Nine months after a small group of anti-Israel activists carried out a publicity stunt which disrupted the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize gala, their antics continue to receive extended news coverage.

In an 1,800 word article published August 2 in The Toronto Star entitled: “How the war in Gaza tore apart some of Canada’s most prestigious arts organizations,” Culture Reporter Joshua Chong reported on that demonstration and the subsequent tantrums by anti-Israel protesters as they continue to unsuccessfully demand that the respected literary prize disassociate with Israel.

Troublingly, his article thoroughly downplayed the extremist nature of their campaign.

Referring to the anti-Israel miscreants under the Orwellian term “anti-war activists,” Chong wrote that “soon after the activists disrupted last year’s gala, numerous Canadian writers and publishers expressed support for the protesters in an open letter that called on police to drop the charges.”

But what Chong described as having “expressed support for the protesters” barely scratched the surface of the truth, and in fact severely whitewashed the uncomfortable facts.

In reality,  the open letter, released in late 2023 by a group of artists and writers, was a radical and hateful screed which Chong completely sanitized.

The letter described all Palestinians in Israeli jails, including convicted terrorists with blood on their hands, as “civilians…who are illegally incarcerated in Israeli prisons.” Even more darkly, the open letter explicitly denied Israel’s very right to exist, making reference to Israel’s “75-year occupation of Palestine.”

Seventy-five years prior to the open letter’s publishing was Israel’s independence, in 1948, meaning that for the letter’s signatories, Israel’s entire existence is illegitimate, but despite the fringe nature of that position, readers of The Toronto Star were given a perspective that framed the anti-Israel protesters as legitimate voices of dissent, and not hate mongers.

Entirely unsurprising, the open letter did not once ever mention the word “Hamas,” the terrorist group which launched the war on October 7 with an unprovoked attack, or even have the moral fortitude to acknowledge why the conflict began at all.

In the article, Chong took pains to tell readers that he had sought statements from an Israeli weapons manufacturer targeted by the protesters, providing their allegations with inferred credibility. Yet, at no time anywhere in his lengthy report did the reporter ever press any of the anti-Israel activists on their deafening silence when it comes to the genocidal and murderous attacks by Hamas, both on October 7, and their subsequent holding of hundreds of 115 Israeli hostages for nearly a year since.

More broadly, Chong did not see fit to challenge any of the anti-Israel hate mongers as to why Hamas’ attempted genocide is evidently of no concern to the arts community, which claims to support diversity, unlike the homophobic and misogynistic terrorist group.

If The Toronto Star determined that this ongoing effort to demonize Israel by a group of radical extremists merited a long news article, then that is their prerogative. But simply reporting what they said, without ever challenging the merits of their claims, or even attempting to hold them accountable for their hateful views, cannot be called journalism, but stenography in our view.