Accusations of Israeli “genocide” in Gaza commonly shared themes by anti-Israel detractors. The principal one is that they erase the existential threat that Hamas poses to Israel. They often bypass the October 7, 2023 massacres and Hamas’ passionate desire to repeat it until no Israelis are left. And while these accusations cloak their claims in a humanitarian, emotive appeal, they often neglect to mention the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, dead or alive, who have had no external contact, not even from the Red Cross.

Jane Barter, Professor at the Department of Religion and Culture at the University of Winnipeg, is no different. She penned an article in The Conversation.com on December 19 entitled, “Palestinian Christians call on western churches to ‘humanize’ the children of Gaza”.

In it, she lined up her arguments as to why Christian theologians like herself should take action against Israel’s so-called “occupation” and “genocide” in Gaza.

However, her reasons gave academia a bad name. Her sources were overwhelmingly one-sided, canceling the alternate view.

She began by referring to Amnesty International’s much-criticized report that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. She neglected to point out, among other things, that Amnesty had to create their own definition of genocide to reach their conclusion, nor did the report acknowledge Israel’s assertion that over 17,000+ of those killed were combatants, which, while every civilian killed is a tragedy, makes the casualty ratio of combatant to civilian historically low, particularly given Hamas’ use of its civilians as human shields.

Then Barter tokenly included Jewish support for her viewpoint by referencing the extremist anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP). JVP’s anti-Israel views include opposing US funding of the Iron Dome – a significant part of Israel’s defences against incoming Hamas (and Hezbollah) missiles – that in the first month of the war shot down 9,500 rockets. The lives of the endangered Israeli civilians don’t seem to count.

Barter’s only allusion to Israel’s point of view is her sentence, “Israel disputes the accusation of genocide and states that it is acting in self-defense following the Oct. 7 attacks.”

She seemed unable to come up with any reason as to why Christians would support Israel, apart from “weaponizing the Bible” or “what the late Jewish theologian Marc Ellis called an “interfaith ecumenical deal.” The latter referred to Ellis’ theory that Christianity’s antisemitic history guilts Christians into providing pro-Jewish support.

Israel at the very least deserves that its battle for survival is acknowledged as such. Yet Barter erased it. She didn’t mention Hamas’ charter that calls for the elimination of Jews. She didn’t acknowledge that Hamas terrorists are renowned for hiding behind their most vulnerable populations including children’s bedrooms, schools, and hospitals, and celebrates the resultant civilian casualties. It fits her narrative to lay the blame at Israel’s door, as opposed to at the feet of the guilty instigators of the war, still holding hostages close to 15 months on: Hamas.

Her support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is in sync with this erasure. She wrote, under the subtitle, “Need to support BDS strategies, arms embargoes” that, “effective actions reflecting concern for Palestinian lives can be seen in some church responses. At the United Church of Canada’s recent General Council meeting, the church adopted a resolution that: “affirmed the application of justice principles to the conflict in Israel and Palestine in such a way that enables the adoption of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) strategies…”

BDS targets Israeli institutions for condemnation and boycott, regardless of their perspectives on Israeli government policy. BDS likes to present itself as a grassroots protest movement, avoiding any mention of the movement’s true motivations. Omar Barghouti, its co-founder said, “Definitely most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.”

According to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the most widely-accepted of its kind, denying the Jewish People the right to self-determination as they have done by forming a Jewish state, is anti-semitism. This doesn’t seem to bother Barter.

Barter is entitled to her opinions and The Conversation is allowed to publish them, however radical they may be. But Barter’s failure to recognize the full picture is not just a failure of journalistic ethics; it is a failure of morality.

For its part, TheConversation.com to portray a warped view of the Hamas-Israel war, supporting Hamas’s inverted narrative of victimhood to garner international support. This news outlet which receives Canadian government funding from the Canada Periodical Fund, the government of Quebec, and scores of Canadian universities, obscures the truth: Hamas is responsible for the considerable harm on both sides of the war, Israel behaves with astounding humanity.