The Conservative party’s genocidal lies are made possible by a criminal media sphere.
Last week Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong claimed, “I have seen no credible reports of the State of Israel’s violating either international humanitarian law or customary international law. The number of civilians who have been, unfortunately, killed in this conflict is not an arbitrary determinant as to whether a state is complying with international law.”
All relevant legal and human rights organization from the International Court of Justice to various UN Special Rapporteurs, the International Criminal Court to Amnesty International have concluded Israel is violating international law. Israel has destroyed most of the occupied coastal strip’s buildings, water sources and agricultural land and according to Oxfam, more women and children have been killed in Gaza than during the same period in any conflict over the past two decades. If you include excess mortality the full Gaza death toll is likely 200,000.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre made a similar upside-down lie about Iran launching 180 missiles in response to Israel’s violent provocations. Poilievre declared, “all of these attacks were targeted at civilians. None of them were pinpointing military targets.” But Iran didn’t kill a single Israeli civilian (a Palestinian in the West Bank was killed by what was presumed to be debris after Israel’s air defence intercepted an Iranian missile). And there’s video showing Iranian missiles hitting the Nevatim and Tel Nof airbases as well as near the Mossad headquarters (“Iranian missiles hit Israeli military sites, visuals show”, explained a Washington Post headline).
Poilievre and Chong’s absurd claims swim atop a downright criminal media sphere. This weekend’s National Post took a year of the paper’s genocide promotion to a whole new level. It included a four-page supplement headlined “I Want the World to Know What Hamas Did to Me”. (The Montreal Gazette and other Postmedia papers published the supplement). Additionally, the front page of Saturday’s paper was entirely covered by a story headlined “A Special Investigation into the Profoundly Unsettled State of Canadian Jewry. When do we Know? Where is that Tipping Point?” With no advertisements, the first five pages of the paper were devoted to this Israeli violence promotion.
Page 6 and 7 were also covered in ads and two pro-Israel stories headlined “Now is not the time for rallies, but rather for remembrance” and “Documentary explores history of Jews expelled from Arab lands”. All of page 8 was devoted to “Destruction murder and devastation: in ‘Bearing Witness’ Project, Israel Catalogues Stories, Artifacts of October 7”. There wasn’t a single piece of non-genocide justifying news until page 10, which included “Anti-Israel groups at Concordia suffer blow. Court Injunction”. On page 13 there was finally a story about some of Israel’s crimes over the previous 24 hours though reported through the lens of an Israeli military spokesperson and with the special byline “National Post News services”.
In the opinion section seven (out of eight) commentaries were devoted to justifying Israeli crimes as well as four letters to the editor enveloped in a special box. The editorial board published “Pro-terrorist left takes hold” while next to it was “A year in the life at Hamas HQ” (partly about the media’s purported pro-Palestinian bias). There was also “Betraying Liberalism: How Woke Progressivism Drove a Surge in Antisemitism in the West”, “One long year of antisemitism”, “Israel is winning”, “Shilling for terrorism” and “Israel building a new Middle East”.
Even the business section wasn’t safe from the onslaught of Israel violence promotion. Labour lawyer Howard Levitt, who’s used his weekly labour law column over the past year to shill for genocide, published “One year after October 7, world is a changed place”. There was also a full-page ad in the business section for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Spirit of Hope 2024 “honouring steadfast allies of the Jewish people and Israel.”
In a fitting conclusion, a quarter page ad was devoted to a Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation “Evening to Celebrate Integrity in Journalism and Media”. The October 15 event in Toronto honours National Post editor-in-chief Rob Roberts.
Rather than accolades, Roberts should be tried for enabling Israel’s crimes.
While less criminal than the National Post, the liberal Toronto Star has also been the mouthpiece of an apartheid state rampaging across the region.
The Star continues to publish a regular column from supremacist fanatic Michael Levitt and Samira Mohyeddin recently highlighted its more subtle bias. On Friday she noted “every publication found their active voice yesterday” posting a photo of the front page of the Toronto Star headlined “Iran Strikes Israel”. But, two days later, she noted on X, they were “back to passive voice” with the front of the Star noting, “Airstrikes shake Beirut”.
As Davide Mastracci notes in “Media Lies About October 7 Helped Create Support For Genocide”, the Star was the first Canadian paper to circulate an important anti-Palestinian blood libel, publishing two opinion pieces claiming the Palestinian resistance beheaded babies on October 7.
“The ISIS-like attack by Hamas against Israeli citizens is an act of barbarism that cannot be comprehended”, noted the outlandish first commentary. “People slaughtered in their homes, some burned alive. Babies beheaded.”
The second op-ed claimed, “The bodies of 40 murdered babies were discovered at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, many decapitated. Babies. Their decapitation is being celebrated.”
It was an obvious hoax. As is now officially recognized, a single 10-month-old was killed by a stray bullet on October 7.
Conservative politicians lie wildly about Israel because it serves power and the dominant media does as well. The International Criminal Court should investigate National Post editors to determine if they are guilty of complicity in Israel’s holocaust in Gaza.
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