers and his previous reporting, Mark Mackinnon is taking sides on this territorial dispute and has fundamentally denied Israel’s claims.
This is a serious problem. HRC had hoped that our past communication to the Globe on this matter would serve to sensitize their staff and to prevent this from happening again, but this situation is regretfully continuing. This doesn’t speak well to the Globe’s neutrality on the issue and its pursuit of objectivity.
