Legendary US Marine Jeff Cooper once famously said that “It is true that a victim who fights back may suffer for it, but one who does not almost certainly will suffer for it.”

Israel, the victim of Hamas’ genocidal October 7 invasion, massacre, and hostage-taking – would suffer grievously if it did not fight back and defend itself. Yet, time and again, Yasmine Hassan consistently neglects to mention this vital point.

Yasmine Hassan is a producer for CBC News whose work previously was published by Al Jazeera, a propaganda mouthpiece of the Qatari regime. She recently wrote four articles in five days focusing on the suffering in Gaza. While she does briefly acknowledge the Israeli point of view, her articles are skewed in her sympathetic portrayal of Palestinians in Gaza. Additionally, she routinely erases Israel’s raison d’etre for fighting: defending themselves against Hamas’s genocidal intent.

Hassan regularly includes a paragraph similar to this one from her July 16 article, “The war has been ongoing since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a devastating assault in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 and taking around 250 hostages into Gaza, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza has killed over 38,000, according to Palestinian officials, and devastated the territory.”

While this paragraph appears to reference both sides of the conflict, it misrepresents it as numerical, with Israel appearing disproportionate. Hassan achieves this in two ways. Firstly, she quotes, “Palestinian officials” figures, or, on July 11, “based on numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry.” The Gaza Health Ministry is controlled by Hamas, and cannot be considered credible, particularly when she does not share that it is an arm of Hamas. Hamas actively uses its own population as human shields to help it win the PR war against Israel. Therefore, their numbers do not differentiate between combatants and civilians and include deaths due to natural causes.

Secondly, Hassan erases Israel’s need for self-defence against annihilation. Hamas leaders are quite frank about it. Mohammad Deif, who planned the October 7 massacre, immediately afterwards, demanded that his followers, “torch the earth under the feet of the plundering occupiers – kill, burn, destroy, shut down roads.” Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official, said on November 1, 2023, “We will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated. Indeed, Hamas’s charter states, “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,…” (Hamas Charter, Article 7). Hassan is guilty of whitewashing Hamas’ genocidal goals.

Picture of Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, one of the architects of the October 7 massacre

Additionally, Hassan’s reporting is skewed. There is suffering in Gaza, but not all Gazans are suffering. Video footage from Gazans’ social media accounts shows them complaining about the canned foods in aid packages and markets with fresh food aplenty.

Hassan’s whitewashing of Hamas is a theme in her articles. In her July 16 article entitled: “This mother bathes her child with sand”, which bemoans the lack of shampoo, Hassan wrote of the obstacles to humanitarian aid reaching the people, “Aid organizations have cited the ongoing Israeli military operation, severe fuel shortages, and armed looting by some Palestinians as some reasons for the backlog.” Israel has allowed in 808,884 tons of humanitarian aid to date, and Hamas is responsible for most of the stealing of aid in the strip. In April, a rival Palestinian faction noted “Hamas’ persecution of any party who is a source for distributing the [humanitarian] aid or securing it began from the start of the war”. Yet Hassan whitewashes them again, describing the looters as “some Palestinians”.

In her July 12 article entitled: “Israel airstrike kills at least 4 aid workers in Gaza, IDF claims 1 is Hamas operative” Hassan wrote of the location of an Israeli strike, “It was designated a “humanitarian safe zone” by the IDF. Palestinians were told to seek refuge there to avoid being caught in the crossfires of the fighting.” Hassan neglected to mention in this article that Hamas has a cowardly strategy of hiding behind their civilians, deliberately making humanitarian safe zones, hospitals, schools, and more into unsafe zones.

Picture of warehouse, located in Al-Mawasi, where Hamas terrorists were embedded among civilians (Picture CBC News)

Hassan followed up her string of articles with a report on July 17, detailing Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) report on war crimes committed on October 7 by Hamas. While her highlighting of HRW’s report is commendable as it accuses Hamas and other groups of severe crimes against Israel, and calls for the immediate return of the hostages, she again failed to acknowledge that Israel is engaged in a fight for survival. Hassan implied Israel is responding to October 7 as if it were a war of revenge, not fighting for their right to exist.

Israel cannot afford not to fight back. Hassan fails to confront this crucial point that informs any discussion on the war. In doing so, despite referencing aspects of the Israeli side, she falls far short of giving her readers a balanced understanding of the war.