Shree Paradkar’s January 11 opinion column in The Toronto Star entitled: “As a journalist, I’m crushed by my industry’s silence on our Gaza colleagues,” argued that “Palestinian journalists are being killed in unprecedented numbers” over the last three months during the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Paradkar, the newspaper’s ‘Social & Racial Justice Columnist,’ who also serves as the newspaper’s first internal ombud and whose last seven columns in The Toronto Star have exclusively been fixated with a particular anti-Israel lens, shared the claims of the New York-based organization Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as stating that 72 Palestinian journalists have been killed since October 7.
The previous day, another Toronto Star commentary by Michelle Shephard and Carol Off made virtually the exact same argument, even citing the same organization.
Despite Paradkar’s uncritical acceptance of these claims that scores of Palestinian journalists have been killed, the truth is far murkier.
As a recent analysis by investigative journalist David Collier has uncovered, as many as half of the journalists listed by CPJ “are openly associated with proscribed terror groups” including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). In addition, many others listed as journalists by CPJ appear not to have been journalists at all.
Paradkar would be well within her rights to criticize the conclusions of such research, but she does not. Instead, she simply ignored it, and took it as a given that Palestinian journalists are being killed in large numbers by Israel.
In her column, Paradkar demonstrates little to no trademark journalistic skepticism when it comes to Palestinian claims, accepting them without a second thought, but suddenly grows a far more critical eye regarding claims from Israel.
Paradkar told readers about a recent Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip which killed two men: Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Tharaya, referring to them as a photojournalist and journalist, respectively.
Acknowledging that Israel has made serious accusations against both men, Paradkar wrote that Israel “often justifies its actions by slapping a terrorist label on them, as it is doing in the case of Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Tharaya.”
While Paradkar blithely dismisses Israel’s claims against Dahdouh and Tharaya as merely “slapping a terrorist label on them,” Jerusalem did far more than that, providing documentation demonstrating that both were members of Gaza-based Islamic terrorist organizations.
Both men were traveling in a vehicle in Gaza alongside an operator of a drone which Israel says was being used against Israeli soldiers in the area, which Paradkar also failed to disclose.
But rather than addressing the serious claims being made against the two Palestinian men, Paradkar waved them off as if they were meaningless.
Midway through her column, Paradkar subtly pivoted to another topic entirely, and tried to move the goal posts of her argument entirely.
She rhetorically asked “where is the solidarity with Palestinian journalists working in impossibly hostile environments? Instead, newsrooms have warned journalists not to sign petitions of support claiming it would malign the organizations’ reputation for balance and objectivity.”
Sloppy journalistic practices aside, there is no moral or ethical problem with raising the issue of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, even though her decision to misrepresent or otherwise entirely ignore opposing views seriously jeopardizes her argument. But Paradkar attempted to shoehorn in a separate point, defending the right of Canadian journalists to publicly violate fundamental journalistic principles by expressing anti-Israel views, as some have done, shamefully.
As an opinion writer, Paradkar is paid to express her views on the issues of the day, even if the only issue she appears to want to write about is criticizing Israel. But by minimizing or completely erasing evidence which seriously challenges her conclusions, Paradkar’s own arguments – and journalistic integrity – lie in tatters.
