Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, has again used the Globe and Mail to promote a one-sided and misleading account of the Hamas-Israel war. His October 16 column, “‘Where to go?’: The world must confront the unbearable costs of the war in Gaza”, reads as a lament for Palestinian suffering, yet strikingly omits the single force most responsible for perpetuating it: the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas

“The world calls it a ceasefire,” Abuelaish writes. “It’s the brief moment when people can finally breathe – not in relief, but in mourning.” The imagery is moving, but the framing is deceptive. The reason Gazans mourn is not simply because Israel fights; it is because Hamas refuses to stop fighting. Each ceasefire Hamas violated, every hostage it refused to release, and every rocket it fired from schoolyards or hospitals ensured the cycle of misery continued. But to Abuelaish, Hamas barely exists – a remarkable omission for a writer claiming to seek justice and peace.

He insists that “there is no symmetry in the suffering, no balance in the injustice.” Indeed there is not, because Hamas, not Israel, designed it that way. As HonestReporting Canada observed in its fact-check of Abuelaish’s recent writing, “this omission is far worse than sloppy; it is a distortion that shields Palestinian savagery.” His moral outrage is selective, his empathy conditional. A tragedy without Hamas is not analysis; it is propaganda in the language of compassion.

Abuelaish quotes poet Mahmoud Darwish: “After the war, the leaders shake hands.” But his cynicism seems reserved only for Israel. Hamas leaders, hiding in luxury in Qatar while Gazans long for normalcy, escape his scrutiny entirely. He claims, “those who speak of ‘the end of war’ without addressing its causes are merely preparing for the next one.” Yet the cause he refuses to name is the terror organization that turned Gaza into a launchpad for civilian suffering.

His appeal to grief is powerful but partial. He writes of “the invisible damage that seeps into every breath,” of “the loss of hope.” But his empathy vanishes when it comes to Israeli victims – the children forcibly taken from their loved ones to be dragged to Gaza, the families executed in their homes, the hostages who remained in tunnels months later. In his column, their pain does not register. To a public health scholar who promotes the value of life, kindness, education, that moral blindness is extraordinary.

HonestReporting Canada has documented this pattern before, noting that Abuelaish spread anti-Israel propaganda in Toronto Star and Globe and Mail columns by systematically ignoring the context of Hamas terrorism. His inability to confront the group’s role transforms his writing from personal testimony into political absolution. When an academic platform is used to excuse or obscure terror, it undermines not only journalism but moral integrity.

When Abuelaish recounts his brother’s words – “where to go? Our home is demolished” – he presents them as an indictment of Israel. Yet the harder question is why Hamas built tunnels instead of shelters, bunkers instead of schools, and weapons caches instead of hospitals. The people of Gaza might have had more options if their rulers had valued their lives more than their leverage.

Abuelaish’s conclusion calls for the world to “restore trust – in humanity, in the rule of law.” On that point, he is right, but restoring trust begins with honesty. The rule of law applies equally to all, including those who butcher civilians and hide behind their own people. By refusing to hold Hamas accountable, Abuelaish betrays the very humanitarian values he invokes.

He ends with the question, “who lost their humanity?” The answer is not Israel, which has repeatedly faced a terrorist enemy embedded among civilians; it is Hamas, which glories in death, and those who, by erasing its crimes, enable its cruelty. Until writers such as Abuelaish find the courage to say that plainly, their words will not advance peace. They will only perpetuate the lie that sustains the suffering of Gaza.