In a July 31 CTV News article entitled: “Who was Ismael Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader killed in Tehran?”, reporter Jessie Yeung effectively eulogized the life and career of the late arch-terrorist without a single mention of his decades of vile murderous activities.

The article painted a glowing picture of Haniyeh as an impressive self-made man who came from humble, challenging beginnings to rise through the ranks and achieve an impressive resume and legacy in Palestinian and global politics.

Yeung noted that “despite [Haniyeh’s] designation [as a ‘global terrorist’],” the late Hamas leader “travelled globally, meeting with world figures” and implied that he was a moderate, peace-seeking figure who “showed willingness to reach an agreement” and keenly “discuss[ing] ideas to end the war” even at times when he “felt the personal toll of the war.”

Never mind the fact that Haniyeh’s organization caused the war with its unprovoked invasion and mass slaughter of innocent people, the fact that his “meetings” with world leaders were attempts to undermine the Western liberal international order, the fact that the “uprising” in which he participated was a violent wave of terrorist attacks, the fact that he ran a brutal totalitarian regime in Gaza against his own people, or the fact that he exploited the suffering of the Palestinian people to steal billions of dollars’ worth of aid money to fund his luxurious villa lifestyle in Qatar while those in Gaza the money was intended for continue to struggle. At the time of his death, estimates commonly considered his net worth to be over $4-billion.

Yeung evidently didn’t feel any of this should be mentioned to potentially challenge the sanitized narrative of this man as a “moderate” figure that so many media outlets have bizarrely been pushing all week.

While it’s true that Haniyeh’s current role was as the “political” leader of Hamas rather than “military,” is Yeung really so blindly naive as to not understand that he was still the leader of a violent terrorist organization at a time when it launched the second most violent terrorist massacre against a democratic country in history? Just because an individual calls himself a “moderate” in his official communications and propaganda strategy, does this mean we should pretend he hasn’t publicly praised the attacks multiple times and refused to release the hostages who continue to languish for 300 days now?

Despite failing on all these basic levels to even moderately scrutinize the monster in question in any way, Yeung still found opportunities to sneak in multiple little backhanded jabs at Israel — citing Hamas’ unverified claims that over 39,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, and alleging that Israel’s refusal to surrender and allow the terrorist group to remain in power is responsible for “leaving negotiations at a standstill.”

Yeung simultaneously managed to consistently paint all of Israel’s actions in the least favorable light possible — always taking the anti-Israel activists’ ideologically-motivated talking points at face value — while omitting or downplaying the bad behavior of the other side, or in some cases even whitewashing it to sound like something good. For example, we’re offered Haniyeh’s feelings on how Hamas terrorists giving up control of the Gaza Strip would be unacceptable due to the “aggression against our people, which is a fundamental and logical position that lays the foundation for a more stable future” — but when it comes to Israel’s opposite viewpoint, we’re told only that Prime Minister Netanyahu calls Hamas’ demands “unacceptable.”

On the same day, a CTV interview with Georgetown University professor Nader Hashemi similarly played games with the very simple meaning of this event. He referred to Israel’s civilians being held hostage by Hamas as “prisoners,” cited the claim that Israel’s defensive actions are “borderline genocidal,” and implied that Israel is somehow responsible for the prospect of a broader regional war rather than Iran, who’s proxies have been attacking Israeli towns nonstop for ten months. He also chose to focus his discussion on his opinion that this assassination means ceasefire talks are “effectively over,” never addressing the horrific nature of who this target was, the fact that his organization voluntarily provoked the war through violent terrorism, or the alternate perspective that a tough confrontation against Hamas leadership increases the likelihood of a deal that would be favourable to Western and Israeli interests rather than those of Hamas and Iran.

It really shouldn’t be controversial or difficult to understand that it is legitimate and normal for a military assassination against the leader of a terrorist group during an active conflict initiated by said group. Luckily, most Canadians understand this obvious moral observation. The real question is whether most Canadians will be able to trust future content coming from a source that would unashamedly skew the situation this way again.