With the end of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza – at least in theory, given continuing Palestinian attacks against Israeli soldiers there – the newest fixation on the part of the Canadian news media are Israeli “settlers,” or those Israelis who live in their historic lands of Judea & Samaria (West Bank).
Many of these news reports portray these Israelis as a whole as violent hooligans attacking Palestinians at will, overwhelmingly ignoring critical details which fundamentally change the entire nature of the story.
CBC News Correspondent Tom Parry’s December 1 broadcast is one such example. His report, “Canadian beaten during attack in West Bank,” zeroed in on an anonymous Canadian woman who says she was attacked by a group of masked Israelis while trying to protect Palestinians.
Click below to watch the segment:
While such stories are worthy of telling, Parry’s report was notable in what he chose to overlook.
He told viewers that there has been a “wave of settler attacks” against Palestinians of late, offering no further details, and thus implying that they are radical extremists simply acting out of hatred.
No mention was made by Parry of the larger dynamics at play in Judea & Samaria, including the near-incessant terrorism by Palestinians, attempting to carry out murderous acts against Israelis, including stabbings, car-ranmings, and throwing dangerous items onto Israeli cars as they drive on the highway.
If Parry’s report had simply told Canadians that violence was a two-way street in the area, that would have been a vast improvement. But he didn’t do that, instead ignoring this reality altogether.
Even the narrative of “settler attacks” is difficult to accept uncritically. As documented recently by Israeli non-governmental organization Regavim, the actual numbers of Israeli “attacks” on Palestinians is far lower than often told by the news media. Additionally, most of these incidents are not unprompted attacks, but a reaction to Palestinian violence.
That does not excuse or justify extrajudicial violence, though it does paint a picture which is dramatically different from the one that viewers were given in Parry’s existing report.
Parry’s report is also more evidence of CBC’s continuing erasure of Israeli voices. Beyond a passing clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no Israelis were interviewed. Instead, in addition to the unknown Canadian woman, a Palestinian woman from the Faz3a group was interviewed, to which the anonymous Canadian woman was a member.
Faz3a, Parry reports, is a “group that brings foreign volunteers to Palestinian communities to help deter settler violence,” portraying it as a humanitarian organization dedicated to protecting Palestinians.
In fact, it is clear that Faz3a is simply a typical anti-Israel group, accusing Jerusalem of “genocide” and claiming that it trying to conduct “ethnic cleansing” of “its rightful Palestinian residents.” If any Israeli group referred to ‘settlers’ as the “rightful” residents – thus erasing anyone else – they would almost certainly be castigated by the Canadian news media as being extremists.
But at CBC News, when the Palestinians do exactly that, they are portrayed as the victims of Israeli aggression, rather than being intransigent radicals themselves.
Tom Parry has produced previous one-sided coverage of the Hamas-Israel war, and it is distressing that his selective reporting continues unabated.
