Briarpatch Magazine, a taxpayer-funded, Saskatchewan-based news outlet which has denied Hamas’ documented sexual assaults against Israeli women on October 7, and glorified Hamas terrorism, again, again and again, is back with more fanatical anti-Israel extremism.
In one article written by the magazine’s Board of Directors entitled: “Briarpatch signs onto PACBI,” published unceremoniously on October 7, the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ genocidal massacres, the magazine announced that it has officially signed onto the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
PACBI is part of the larger anti-Israel boycott movement founded in 2004, widely condemned across the Canadian political spectrum as hateful and discriminatory.
Briarpatch lists the items that it has committed to doing as part of the PACBI campaign, including boycotting cultural events hosted by official Israeli bodies, but also refusing to collaborate with any Israeli institutions, governmental or not.
However, the demands become far darker, and include, in Briarpatch’s words, a promise to “refuse ‘normalization’ efforts” with Israel which seek to “present a false symmetry between oppressed & oppressor.”
In essence, PACBI not only calls for the official boycott of official Israeli institutions, but anything Israeli at all, and rejects any comparison between Israel (the “oppressor” in their parlance) and the “oppressed.”
When verifiable reality is tossed to the side, as Briarpatch has done, it can be possible to justify anything, or as French philosopher Voltaire put it, “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” As the blood-curdling testimonials from Hamas’ massacres of October 7 show, anti-Israel lies aren’t innocent falsehoods; they can and have been used to justify the most grotesque genocidal acts.
Briarpatch Author Denies Israel’s Right To Exist:
The very next day, Briarpatch was back with another article entitled: “Felling the corporate media beast.” The article was written by Tara Alami, who identifies as a “Palestinian writer from occupied Jerusalem and occupied Yafa.” Yafa, or Jaffa, is not recognized as being in any disputed land whatsoever, indicating that for Alami, all of Israel is therefore illegal.
It should come as little surprise that Alami’s column is little more than a hateful screed peddling nonstop disinformation, including promoting the “genocide” lie against Israel, a claim which has quite literally no evidence to support it, and which its primary advocate, South Africa, has struggled to produce any evidence at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Briarpatch Regularly Engages In Anti-Israel Activism
For Alami, who so eagerly fabricated allegations against Israel, embraced conspiracy theories and documented facts by denying that Hamas raped Israeli women during their rampages on October 7, saying the first-hand testimonials were “debunked.”
The main crux of Alami’s article was how a corporate-owned media is colluding to silence Palestinian voices and promote a pro-Israel view, quoting fringe publishers making those allegations. But it is pro-Palestinian voices which are regularly, and in the case of CBC, Canada’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster which receives nearly $1.5 billion annually, nearly exclusively, platformed.
News media outlets regularly refuse to call Hamas and Hezbollah “terrorists,” and instead whitewash them as “militants.” They falsely equivocate between genocidal terrorists and Israel, a liberal democracy, and thoughtlessly regurgitate groundless lies alleging “genocide” and “famine” by Israel, when no such evidence exists.
Not only is CBC, a massive organization funded largely through Canadian taxpayers, scandalously anti-Israel in its coverage, but Briarpatch Magazine is itself proof of the ridiculousness of Alami’s argument. The magazine where her article appears receives tens of thousands of dollars a year from Canadian taxpayers in order to share their hateful anti-Israel bile, showing that despite her supposed opposition to big money, the anti-Israel campaign appears to rely heavily on it.
Despite openly glorifying Hamas terrorism and promoting a hateful and discriminatory boycott of Israel, Briarpatch Magazine continues to be a recipient of taxpayer funds, a matter which HRC continues to brief the Department of Canadian Heritage about, as we call for an immediate suspension of funds to Briarpatch Magazine.
