As Israel continues to hold back food to starving Palestinians trapped in Gaza, resulting in famine and death, as its prime minister tells the United Nations he will not yield to its peace resolutions, as Israeli forces order Palestinians to vacate their homes and mosques and schools and hospitals so it can bomb them into the stone age, a small Canadian charity is working overtime.

Honest Reporting Canada (HRC), as it calls itself, is busy targeting news organizations and journalists who report any of this is actually happening. As an officially registered charity, it is allowed to give income tax deductions to anyone who contributes to its $2 million a year budget.

Almost every day recently, its website has issued multiple “action alerts,” directing its 70,000 subscribers to bombard journalists and their organizations with emails accusing them of anti-Israel bias, antisemitism, blood libels and disinformation. It even provides them with accusatory email templates to which they can simply attach their names. There is evidence that these intimidation tactics have forced some news organizations to pull back on publishing news and opinion that HRC might object to. Indeed, I and other observers are hard-pressed to find news people who are even willing to attach their names to criticism of HRC.

HRC describes itself as an “independent, grass-roots organization promoting fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel, the Middle East and matters affecting the Jewish community in Canada, and which works to challenge anti-Jewish rhetoric, particularly when antisemitism hides behind a mask of anti-Israel criticism.”

Fact check: Honest Reporting Canada is not independent. It is not grass-roots. It does not subscribe to journalism’s commonly accepted standards for fairness and accuracy. And, critics argue, it does not act as a charity; rather, it is usually a mouthpiece for whatever Israel says it is doing, namely: There is no famine in Gaza; Israel is not targeting civilians; there is no genocide; any criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism.

All of which begs the question: Why is the government, and Canadian taxpayers, helping this group influence reporting of what a blue-ribbon United Nations independent investigation recently called a genocide?

Last year, a freedom of expression monitoring project sponsored by two of Canada’s leading journalism organizations—the Canadian Association of Journalists and the National NewsMedia Council—called out the menace of HRC.

“The nature of these accusations against named journalists and the volume of complaints and harassment which often follow can create a chill on reporting,” said the Canada Press Freedom Project. “Media workers report that they contribute to a climate of fear and self-censorship, and can exacerbate worries about job precarity and editorial freedom.”

Now, two small human rights organizations are circulating a petition to ask Ottawa to review HRC’s charitable status. In 2023, it gave out more than $1 million in tax deductions to donors, mostly other pro-Israel charities. Rules for charities in Canada are seemingly strict: They must not engage in political activities; 80 per cent of their budget must be spent on charitable activities that serve the public’s benefit like poverty relief, education, religion or health; and they must file a T3101 form annually with the Canada Revenue Agency.

Journalist and author Linda McQuaig, one of HRC’s frequent targets, is one of the few to speak out.

“I did not realize that Honest Reporting was a charitable organization,” she said in an interview. “I’m puzzled by why Canadian authorities would consider attacking journalists to be a charitable activity worthy of a tax credit.”

Here’s where the story gets interesting.

The charity is registered as HR Canada Charitable Organization. It is directed by three well-heeled Toronto businessmen, Ken Rotman, Jonas Prince and Dan Greenglass, who control companies worth billions of dollars. Its donors, listed by name on the Canada Revenue Agency filings, include the powerhouse United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto and a who’s who of other Jewish charities, including The Azrieli Foundation and the Ronald S Roadburg Foundation, named after the late Vancouver real estate baron, which has donated $250,000 to HRC since 2022. The charitable foundations of former senator Linda Frum and former gold magnate Peter Munk are also supporters.

HRC has grown quickly since it registered as a charity in 2019. Its war chest in 2020 was just $186,650 ($117,743 from donations, and the rest from other charities). In 2023, the last year CRA processed T3101 forms, HRC issued tax receipts for $1,061,099, and $984,900 of that came from other registered charities.

Using that money to lobby news organizations has been disturbingly effective. HRC’s latest report on its successes includes a pledge to be a “pit bull” against what it claimed is “a well-organized attempt by anti-Israel groups to solidify their monopoly over news media coverage of the Middle East.” Its website highlights corrections its pressure caused in more than 80 Canadian news organizations, including CBC, CTV, The Globe and Mail, and smaller outlets coast to coast like Saltwire and the Victoria Times Colonist.

So is Honest Reporting Canada engaging in legitimate media criticism, or is it a well-funded pressure group harassing Canadian journalists? Are the stories it targets all substantially incorrect, or do they merely cast Israel in a negative light? I reached out to HRC to address this and other questions but they have not replied.

The United Jewish Appeal, which raises $60 million a year, recommends HRC to its donors, endorsing its methodology. HRC, it says, “subject(s) news reporting to rigorous and methodical investigation in order to prevent distorted coverage.”

It’s hard to take this claim seriously. The person who directs HRC’s media analysis and writes most of its alerts is Mike Fegelman, who has never worked as a professional journalist despite his misleading online bio which says he is “a twenty-one-year veteran of the Canadian journalism industry.”

Although journalism’s codes of ethics require reporting without fear or favour, Fegelman once said that he wants HRC to be “a digital army for Israel.” He doubled down on this in a November 28, 2023, email: “In the war against Hamas, there are two battlefronts: the fighting on the ground and the battle for public opinion. In many respects, the war of persuasion is no less important, helping to shape an entire generation.”

Just Peace Advocates, one of the two pro-Palestinian human rights groups petitioning Canada Revenue Agency to audit HRC, says the charity exhibits an extreme pro-Israel bias and is acting contrary to Canadian law:

“Petitions and articles written by HRC leadership deny reports of famine in Gaza, dispute official death tolls, spread false reports of ‘[an] unborn child ripped from the womb’ and ‘tunnels under cribs’, stoke fear and hatred toward Gazan refugees, endorse and repeat Netanyahu’s notorious ‘children of darkness’ remarks, argue that Gazans are deserving of or responsible for their own bombardment, and claim that murdered Palestinians under the age of 18 should not be called children.”

If you read how HRC describes itself to justify its tax-deductible donations, you’d think it was a broadly based anti-racism organization with a focus on education. Its stated charitable purpose is: “to advance education by: Developing and delivering courses, lectures and workshops to the general public that address the issues of religious, racial, ethnic and/or cultural and linguistic intolerances, discrimination and prejudices; Conducting and compiling data, as well as short and long term media analysis surveys about antisemitism and discrimination to increase understanding and awareness about the importance of unbiased representation of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities in Canada, and publicly disseminate the results thereof.”

In fact, almost all its activities are directed at defending Israel.

Also controversial is the status of Robert Walker, listed as assistant director of HRC. His bio on the website says: “he is actively involved in helping to organize and conduct community antisemitism education workshops for all audiences, so that the public at large can become empowered to challenge anti-Jewish media bias and misinformation.”

Late last year Walker was arrested and charged with 17 counts of mischief for spray-painting anti-Palestinian graffiti in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood. Some of it said “F**k Gaza.”

Although the graffiti was described as hate-motivated by Toronto Police Services, all charges were withdrawn in return for Walker and two accomplices contributing $1,000 each to SickKids Foundation to offset the costs of graffiti removal.

Such actions would get any journalist fired. But Walker, who is not a journalist, remains listed as assistant director of HRC. In fact, he wrote a recent action alert accusing Linda McQuaig of “demonizing Israel.”

The column in question, published in the Toronto Star on September 4, did not focus on Israeli atrocities in Gaza. McQuaig made no new accusations but, as background, linked to international authorities like Amnesty International who have blamed Israel for starving and committing genocide against Palestinians. McQuaig’s column examined alternatives for the United Nations to take action for peace in the region. She quoted a former UN lawyer as saying the General Assembly could override the Security Council veto by the United States using the same resolution put forward by Canada’s Lester Pearson in 1957, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Her column urged Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to do more to push for peace. In my opinion, it met all the tests for a good piece of opinion journalism.

Walker’s criticism, on the other hand, said the writer is “engaging in breathtakingly low-calibre journalism and deeply misleading readers of The Toronto Star” and “directly providing rhetorical cover for a banned terrorist entity in Canada” (presumably meaning Hamas}.

Without any independent verification he said Palestinian mothers and children being killed in Gaza are neither defenceless nor starving, and that “inside Gaza, restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries and food markets are busy.”

That sounds to me like political propaganda, not “rigorous and methodical investigation.” It’s not the kind of education that charitable status was meant to support.

I’ll give McQuaig the last word:

“From what I have noticed … the group does not appear to be concerned about accuracy in media. Rather, my impression is that they seem interested in attacking those (like me) who attempt to hold Israel to the same standards of international law that apply to all nations.”

Support rabble today!

We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.

rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.

Nick Seebruch, editor

Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.

Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.

Nick Seebruch, editor