Following the antisemitic terrorist attack against Jewish congregants on Yom Kippur at a synagogue in Belleville, Ontario – fortunately averted due to the quick thinking and heroic action of police constable Jeff Smith, who fatally wounded the alleged shooter, but remains in serious condition in a local hospital – The Kingston Whig-Standard published an article profiling the Jewish community of Kingston, less than an hour’s drive away, and about the impact of the terror attack on them.
The article quoted local Jewish community members, including one who rightly pointed out that the attack was simply the latest manifestation of hate directed at Canadian Jews over the last three years. However, in seeking to provide context to what happened three years ago, the article omitted a critical detail and made a false statement alongside it.
Fortunately, and to their credit, the newspaper acted quickly in rectifying that mistake following outreach by HonestReporting Canada.
In the original version of the September 22 article, “Kingston’s Jewish community in shock, but remains unified, strong following Belleville shooting,” reporter Maegen Kulchar wrote that, in providing context to the Palestinian terror invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023 and the accompanying massacres, “Hamas is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian nationalist political organization…”
However, what was absent was that Hamas is not simply a “Palestinian nationalist political organization,” but a terrorist organization, and remains listed as a banned terrorist entity by the Canadian government, among many others.
This is critical information that is highly relevant to the story, given that Hamas is a fanatical Islamist terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel, and which seeks to replace it with an Islamic State-style totalitarian regime. In recent days, even the United Nations has acknowledged the widespread misogynistic practices inside Gaza, where reports say women are being traded for food and being forced to marry their rapists.
The original article also stated that Hamas has “governed the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip since 2007.” In fact, Israel fully withdrew from Gaza during the much-publicized 2005 disengagement, when Israel forcibly evacuated all Israeli civilians and soldiers from the coastal territory, giving it to the Palestinians in the hope that such a move would help advance the cause of peace. Tens of millions of dollars were raised to provide high-tech greenhouses for Gaza to develop state-of-the-art agriculture.
Observers hoped that Gaza would become the next Singapore, an economically-advanced city-state.
Regrettably, that move was entirely unrequited, with Gaza soon being transformed by Hamas into a terrorist state and a launching pad for rocket attacks and other violence directed against Israel.
Subsequent to the publishing of the article, HonestReporting Canada filed an official complaint with The Whig’s editorial team, who then took corrective action and edited the report.
The corrected version reads as follows: “Hamas is a Sunni Islamist Palestinian nationalist political organization officially listed as a terrorist organization in Canada,” which adds that Hamas is a banned terrorist organization, and removes the false claim that Israel has occupied Gaza since 2007.
HonestReporting Canada thanks The Kingston Whig-Standard for their quick response in correcting their September 22 article.
