SLOBODIAN: When radical activists pose as journalists

ReMax Canada fired Nazih Khatatba on October 24, but the former realtor is still editor of the Mississauga-based Meshwar Media, an Arabic language newspaper. So, although ReMax cut this radical loose for his antisemitic social media posts, Khatatba is still free to share his vitriolic messages.He celebrated and glorified the October 7 savage massacre of 1,400 Israelis by Hamas terrorists who penetrated southern kibbutzs and villages.They attacked Jews in their beds, on the streets, seniors at a bus stop, Jews and foreigners at a music festival. Burning alive. Beheading. Dismembering. Torturing. Executing. Babies, the elderly and every age in between.Another 5,400 were wounded. And 240 — including children — were taken hostage.“Al-Aqsa storm. The best news I ever heard when I woke up this morning. A lightning attack against the occupation exceeds the attack of October War,” Khatatba posted on Facebook that day..He also posted: “Thousands of congratulations Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” in reference to what Hamas called the invasion by land, air and sea.Khatatba included a picture of khafeh, a dessert that terrorist groups hand out after brutal attacks.On October 8, Khatatba joked about having sex with Israeli women — essentially justifying attacked and captured Israeli women being raped by Hamas terrorists.“You may remember the person who was asked: If we enter Israel (as conquerors), will we have sex with the Israeli women? (meaning taking the Jewish women as sex slaves.) He replied to them: If you entered (Israel as conquerors), come and have sex with me (meaning, conquering Israel is impossible.) People are trying to find him (meaning, to prove him wrong),” wrote Khatatba in Arabic..This post, with three tears of joy Happy Faces, was translated by the Documentation Project that monitors antisemitism in Canada.Khatatba called on followers to protest at hate-spewing events that disrupt daily life, forcing Canadian taxpayers to foot hefty policing bills.Chants at these rallies from Vancouver to Montreal include:• Oh Muslim, praise Allah and smash the Zionist’s head.• O Allah, destroy the enemies of the people of Gaza. O Allah, count their number. And slay them one by one. And spare not one of them.Do employees of Arabic publications get a pass when they're encouraging genocide and celebrating Hamas — declared a terrorist organization by many nations, including Canada?Are employees of Arabic newspapers exempt from following Canadian journalistic practices and principles?Global News fired Toronto-area Palestinian ‘journalist’ Zahraa Al-Akhrass on October 17 because of her activist, misleading, angry, defiant, social media posts.On October 12 she posted: “Zionism is Nazism. This narrative led by occupation media and politicians and so dumbly repeated by everyone in the west without even fact-checking the lies, is so dangerous. It dehumanizes Palestinians and the only response to it is to fight back. We owe you nothing.”In an Instagram video, Al-Akhrass, with almost 65,000 followers, plaintively lamented she believed her voice would “matter most” when it came to speaking up about Palestine to Global News “but I guess I was wrong.”Where she went wrong was in leaping over the line from journalism into rabid activism and in not getting the facts right.In the video, Al-Akhrass said she was turfed October 17; the day Palestinians were “counting the deaths” in the “hospital massacre that took the lives of over 500 people in Gaza.”She blamed the Israelis. But there was no massacre, as Hamas claimed. Multiple intelligence sources confirmed an explosion in the parking lot adjacent to al-Ahli Arab Hospital resulted from a failed rocket launched from within Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A few dozen people were killed.If Al-Akhrass since corrected the deception, I couldn’t find evidence.“Do we matter at all? Nobody even acknowledged my pain. I was told we should suffer in silence and not disturb others,” she claimed in the video.According to Daily Hive and Now Toronto, a Global News spokesperson declined comment on specific employee matters.“However, Global News does not condone violence or discrimination of any kind toward individuals or groups,” said the spokesperson.“Commentary by our employees expressing or amplifying violence or discrimination against any group is not condoned and is a violation of our company policies.”Al-Akhrass assumed victimhood posture and urged followers to launch a campaign against Global News which was heartily supported by the National Council of Canadian Muslims.Journalists in Canada’s mainstream media get cut a lot of slack. So, what line did Al-Akhrass cross in social media comments about the Israel-Gaza war — that Hamas started?Al-Akhrass claimed she was told to take down posts with hashtags #FreePalestine, #GazaGenocide and #GazaUnderAttack.Her social media posts have long falsely accused Israel of genocide, ethnic cleansing, willfully targeting Palestinian children and all civilians in indiscriminate attacks and being "brutal occupiers who are hungry for Palestinian blood.”Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip in 2005.Al-Akhrass casually downplayed the massacre, despite overwhelming evidence from survivor testimony, photos, security cameras and videos taken by the Hamas terrorists.The Israeli Defence Forces have shown foreign journalists a compilation of raw footage taken by the sometimes-laughing Hamas killers.In a gripping November 6 National Post column, Warren Kinsella wrote about the graphic details. Kinsella was one of 25 journalists shown unedited 43-minute footage of the horror at the Israeli Consulate in Toronto.“I saw the decapitated heads of babies and children. I saw babies with bullet holes in them. I saw babies and children who had been burned until all that you could see was the outline of their little bodies, arms reaching up to God,” he wrote.“I saw a dog, a black retriever, approach the monsters, his tail wagging. They shot him — once, twice, three times. The dog fell to the sidewalk.”“There was more, much more … I went outside, where my colleague, Brian Lilley, waited for me. He asked me how I was.”“And then I start to cry and could not stop.”Anyone who has witnessed the atrocities of man’s inhumanity to man is left forever scarred.Maybe the video should be played at these massive demonstrations calling for more death, more genocide.Or maybe not. Some of those sick hearts are so seared with unnatural, unbridled hatred, they’d probably grab popcorn and enjoy the show.Oh Canada, what is happening to you?

SLOBODIAN: When radical activists pose as journalists

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