In Toronto Star Column, Raja Khouri & Jeffrey Wilkinson Call To Build Bridges While Simultaneously Leveling Baseless Charges Against Israel
Raja Khouri and Jeffrey Wilkinson, an Arab and a Jew, respectively, have been repeat guests on various CBC radio programs, where their appearances have been portrayed as a balanced conversation on a difficult topic, namely the Middle East.
But scratch further and the duo, co-authors and frequent collaborators, far from representing diverse opinions, reflect a consistent viewpoint that while superficially nuanced, is in fact stridently hostile to Israel.
In their October 7 opinion column in The Toronto Star entitled: “It’s been two years since Oct 7. Have we done better in bringing the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel communities together?,” coinciding with the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ massacres in southern Israel, opened their commentary by bemoaning the “rampant increase in polarization between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel communities in Canada.”
But it soon became clear that, platitudes aside, Khouri and Wilkinson presented deeply problematic and unfounded accusations against Israel that are not grounded in fact.
The authors complained that “far too many people in Canada and around the world having (had) tolerated images of deliberate starvation, the mass elimination of lives and livelihoods, the destruction of hospitals, medics and journalists for far too long.”
This litany of claims against Israel, including “deliberate starvation,” is blatant disinformation. Israel has provided well over two million tonnes of aid into Gaza on nearly 110,000 trucks by the time their column was published. Video footage shows restaurants, bakeries and cafes inside the territory full, and yet the authors would have Canadians believe that Israel has starved Gazans, a complete inversion of reality.
And while there have indeed been destruction of “hospitals” and other infrastructure, the pair make no mention of the unavoidable fact that Hamas has deliberately used such facilities to store fighters and weapons, which causes these facilities to lose their protected status. However, by avoiding mention of this, they portrayed Israel as vengeful and violent, rather than a state carrying out a legitimate war against the genocidal terrorist group Hamas.
In fact, for a column supposedly marking the two-year anniversary of Hamas’ massacres, the group did not get mentioned even a single time, an omission so obscene that it renders the entire commentary utterly ludicrous. It is like marking the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks without mentioning Al Qaeda or its mastermind, Osama bin Laden.
Their attacks deepen, arguing that “labelling all of this as ‘genocide’ has created such strong reactions from many who have focused more on their discomfort with the term rather than the devastation and loss the term denotes.”
But what Khouri and Wilkinson describe as “discomfort” was a shameless misrepresentation of the facts. It is not “discomfort” in the word genocide, but recognition that Israel is not – by any measure whatsoever – committing such crimes, and labelling Israel’s legitimate self-defence against a proudly genocidal group as such is not only without basis in fact, it is a senseless assault on truth.
Rather than acknowledge Israel’s herculean efforts in avoiding civilian casualties in Gaza – made admittedly difficult by Hamas’ use of those same civilians as human shields – Khouri and Wilkinson all but explicitly accuse it of the worst crime against humanity possible.
Khouri and Wilkinson may frame their column as seeking to build bridges, but in actuality they are laundering anti-Israel propaganda under the guise of reconciliation, and their omissions speak louder than their platitudes.
