When even the pious and faithful are misinformed by Hamas-friendly media, we have a serious problem

Sisters of Gaza solidarity using language “straight out of the Hamas communications handbook”

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On May 29, ten days after Canada, France and the UK issued a joint statement informing Israel it was behaving in a manner the righteous trio considered intolerable, a communion of Canadian religious sisters wrote to PM Mark Carney to express, “gratitude for, and solidarity with” the statement.

While the saintly statement by Canada and its founders was reported widely, the sisters’ misinformed opinion - which one can only assume was formed through their consumption of Hamas-tolerant media - was restricted to a much smaller audience.

Srs. Margo Ritchie and Linda Haydock, on behalf of some 30 religious congregations in Canada, wrote that the situation in Gaza was desperate.

“For months now, humanitarian supplies have been blocked from entering Gaza. Community kitchens are closed. Warehouses are empty. War-traumatized families, including children, are slowly starving.”

Though Ritchie and Haydock do call on Hamas to release the “remaining hostages,” the blame for the humanitarian crisis is laid squarely at the feet of Israel.

According to the sisters, the situation is desperate not because Hamas wrested control of the aid entering Gaza as a means of supporting their war effort, stealing a portion for its own use and selling the rest at a profit, but because Israel has blocked aid into the Gaza strip.

In fact, the letter was written more than a week after Israel had lifted the blockade, more than a week also after the overwrought and inaccurate claim by the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, that “14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours” had been completely debunked, and three days after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a joint Israeli-US initiative to circumvent the Hamas-captured aid system, began distributing food boxes.

I am not sure whether the good sisters were aware, and if so whether it gave them pause, that just a few days earlier, Hamas – the murderous terrorist organization that has controlled Gaza since the 2007 Gaza Civil War - had also expressed their gratitude and solidarity with the statement issued by Canada, France and the UK.

On May 20, in a letter published online, Hamas called the statement “a significant step in the right direction.”

While Hamas urged the international community to take steps to halt the “savage Zionist aggression,” the sisters declared that “military operations in Gaza must stop” and commended the multi-national promise “to take further action, including targeted sanctions, if Israel does not cease its military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid.”

The language employed by these Canadian Catholic sisters, living so very far from the place they are writing about, is straight out of the Hamas-communications-handbook.

When they write of “slow starvation,” Ritchie and Haydock not only accuse Israel of war crimes but participate in a media trope of intentional starvation and genocide that has been present since the beginning of the war. A trope that has been debunked. Like their secular counterparts Women in Black (ironically, it is now the secularists who wear more of a habit than the religious sisters) the object of moral indignation is always Israel, and never Hamas.

The sister’s letter came across my desk because it had been attached to the weekly email bulletin I receive from my local Catholic church. The small, suburban parish is neither more nor less preoccupied with so-called “social justice” issues than any other Catholic church in Canada and I assume, though I have not checked, that many other parishes across the country decided to attach the letter to their parish email chain. I suspect that of the small percentage of Catholics who will read the letter, an even smaller percentage will baulk at the underlying assumptions and tone. Why? Because they are the very same assumptions and tone that has been broadcast from every newsroom and printed in every paper since October 7, 2023.

As Seth Mandel wrote in Commentary Magazine, “If you got your news from the New York Times or the Washington Post or the BBC or any number of others, you followed an entirely different war—one that didn’t happen.”

What we know happened is that Hamas, after years of planning, launched a war against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Documents recovered by the IDF demonstrate that, despite Oct. 7 being the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas had hoped, planned, to inflict even more death and suffering. Where were the sisters then? Where was their letter of solidarity then?

(Anna Farrow is a Montreal-based freelance writer)