After some 20 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza Monday, media zeroed in on their new favourite narrative, implying that because journalists were among the dead, they were targeted. Indeed, the headline carried by the Globe and Mail above

a Reuters wire story

read as if killing journalists was the point of the strike: “Multiple journalists killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.” It wasn’t until several paragraphs into the story that it was reported that “Israeli troops fired two artillery shells at the hospital, targeting what they suspected was a Hamas surveillance camera on the roof.”

When civilians, including journalists, are killed in war, it is an inevitable, if tragic, consequence. This is particularly true in urban warfare against Hamas, which embeds its terrorist fighters in civilian infrastructure, using non-combatants as human shields as part of an effective communications campaign to smear Israel as uniquely bloodthirsty.

Western media are the intended targets for such propaganda and they largely oblige by gullibly regurgitating the Hamas perspective on the war: inflating casualty numbers, refusing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, downplaying how the terrorist group uses hospitals and schools, and largely ignoring that Hamas started the war with the massacre of 1200 people in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Western reporters accept, frequently without question, the narrative pushed by anti-Israel media groups that journalists who are killed in Gaza were targeted because they are journalists. In reality, working as a war correspondent is inherently dangerous and always carries the risk of death. For example, the journalists killed in the attack on the hospital Monday may have, based on what can be gleaned from Reuters’ reporting, been killed after they “rushed to the scene” following the firing of the first artillery shell, but before the second shot.

Even so, an official statement from Reuters and the Associated Press displayed a wilful ignorance of context, where journalists were killed after running towards artillery fire. “We are outraged that independent journalists were among the victims of this strike on the hospital, a location that is protected under international law,” the statement said. As for hospitals being protected, perhaps the media organizations should assign a reporter to talk to Hamas.

Not only are well-understood risks associated with war journalism brushed aside when criticizing Israel, western media rarely bother to probe whether those killed are actually journalists, when they are often anything but.

In fact, nearly half of the 197 journalists —

listed by the Committee to Protect Journalists

— killed in Gaza and Lebanon since the October 7 attack, “worked for media owned by or affiliated with terrorist organizations,” according to analysis

by American journalist James Kirchuk.

These include “journalists” who worked for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, the Islamic Jihad-run Al-Quds Al-Youm and the Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar.

Considering those who are doing terrorist propaganda as “journalists” allows Israel’s media critics in the West to inflate the numbers of reporters killed and self-righteously claim, with little proof, that Israel is attacking freedom of the press. It also lets them feel like they have a right to be even more aggrieved against Israel, because Israel is killing people “just like me.”

What’s worse is that when Israel does specifically target someone who works for a media company, it is because of evidence they also work directly for Hamas, evidence that is dismissed out of hand by western journalists, desperate to identify with any suffering in Gaza.

The latest was Anas Al-Sharif, who was killed on Aug. 10. Though he reported for Qatari-funded Al Jazeera, he was also, according to Israel, “an active Hamas military wing operative” and “received a salary from the Hamas terror group.”

According to

documents

Israel obtained in Gaza and first published last October, Sharif joined Hamas’s military wing in 2013. According to a Times of Israel summary of the documents, Sharif “was certified as the team commander” of a “rocket launching squad in northern Gaza” on Jan. 1, 2019. Sharif was also listed as a member of Hamas’s Nukhba Force, a military company that, as the Times put it, “led the initial waves of attacks on southern Israel during the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught.”

Despite this, Sharif has been portrayed as a martyr in western media. A CNN headline

read

: “Anas Al-Sharif became the face of the war in Gaza for millions. Then Israel killed him.” A Globe and Mail

headline

read, “Killing of Al Jazeera journalist in targeted Israeli strike draws condemnation,” and an opinion piece in the New York Times carried this headline: “He Was the Face and Voice of Gaza. Israel Assassinated Him.” In contrast, a National Post headline that identified Sharif as a terrorist attracted vitriolic reaction in Canada from activists, some of whom call themselves journalists.

For those working in a trade where skepticism is at its core, journalists are remarkably credulous when it comes to anything smearing Israel. There has been no outrage among western media at the fact Al-Jazeera appears to have multiple Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives on its payroll pretending to be journalists. Sharif was one of six

identified

by Israel last October. Another was

Hossam Shabat, who Israel says was a Hamas sniper, and who was killed in March. 

Previously, another Al Jazeera

reporter

, Ismail al-Ghoul, who was killed in January 2024, was also found to have been a member of Hamas and took part in October 7, according to intelligence Israel obtained in Gaza.

Evidently, it is too much trouble to ask Al Jazeera why it has so many accused terrorists working for it, especially when it is so much more satisfying for western journalists to demonize Israel.

National Post

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Another Pride parade, another protest. But this time, the protestors won the day. On Sunday, Queers for Palestine managed to

shut down

the Ottawa Pride parade by blocking its path on Wellington Street, in front of Parliament Hill. They

claim

to have done so “with the permission” of the parade’s grand marshal. Capital Pride responded by cancelling the rest of the parade — and the fact they did so says everything you need to know about where Pride has drifted.

Last year, Ottawa Pride organizers decided to take a political stand by issuing a statement “in solidarity with Palestine” which blurred the line between celebration and protest. The statement condemned Israel’s violence in Gaza, referring to the Israel-Hamas war as “the ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” and denounced “pinkwashing” — a term for using LGBTQ rights to deflect criticism of human rights abuses.

Sponsors and politicians

pulled out

, and the pro-Palestinian statement was eventually removed from Capital Pride’s website, but the organization’s executive director, Callie Metler,

told

the CBC last week that the organization still stood by its “principles and values.”

The organizers invited politics into Pride — and now they’ve lost control of it.

In a

news release

, Queers for Palestine made it clear they hijacked the event for their own agenda: “We are in the parade today to affirm very clearly that our Pride is not for sale, and that 2SLGBTQIA+ communities will not accept sponsors and elected officials dictating what we stand for, how we celebrate ourselves and how we claim our space.”

The key question is whether Capital Pride organizers intended for this to happen. Their refusal to enforce basic rules of order, their unwillingness to ensure the parade carried on and their silence as a small group took control on a day that was supposed to belong to tens of thousands of participants all speak volumes. A Pride organization that cannot guarantee its own parade isn’t fit to hold one.

But whose Pride is it? Those of us who lived through the decades when Pride was radical simply for existing remember the real milestones: equality under the law, protections against discrimination, the right to marry. These were hard-won gains. And when we achieved them, many of us dreamed of the day we wouldn’t need Pride parades at all — because every month would be Pride month. Because we would simply live our lives in dignity and equality: at work, in the suburbs, or with friends and family. That dream feels far away now.

Instead of being a unifying celebration, Pride has drifted into something else: a stage for political posturing, divisive slogans and activism that often leaves members of the LGBTQ community feeling excluded or unrepresented.

Worse, there’s a creeping sense of entitlement within the leadership of these organizations. Rather than being accountable to the communities they serve, they increasingly behave as though their funding and sponsorships are owed to them — not earned. They’ve shifted from underdogs demanding a seat at the table to gatekeepers policing who belongs and who doesn’t.

It’s no wonder there’s growing pushback. I don’t have to be straight to say I’ve had enough of the hijacking of Pride by political activists.

So how many more political Pride parades do we endure before the funding spigot is turned off? How long before taxpayers and sponsors alike say enough is enough?

Public dollars, in particular, demand accountability. It’s not unreasonable to ask whether Pride organizations should be required to prove that their events are inclusive, representative and safe before receiving a dime of taxpayer money. Likewise, corporate sponsors should consider whether their millions are going toward building community or amplifying division.

Pride should be a celebration of our victories, not a platform for fringe politics. It should be about community, not confrontation. It should make LGBTQ people feel included, not sidelined by activists with other agendas.

The Ottawa parade collapse is a wake-up call. Pride can either return to its roots as a joyful celebration of equality or it can continue down the road of politicization and alienation. But if it chooses the latter, it shouldn’t receive our tax dollars and corporations should reconsider their financial support.

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We all know governments used the pandemic as rationale for stripping away basic Charter rights, even if some think it was justified. John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, remains at the forefront of the fight to get them back. He has a new book out, “Corrupted by Fear: How the Charter was betrayed and what Canadians can do about it.” And he discusses with Brian Lilley why it’s so important to expose the junk science, careless courts and gross media negligence that made it easy for governments to wield dangerous powers so irresponsibly. COVID may be over, Carpay explains, but if we don’t rebuild our culture of freedom, history tells us governments will do it again — and sooner than we think. (Recorded July 11, 2025.)

• John Carpay: Rights were trampled upon during COVID. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again
• Jay Bhattacharya: Canadian courts complicit in failed lockdowns that violated rights

“Why is a listed terrorist group still operating a Canadian non-profit?”

That’s 

the question

 being posed by B’nai Brith Canada in 

a new campaign

 aimed at pressuring the federal government to dissolve the Vancouver-based Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, which still enjoys 

non-profit status

 despite being listed as a terrorist organization last fall.

Unfortunately, there seems to be little appetite in Canada to take action against the terrorist supporters in our midst. 

Samidoun

 was co-founded by Khaled Barakat, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and his wife 

Charlotte Kates

, a New Jersey native who now lives in Vancouver.

Many Jewish groups hailed the Canadian government’s decision to list Samidoun as a terrorist entity in October, but since then it’s mostly been business as usual for the group.

Readers may remember Kates as the woman who was arrested after leading an April 2024 protest in Vancouver in which she called the perpetrators of the mass slaughter of innocent Israelis “heroic and brave,” and led the crowd in a chant of, “Long live October 7.”

Despite video evidence of her alleged hate speech, a recommendation from the Vancouver Police Department that charges be laid and 

a police raid

 on her home last November, the B.C. Prosecution Service has 

so far declined

 to prosecute her.

The Crown’s inaction prompted B.C. MLA Dallas Brodie, leader of the upstart OneBC party, to take the unusual step this week of filing 

a private prosecution

 in a Vancouver courthouse.

While lawyers say her stunt is unlikely to lead to Kates’s prosecution, it succeeded in garnering media attention and may put pressure on prosecutors to stop dragging their feet. In the meantime, Kates seems to come and go from this country as she pleases, and never misses an opportunity to call for violence against “Zionists.”

In May 2024, she 

travelled to Iran

 to accept a “human rights award” and praised the “brave and heroic” October 7 massacre on Iranian television. In February, she went to Lebanon to attend the funeral of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

She was in Beirut again this month when she 

appeared

 as a guest on a South African talk show railing against pledges by the leaders of Canada, the United Kingdom and France to recognize a Palestinian state in September.

You heard that right: Kates is not in favour of recognizing Palestine as a state. Not because she doesn’t believe in the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, but because a demilitarized Palestinian state in which Hamas is excluded from government, as Canada and its allies are demanding, would hinder the Palestinians’ “right” to slaughter their Israeli neighbours.

In the interview, Kates falsely claimed that Israel is a “criminal entity” that’s carrying out a “genocide” and “does not have any right to quote-unquote defend itself,” while excusing terrorism as Palestinians “exercising their internationally recognized right to resist the occupation by all means necessary, including through armed struggle.”

As such, she said that instead of recognizing a phony Palestinian state, western governments should stop trading and engaging in diplomatic relations with Israel, while advocating that they decriminalize terrorist organizations and start “funding and arming the Palestinian resistance.”

If there was ever any question about what Kates thinks should happen to the Jewish state, she put them to rest when she said: “The best path for humanity is no Zionism in the region.”

Less than a week later, on Aug. 6, Kates 

took to Twitter

 to call on people to “take to the streets, act, escalate, mobilize and struggle,” and to impose “material cost on the zionist-imperialist genocides.”

While she may not have directly called for violence, her intention was clear when she wrote: “Simple mass action is not enough.… We need to advance and escalate our tactics”; and “Almost every action is not _sufficient_ now, only living up to the example of the Resistance.”

Her Twitter storm ended with an English-language press release signed by Hamas, another listed terrorist organization in this country.

And indeed, later that day, a group of protesters showed up at the private residence of Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister and former minister of foreign affairs, 

ominously warning

 that her “actions warrant immediate consequences.”

Then, last week, a group of anti-Israel 

protesters broke into

 La Presse’s Montreal newsroom. Demonstrators also 

protested

 outside CBC’s Montreal offices, laughably claiming the public broadcaster is too pro-Israel.

While it’s unclear if the protesters were responding to Kates’s call to action, it begs the question: what’s the point of having a terrorist watch list if the listed entities can maintain their status as registered non-profits and their members can continue advocating for violence and disseminating terrorist propaganda?

I’m a big free-speech advocate, but even America’s strong First Amendment protections end at incitement to violence. Even if prosecutors don’t think they have a strong enough case to charge Kates for what she said at the Vancouver rally, it’s hard to imagine that a thorough examination of her public statements wouldn’t reveal something that crossed the criminal threshold.

But given that Ottawa couldn’t even be bothered to remove Samidoun from the federal corporation registry 10 months after listing it as a terrorist organization, it seems clear that Canadian officials do not take the threat posed by the group or its leaders seriously.

To be sure, we should probably make a distinction between groups like Samidoun, which was 

accused

 by the U.S. government of being “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for” the PFLP, and organizations that are committing actual acts of terrorism.

But if Canadian officials are going so easy on Samidoun, one wonders whether organizations like the PFLP and Hamas are also operating with impunity within our borders.

National Post

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In this season of surging Canadian nationalism, it’s worth remembering that defining ourselves in opposition to the United States is both an old reflex and a risky one. While understandable, even necessary in certain contexts, excessive anti-Americanism has sometimes led Canada and Canadians down dangerous, counterproductive paths. No case illustrates this better than that of George Taylor Denison III, a man who let hostility to the United States overtake his judgment, his patriotism, and ultimately, his future.

From the beginning, Canadians have distinguished themselves from Americans. Our national story begins with the Loyalists, those Americans who fled north after the Revolution because they remained faithful to the British Crown. That loyalty, and the suspicion of American republicanism that came with it, became a cornerstone of Canadian identity. It was defended on the battlefield in the War of 1812, tested again during the Hunter invasions of 1838, and sustained by successive generations of Canadians wary of American power: military, economic, and cultural.

These concerns were not irrational. We share the world’s longest undefended border with a superpower that dwarfs us in size, strength, and swagger. Keeping Canada distinct in such a shadow requires effort. But it also requires balance. Our prosperity and our security have always depended on managing the American relationship wisely, not defiantly. Anti-Americanism, when it becomes more than a posture and tips into dogma, can blind Canadians to reality and trap us in self-defeating fantasies. George Denison’s story shows how far that can go.

Born in 1839 to a prominent Toronto family steeped in Loyalist pride, Denison was raised to distrust the American experiment. His grandfather fought in the War of 1812. His father was a Tory stalwart in the colonial militia. George, the eldest son, inherited not just the family name, but also its sense of grievance and duty. While he trained as a lawyer, his passion was military service. At just eighteen, he took command of the York Dragoons, an elite cavalry unit originally bankrolled by his family when the government cut funding. This wasn’t a militia post in name only — it was the stage on which he hoped to prove his worth.

His moment came with the American Civil War. As the Union and the Confederacy plunged into conflict, most Canadians watched with anxiety and ambivalence. Around 50,000 would fight in the war, nearly all for the North. Black Canadians, abolitionists, and liberals cheered the Union cause and its fight against slavery. Others, more cautious, feared the consequences of an increasingly powerful and battle-hardened United States. But George Denison saw something else: a chance to relive the Loyalist struggle.

From the start, Denison viewed the Union not as a force for emancipation or unity, but as a threat to Canada’s survival. He issued pamphlets demanding Canadian mobilization. After the Trent Affair — when Union forces intercepted a British ship carrying Confederate envoys and nearly provoked war with Britain — Denison’s alarm turned into obsession. He predicted that when the Civil War ended, a massive and victorious U.S. Army might look north for its next conquest.

But where most Canadians sought diplomatic caution, Denison embraced the Confederacy.

He didn’t just sympathize with the South. He idealized it. To him, the genteel plantation class mirrored the Tory aristocracy his own family represented. Both were noble orders resisting the march of liberalism and industrial capitalism. Denison admired Confederate general Robert E. Lee as a kind of modern demigod. When he visited Lee in Virginia after the war, he spoke of the general with near-religious reverence.

His support wasn’t just sentimental. Denison opened his home to Confederate agents and couriers. His uncle was a Confederate colonel who visited Toronto during the war. When the South began plotting espionage and sabotage from Canadian soil — raiding banks in Vermont, organizing jailbreaks on the Great Lakes — Denison didn’t merely cheer them on. He joined in.

In 1864, Denison commissioned the construction of a steamer called The Georgian, intended to function as a Confederate commerce raider on Lake Erie. It was a reckless, illegal project funded in part by the Confederate treasury and led by Jacob Thompson, the Confederacy’s chief agent in Canada. Denison gambled that his elite status and Canadian birth would shield him from suspicion. They didn’t. The ship was seized before it could sail, and Denison was publicly exposed as a Confederate collaborator.

It ruined his political ambitions. He had hoped to enter public office, perhaps even serve as Canada’s minister of the militia. But no government wanted to antagonize Washington by appointing a man so visibly tied to America’s enemies. He remained active in public life as a police magistrate, as a military theorist, as a founder of the nationalist Canada First movement, but his dream of leadership was over before it began.

Denison’s trajectory is a cautionary tale. His fixation on the American threat led him to support slavery, undermine his country’s neutrality, and betray its long-term interests. Even as Canada was profiting from Union trade and preparing for Confederation to better withstand the continent’s changing dynamics, Denison chose ideology over pragmatism.

He wasn’t alone in fearing American might. Many Canadian leaders in the 1860s recognized that Britain was no longer willing to guarantee colonial security. The response of the Fathers of Confederation was not to sabotage the United States, but to build a stronger Canada. They believed in joining forces across the colonies, creating new rail links, and founding a national government capable of defending and defining itself. That was the patriotic response — not Confederate collaboration, but Canadian cooperation.

Denison, for all his fervour, got the national project backwards. He saw Canadian identity as a permanent rear-guard action against the United States. In doing so, he mistook resentment for vision. Canada didn’t need to fight the U.S.; it needed to manage the relationship, harness it, and at times even embrace it — without ever losing itself.

That remains the challenge today. Nationalism is back in vogue, and many Canadians, weary of American influence, are once again tempted to define ourselves by what we are not. But that path can lead to absurdity and isolation. The U.S. remains our largest trading partner, our key ally, and our cultural mirror. To pretend otherwise is to indulge in a denial that has costs.

Canada will always need a measure of independence, a sense of self, and the confidence to resist the gravitational pull of American politics and culture. But we must also be wary of turning anti-Americanism into a political program. The lessons of George Denison are clear: when national pride becomes national paranoia, everyone loses.

Greg Koabel is the host of The Nations of Canada podcast and author of The Making of Canada: An Epic History in Twenty Lives.

National Post

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When bias — conscious or not — seeps into journalism, it does more than harm one story. It chips away at the trust audiences place in the news media. And trust is nearly impossible to win back.

Veteran CBC correspondent Margaret Evans, one of Canada’s most respected international reporters, appeared on camera this week wearing a scarf that looked like a keffiyeh — a symbol, depending on your worldview, of resistance or of antisemitic terror.

It wasn’t necessarily a keffiyeh, but it was a black and white patterned scarf that looked a lot like a keffiyeh and, at the very least, echoed a symbol of hate for many Canadian Jews and the many other supporters of Israel. Evans should have known better.

And then there’s the CBC crew around her: Directors, camera operators, producers, editors — all serve as guardrails before a story goes to air. That no one flagged the scarf along the way is as troubling as the wardrobe choice itself.

The CBC is already under fire from critics who accuse the broadcaster of picking a side in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Whether those criticisms are fair or not, and I have my own view on that, a visual like this only feeds the perception that the network cannot separate its journalism from its staff’s opinions. For an institution already struggling with public trust, it is a costly mistake.

But the CBC wasn’t alone this week with this kind of misstep.

On the West Coast, a CTV News anchor in Victoria, B.C., introduced a report with: “Israel continues its genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine.” There was no attribution, no quotation, no context. Just the anchor’s voice, flatly delivering one side’s version of events as fact. The report offered no indication of Israel’s robust denials.

Anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom knows how many eyes typically pass over copy before it makes it to air. A writer drafts it. A producer edits it. An anchor reviews it. Yet somehow, none of them stopped to ask: is this balanced? Is this accurate? Is this language supported by reporting? That failure doesn’t just put one anchor or one newsroom on the defensive. It diminishes the credibility of all mainstream media.

Reporters once understood instinctively that their words should not editorialize without attribution, and that their wardrobe should not impede the story. These were day-one basics.

As a former reporter and anchor of a traditional newscast, I learned early that the expectation was simple: dress in a way that reinforced credibility, not distracted from it. Scripts were always vetted by a second set of eyes. We discussed any potential pain points on sensitive stories. That culture of caution and accountability made mistakes less likely and credibility more secure.

Credibility is the currency of journalism. Once it’s spent, there’s nothing left to trade on. And in an industry already battered by layoffs, shrinking audiences, declining revenues and the uncertainty of artificial intelligence, credibility is the one resource that must be protected at all costs.