Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is the editor of REAL Israel & Palestine Report.The phrase “One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter” underscores the inherent subjectivity involved in characterizing terrorism versus freedom fighting. It demonstrates that differing value systems, religious ideologies, and political objectives can lead to conflicting interpretations of the same actions.More specifically, this aphorism can be interpreted as an expression of moral relativism, meaning there are no universally accepted ethical standards for judging violence. Accordingly, we should be tolerant, if not respectful, of the ethical, spiritual, and political rationale different groups and their supporters give for their violent actions.While moral relativism seems globally and historically valid — different cultures and different time periods clearly exhibit highly varying belief systems and their associated behaviour — it becomes mortally harmful when applied to contemporaneous nation states engaged in existential warfare..RUBENSTEIN: Did Sir John A. Macdonald engage in genocide against indigenous children?.No better example of this ideological clash is the competing Canadian evaluations of the current war between Israel and Hamas.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, citing in-house research by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canadians rate religious extremism a greater threat to public order than neo-Nazism. These beliefs appear linked to numerous anti-semitic street protests over the war in Gaza and the 2023 assassination of a Sikh nationalist in Surrey, BC.“Tracking reveals an increase in concern about religiously motivated violent extremism, up 13 points since 2021,” said the report. These worries reflect overall “high levels of concern about foreign interference” in Canada, it said..Asked: “Would you say you are more concerned about religiously motivated violent extremism or ideologically motivated violent extremism, e.g. neo-Nazi groups?” A total of 45% rated religiously motivated extremism a greater worry.“Respondents were also asked about how safety in Canada has evolved over the past five years,” said the report titled Attitudes to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. “Overall, six in ten, 57%, feel Canada is more dangerous.”Fears of violent religious zealotry followed the 2024 expulsion of seven Indian diplomats from Canada following the assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, BC, and ongoing anti-Israel street protests. .EDITORIAL: Alberta’s expense cover-up.Demonstrations included a 2023 rally in Montreal in which an imam wished death to Jews under the guise of reading a Quran prayer.Public disorder prompted the Commons Justice Committee to issue a 2023 report called Measures to Protect Canadians that recommended blacklisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group, a measure adopted by the cabinet in 2024. MPs also sought the introduction of a federal Anti-Hate Crime Task Force “to coordinate the protection of faith communities” following arson and gunfire at Jewish homes, schools, and synagogues.The justice department in a March 14 briefing note said it was prepared to criminalize “terror symbols” like the swastika and take other steps to counter religion-motivated hatred. “The government is considering legislative and other actions to address the rise in hate,” said the note called Department of Justice..“This includes examining in consultation with provinces and territories potential reforms to the Criminal Code to strengthen tools for law enforcement and prosecutors to address hate crimes, notably in the area of access to religious and cultural buildings, extreme forms of hate speech, display of terror symbols, and impediments to the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes,” said the note.No mention was made of the enabling role of Canada’s mainstream media in fomenting antisemitic hate crimes, presumably because another Canadian government agency, namely the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), has repeatedly been accused of employing anti-Israel moral relativism in its coverage of the war in Gaza. According to an August 11 Blacklock’s Reporter story, the CBC continues to face criticism for avoiding the term “terrorist” in news stories, claiming this term is politically loaded. This policy, implemented before the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, has led to a surge in viewer complaints. .EDITORIAL: One rule for thee, another for indigenous Shakespeare.Indeed, critics have long argued that the CBC’s “neutral” — read “morally relative” — Israel stance has been biased, especially given the barbaric nature of the attacks, at least from a Canadian ethical perspective.According to the CBC, it does not identify terrorists in news stories because the term reflects a “certain narrative” and is “highly politicized,” an executive wrote in a newly disclosed letter obtained by Blacklock’s. This morally “neutral” editorial policy has drawn censure from MPs and thousands of complaints from ordinary Canadians.The Crown broadcaster on August 8 released a 2023 letter by George Achi, then-Director of Journalism Standards, regarding CBC News use of the term “terrorist” in coverage of Palestinian violence. The letter was written seven months before the October 7, 2023, rape, torture, murder, and kidnapping by Hamas of hundreds of Jews in Israel, including eight Canadians..“I acknowledge you would have liked to see a certain narrative applied to the death count of both Israelis and Palestinians in those reports, specifically by describing some as civilians and others as fighters,” Director Achi wrote to one CBC viewer. “That’s one possible angle which is sometimes used in our stories, when there is enough time to describe all the nuances that come with such qualifiers, including the highly politicized and divergent definitions of words like resistance or terrorism or even militants.”CBC Ombudsman Maxime Bertrand, who released the letter, agreed that “terrorist” should only be used with caution. .EDITORIAL: Not every forest fire is ‘climate change,’ majority are human stupidity.“We must always choose our words carefully, but never more so than in situations as complex and volatile as this,” she wrote.Translation: Describing and explaining complexity and volatility, employing generally accepted Canadian moral codes, would be a betrayal of the maxim that “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.”What this also means is that the CBC can employ words like “combatants” and “resistance” that sanitize and normalize the most heinous of crimes, including the rape, torture, dismemberment, and murder of innocent civilians. .No wonder that MPs cited Director Achi for issuing an October 11, 2023, directive ordering newsroom staff to avoid all reference to “terrorists” when describing Hamas gunmen who killed Jews. “Do not refer to militants, soldiers or anyone else as ‘terrorists,’” he wrote.Many, if not most, Canadians would see such sanitization and normalization as morally reprehensible.Moreover, in 2002, Canada listed Hamas as a terrorist group..EDITORIAL: Au revoir, Quebec: A bon voyage for the battered West.Some would also recall that CBC records show the network had, for years before Director Achi’s memo, routinely identified Hamas as a “terrorist group” comprised of “terrorists,” proof that moral relativism is a constantly moving target.“The CBC came out and said, ‘Well, we just don’t want our journalists to take sides, and if they use the term ‘terrorist,’ they will be taking a side,’” Conservative MP Rachael Thomas (Lethbridge, AB) told a 2023 hearing of the Commons Heritage Committee. “To that I would say, no doubt.”“Of course, you’re taking a side,” said MP Thomas. “What other side would you want to take when you have 1,400 people who were massacred in an evening, when you have women and girls who are raped and then murdered and then paraded through the city, when you have 40 babies who are beheaded? Whose side are you on?”.CBC coverage prompted 4,785 viewer complaints in 2023, representing a 45% increase year-over-year. “The shocking attacks by Hamas inside Israel and the massive response by Israel inside Gaza that followed were far and away the biggest source of complaints about CBC’s journalism,” then-Ombudsman Jack Nagler wrote in 2024.Nagler said CBC News coverage left “room for improvement.” Examples he cited included a 2023 CBC Radio World Report that characterized the killing of Jews as a “surprise attack by Hamas militants,” resulting in casualties to both sides, as “Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip.” Wrote Nagler: “The language throughout is antiseptic, as though this had been a normal clash between two rival military forces.”Members of the Commons Heritage Committee also complained that CBC News was slow to correct an October 17, 2023, story that falsely claimed Israeli rockets had destroyed a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds, when the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was actually destroyed by a misfired Palestinian rocket..EDITORIAL: Christian artist Sean Feucht’s concert shut down over ‘safety’ or ideology?.One-sided reporting is as routine for the CBC as it is for all contemporary mainstream media commentary. The portrayal of Palestinian suffering is always seen as the product of a single culprit, namely the State of Israel.This framing is no better exemplified than in a CBC News segment on The National by Nahlah Ayed on July 22, entitled “100 humanitarian organizations plead for Gaza aid to resume.” Ayed, who has consistently produced biased anti-Israel reporting, as documented by Honest Reporting Canada many times, set the scene for CBC viewers in an emotionally charged manner: “Imagine the desperation it takes to wade into this.” She was referring to a scene in which a group of men crowd around an aid truck, quickly and chaotically grabbing supplies..What followed was a quote from an interviewee injured in the crowd, Muhammad Abu Jabal, explaining how he “went to die” to provide food for his children. “This bag,” he claimed, “is soaked with blood.”There was no attempt to consider other claims or factors that hinder the logistics of aid delivery in Gaza. Specifically, it has been reported that the United Nations (UN) has aid sitting at the border, and aid is now distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US and Israeli-backed initiative which the UN does not recognize. Israel has pointed out that any humanitarian situation can be addressed with cooperation, and that even the delivery of the hundreds of trucks at the border would change the situation drastically. But the UN refused to cooperate with the GHF, accusing the latter of setting up operations that endanger the local population, even though it has successfully delivered tons of much-needed food to hungry Palestinians..EDITORIAL: Canada needs an immigration moratorium.Hamas, unsurprisingly, is the major roadblock to the delivery of such aid. In its criticism of the GHF, the UN refuses to acknowledge that the terror group deliberately targets aid efforts it cannot directly benefit from. As should be well known to those carefully following this conflict, “Israel’s expanded offensive into central Gaza” that Ayed claims “is threatening the last lifelines keeping Palestinians alive” is attributable to Hamas’s holding of the remaining Israeli hostages and its refusal to negotiate a ceasefire.This biased, one-sided, morally relative, and factually blind coverage surely explains why CBC is routinely labelled as anti-Israel, a bias many observers would equate with full-blown antisemitism, the world’s oldest hate. Hymie Rubenstein, a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, is the editor of REAL Israel & Palestine Report.
