ALERT. Part two
So is Honest Reporting Canada engaging in legitimate media criticism, or is it a well-funded pressure group harassing Canadian journalists? Are the stories it targets all substantially incorrect, or do they merely cast Israel in a negative light? I reached out to HRC to address this and other questions but they have not replied.
The United Jewish Appeal, which raises $60 million a year, recommends HRC to its donors, endorsing its methodology. HRC, it says, “subject(s) news reporting to rigorous and methodical investigation in order to prevent distorted coverage.”
It’s hard to take this claim seriously. The person who directs HRC’s media analysis and writes most of its alerts is Mike Fegelman, who has never worked as a professional journalist despite his misleading on-line bio which says he is “a twenty-one-year veteran of the Canadian journalism industry.” Although journalism’s codes of ethics require reporting without fear or favour, Fegelman once said that he wants HRC to be “a digital army for Israel.” He doubled down on this in a Nov. 28, 2023, email: “In the war against Hamas, there are two battlefronts: the fighting on the ground and the battle for public opinion. In many respects, the war of persuasion is no less important, helping to shape an entire generation.”
Just Peace Advocates, one of the two pro-Palestinian human rights groups petitioning Canada Revenue Agency to audit HRC, says the charity exhibits an extreme pro-Israel bias and is acting contrary to Canadian law.
“Petitions and articles written by HRC leadership deny reports of famine in Gaza, dispute official death tolls, spread false reports of ‘[an] unborn child ripped from the womb’ and ‘tunnels under cribs’, stoke fear and hatred toward Gazan refugees, endorse and repeat Netanyahu’s notorious ‘children of darkness’ remarks, argue that Gazans are deserving of or responsible for their own bombardment, and claim that murdered Palestinians under the age of 18 should not be called children.”
If you read how HRC describes itself to justify its tax-deductible donations, you’d think it was a broadly based anti-racism organization with a focus on education. Its stated charitable purpose is “to advance education by: Developing and delivering courses, lectures and workshops to the general public that address the issues of religious, racial, ethnic and/or cultural and linguistic intolerances, discrimination and prejudices; Conducting and compiling data, as well as short and long term media analysis surveys about antisemitism and discrimination to increase understanding and awareness about the importance of unbiased representation of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities in Canada, and publicly disseminate the results thereof.”
In fact, almost all its activities are directed at defending Israel.
Also controversial is the status of Robert Walker, listed as assistant director of HRC. His bio on the website says “he is actively involved in helping to organize and conduct community antisemitism education workshops for all audiences, so that the public at large can become empowered to challenge anti-Jewish media bias and misinformation." Late last year Walker was arrested and charged with 17 counts of mischief for spray-painting anti-Palestinian graffiti in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood. Some of it said “F**k Gaza.”
Although the graffiti was described as hate-motivated by Toronto Police Services, all charges were withdrawn in return for Walker and two accomplices contributing $1,000 each to SickKids Foundation to offset the costs of graffiti removal.
Such actions would get any journalist fired. But Walker, who is not a journalist, remains listed as assistant director of HRC. In fact, he wrote a recent action alert accusing Linda McQuaig of “demonizing Israel.”
The column in question, published in the Toronto Star on Sept. 4, did not focus on Israeli atrocities in Gaza. McQuaig made no new accusations but, as background, linked to international authorities like Amnesty International who have blamed Israel for starving and committing genocide against Palestinians. McQuaig’s column examined alternatives for the United Nations to take action for peace in the region. She quoted a former UN lawyer as saying the General Assembly could override the Security Council veto by the United States using the same resolution put forward by Canada’s Lester Pearson in 1957, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Her column urged Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to do more to push for peace. In my opinion, it met all the tests for a good piece of opinion journalism.
Walker’s criticism, on the other hand, said the writer is “engaging in breathtakingly low-calibre journalism and deeply misleading readers of The Toronto Star” and “directly providing rhetorical cover for a banned terrorist entity in Canada” (presumably meaning Hamas}.
Without any independent verification he said Palestinian mothers and children being killed in Gaza are neither defenceless nor starving, and that “inside Gaza, restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and food markets are busy.”
That sounds to me like political propaganda, not “rigorous and methodical investigation.” It’s not the kind of education that charitable status was meant to support.
I’ll give McQuaig the last word.
“From what I have noticed … the group does not appear to be concerned about accuracy in media. Rather, my impression is that they seem interested in attacking those (like me) who attempt to hold Israel to the same standards of international law that apply to all nations.”