The Honest Report

For decades, but particularly over the last three years, anti-Israel activists have repeatedly sought to hijack indigenous language and terms in their attempt to demonize the Jewish State. From accusations like "colonization," these activists have turned truth on its head, and received widespread sympathetic coverage from the news media as a result. But that doesn't mean there is any...

Sana Ebrahimi is an Iranian-born academic and activist in the United States, where she is an outspoken opponent of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the pro-Palestinian political movement. But that wasn't always the case, and in this fascinating interview, Sana shares her own personal journey, what led her to where she is today, and the remarkable parallels she sees between Iranian state media...

In early July, it will be 1,000 days since Hamas' massacres in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then, what have we learned about the state of the Canadian news media? How have they fared when it comes to telling the unvarnished truth to the Canadian public? In this week's episode we are joined by Dave Gordon, journalist for The National Post, who offers his insights and diagnosis...

For more than 2.5 years (and many years before it), most of the Canadian news media has uncritically regurgitated oversimplified, misleading and sometimes outright false claims about Israel. And even aside from their factual inaccuracy, the wording has often been constructed in a way that leaves the Canadian public seriously ill-informed. In this week's episode, HonestReporting Canada Assistan...

When Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a national address on antisemitism recently, he hit some high notes, but also missed critical details. In a recent opinion column in The Globe & Mail, Rabbi Steven Wernick of Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto, one of the largest congregations in the country, thanked the prime minister for speaking out on antisemitism but also noting that a lot was mi...

For nearly 300 years, Jews have played an integral role in Canada, from their origins working in the fur industry to today, where the country's 400,000-strong community remains central in the fields of arts, culture, philanthropy, business, science, medicine and more. To help us understand the story of Canadian Jews over the last three centuries, we are joined by David Koffman, the J. Richard...

Next month, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg is slated to open its "Nakba" exhibit focusing on Israel's 1948 war of independence and the displacement of Arabs as a result of the attempted destruction of Israel. Critics have said that the exhibit appears to be presenting a stridently anti-Israel narrative and could embolden anti-Jewish hate crimes by enshrining pro-Pal...

Following the terrorist attack at a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia in December, Toronto city councillors James Pasternak and Mike Colle called for an intergovernmental task force, led by the RCMP, to address violent acts of antisemitism. But in the six months following, this task force has not materialized, even after repeated violent incidents. To help us understand what role such a task for...

In Israel's Negev Desert, which spans most of the country's land mass but home to only 8% of its people, sits Dimona, a town built from scratch to house new immigrants from across the Middle East and beyond, and it is where some of the biggest growth is happening. In this episode, HRC Assistant Director Robert Walker sits down with Itai Tick, who is a reservist in the Israeli military and...

In a scandalous but increasingly unsurprising story, Melanie Bennet, an investigative journalist with Juno News, recently broke that the Hamilton-Wentworth District School board in southern Ontario spent $70,000 on a training module to teach thousands of teachers about 'anti-Palestinian racism.' Bennet got hold of the training transcript, and what was taught was not about combating racism,...

When it comes to combating anti-Jewish hate, it is important to look to leaders for inspiration and education, no matter where they are. And in the fight against anti-Jewish hate, one of the loudest voices has been Cora Neumann, a Democratic Montana state senator, a state with a Jewish population of only about one-tenth of one percent. Nevertheless, Neumann has been a vocal opponent of antisemitis...

How is it possible that Israel can be attacked on multiple fronts, from Yemen to Iran to Gaza and Lebanon, and yet be ranked the eighth-happiest country in the world? What is the secret to Israel's resilience? How do Israelis cope with war, and more importantly, learn to thrive despite the circumstances? In this podcast, HonestReporting Canada assistant director Robert Walker speaks with Tzivia Ma...

The Carney government has faced unprecedented criticism, domestically and internationally, for what critics call a failure to address Islamic terrorism and anti-Jewish hate inside Canada. What more needs to be done to meaningfully address the scourge of Islamic terrorism, and, in a directly related effort, the related upsurge in anti-Jewish hate? In this episode of The Honest Report, HonestReporti...

One of the most historically ignorant lies told about Israel is that it is a colonialist enterprise with no history in the land, despite three thousand years of Jewish presence in Israel. Such historical revisionism aside, the reality on the ground tells a very different story, and in this powerful interview, HonestReporting Canada assistant director Robert Walker sits down with Crystal Lavallee....

Since the U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Iranian regime began on February 28, the message from Ottawa has been mixed. First, Prime Minister Mark Carney supported them, then appeared to walk that back, with little clarity since. As the war progresses, footage continues to show Iranians cheering strikes on regime targets, and in Canada, mass gatherings of Iranians praise the effort, calling it not...

Just a few days into the war with the Iranian regime, and so much has changed. The Islamic Republic's longtime ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, as are apparently thousands of regime officials, Israel says. In response to strikes, the Iranian regime has lashed out, striking countries across the Middle East and beyond, demonstrating in real-time their fanaticism. But where is the war going from here,...

The Middle East is such a busy place that the region's most populous country, Egypt, is often forgotten. Home to some 110 million people, Egypt fought four wars with Israel, but in 1979, the two signed a peace agreement. However, the story didn't end there. The aggressive language and even actions from Cairo have intensified in recent years, and in this episode of The Honest Report, we are joined...

On December 26, Israel and Somaliland, a country in eastern Africa, announced that they had established formal diplomatic relations. In doing so, Israel became the first country to recognize Somaliland, which declared its independence from neighbouring Somalia in 1991. But in contrast to Somalia, Somaliland is a vibrant, democratic and stable country. To help us understand the complexities and pro...

From almost the moment that thousands of Palestinian terrorists streamed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, conspiracy theorists began re-writing history in real time, accusing Israel of killing its own people and spreading vicious lies aimed at whitewashing Palestinian terrorism. As history has shown countless times before, lies that start on the fringes can often become mainstream, and Isr...

While much of the world's attention is focused on the Iranian regime, desperate to cling to power after a historic massacre of its own people protesting, another power seeks hegemony in the Middle East: Turkey, run by its strongman leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Under Erdogan, Turkey has massacred Kurdish minorities, backs the new Syrian regime, and has expressed vocal support for Hamas. It also se...

HR Canada Charitable has published a 100-page report, backed by the same team that released the Asserson Report on the BBC, to examine CBC News' coverage of the Hamas-Israel war over a 20-month period. The results are damning as they showcase an overwhelming narrative imbalance of the Hamas-Israel war, which minimizes and abstracts Israeli and Jewish experiences while privileging Palestinian p...

Starting in late December, millions of protesters have gathered across Iran, joining against the Islamic Republic of Iran's theocratic rulers. And in response, according to reports, the Islamic Republic of Iran has murdered tens of thousands of protesters, just in recent days alone, and to help hide their crimes, the regime has shut off the internet, making it difficult for the world to see th...

Despite the barrage of pro-Palestinian propaganda being presented on social media - and in the traditional news media as well - there has never been a substitute for the unvarnished truth, and that means seeing the reality first-hand. Cory Morgan recently had a chance to do exactly that. The journalist and columnist for The Western Standard recently visited Israel  with the Exigent Foundation,  wh...

Anyone not living under a rock in the last two years has seen the vicious pro-Hamas demonstrations in Western cities. But while they may look like spontaneous expressions of hostility to Israeli policy, they are carefully-constructed instances of astroturfing, where big money funds projects designed to look grassroots. In this podcast, we sit down with Warren Kinsella, journalist, lawyer, author a...

When a Toronto bookstore owned by Jewish philanthropist Heather Reisman was vandalized by anti-Israel extremists in late 2023, one of the perpetrators, a licensed immigration consultant named Mac Scott, received only a warning from his professional regulator, even after an admission of guilt. Lawyer and advocate Bryant Greenbaum says that’s not good enough.  In this episode of The Honest Report, h...