ACTION: Take a minute to support a formal complaint asking the Canada Revenue Agency to investigate whether HonestReporting Canada is violating rules for registered charities.

HonestReporting Canada is a charity that promotes anti-Palestinian racism, spreads misinformation, and leads doxing and harassment campaigns against journalists, media outlets, and other individuals. These “charitable activities” are actively being subsidized by Canadian tax dollars.

HRC boasts a 60,000+ strong mailing list dedicated to flooding the inboxes of media outlets with the intent of getting reports censored, amended, or those journalists fired. These harassment campaigns have successfully led to the firings of at least two journalists. A Sick Kids doctor was placed on administrative leave following a similar doxing and harassment campaign, and they regularly target other healthcare professionals, educators and individuals outside the public eye have been. An account published in The Breach describes one journalist’s contract being cut short as a result of HRC’s campaigning:

”During my time there, a senior writer was even called into management meetings to discuss her supposed biases after a HonestReporting campaign targeted her. Her contract was cut short.” (“CBC has whitewashed Israel’s crimes in Gaza. I saw it firsthand”)

HRC spreads misinformation about verified facts about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, including denying reports of famine, disputing death tolls, and spreading (and failing to redact) notorious, racist falsehoods around “unborn child ripped from womb” and the “tunnels under cribs.” It promotes its own glossary of language around Palestine that deliberately obscures internationally recognized violations of international law. This includes outright attempting to erase language that references the “1967 border,” “settlements,” “the West Bank,” “Palestinian territories,” and “occupied territories”

HRC also regularly spread racist incitement, including this editorial by HonestReporting Canada’s assistant director, explicitly stoking racist fear and hatred towards Gaza’s refugees. They’ve repeated and endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu’s notoriously racist “children of darkness” remarks, argued Gaza’s civilians are deserving of or responsible for their own bombardment, and regularly argued that murdered Palestinians under the age of 18 should not be defined as “children.”

The complaint requested that an audit of the organization be initiated immediately by the Canada Revenue Agency.

We have opened a secure, anonymous tip line for media workers who have been victims of harassment from HonestReporting Canada or similar media lobbies, or have information about the way these lobbies interact with newsrooms or editorial policy.

If you have something to share, write to wawogTO@proton.me from a secure personal email address (Proton is encrypted and free) on a non-work device, saying “hello” in the subject line

Just Peace Advocates/Paix Juste

A Canadian-based independent human rights organization promoting Just Peace/Paix Juste through the rule of law and respect for human rights in Canada and around the world for the Palestinian people and those that stand in solidarity for the human rights of the Palestinian people. Just Peace Advocates also has a specific focus on the realization of the self-determination of the people of Kashmir.

About Writers Against the War On Gaza (WAWOG)

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG) is a coalition of media, cultural, and academic workers who are committed to the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people, and who organize against Zionism and American empire from within the imperial core.