Some Canadian media seem to believe that none of the events on October 7 can be justified by anything but any part of what happened that day has justified everything since.
In the first days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, these publications pointed to a baseless claim that Palestinian fighters beheaded 40 babies, and said Israel had the right to defend itself. When that was debunked, the rhetoric eventually shifted to state that Gaza deserved what was coming because even one child killed was too many.
The latter part of this statement is something many people genuinely believe. The editorials since released by some of these publications cast doubt on whether they do.
On February 28, the United States bombed an elementary school in Minab, Iran, as part of its illegal war with Israel on the country and its civilians. The horrifying strike killed at least 186 people, the vast majority of whom were children between the ages of seven and 12.
One child killed is too many, right? Maybe not.
On March 1, the Toronto Sun published an editorial stating: “Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre have rightly endorsed the joint attack by the U.S. and Israel on the barbaric regime of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial assault.”
I expect it would come as a shock for the family of the children slaughtered to hear their kids were taking time away from the playground to serve as members of the Iranian government.
On March 2, The Globe and Mail published an editorial stating, “Iran cannot fund international terror, attack Israel for decades through proxies, pursue nuclear weapons and back a war of aggression in Ukraine and then expect that the niceties of international law will somehow shield it from the consequences of its actions.”
Yes, really stick it to those parents who expected their kids would come home from school.
And on March 4, the National Post published an editorial in support of the war claiming that the U.S. and Israel have been “taking pains to avoid civilian casualties.”
I would love to see these editors tell any remaining classmates of the deceased that the U.S. really tried not to kill their friends, but oopsie-daisy, sometimes it just happens.
The bombing of the school had made international headlines before these editorials were published, so it’s reasonable to believe the staffers who wrote them knew about it. None of them mentioned it. And in the days since, as U.S.-Israeli forces have hit at least another three schools, the publications they work at have also mostly avoided doing so.
I scanned the Canadian Newsstream database for standalone articles from the three publications noted above that mention the deadly strike on the school. I found just seven of them. Here’s the extent of the coverage this horrific war crime has received thus far in these publications:
- “Iran’s judiciary said an all-girls school was hit by airstrikes in the country’s south, killing at least 85 people.” (Toronto Sun)
- “The killing is endless. School girls in Iran, state media reported.” (The Globe and Mail)
- “She is still grieving for young women killed in a school caught in the bombing.” (The Globe and Mail)
- “The deadliest single strike so far came on Saturday at an all girl’s school in southeastern Iran, where more than 150 students and teachers were reported to have been killed while another 96 were injured.” (National Post)
- “Among the dead were many school children in Minab, in southern Iran. UNESCO in a statement said that the attack over the weekend had killed around 150 people and wounded 100. ‘Many students are believed to be among the dead,’ the UN agency said.” (The Globe and Mail)
- “The death of hundreds of people in Iran on the first day of the war, many of whom were children, due to the bombing of a school, brought back fresh and painful images of the atrocities in Gaza, where thousands of innocent Palestinian children were killed in the conflict.” (The Globe and Mail)
- “Who is responsible for the deaths of at least 168 people, the majority Iranian schoolgirls, killed in Minab on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli strikes?” (The Globe and Mail)
Twenty children under the age of 15 were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, and those events have dominated the news since. At least seven times that number of children were killed under a week ago, and I can’t even say it dropped out of Canadian news already, as it was barely there to begin with. To the extent that it was, it was almost entirely relegated to throwaway lines, including one where Iranian girls were depicted as “young women.”
So, why is this the case?
I suspect that if you asked these editors they’d never respond by saying Iranian lives are less valuable to them than Israeli ones, or that the murder of Iranian children isn’t as newsworthy.
My baseless hunch is that they’ve huddled in their newsrooms, observed that Iranian state media has been reporting the casualty count, pointed to Zionist conspiracy theories that the IRGC was to blame and then thrown their hands up in the air, content to pretend they don’t know what happened and wait until their daddies in Western governments pass along their spin before reporting on it. This, of course, is the complete opposite of how they’ve treated bizarre claims coming out of Israel since Oct. 7, 2023, which have been repeated ad nauseam, even after being debunked.
Regardless of the reason, the fact is that Canadian editorial boards endorsed a U.S.-Israeli war that killed more than 150 children in one strike within its first 24 hours, and didn’t even give the martyred the dignity of mentioning them as they did so.
