Over a four-day period in late November, Xtra Magazine, a digital publication geared towards the LGBTQ+ population, published two articles and a video relating to the war between Israel and Hamas, all of which featured widespread anti-Israel propaganda and misinformation.

On November 24, Xtra published a video interviewing attendees with LGBTQ attendees at several anti-Israel rallies in Toronto and Montreal.

Watch full video below

The segment was introduced by Ziya Jones, a senior editor at the publication, who told viewers that “Since October 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza.” But Jones failed to add that the casualty numbers she cites come from one source: Hamas, through its so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health.”

There is no independent confirmation or corroboration of Hamas’ casualty figures, but this has not stopped Jones from sharing them as if they were factual. Worse yet, just as Hamas intentionally fails to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists, who are combatants, Jones never made any distinction between civilians and terrorists, nor those killed by Israel, or those in Gaza killed by rockets from within Gaza.

In their comments featured in the brief video, rally attendees made manifold false statements about Israel, including that the country is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

While it is the right of any of these participants to hold and express such views, even if utterly unmoored from reality, Xtra Magazine never provided viewers with any kind of context or factual basis allowing viewers to separate personal opinions from facts.

One attendee was quoted in the video as saying that Israel is guilty of “pinkwashing,” attempting to claim that Israel uses rights for sexual minorities as a shield against criticism of Israeli governmental policies. The attendee continued by arguing that Israel is not a “safe haven in the so-called Middle East for queer people, which is not true. Gay marriage is not even legal in Israel.”

While Israeli governmental policies are free to be debated, challenged or even condemned, there is no question that Israel’s protection of its LGBTQ+ population stands in sharp contrast to all other countries in the Middle East.

In the Palestinian Authority (PA), homosexual acts are punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and in Hamas-run Gaza, homosexuality is even punishable by death. Hamas’ patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which provides Hamas with weapons, funds and other logistical support, has made no attempt to hide its open persecution of homosexuals in Iran.

In an article published by Xtra on November 21 titled: “Why queer and trans people need to resist pinkwashing,” author Kai Cheng Thom indefensibly referred to Hamas as a “resistance group” which on October 7 “broke out of the Gaza Strip” and “launched an attack that claimed the lives of approximately 1,200 people.”

In the annals of historical whitewashing, Thom’s screed is a contender. Hamas is a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization that is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel. Its charter says so, its senior leaders say so, and on October 7 – only the latest chapter in its violence against Israelis – the group’s terrorists marauded across southern Israel, raping, torturing, murdering, desecrating bodies, and recording it all for posterity, showing that Hamas doesn’t just call for Israel’s destruction, it actively strives for it.

In another article, published by Xtra on November 24 entitled: “Yes, Palestinian solidarity is a queer issue,” Jones once again repeated Hamas’ casualty figures without attribution, context or any skepticism at all, and repeated unfounded allegations that Israel is pursuing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. This is unadulterated nonsense. Genocide refers to the wholesale attempted extermination of a people, as seen in the Holocaust, or more recently, the massacre of nearly one million Tutsis in Rwanda.

Israel’s counter-terrorism efforts in Gaza, in contrast, are targeted towards Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group that unlike Israel, has made no effort to disguise its true goal of committing mass murder.

These articles and video from Xtra cannot be called journalism, serious or otherwise. They are anti-Israel screeds hidden behind a thin veneer of reporting when they are at best lazy, unintellectual gibberish, and at worst, overt whitewashing for a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization.