An article today in CBC.ca clearly demonstrates why Derek Stoffel won a journalism award from a Canadian Zionist organization and why CBC considers him suitable to report on Israel/Palestine. Basically because he has zero integrity. He must know that what he is writing is skewed and misleading, but he does it anyway.
Here are examples from this one article:
1) He writes: "Gaza residents haven't had around-the-clock electricity since 2006, before a conflict was fought between two rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, based in the West Bank. Hamas won and has governed the Gaza Strip for the last decade. Repeated attempts at reconciliation between the two sides have failed."
Why does he not mention that there was an internationally-monitored election in 2006 which Hamas won and Fatah lost? Or is he describing the election as a "conflict"? That would be strange terminology. He writes as if it was just a street fight that put Hamas in charge in Gaza, and does not clarify that Abbas and Fatah have no legitimacy because they lost the election, but won the street fight in the West Bank.
2) He writes: "Israel agreed in early June to cut back its share of Gaza's electricity supply, at the request of Abbas, who is widely believed to have made the move to increase the pressure on his rival Hamas. That led to the reduction to just two to four hours of daily electricity."
Even though Abbas has no legitimacy, but even if he had, the time has long past when he should have faced an election. Abbas is widely-despised by Palestinians as an Israeli puppet. He does not hold an election because he will lose. Yet Stoffel claims that Israel is just responding to a request from Abbas, so they have no fault in the current situation.
3) Stoffel writes as if Gaza suffering is all caused by internal Palestinian politics. This is absurd. Palestinians have been suffering Israeli abuse for over 70 years. Stoffel should point out that Gaza is crowded and poor because almost all its residents are victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing and today an economic blockade. Many are from the beautiful city of Haifa, where 50,000 Palestinian residents were forced at gunpoint to flee for their loves by boats to Gaza.
4) Stoffel claims there were three wars between Hamas and Israel, but they were not wars. They were brutal Israeli massacres, and calling them "wars" just gets the Israelis a free pass to massacre at will.
5) Stoffel claims that Gazans are angry at Hamas, not Abbas. He claims to have interviewed a "handful" of residents. But how valid is this in light of the FACT, that he ignores, that in an election, the people of Gaza rejected Abbas and Fatah. Is Stoffel claiming his handful of interviews has more validity that the election result?
But Stoffel's greatest abuse, in which he serves his Zionist patrons, is writing a piece on Gaza suffering which virtually completes exonerates the role of Israel in this suffering.
Canadians deserve better reporting than this, We pay for CBC, not the Zionists, and CBC should work for us, not the Zionists.
