The year 2025 saw little slowdown in the barrage of anti-Israel propaganda peddled from many news media outlets, targeted towards the Canadian public.
From campus newspapers to CBC News, Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster, anti-Israel narratives were aggressively promoted, often at the complete exclusion of opposing views.
However, a few narratives in particular stood out, both for their frequency and for their abhorrence.
Famine: Few claims were made more regularly than “famine in Gaza,” and anytime such allegations were leveled at Israel, they were reliably platformed. At no time could claims of “famine” stand up to scrutiny, and even when the IPC, the most prominent accuser, quietly acknowledged that famine was “averted” – ie that it never actually happened – the news media suddenly lost interest in the story.
Genocide: This falsehood has been spread so widely that its promoters rarely feel compelled to even defend their allegations, and news media outlets have rarely held them to account. When anti-Israel groups accuse Israel of genocide, they receive predictable news coverage. But when actual scholars find no such genocide took place, they are ignored. When the world’s top expert in urban warfare says there was no genocide, he is ignored as well in most corners of the news media.
Treating Anti-Israel Groups as Experts: Countless media outlets have treated so-called “humanitarian” groups like Save the Children, Doctors without Borders/MSF, Amnesty International, Oxfam and others with near-total reverence, treating their accusations as fact, rather than politically-motivated allegations. Despite these groups promoting aggressively anti-Israel tales devoid of factual basis, news media outlets consistently sought them out for their supposed “expertise” on Gaza, rarely if ever challenging them to back up their allegations, and almost never noting their anti-Israel agenda.
Dead Journalists in Gaza: The claim that Israel killed hundreds of journalists in Gaza was initially spread by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and soon amplified across the Canadian news media landscape. Despite extensive documentation showing a majority of these “journalists” were active members of Palestinian terrorist groups, this detail was virtually never acknowledged by reporters, who instead treated CPJ’s claims as fact. Even when these facts arose, groups like the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) – which previously had no issue criticizing Israel for this very issue – suddenly fell completely silent.
Ignoring Inconvenient Reports: When an anti-Israel group published a report alleging Israeli malfeasance, they were almost guaranteed Canadian media coverage. When Amnesty International accused Israel of war crimes, it received widespread attention, but when the same group documented Hamas crimes, it was widely ignored. When scholars and researchers found that Hamas was manipulating casualty data, Canadian news media outlets had little interest in telling these stories to Canadians. Only anti-Israel reports were worthy of publication.
Importing Gazans to Canada: Time and again, news media outlets interviewed Gazans or local activists promoting the idea that Gazans should be exempted from security screenings when coming to Canada. These reports overwhelmingly ignored the widespread extremism present in Gaza, and the relevant security concerns for Canadians, and instead uncritically platformed activists demanding that Gazans receive preferential treatment in their quest to come to Canada.
Sanitizing Hate: For more than two years, many anti-Israel groups have not condemned Israeli policy, but engaged in overt anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech, and even glorifying terrorism. Whether it was at pro-Hamas rallies where intifada (Palestinian terrorism) was praised, or when one group, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), invited followers to a celebration of the October 7, 2023 massacres, many activists have made little effort to hide their extremism. But most news media outlets, apparently disinterested in such realities, have largely ignored this radicalism and instead portrayed them as simply outspoken activists.
Settler Violence: Particularly since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, more news media outlets have pivoted to the “settler violence” narrative, where Israelis living in Judea & Samaria (West Bank) are engaged in wanton and unprovoked violence against Palestinians. While such stories are valid to tell, the coverage of these claims universally ignore research which shows that most such instances are a response to Palestinian violence.
Platforming Extremists: Yipeng Ge, an Ottawa physician with a history of what we consider to be terrorist glorification, has been a favourite interviewee on multiple Canadian news media outlets, which failed to hold him accountable. Likewise, the fact that Tamam, a Vancouver “Palestinian” restaurant, posted glorifying images of the October 7, 2023 massacres, has not stopped it from being the subject of multiple fawning interviews. Anti-Israel extremists continue to enjoy uncritical news coverage.
Turning Anti-Israel Complaints into News: When anti-Israel extremists demand that the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) revoke the charitable statuses of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, they receive extensive and sympathetic coverage. But when investigators allege possible ties between Canadian Islamic charities and Islamist terrorism, it is overlooked. Following an anti-Israel riot near Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), it was used as an opportunity to platform complaints by anti-Israel extremists instead. In short, when anti-Israel radicals complain, they are given coverage. When others speak out, they are ignored.
In 2025, most news media outlets badly failed in telling the full story to Canadians, and practicing responsible journalism.
