What exactly is the ‘new normal’ in campus media reporting on the Hamas-Israel war?

Is it — as Kathan Kapoor and Jaidyn Gonsalves highlighted on October 29, 2024 in “Pro-Palestinian protesters father to remember” in Carleton University’s newspaper The Charlatan — the uncritical platforming of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which openly celebrated Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023? Or perhaps the Western lens on the Hamas-Israel conflict, empowering pro-Palestinians to inappropriately parallel the plight of Indigenous peoples in Canada to the “Palestinian struggle,” dismissing Jewish peoplehood as “colonial violence”?

Or is it the whitewashing of the role of Islamic terrorism in perpetuating the conflict and Israel’s current wars, as The Varsity’s November 4, 2024 publication entitled: “U of T students hold tri-campus walkouts in protest of ongoing violence in Gaza,” establishes? Authors Genevieve Sugrue, Urooba Shaikh and Razia Saleh followed three pro-Palestinian marches in their profile, painting this series of events as one between University of Toronto-Mississauga and its anti-Israel activists, completely forgoing any Jewish or Israeli counter-perspective of tensions on-campus.

Students across North American university campuses clearly have strong feelings about this current war and the conflict more broadly, but interestingly, cannot seem to convey these feelings without veering into historical erasure and antisemitic narratives that are far from truthful.

A recent HonestReporting Canada alert reported on a Charlatan article that discussed the suppression of pro-Palestinian perspectives on campus, instigated by the temporary prohibition of an exhibition, “Silenced by Scholasticide.”

This exhibition was spotlighted in an article by Sadeen Mohsen on November 4, 2024. Once again, president of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Carleton, Nir Hagigi, described how the exhibition aimed “to humanize Palestinian scholars, academics and students to the Carleton administration and student community.” Untold is how IJV is an organization that advocates for the “complete isolation and demonization of Israel” and has defended Hamas terrorism against Israelis – hardly a mainstream Jewish view, to put it lightly.

More alarming was the featured interview with Amira Elghawaby, who “commended Carleton students for fighting to keep the exhibition alive amid administrative censorship concerns.” Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combatting Islamophobia, has been publicly dismissive of the experiences and vulnerabilities of Jewish students on Canadian university campuses.

A perfect example of actual censorship is illustrated by Daman Singh on November 1, 2024 in The Gauntlet, about how “Pro-Palestinian groups protest[ed] Israeli speaker Eylon Levy at the University of Calgary” when Levy was hosted on campus by local pro-Israel groups The Muslim Student’s Association provided a statement to the newspaper that ironically claimed: “We fully believe in free speech — all we say is that somebody who has promoted genocide constantly shouldn’t feel welcome on campus.”

The accusation of “genocide” is constantly lobbed at Israel and its supporters, and the irony of pro-Palestinian groups suppressing Jewish and Israeli students, events, and groups while simultaneously crying wolf is tragicomic.

Mosca’s coverage of “Overwriting Palestine” included no mention of Hamas & multiple vague references to “October 7, 2023,” characterization of the Israel-Hamas war as the “killing of…43,000 Palestinians, a majority of which are children, women and elderly,” unsurprisingly relying on Hamas’ unverified casualty numbers that do not distinguish between civilian and terrorist.

Like the aforementioned Varsity article, Sharon Chan’s article on how “U of T community members reflect on Israel’s ongoing violence in Lebanon” also left out important context. The November 4, 2024 “news” article conveniently omitted Hezbollah’s nature as a Islamic Republic-back terrorist organization, detailing the injuries, casualties and displacements on the Lebanese side while forgoing Israel’s side.

The “Students’ reactions and response” section similarly omitted any responses from affected Israeli and Jewish students, but quoted a statement from the student union accusing “the University of Toronto, [of remaining] willing collaborators in the actions of a settler colonial apartheid state.”

It wouldn’t be a campus digest without an opinion piece on how “Academic boycotts of Israel are an ethical imperative,” unsurprisingly published in The Varsity, too.

Yousef Ramahi’s piece, published the same day as Chan’s, perpetuated unfounded and dangerous accusations of “genocide” and “scholasticide,” including the claim that Israeli universities are engaged in the “systemic obliteration of education.” It failed to address the broader role of Palestinian terrorism in perpetuating the conflict. By advocating for boycotts, Ramahi weaponized academia to advance a one-sided agenda rather than upholding its role in bridging divides and promoting truth.

Speaking of weaponization, Siobhan Carroll and Mariam El Sheikh’s article from October 7, 2024 in the McGill Daily about “How McGill Weaponized Public Health Against Student Protesters” seeks to disingenuously flip reality on its head.

These “public health scholars” prioritizes inflammatory rhetoric over substantial analysis, using loaded rhetoric like “ongoing genocide in Palestine,” dismissing safety concerns — such as fire hazards and drug use — about the encampment. This attempt to link McGill’s actions to Gaza today oversimplifies complex issues, conflating it with the student protests: “If McGill cared about public health, it would address this reality and stop funding industries profiting from it,” Carroll and El Sheikh asserted.

This inappropriate self-victimization is common in reports of pro-Palestinian perspectives. Take, for example, “news” report “‘Surveilled & Silenced’ report reveals systemic anti-Palestinian racism at York” by Stacey Kuznetsova on October 30, 2024 in The Excalibur.

Kuznetsova wrongly reported that Israel’s retaliation against Hamas is “what the United Nations Human Rights Council calls a genocidal attack on the Palestinian people.”

The article relied on the “Surveilled & Silenced Report” as definitive, entirely overlooking the experiences of Jewish or pro-Israel students. Instead of presenting a nuanced picture, Kuznetsova simply regurgitated the idea that Palestinian solidarity is systematically repressed; for example, the report alleged that York has employed police to “discipline Palestinian supporters,” framing actions like dismantling encampments as targeted repression.

By amplifying these claims without scrutiny, ignoring the potential safety and legal concerns such actions may address, Kuznetsova isn’t reporting “news,” rather reporting the claims as fact.

So, what exactly is the “new normal”? It appears to be an academic landscape where claims of repression are weaponized to absolve pro-Palestinian activists of accountability — where selective outrage dominates logic and nuance, leaving little room for the voices of Jewish and pro-Israel students in favour of narratives steeped in bias and historical erasure.