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Ottawa Citizen
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Ottawa Citizen
Sherazi: Demonization leads to hateful attacks such as Monday's OC Transpo bus incident
Article content This week, news broke of four Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces. Among them was Anas Al-Sharif, a reporter whose raw footage and emotional dispatches had touched viewers globally. He shared stories under bombardment, even mourning his father's death on camera. Within 24 hours of his death, Israeli officials claimed he was a member of Hamas, without presenting transparent evidence. Article content To smear a journalist posthumously, especially one who had criticized Hamas publicly, feels less like fact-finding and more like a warning. These accusations don't stay online, they bleed into real life. They dehumanize communities, discredit truth-tellers, and make violence more likely. Article content The Committee to Protect Journalists reports 192 journalists killed and 90 imprisoned since October 2023. Many are branded 'biased' or 'terrorists.' It's a dangerous trend, one that silences facts, crushes dissent and emboldens hate. Article content Article content Here in Ottawa and elsewhere we have seen protesters about the war in Gaza demonized as haters for exercising their right to say they dislike what is happening to civilians in Gaza. Media images often focus on people with their faces covered, mimicking those we have seen in the Middle East in news footage. Article content Nobody has connected the dots and realized that people cover their faces because they are afraid of reprisal, of being fired or doxed online. Demonization has very real consequences. Article content As a community leader, I've witnessed the scarring that hate leaves behind. Since Monday, I have been in touch with the victim's family and with a witness on the bus. They're traumatized beyond belief Article content But what haunts me most are the unspoken stories, the ones never reported out of fear. The victims who stay quiet to avoid re-traumatization. The youth who internalize the hate, believing maybe they deserve it, because people like them are always shown as the threat. Article content Article content To stop this cycle, we must do more than issue statements after the fact. We must challenge the narratives that fuel violence. That means protecting journalists, amplifying the truth, supporting victims, and rejecting the dehumanization of any group, Muslim, Jewish, Palestinian, or otherwise.
The National
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The National
Alaska summit will reveal extent Trump borrows from Putin playbook
Trump's military takeover of the nation's capital, sending National Guard troops to Washington's streets and seizing control of the DC municipal police department, could have come straight from the Putin playbook. It matters little that there is no crime wave 'emergency' as Trump says. In fact, Washington's crime rate has fallen in recent years with violent crime overall down 26% compared with this time a year ago. It matters even less that in order to deploy the National Guard, Trump has invoked an obscure section of the 1973 DC Home Rule Act, which allows the president to take control of local law enforcement in the district for a period of one month. READ MORE: Healthcare in Gaza facing 'catastrophe' amid food shortages, doctor warns Back on January 6, 2021, Trump might have been relying on an incited mob of supporters to seize the Capitol building, but today, in an open show of power in his second term, he can use his presidential powers at will, it seems, to send out an unmistakeable message of his administration's willingness and capacity to wield power. At every turn, Trump is expanding his control in a way that poses a real threat to America's democracy. Just take the press as an example. As a report by the media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently identified, there are three ways in which the Trump administration is chipping away at US press freedom: by limiting access to information, instituting new regulations and targeting journalists and newsrooms with lawsuits and investigations. Or to put this another way, you are rewarded for the 'right' coverage and vilified if it doesn't fit with Trump's thinking. As the CPJ also rightly points out, the fate of American democracy and journalists' ability to work without fear are intertwined. This threat to press freedom must then be seen as occurring in a larger context in which First Amendment rights more broadly are being eroded. Which takes me back to the meeting between Trump and Putin tomorrow. For while America admittedly might still be a long way off being the equivalent of Putin's authoritarian Russia, Trump so far is making a good go at showing he is working off the same political page as his Kremlin pal. What both leaders do domestically in political terms, of course, is one thing, but when it comes to imposing their will on another independent sovereign nation, that is something else again. The news that this will be a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska and that neither of the two leaders will be flanked by their advisers has only added to the disquiet that between them they will come to a tawdry deal that will then effectively be imposed on Ukraine. Trump as we know has form when it comes to striking ill-considered agreements with whoever gets into a room with him. It's also a reminder of how autocrats often work, for when the tanks, troops or mobs can't get them what they covet in the first instance, too often shady deals with each other become an alternative. READ MORE: Acclaimed Scottish screenwriter wears 'Palestine Action' T-shirt at Fringe As Edward Luce, US national editor of the Financial Times, wryly put it a few days ago: 'The ghosts of Munich, Yalta and other sordid bargains ought to be stalking Alaska.' For make no mistake, what happens in that room at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson military facility in Anchorage tomorrow is a profoundly crucial moment not just for Ukraine, but for Europe and its future relations with the Trump administration and the US generally. If the intense diplomacy and virtual meetings between European leaders, Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump are anything to go by, then it's evident that every party realises that what comes out of tomorrow's meeting could be a gamechanger with profound geopolitical consequences. It's no coincidence too that the meeting comes at precisely the moment when Moscow has upped the ante on eastern Ukraine's battlefields. There in the Donbas these past days, Russian forces have breached the frontline along a narrow corridor parallel to Dobropillia, a coal-mining town turned key logistical hub north of the stronghold of Pokrovsk that Moscow's troops have almost encircled. In short, grab as much territory as possible before any 'swapping of land', as Trump puts it, becomes part of the deal between him and Putin. That European countries are outraged that Zelenskyy will not be present in Alaska as any deal is cut is justified. In a worst possible scenario, Ukraine and its European allies could be left with a very stark choice. Either sign up to the deal and accept a rewriting of European security over their heads or reject it and risk Trump walking away from US military support for Ukraine. Speaking to the US-based Foreign Policy magazine, John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Moscow and Kyiv, summed up the worst fears of many about the outcome. 'I worry that his (Trump's) shared authoritarian instincts with Putin, lack of clarity in his mind about his own position and wish to be seen as a big man deciding the fate of nations at the stroke of a Sharpie will lead to him agreeing to terms which are wholly unacceptable,' Foreman warned. For Putin, meanwhile, tomorrow's summit will mark his first visit to the US since 2015 and his first visit to the country since 2007 that has come outside of the context of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Should things go the way of the Russian leader, Trump would be giving away Ukrainian land that Putin could not win by force of arms. Few doubt that the Kremlin's man would relish the humiliation of European leaders who have insisted that nothing about Ukraine should be decided without Ukraine. Speaking earlier this week about the summit, Trump said it would be 'a feel-out meeting a little bit', adding that he would know within two minutes whether progress is possible. 'I may say 'lots of luck, keep fighting', or I may say 'we can make a deal',' Trump added. Only tomorrow will tell which of those outcomes win the day. To say that nerves will remain frayed until then would be an understatement. In fact, they could well be in tatters in its aftermath.
Deccan Herald
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Deccan Herald
Muting news with killer strikes
Israel's attack, which left six journalists dead in Gaza, was a targeted killing, executed as part of its continuing efforts to suppress news reporting from the strip. Four Al Jazeera journalists, including its well-known reporter Anas al-Sharif, were killed in the strike. Anas al-Sharif has brought out through his reportage the horrors of Israel's genocidal actions and the starvation in Gaza. He had been told by Israel to stop reporting and leave Gaza. His father was killed in an airstrike in 2023, after that warning. In a post published posthumously, Anas wrote: 'If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me.' Israel now claims, without proof, that he was a terrorist. The killing of the reporters is another warning, and there is unlikely to be any more reporting from ground zero on Gaza. This is what Israel has been working to Reporters without Borders, more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed in about two years of the war in Gaza. This is more than the number of journalists killed in other parts of the world in the last three years. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 26 of the reporters were targeted for killing. While the deaths show the courage and commitment of the journalists, they also show Israel's determination to prevent Gaza's truth from reaching the world. International journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza except on Israel-organised military trips during which they cannot speak to Palestinians. The killing of the Al Jazeera journalists has been widely condemned. Deliberate targeting of journalists is a war crime. The International Criminal Court has been requested to investigate the killings. Israel has not cared for the international criticism of its actions in Gaza or its treatment of killings have taken place when Israel is set to launch a major operation to seize control of Gaza City, which will take the war to another level. The new campaign will lead to many more deaths and the displacement of thousands of people. Over 60,000 people, including women and children, have been killed since the war started. There is opposition to the new war plan even from within Israel. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going ahead with the offensive and has obtained the approval of the Security Cabinet for it. The aim is said to be to capture Gaza, expel or eliminate the Palestinian population, and have the Jews settle there. The illegal and inhuman assault has happened in front of an international community that, now, will also be deprived of reporting from where it unfolds.
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Business Standard
a day ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
Journalist killings spike globally as Gaza becomes deadliest region
Recent killings of journalists in Israel have shifted the focus on targeted attacks on media personnel around the globe. During 2015-25 (latest figures), 846 journalists and media workers have been killed worldwide, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Journalist and media workers killed across the world Killings of journalists have spiked in recent years. In 2023, 91 journalists and 12 media workers were killed. The toll rose to 114 for journalists and 10 for media workers in 2024. 56 journalists and 1 media worker have been killed in 2025 so far. The Palestine region recorded assassination of 190 journalists from 2015 to 2025 (latest) — 186 of them in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Toronto Star
2 days ago
- Politics
- Toronto Star
The 184 Palestinian journalists killed in the war in Gaza endured hunger and grief
Since the war began in Gaza, 184 Palestinian journalists have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. They include men and women, freelancers and staffers, veterans with years in the field and young reporters on some of their first assignments. Some were killed with their families at home, others were in vehicles marked 'PRESS,' or in tents near hospitals, or out covering the violence. Many endured the same conditions as those they covered — hunger, displacement, and grief.
