The Israeli military carried out heavy airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday night, killing 104 people, including 46 children, local health officials reported. An additional 253 Palestinians were injured in the strikes.
It was a clear violation of the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but Canadian mainstream media failed to accurately convey the severity of the moment, acting instead as a mouthpiece for the Israeli government.
CBC News, for example, ran a headline on Tuesday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the attacks: “Israel tests ceasefire with ‘powerful attacks’ on Gaza.” On Wednesday, CBC News ran the following headline for a wire story from Reuters: “Israel says ceasefire back in effect after Gaza strikes kill at least 104 people,” with subheadline: “Accuses Hamas of violating ceasefire by attacking its forces behind ‘yellow line.’”
As many observers were quick to point out on social media, the CBC News headline (and the subsequent story) not only failed to convey the fact that Israel’s attacks clearly violated the ceasefire, but also failed to mention that Israel has repeatedly violated the ceasefire since Oct. 10, killing dozens of Palestinians each week.
The Globe and Mail, which also ran Reuters wire, went with “Israel says it’s enforcing a ceasefire again after strikes in Gaza kill 104 people.”
Meanwhile, CTV News, Toronto Star and other outlets, each of which ran wire stories provided by the Associated Press, used identical headlines: “Israel’s military says ceasefire is back on as death toll from overnight strikes in Gaza reaches 104.”
Only one of these headlines clearly attribute the deadly bombing to Israel, instead making insinuations and leaving unnecessary ambiguity. (While it is normal for major outlets to run wire stories for international news, editors have the ability to rewrite or adjust the headlines.)
What emerges from these headlines — for those able to understand them at all — is a narrative that suggests Israel has the right to unilaterally violate and re-establish the ceasefire agreement without consequence or accountability.
Joshua Sealy-Harrington, a professor of law at the University of Windsor, describes these headlines as “an epic failure of both journalistic and moral principles.”
“The relentless framing from Canadian media outlets, which are deeply complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, is near unconditional acquiescence to Israel’s fallacious narrative,” Sealy-Harrington tells The Grind.
“Refaat Alareer put it best back in 2021, when he wrote: ‘Ceasefire? What usually happens in occupied Palestine is that Palestinians cease, and Israel fires.’ This is clearly what’s been happening since the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, during which Israel has killed Palestinians in Gaza on an almost-daily basis.”
“Minimal journalistic integrity would demand, at the very least, that when Israel fires, journalists would name what is self-evident: that such fire breaches the ceasefire. Instead, we are inundated with a litany of racist euphemisms about Israel ‘testing’ the ceasefire, or it being under ‘strain’ — that is, when Israel’s atrocities even make western news at all.”
The deadliest day in Gaza in weeks
Tuesday’s strikes mark the deadliest 24 hours since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect nearly three weeks ago. The death toll in Gaza since the Oct. 10 ceasefire has risen to at least 211, with nearly 600 recorded injuries.
Netanyahu said he ordered the strikes after forensic analysts determined that a body handed over to Israel by Hamas was the partial remains of a captive recovered earlier in the war, and not those belonging to one of the captives that Hamas agreed to return as part of the ceasefire deal. Israel also alleged that an Israeli soldier was killed in a Hamas attack in Rafah, though Hamas rejected any involvement.
The deadly series of strikes was a clear violation of both the ceasefire and international law. On Wednesday, the United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk called the airstrikes “appalling.” According to Al-Jazeera, one of the airstrikes struck a residential building in central Gaza, killing at least 18 members of the same family, including children, parents and grandparents.
The first phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 10, when Hamas returned all 20 living captives it was holding in Gaza in exchange for the release of almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jails. The agreement also demanded that Hamas return the remains of the remaining deceased captives.
In exchange, Israel agreed to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and to withdraw its military from large parts of Gaza. Earlier this month, Gaza’s media office said that Israel had violated the ceasefire nearly 50 times, including “crimes of direct gunfire against civilians, deliberate shelling and targeting, and the arrest of a number of civilians, reflecting the occupation’s continued policy of aggression despite the declared end of the war.”
And while Israel has allowed some humanitarian aid into Gaza, supplies have been well below the 600 trucks a day specified in the ceasefire agreement. On Oct. 23, the United Nations’ World Food Programme said that the hunger crisis in Gaza remains “catastrophic” despite the ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Israel has claimed that Hamas violated the ceasefire by staging the discovery of some of the remains of Israeli captives, and said the militant group was responsible for the consequences.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who has largely taken credit for brokering the ceasefire deal, defended Israel’s strikes, telling media that Israel “should hit back” when its troops come under attack, a reference to the alleged Hamas attack in Rafah.