Meshwar Media, an Arabic-language newspaper based in Mississauga, Ontario, has previously spread antisemitic cartoons claiming Jews own the news media, has denied the Holocaust and has glorified Palestinian terrorism.
Its editor, Nazih Khatatba, who is listed as working as a real estate agent with Super Sold Realty, has claimed “there are no civilians” in Israel (and thus are legitimate targets for murder) and has spread the hateful lie that Israeli Jews consume Palestinian blood.
In recent weeks, the newspaper has delved deep into hateful anti-Israel propaganda.
In its March 31 edition, the newspaper published an article by Palestinian poet Hamza Bishtawi, who praised Palestinian terrorism against Israel, writing that the “youth of Al-Quds [Jerusalem] (have come) to carry out stone-throwing, stabbing, and running over operations against the occupation soldiers, holding in their hearts the words of the martyr Basel al-Araj who said: You don’t just have to take revenge, you have to take revenge well.”
The “martyr” Basel Al-Araj referred to by Bishtawi was a 31-year-old Palestinian who was killed during a 2017 gunfight with Israeli troops, who came to his home to arrest him for planning attacks against Israelis.
On April 30, the newspaper published an article from Mississauga resident Samir Jabbour who nonchalantly looked forward to the day when “we can talk about the approaching end of the Zionist project.”
While Hamas is a banned terrorist organization in Canada, that has apparently not stopped Meshwar Media from glorifying it in its pages.
In the same edition, Meshwar reprinted an article that had been originally published in the Palestinian newspaper Al-Resala two weeks earlier. In the article, author Ibrahim Al-Madhoun praised the Hamas terrorist group, saying that “the weapon of which Hamas speaks is not just a gun but a deep-rooted spirit of resistance, a solid national identity, and an accumulated legacy of struggle.” Al-Madhoun continued by saying that any suggestions Hamas should disarm “smacks of ignorance or treachery.”
HRC has independently verified these translations from the original Arabic.
The editor Nazih Khatatba, for his part, has not been satisfied to allow the hateful content to remain exclusively in the pages of his newspaper. He has continued to take to social media both to engage in indefensible Holocaust distortion and minimization, and spouting what is in our view an overt attempt to demonize all Jews.
In a May 2 post on his Facebook page, Khatatba compared Israel’s war against Hamas with the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, and wrote in an April 24 post that “their descendants (of the Holocaust) are committing the most heinous crimes and the Holocaust in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Not only is there zero factual basis for the comparison, Khatatba’s comments are an attempt to weaponize Jewish history and turn it into a cudgel to be wielded against the Jewish State and attack its right to defend itself.
Meshwar Media has a long history of praising Palestinian terrorism and of demonizing Jews, yet it continues to operate seemingly without any inhibitions or limitations whatsoever. Despite its deeply hateful rhetoric, the paper continues to operate and to disseminate its bile to Canadians.
