September 20, 2023
Letter to the Ottawa Citizen
Dear Editor;
In 2022, 66 journalists were killed in war zones. (66 Journalists Killed in 2022 Amid Decline in Press Safety, International Press Institute, 12/29/22).
Every death of a journalist in a war zone is of equal tragedy. Journalists who choose to report amidst the murderous hail of bullets and shrapnel that war zones represent accept the risk.
However for the Carleton School of Journalism to single out Shireen Akleh Abu posthumously for a Social Justice award and thereby ignore the other 65 journalists killed in equivalent circumstances is ultimately antisemitic. (Carleton University Launches Scholarship to Honor Slain Palestinian Journalist)
First, Israel, notwithstanding the constant slaughter of Jewish civilians by Arab terrorists, is not even among the top ten countries in terms of combat journalists killed in 2022. (Since November 30,1947 over 28,400 Jews have been killed by Arabs in Mandatory Palestine and what since May 15, 1948 is Israel.)
Further, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, applying a double standard to Israel not expected or demanded by any other nation is antisemitic. To honour one journalist killed in Israel (presumably by Jews?) with a Social Justice award as somehow more deserving of such an award than those other 65 journalists killed in equivalent combat circumstances ( by non-Jews?) is antisemitic.
To give such an antisemitic award casts more opprobrium on Carleton College than honour on the memory of Shireen Akleh Abu.
Richard Sherman, Florida
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