As the school year inches along, student-run newspapers continue to churn out articles on events surrounding the Israel-Hamas war. Yet recent articles arguably demonstrate how universities have become a place where students are taught what, rather than how, to think.

Shani Laskin’s September 17 article in The Tribune entitled: “Protestors and Concordia University security clash at SPHR rally” presented a one-sided picture of the recent rally led by McGill and Concordia’s Student for Palestine’s Honour and Resistance (SPHR) and Palestinian Youth Movement. She presented it as “engaged in call-and-response chants to condemn Israel’s siege on Gaza,” but it’s unclear whether this is the stated goal of the protest or her perception of it.

Laskin quoted the SPHR McGill representative’s call for a “student intifada” without explaining what this means — a reference to uprisings that involved civil disobedience and terror against Israelis. She also quoted Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a group that has defended Hamas terrorism against Israel. Laskin failed to quote other Jewish groups at McGill.

Similarly, a September 17 article in The Queen’s University Journal by News Editor Meghrig Milkon, which quoted a Palestinian student’s speech about being “someone that comes from a long line of resistance and existence.” Rather than quoting or elucidating perspectives of any ‘other side,’ Milkon merely demonstrated the frustration of drivers being blocked on Union Street by quoting one that shouted, “Go home,” who was “met with calls for ‘shame’ from demonstrators.”

In another article in Queen’s Journal one week later, Milkon along with Lauren Nicol reported on a protest: “All out for Gaza & All eyes on Lebanon,” at City Hall calling for Queen’s and the city of Kingston to divest from “Israeli Apartheid.”

Nicol and Milkon contextualized their report by detailing the pager operation against Hezbollah terrorists on September 17 —without noting Hezbollah’s ongoing attacks on Israel for the last year, unprovoked without this context, the SPHR’s spokesperson’s quoted speech about their grief and rage “for the crimes committed in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon” seems to be justified, perhaps endorsed by the writers.

Vama Saini’s September 19 article in The Gauntlet entitled: “Calgary Student Movement rallies for university accountability and divestment from Israeli-linked investments,” exhibited this journalistic failure as well. Saini seemingly endorsed efforts by the University of Calgary Student Movement to protest against the university’s supposed ties “to companies supporting the occupation of Palestine.” Offering no counter perspective, Saini quoted the groups’ statement about the so-called genocide in Gaza and the university’s “complicity in the occupation of Palestine.”

Rather than seeking interviewees with different perspectives, Nicol and Milkon’s Journal report referenced two instances where community members respond to the protest — one remarking that, “This isn’t resistance” — and offers no commentary. They conclude by extensively quoting the Graduate TA and Teaching Fellows union president, Jake Morrow, on how the union is made up of “workers at the University who are forced to pay money that is then used to kill their families” and that the University is “allowing this genocide to take place.”

It’s repetitive, but it must be stated: genocide is not happening in Gaza — South Africa has yet to put together the evidence proving otherwise — and neither Queen’s nor the University of Calgary are playing a part, either.

But it doesn’t start nor end with university protests and their demands.

Simon Fraser University’s The Peak published an article on September 20: “‘G’ is for Genocide: Google and Amazon’s Project Nimbus,” wherein Sofia Chassomeris feebly attempted to make the case that boycotting Israeli products and technology prevents them from “enabling colonial violence,” citing previous efforts with South African apartheid as proof.

Beyond the preposterously flimsy attempt to conflate apartheid South Africa to Israel, Chassomeris referred to Jalal Abukhater’s Al Jazeera — owned by Qatar, the very same country that funds and protects Hamas — article about how Palestinians are surveilled in Israel and the “West Bank” & Gaza, likening the latter two “to a lab where Israel can trial spyware and surveillance technology.”

One glance at Jalal Abukhater’s X account shines a light on blood libel galore (with a hint of Holocaust inversion) and denial of the Jewish connection to the land of Israel. In early 2023, it was reported that Abukhater published a problematic article in The Guardian after writing another article glorifying the January 2023 Palestinian terrorist attacks on a synagogue in Jerusalem as an “act of defiance.”

Since, according to Chassomeris, it’s hard “to untangle our lives from companies like Google” (read: it’s hard to actually boycott Israel despite incessantly claiming to), one wonders what prevented Chassomeris from utilizing the search engine to look into Abukhater beyond his Al Jazeera articles demonizing Israel for using surveillance to prevent terrorism.

The Varsity, University of Toronto’s student newspaper, published an article on September 23 by Selia Sanchez reporting on a recent conference held on campus by the school’s Muslim Students’ Association (MSA). In response to a rally held by Occupy for Palestine (O4P) on campus days before, the MSA president made a speech about Islamophobia that was supposedly espoused by counter-protestors.

The MSA and O4P called on the University of Toronto “to ban the presence of hate groups on campus.” This is coming from O4P, which led the encampment at the university a few months back with its messages glorifying “intifada” and “martyrs,” claiming “Zionists are racists/terrorists,” demanding Israelis “Leave Falasteen alone and go back to Europe” and more. There is no doubt that any form of bigotry should have no place on university campuses, but it begs the question: why was this being reported by Sanchez without any consideration of O4P’s recent history on campus?

When student newspapers are unable to report on anything related to Israel without endorsing anti-Israel perspectives as the singular perspective, it demonstrates how the perceived popular opinion is often made popular because it’s the only one given a proper voice. Diversity of thought and perspective is meant to be encouraged in university spaces — not double standards and the demonization of a group of people and a singular country.