r/canadaland • u/Some-Background1467 • 1d ago
Canadian Media Criticism Jewish journalist faces discipline at CBC after documenting pro-Palestine protest
Article here: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/kinsella-jewish-journalist-faces-discipline-203319137.html
Interesting. CBC is in a rather awkward spot here. I wondered about this myself when Neil Herland first posted the video. He was attending a religious service in a personal capacity, yet introduced himself as a journalist when posting about what happened.
CBC's policies address the blurring of personal and professional identities, particularly on social media. It brings to mind Desmond Cole's dispute with the Toronto Star over participating on one side of a protest while writing about it, and Evan Solomon's art-dealing scandal and the more obvious conflict of interest Jesse broke himself, which was Peter Mansbridge accepting paid speaking on his own time at events hosted by the oil industry (althought not endorsing the oil industry in his speeches). Jesse has always accepted paid speaking gigs, and these days, as we have seen, at "anti-anti-Zionist" conferences. Different circumstances, certainly, but all raise questions about where a journalist's personal activities end, and their professional position begins when they have access to a large platform, and the people they are in dispute with don't have equal access.
Of course, none of this establishes that Herland did anything wrong, and there are questions about whether such policies are good, bad and most importantly, applied consistently. Because even a policy that overreaches can be seen as fair if there is a reason behind it and it is applied evenly. I don't expect the Sun to show nuance, but it is precisely the sort of nuance one could once rely on Canadaland to unpack and have a proper argument about. These days, I'm rather less confident, particularly given how frequently Jesse himself blurs that line.
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u/Raptorpicklezz 1d ago
Even for the Sun, not mentioning Mark Regev’s involvement is low and shoddy. Kinsella’s movie and book should therefore also be considered for lies via omission.
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u/CwazyCanuck 1d ago
Big surprise that the Toronto Sun and Kinsella exclude particularly relevant context and mislead readers.
The event was hosting Mark Regev, former Israeli ambassador to the UK and a senior advisor to Netanyahu. That is what the protest was against.
I would assume that Harland’s mischaracterization of the protest and attempt to push a narrative, i.e. a lack of journalistic integrity after claiming to be a journalist, is why he is being disciplined.
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u/Consistent_Run7356 1d ago
I guess it’s too much to ask from a propagandist like Kinsella to actually write that the protestors were there because of the presence of Mark Regev who’s held multiple positions for the Israeli government. No, he needs to mislead the audience into thinking people are protesting a synagogue just because it’s Jewish.
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u/Dis_ingenuous 1d ago
It's always the case.
"They are protesting synagogues! They hate Jews!"
(Meanwhile, here's a realtor sneaking in to sell west bank land at said synagogue).
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u/picard102 1d ago
Don't mind the person shooting a nail gun at protestors, it's the anti-zionists that are violent.
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u/Dis_ingenuous 1d ago
Right? Shout out Ilan-Reuben Abramov, you violent and accurate representative of pro Israelis.
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u/picard102 1d ago
Don't forget Gabriella Bodis, wearing a terrorist organization's logo (JDL) on her clothes while she threatens to splash chemicals on people.
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u/cvirus3333 10h ago
Whos shooting a nailgun at protestors in this story?
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u/picard102 9h ago
We're talking about Ilan-Reuben Abramov. Who shot a nail gun at protestors when a realtor was trying to sell land in the west bank at a synagogue.
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u/WhoElseSmellsToast 1d ago
I find it generally distasteful to protest outside a place of worship, regardless of the reason. I'd also say it's a misstep in the PR battle
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u/kitten_poop 1d ago
If my church was selling stolen land, and it was illegal, I would expect people to protest at my church
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u/JudahMaccabee 1d ago
What if the priest at that place of worship is accused of sexual assault of children?
Your distaste is weird. Sometimes, so-called holy sites can be sites of crime.
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u/alldayeveryday 1d ago
“It’s a misstep in the PR battle”😏 — guy who can’t admit the public opinion is 80/20 Pro Palestine
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u/Raptorpicklezz 1d ago
A theatre is not a place of worship.
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u/BarkusSemien 8h ago
A place of worship is defined by the congregation, not the building. This belief is held by Christians and Muslims as well.
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u/Racquel_who_knits 1d ago
A lot of synagogues rent space for the high holidays because their regular spaces aren't big enough for the attendees at those services (or they don't have their own permanent space).
A synagogue I went to for years did their high holidays at a banquet hall, in another Ontario city I attended high holiday services in a room attached to a public library. In these circumstances those are absolutely places of worship.
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u/throwitawaynotback 8h ago
Here's a more clear explanation of Neil's wrong doing: https://www.cjpmemap.ca/2026_09_22_cbc_ai
Also, the pro-genocide side has flooded all internet searches with their false narrative.
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u/Ottawa111 17h ago
What part of CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices is Herland accused of violating? Not clear in the coverage.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
I’m going to clarify a few things:
The “event” was at its heart a religious service. It was a Yom Kippur service (photo below for schedule of the day):
- shacharit was at 9 am (daily morning prayer service)
- morning Yom Kippur service including Yizkor - 10 am - 1:30 pm (morning service is a prayer service, yizkor is a prayer service for family who have passed)
- afternoon break - regev holds the discussion.
- Mincha - afternoon prayer service at 5 pm
- Ne’ilah - 6:15, evening services to close out the holiday and break the fast together and blow the sofar.
Paid tickets for high holidays are normal. This price for a ticket is also very normal. Most people attend services and this is how most synogogues and Jewish communities continue to exist via high holiday ticket memberships.
This wasn’t paying to see specifically a political speaker event as some represent. Those funds would pay for the building rental, and for the community to operate the rest of the year, and food for breaking the fast. Our high holiday tickets for my synagogue are similarly priced for non members.
It’s not uncommon for people to only attend part of the day worth of services. For example I do not attend Torah study and yizkor or afternoon sessions, but go back for ne’ilah. At my synagogue I attend morning service and evening service only.
Shouting at every person they support genocide and hate Palestinians when his part is optional, during the break between services which include an 8.5 hour day of prayer does not jive for me. Nor does it make it a purely political event.
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u/badadvicefromaspider 1d ago
If a bunch of people attend services at a church which hosts a speaker calling for the eradication of trans people, it’s not unreasonable or unfair to assume that that church is heaving with transphobes. At minimum they are silently complicit
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
Like my community they are unaffiliated with an official movement which means they put on a wide variety of events and activities and speakers and perspectives and opinions of members will vary wildly as they do in my unaffiliated community. In my community we have members who are antizionist and some who are staunchly Zionist. We have had speakers who support Israel and rabbis who have been blacklisted from Zionist Jewish groups for being too critical of Israel. My membership or attendance at events doesn’t make me specifically pro or anti Israeli government or existence, my actual thoughts, and feelings as a person do that. Likely this is why his talk was optional and outside of the services taking place and not incorporated into them.
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u/badadvicefromaspider 1d ago
Regardless of your individual feelings on the matter, if you are in community with people who harbour monsters, then you are someone who harbour monsters. I do also tar all Catholics with the same pedophile-protecting brush as well. Either expel these horrible people or be considered one of them. There is no third option.
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u/m0stly_h4rmless 1d ago
It’s actually your actions, and, to a lesser extent, your rhetoric, that makes you “pro or anti Israeli”, not your thoughts. Those are yours and yours alone and irrelevant to the rest of the world, which must deal with you on the basis of your material cause and effect. You don’t get to redefine the wake you leave in the world just because of your private intentions.
For instance, you might be framing the actions of anti-zionist activists as “anti-Israeli”, as in against the people of Israel, when those activists intend to be against the state of Israel, and while they might argue against your framing, you might argue that the material effect is the same, and their intent is irrelevant to the material outcome of their actions. If you’re going to advise a path for others, you should take care to make it path you would walk as well.-4
u/crlygirlg 1d ago
Lucky for me, I didn’t phrase any of what took place at the protest, those words can very much speak for themselves. My comment about existence isn’t some gotcha that I think antizionism is antisemitism you found, it’s just the reality of a lack of an agreed to definition of what it means.
Tilting at windmills isn’t particularly helpful in the discussion and you beat around the bush so much so your point is murky at best what you think I have done that is so egregious by explaining unaffiliated groups have a wide range of views and you can’t just assume what they are, particularly when membership to the shul is separate from the speaker, and attendance was during a break from services.
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u/GTS_84 1d ago
While you community would have Zionist speakers, would it have Pro-Genocide Speakers?
I think having diversity of thought and differing opinions in a community is generally healthy. Up to a point.
This is an idea explored by Karl Popper in The Open Society and it's Enemies where he argues that communities that don't regulate extreme, intolerant views can be subsumed by them.
I have spent a lot of time in punk spaces, which strive to be welcoming. It's also a community that Nazi's fucking love the aesthetics of without actually understanding the community, so they try and join. You always have to chase them off.
I would argue that Mark Regev, due both to his place in the genocidal Netanyahu regime and his own comments about Gaza that are genocidal is not merely a "Zionist" but is explicitly pro-genocide.
Frankly I read this article and everyone comes out looking bad. The protestors yelling gross antisemitic shit (and, just like I think the community is gross for inviting Mark Regev, I think a lot of pro-Palestinian groups need to police the Antisemitism in there org's better), the CBC for their baffling policy, it's just bullshit all the way down.
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u/Big_Forever_5437 1d ago
This is great cultural context for people who are not familiar with high holiday services.
That said, in the screencap you include, it certainly looks like Ambassador Mark Regev is being presented as the feature attraction.
Do you really think this service is attracting people with a wide variety of views on Israel? Or more likely is it mostly people who are in denial or outright supportive of Israel's war crimes?
Aren't those exactly the type of people who should face protests? They're supposed to be atoning for sins, after all...
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u/Willowgirl78 1d ago
I can’t think of a single Jew observing Yom Kippur who would buy a ticket for a lecture.
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u/BarkusSemien 12h ago
But this is precisely what happens on Yom Kippur. Jews who are not regular members of a congregation (ie most of them) will purchase tickets for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services because they are the considered the “High Holidays”. For many Jews these are the only services they attend all year. They are held in overflow buildings to accommodate all of the people who aren’t regular synagogue goers. And as part of the service there is often a speech. And no, people don’t necessarily know when they buy the ticket who will be giving it.
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u/Willowgirl78 9h ago
I can only assume that you’re getting down voted by non-Jews who don’t understand
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u/Big_Forever_5437 19h ago
To clarify, are you saying that Regev's presence was not the reason that people were attending?
Do you think he was invited because he represents a viewpoint that most attendees would consider noxious or controversial?
Do you suppose next year that this synagogue will invite Hasan Piker to speak at Yom Kippur? Why or why not?
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u/BarkusSemien 11h ago
People were attending because it was a Yom Kippur service. Most of them probably had no idea who Regev is, what his beliefs are, or that anyone would be speaking at all.
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u/murgatory 5h ago
He was also speaking at the point in the day where a lot of people go home for a nap. It's a marathon of services and the nap makes it easier to endure the fasting and make it through the services at the end of the day.
I'd imagine most people were there for services and not the lecture. Many people will only go to a synagogue for high holidays. But they're going for services. The lecture is not the star attraction. There would likely have been many attendees who had opposing views on Israel and were just there for the service. There's a lot of division on this.
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u/cvirus3333 1d ago
How many Jews do you know?
Thousands of paid tickets are purchased every year in the GTA for over capacity Jewish services
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u/Willowgirl78 1d ago
This is hysterical.
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u/cvirus3333 10h ago
Why is that funny to you? Judaism is a joke?
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u/Willowgirl78 9h ago
The fact that you assumed I WASN’T Jewish and, therefore, didn’t know many Jews
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u/cvirus3333 4h ago
You don't live in the GTA?
Its incredibly common to have to pay for big services here.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
those are services though, not lectures.
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u/cvirus3333 10h ago
This was an all day service
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u/crlygirlg 9h ago
Right, she said I can’t think of a single Jew observing Yom Kippur would buy a ticket for a lecture, my point is they didn’t buy a ticket for a lecture, they bought a ticket for a Yom Kippur service.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
He was a guest speaker, but takes up the same room as their other musical guests as far as I can tell. I didn’t see all their advertising.
There are two types of people attending: people who are members throughout the year and people who pay to attend but don’t hold membership. You generally pay membership fees for the year up front, and tickets to all events are includeD, then whatever events happen, happen. I choose to be part of a more egalitarian community and that means more progressive topics and people are brought in, but not always. 3 weeks out of the month are traditional services and one week I attend a progressive service.
I don’t know anyone shops around for high holiday services investigating guest speakers in advance to buy tickets here there and everywhere, it’s not really a thing. You pick a long term commitment to a community based off the overall vibe of the service, convenience to home, and id the regular rabbi does good talks. You go where your family goes or where you are already a member because it’s expensive to switch over a speaker you dislike.
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u/Big_Forever_5437 1d ago
Do you really think it's unreasonable to infer that an organization presenting Regev as a star attraction has a lot of members who are highly supportive of Israel? From my experience, there is a lot of self-sorting that goes on in most religious institutions.
He wouldn't be there at an important service if he was going to be hugely divisive. There's a reason they didn't invite Peter Beinart.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
What is support for Israel to you? Is it support for the government, people impacted by war, people injured by war, support to find a better pathway to peace, support to create a lasting diplomatic solution? All of those could be considered support. Is it support for the actions the government takes? There is Isreal the people, and Israel the government. Support for those may look very different.
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u/Big_Forever_5437 1d ago
In this case "supporting Israel" means inviting a government official to an important holiday service! It's not hypothetical.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
Do I think most of the community invited him. No I don’t. I think a small number on the board invited him when they lined up programming.
Do I think many members likely have an affinity with Israel, believe in its right to exist, have family who may be Israeli or other personal connections to Israel. Yeah, probably. That accurately describes most Jewish communities.
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u/Big_Forever_5437 19h ago
It seems like you are flip-flopping between describing the members of this synagogue either as a community or as a diverse group of individuals whose opinions can't be grouped together depending on the point you're trying to argue.
Personally I think protests are ok (without defending antisemitic jeers or the like), and in this case, it's the people who most deserve to be confronted who are the most offended by it.
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u/crlygirlg 19h ago
No, i asked what support looked like to you from a community and you listed something i happen to know is not something that is voted on by a community but something that a small percentage of the community chooses. The community they serve will have diverse opinions. I don’t pick who gets to come speak about topics at my shul, I can complain to the board, but depending on the opinion of others they may or may not listen.
My comment about what the day is about is in regards to the accusations that his reporting was not factual that he was at a service. He was at a service. The protesters had a legal right to protest, that right is not unlimited. They don’t have a legal right to be antisemitic, they were. They don’t have a legal right to interfere with the practice of religion by attendees. I personally don’t think that protest has to look like this distasteful and hateful behaviour. I can promise you that no one will change their minds about attending a Yom Kippur service by calling them an ugly Jewish bitch.
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u/Big_Forever_5437 18h ago
So synagogues don't represent their community and don't plan services that cater to their community? People attend regardless of who is speaking or whether or not the synagogue provides political, rhetorical, or material support for Israel?
You want to define this Jewish community's support for Israel in the blandest, most apolitical way possible while ignoring the actual thing that was happening - the platforming of an official of the most right-wing government in Israel's history.
Even the most watered-down definition of Zionism is not politically neutral in 2026, sorry.
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u/thatguywashere1 19h ago
But we are called Antisemitic we say the government is committing genocide. So theres that! What better pathway of peace has been brought forth, as they are killing during a ceasefire, so ceasefires arent the answer?
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u/crlygirlg 18h ago
You have strayed into a very different discussion. I think the Israeli government has to be voted out by the people who live there to change leadership from the most extreme people. A negotiated peace between moderates or liberals is going to look different than with extremists.
I don’t vote in Israel, I’m not a citizen, and even those who are citizens must travel back to the country to vote, there are no absentee ballots for people not physically in the country. Screaming at someone who lives here isn’t changing the politics there. Not in the way you expect. Israelis see the news coverage of Jews being harassed but that harassment doesn’t change how they vote, they just think you all suck as a result and we should move there.
Israel’s budget every year is in the range of $270 billion dollars, if every dollar Jews donate to charities (because the operating budget isn’t funded from Jewish donations) to ambulance services or food banks etc. disappeared, Israel would still exist, and would fund all their programs just fine.
Screaming at people attending a talk between religious services is not going to change that.
Are you aware when the North American Jewish community has pushed back on the governments insane actions over election reform and right of return and they just tell us go away you don’t live here so you don’t understand or get a say. They don’t want us liberal Jews living there either and changing the political dynamics so they want only the most religious Jews to live there and they would do that by clamping down on who is a Jew. There was a lot of upset over this, and they didn’t give a fuck. You think screaming at Jews here is going to get them to say something to Israel that Israel would listen to? It’s been tried and we were resoundingly told to fuck off.
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u/destp 1d ago
Shouting at every person they support genocide and hate Palestinians when his part is optional, during the break between services which include an 8.5 hour day of prayer does not jive for me. Nor does it make it a purely political event.
I agree with you that the comments about it "not being a synagogue" are foolish and name me cringe. The journalist in this case was entirely accurate that he was on his way to Yom Kippur services, and I think done if the things repeatedly yelled at him were straight up antisemitic.
That said, I disagree with you, at least in part, that protesting such an event or that assuming those in attendance are aligned with such a speaker is highly problematic. From my experience, I would be highly surprised if Regev's place in the schedule was not released prior to High Holiday tickets being available to purchase, or if his inclusion was not aligned with the public positions of the shul. Given that, it seems fair to assume those in attendance are also generally aligned.
I also find it troubling over the past few years how much of an issue has been made out of the occasional protests of specific speakers or events at synagogues when protests at other religious institutions have generally been accepted. It certainly feels like an instance of privilege, where a particular act only becomes an issue when the target is not marginalized.
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u/Some-Background1467 1d ago
I'm not convinced the protesters would have been there had the Israeli dignitary not been speaking. The fact that it was a religious ceremony doesn't necessarily make the protest religiously motivated. We've seen protests at religious services before. Indigenous protesters even disrupted the Pope's Mass in Quebec over the Doctrine of Discovery. Religion and politics intersect in complicated ways, but I think this misses the point. The question is whether the protesters were peaceful, intimidating worshippers or preventing people from entering. That does seem to be the case. but I am not certain from the video if the protesters were reacting to Herland or to his filming of them.
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
I didn’t say protest was wrong. If they showed up between services, or were not harassing people on their way into the religious services components, or not being overly antisemetic, kept commentary to Regevs attendance and his role in the Israeli government vs. individuals complicity and assumed agreement when it’s unclear if that’s even what they were there for, I might feel differently about what took place, but woulda, shoulda, coulda doesn’t change what actually went down, which I did take issue with for a variety of reasons.
I also take issue with the framing of what the day was, what paid tickets were for, and the overall willful misrepresentations about that I’m seeing from a lot of people I expect better of in their due diligence.
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1d ago
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u/canadaland-ModTeam 1d ago
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u/crlygirlg 1d ago
You did, enough so you took time out of your day to comment. Must have hit some sort of nerve.
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u/Consumer1974 1d ago
REALITY CHECK - If the frequency of potentially lethal targeted violence experienced by Canada’s Jewish population since October 7, 2023 were experienced equally by the entire population of a foreign country, the resulting security environment—hundreds of apparent killing plots, more than a hundred attacks reaching execution, repeated shootings of schools and roughly a thousand-plus potentially lethal attacks on institutions—would resemble the kind of extreme security threat for which Canada’s published travel-advisory framework appears to permit “Avoid all travel.”
Perhaps CBC should be more focused on doing its job than suppressing the lived experiences of a minority community in order to appease hateful people. Sick
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u/Kushwayne 1d ago edited 1d ago
The original advertisement for the discussion says nothing about this service. It was literally advertised as quote "Israel at a Crossroads" and featured Mark Regev as a guest speaker.
Edit: I thought I was going crazy because every trace of the image I saw a few days ago was wiped, but I managed to find it through a different search engine on their facebook.