The time has come to look at the reluctance of most in the Canadian media to expose the genocide going on in Gaza, or the murderous attacks and killings on the West Bank.  True, many in the western world prefer to look away.  Or they prefer to use both-sidesism to show each side  – Israelis and Palestinians – are equally to blame, of  equal power.  I was thinking about this last week when I listened to a new one hour BBC radio drama called The Film.

The Film is about actual events in 1945 London, when the British government’s Ministry of Information (MOI) vetoed the completion of a film about the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.  London filmmaker Sidney Bernstein (who was Jewish) had just returned from visiting the camp, newly liberated by British troops.   He filmed the thousands of prisoners, dead and alive; he got testimonials and interviews.  The MOI quickly snapped up the documentary film idea.  In post-production, Bernstein was assisted by his friends Alfred Hitchcock (yes that Hitchcock) and a leading BBC journalist (and Labour MP!) Richard Crossman.  Then the MOI pulled the plug. 

3photos

In the radio play, Bernstein tells the MOI “it had to present  a case to the German people, proving beyond doubt that Belsen was just one tiny part of an industrialised system of forced labor, torture, persecution and extermination for which they are all culpable”.  

Bernstein felt his government wasn’t telling the truth about the horror of the concentration camps.  Bernstein told Hitchcock and Crossman, 

“We [in the MOI] haven’t been lying, not exactly, but generally, we’ve averted our lenses from anything too graphic But this, this was different. I said to them, forget the bloody rules. 

“We need detail, no matter how ghastly. You must not shy away from anything. The bodies are in a terrible state.  

“We have to  see that. Anyone left alive has lost their dignity a long time ago. No, no, they haven’t lost it. 

“It’s been torn away from them… Some of them do look like statues or rag dolls. So you have to make sure that when you film these horrors, no one watching can be in any doubt that these are anything other than real human beings.

“In a living hell, built not just by the evil of the Nazi war machine, but by the evil of a whole country of ordinary people, who at the very least just stood by and let it happen.  So yes, yes, we have to have close-ups where all the horrific detail is there for everyone to see.  But we also need to show that these horrors, these crimes are being witnessed by real people.” 

Does this sound like the present day? The news in Canada rarely shows what is directly going on in Gaza and the extent of the tragedy.  True, Israel does not permit western journalists to enter Gaza– insisting it is for security reasons.  But Israel has been busy killing Gaza’s journalists–  as of the end of March 2025, at least 232 journalists and media workers had been murdered by Israel.  According to Foreign Policy, that amounts to

“more journalists than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project.”

When no western media are admitted to Gaza, we see little on the nightly news, there is a shortage of column inches devoted to Gaza in the papers and we hear little to nothing from Canadian journalists in the wider legacy media. True, we can watch better coverage on Al Jazeera, or on Gazan journalists’ blogs or on 972+.  But much of the Canadian media have been effectively silenced and do not report on Gaza.  

“Torture, persecution and extermination…”

Similar to the journalists who did expose the concentration and death camps in 1945, Canadian journalists and campaigners today must insist that what is going on in Gaza, and the West Bank is ethnic cleansing.  Many major world charities insist we call it by its name.  But it is a rare western media outlet that calls it ethnic cleansing.  They will not even say that Israel is responsible for “torture, persecution and extermination.” 

Yet these recent events in Gaza are shocking reminders of what Israel is doing daily – and what much of Canada’s news media tries to skirt around – or even dump blame on the Palestinians.   In a recent interview with several men who had recently been imprisoned by Israel and were sent back to Gaza—all of them carried signs of torture.  For example, Mohammad Abu Tawileh, a 36-year-old mechanic said in prison the guards dunked his head in chemicals and his back was set on fire.  “I thrashed around like an animal in an attempt to put the fire out [on my body].”  His sight has been permanently damaged by the chemicals in which he was forced to submerge his head.  

On 23 March, Israel killed 15 Palestinian paramedics in Gaza. They were found in a shallow grave — bound, shot and buried along with their ambulances.  That is a war crime.  Though that particular crime was covered by the media, it’s been overtaken by more recent events elsewhere in the world – which is another way of “changing the channel” on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. 

Just  the other day, the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) announced they were  closing off the three entrances to the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.  Most analysts say the closures are to break the spirit of unity between the Palestinians who live in the camp and those who live in the adjacent city.  Dozens of metal gates throughout Jenin  will make daily life very difficult.  An Al Jazeera reporter calls Jenin an “iron cage”.  The gates should never be built because Jenin is in Area A–  that is supposed to be under Palestinian (not Israeli) control.  

Back to The Film

In The Film, the MOI and the BBC want to cancel The Film based on their “respect” for the victims– in other words keep everything quiet.  But Bernstein disagrees– he wants to expose what he saw at Bergen-Belsen. 

“…If we are too respectful, we risk sweeping the full horror under the carpet. …We have to say that this was a crime against humanity as a whole… the crimes committed by the Nazis, they’re completely unprecedented…”

In terms of the Palestinians, Canada’s mainstream media has been cowed and even censored themselves.   The pro-Israel lobby has demonstrated it can get journalists and other professionals fired for showing sympathy to the Palestinians.  Reading the Canadian newspapers – virtually all owned by a handful of corporate chains in this country, listening to the news or watching interviews, you’d swear it was the Jews of Canada who are suffering and that it’s the Israelis who are suffering.  But  60,000 dead Palestinians barely registers a ripple.  Israel has killed nearly 18,000 children in Gaza –one every 45 minutes, 30 kids every day for the last nearly 600 days since Oct. 2023.  

“[If you] choose to don the mantle of victimhood, just be aware of the price you will pay…”

from The Film

Perhaps the most prescient lines from The Film are from Bernstein’s boss at the Ministry of Information who tells him to scrap The Film.  About the Nazis, the MOI boss tells Bernstein,

“Their story is over. But if you the Jews, I mean choose to don the mantle of such victimhood, just be aware of the price you will pay.  If you demand that the world measure the evil of Nazism by the yardstick of Jewish suffering, then don’t you risk forever being judged by that very same yardstick yourself?”

Image at the top: photo to illustrate The Film on Drama of the Week, BBC Radio 4.