Local News
Honest Reporting Canada’s Mike Fegelman delivers Kanee Lecture
By BERNIE BELLAN Mike Fegelman is the executive director and editor-in-chief of Honest Reporting Canada. Honest Reporting was founded in 2000 in the United Kingdom. It describes its mission as “to ensure truth, integrity and fairness, and to combat ideological prejudice in journalism and the media, as it impacts Israel to ensure truth, integrity and fairness, and to combat ideological prejudice in journalism and the media, as it impacts Israel.”
On Sunday, April 7, Fegelman was the keynote speaker at the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada’s annual Sol & Florence Kanee Distinguished Lecture Series.
Fegelman told the audience of about 250 at the Adas Yeshurun-Herzlia Synagogue that, before he was hired as Honest Reporting Canada’s executive director, “I knew nothing about Israel. I was hired because I was objective.”
Honest Reporting Canada “monitors news media 24 hours a day,” Fegelman said. With only a staff of six (including Fegelman), he said that they field on average 600-700 inquiries a day about alleged instances of media bias within Canadian media.
When HRC sees instances of what it perceives to be instances of unfair or biased reporting about Israel, it attempts to contact the journalist responsible for that “misinformation” or, as was the case with a particularly odious cartoon in La Presse of Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu depicted as a vampire, the paper itself was contacted and asked to issue a retraction of that cartoon and apology. (The cartoon has since been removed from La Presse’s website and La Presse did issue an apology.)
While Honest Reporting Canada might make the claim that its mission is to monitor news media in Canada for bias toward Israel and what it would regard as “unfair reporting,” however, after listening to Fegelman’s 45-minute talk – and especially to some of the responses he gave to questions from the audience following his talk, one might question the degree to which he himself is as “objective” as he claimed to be.
One particular subject was mentioned several times: the reporting by the Gaza Health Ministry on how many Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its retaliatory war following the Hamas-led massacre of 240 Israelis on October 7.
At one point Fegelman said that “we have to point out the fact Hamas provides no evidence to corroborate their claims (as to how many Palestinians have been killed). Media should at least acknowledge Israel’s claim that 15,000 of those killed are terrorists.”
Various reports, however, have cited Israeli intelligence officials as confirming that the Israel Defence Forces actually accept the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures for the number of casualties in the ongoing conflict. For instance, there was this report about what was reported on a Hebrew-language website in Israel: “Two Israeli intelligence officials who spoke to the Hebrew-language Local Call news website said the health ministry is mostly ‘reliable’ and their main source of statistics on civilian deaths in Gaza.”
Fegelman said that when it is reported that “33,000 Palestinians have been killed,” as reported by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” that health ministry “doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Further, Fegelman asked: “Are some of the children killed actually child soldiers?” The problem is, absent any verifiable information from the IDF on this point, how do we know?
The problem, moreover, which Fegelman didn’t address, is absent any contradictory information coming from Israeli sources themselves about civilian deaths, what are media supposed to report?
So, when a questioner later said to Fegelman, “All people see on TV is dead babies. Can you give us some language to use in response?” Fegelman admitted “there isn’t an easy answer for the things Israel has had to do.”
My bringing this up is not to begin engaging in a series of “fact checks” on what Fegelman said during his talk. Rather, it is to show that “bias” and “unfair reporting” is something that can be continually argued – and perhaps by entering into a dissection of every instance of what Honest Reporting Canada might regard as anti-Israel bias, Fegelman – and the audience members who so strongly applauded his remarks, are all missing the larger picture, which is that Israel has, and is taking a terrible beating in world public opinion – not because of bias or distorted reporting, but because of the huge losses in both lives and property that Palestinians in Gaza have suffered – and the images that are there for the entire world to see.
One might argue that Israel had no choice: It had to deal such a severe blow to Hamas that the amount of destruction that has occurred in Gaza is justified, but to argue that “the war for public opinion is no less important than the war on the ground,” as Fegelman suggested at one point – well Mike, if that’s the case, then Israel has lost that war. The more honest assessment would be that, in an existential battle for survival, which is what some would argue is a fair description of the war in which Israel is currently engaged, then public opinion matters very little to Israeli decision makers.
Before entering into a more detailed description of what Fegelman had to say, I have to enter a particular objection toward what both he and several audience members had to say about the supposed “anti-Israel bias” exhibited by the Winnipeg Free Press. This subject has become one that has been raised quite a bit over the past few months within certain circles within the local Jewish community – especially after a controversial column by Jen Zoratti.
But, to say, as Fegelman did, that “the Free Press has an anti-Israel narrative on its op ed pages” – without providing any specific examples to warrant that accusation, is nothing more than an instance of Fegelman engaging in the kind of bias that Honest Reporting Canada accuses Canadian media outlets of exhibiting when it comes to reporting on Israel.
Still, in the interest of attempting to give readers the flavour of Fegelman’s talk, I will offer some of the remarks he made without entering into any further discussion whether what he had to say had merit.
Fegelman began by claiming that “media commentators are often parroting Hamas and are, in effect, becoming stenographers for this group.” He suggested we “need to challenge misinformation and disinformation.”
While Honest Reporting may have originated in the United Kingdom in 2000, “its genesis (in Canada) was just a few blocks away,” Fegelman explained. “We were founded (in Canada) by the late Izzy Asper,” he noted.
With specific reference to the Toronto Star, Fegelman suggested we have seen instances “of Canada’s largest paper calling for Israel’s annihilation” on its editorial pages by advocating for a one-state solution.
In reporting on the current Gaza war, Fegelman argued, “it’s increasingly difficult to tell who is the arsonist and who is the fire fighter?”
‘The media want to run with the most sensational story,” he said, “but part of our mandate is to educate journalists.”
“The sympathy for Israel following the October 7 massacre lasted all but a few minutes,” he suggested.
“This is a war between barbarism and civilization,” Fegelman said.
He referred to a famous remark made by Golda Meir with reference to the Yom Kippur War in 1973: “The world hates us when a Jew lashes out. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.”
“The world is horribly indifferent to Jewish blood being spilled,” Fegelman observed.
We are making sure that when there are those who seek to libel the Jewish people, we have to fight back,” Fegelman said, “but knowing how to challenge disinformation is enormously difficult.”
Still, he argued, “We cannot let our opposition have a monopoly on discourse.”
“The war for public opinion is no less important than the war on the ground. If we lose, Israel will go down as the perceived villain.”
When it comes to civilian casualties, however, Fegelman claimed that “Israel deplores each and every innocent life that is taken.”
Saying that, in some ways, “Hamas is worse than ISIS,” Fegelman argued that “when hate becomes normalized, it becomes weaponized….We are in a genocidal propaganda war the likes of which we have never seen….Too many media outlets, whether it’s out of malice or of ignorance, have been spreading misinformation.”
When it comes to fighting back though, Fegelman argued, “We are not just passive victims – but like a muscle, if you do not use it, it becomes atrophied.”
Turning to the subject of social media, Fegelman observed that “Yesterday’s bigots used to be on the margins of mainstream social media; now they’re in the mainstream.”
“We cannot be afraid to tell the world what Hamas’s raison d’etre is – which is to seek an Islamic caliphate.”
But, what then “is the answer to media bias?” Fegelman asked. “We cannot rely on the old playbook,” he said.
Instead, he proposed five pillars of action:
- “We cannot project fear. We have to project resilience and instil Jewish pride.”
- “We must demand that we procure consistency” (from our elected representatives). Fegelman referred specifically to the recent resolution passed in the House of Commons when, among other things, Members of Parliament voted to restore funding to UNWRA.
- “We must demand that people speak up and speak out” against media when the media demonstrate indefensible behaviour. As an example, Fegelman pointed to the photograph of Hamas victim Shani Louk’s badly mutilated body in the back of a Hamas truck, which won a prestigious photography award. (It should be pointed out that Shani’s own father defended the photo as a “symbol” of an era.)
- “We have to make an alternative view impossible to ignore.”
- “We must avoid self-imposed limitations on our advocacy. We must not only project strength, we must possess it, too.”
As a result of “the obsessive magnifying glass being put on Israel,” Fegelman suggested, “terrorism is being accepted as a legitimate means of statecraft.”
Although many Jews may be in a state of despair these days, Fegelman told this story to illustrate how Israel has endured bleak situations before: When President Biden was a senator, he had occasion to visit Israel shortly before the Yom Kippur War, when he met with then-Prime Minister Golda Meir. After being shown maps which showed how precarious Israel’s security situation was, apparently Biden’s face showed how worried he was.
“Don’t look so worried,” Golda told Biden. “We have a secret weapon: We have no place else to go.”
In describing what Honest Reporting Canada has been able to accomplish, Fegelman said, “We have 60,000 subscribers.” (To subscribe to HRC’s reports, simply go to its website at https://honestreporting.ca and click on the “subscribe” button.) “We all have the power of agency,” he added.
“We may not see the elimination of antisemitism in our lifetimes,” he said, “but we have to push it to the margins.”
“If not now, when? The answer is now.”
Local News
GrowWinnipeg celebrates 25th anniversary
By MYRON LOVE On Wednesday, June 25, about 250 Jewish Winnipeggers – comprising lifelong residents as well as newer arrivals, came together at the Asper campus to celebrate the 25th anniversary of GrowWinnipeg, an initiative that has revitalized our Jewish community – in our camps, school, synagogues and other institutions and given our community a much more international flavour.
Our community’s population peaked in terms of population in 1961 when Winnipeg Jewry numbered around 20,000. The years after had been a period of steady decline. By 1961, most of the Jews living in smaller communities in the Prairie provinces – the source of much of our ongoing population replenishment up to that point – had largely disappeared.
A s Bob Freedman, the former CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg (and its predecessor, the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council), noted in his remarks at the 25th anniversary party, by 1986, community leaders recognized that ours was an aging and shrinking community with aging infrastructure.
“We recognized that something had to be done,” he recalled.
The first stage, he pointed out, was the planning and construction of the Asper Campus, which brought our major institutions and organizations under one roof in an attractive new building.
The next challenge was to attract more people to our community. GrowWinnipeg was created to take on the challenge. GrowWinnipeg is unique in its efforts to reach out to young Jewish families throughout the Western world .
The genesis was a chance meeting on an airplane almost 30 years ago between former Manitoba Lieutenant-Governor Janice Filmon – at that time the wife of then-Manitoba premier Gary Filmon, and a Jewish businessman from Argentina who was contemplating moving to Toronto. Filmon persuaded him to consider Winnipeg instead. He was impressed by what he saw and suggested that the community send representatives to Buenos Aires to meet with other Argentinian Jewish families who were considering leaving.
That planted the seed.
Shortly thereafter – in 1998 – Larry Hurtig – then the president of the Federation, his son, Jack, and a representative of the provincial government, made an exploratory visit to Buenos Aires to gauge what interest there might be among young Jewish families to consider moving to Winnipeg.
GrowWinnipeg was officially launched in 2000. Our community opened its arms in welcome to the new arrivals who began to arrive, hosting them in our homes and helping them become acclimatized to their new surroundings.
Evelyn Hecht became the principal contact for the newcomers. “I was lucky that I happened to be working for the Federation when we opened the campus and turned our energies to repopulating our community,” Hecht noted in her remarks at the recent celebration. “Fortunately, the pieces fell into place at just the right time.”
Those pieces, Hecht related, included: the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program – which allowed community support groups to recruit specific immigrants; the arrival of a small number of Jewish families from Buenos Aires who encouraged community leaders to look to their former home as a potential source of Jewish immigrants; and the availability of email and the internet.
The initiative – led by Hecht – recruited a group of local Jewish families who were prepared to host potential immigrants who had begun to come for exploratory visits. The connections made by the new arrivals and their local hosts resulted in many long–lasting friendships, Hccht noted.
She praised Jewish Child and Family Service for helping the new arrivals to become established here and integrate into the community.
Efforts were also made to build a data basis of potential employers for the newcomers.
GrowWinnpeg was kicked off by two visits to Buenos Aires – visits Hecht describes as “exciting and exhausting” – in the early 2000s, when Hecht and other Winnipeg representatives met with potential immigrants and heard their concerns about life and personal safety in Argentina and hopes for the future that Winnipeg might be able to give them.
“I remember,” she said, “the numerous meeting I held in my office on the third floor here listening to people’s excitement and concerns and answering questions about life in Winnipeg, our Jewish identity, schools, synagogues, employment, housing and especially, safety. I always emphasized that they would encounter struggles, disappointment and possibly, crises – but I assured them that we would be here to help.
“And I remember feeling so much happiness when people would show up at my door to share good news about babies born, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations and new jobs – and the numerous times I was in Citizen Court where so many were so proud to receive their citizenship certificates. “
And they are still coming. Dalia Szpiro, Hecht’s successor, reports that, over the past 25 years just under 7,000 people have come here under the aegis of GrowWinnipeg – and not just from Argentina. We have had families from Brazil, Uruguay and other South American countries, Mexico, Europe, and, in more recent years, especially from Israel.
For former Israelis I spoke with on the 25th, such as Slava and Karina Pustilnikov, Irena Oz and Marina Shapiro and her 19-year-old son, Adam, all of whom have been here for 10 to 15 years, the primary motivation was being in a safer environment.
For Ori Rahima and his wife, Anna Shapiro, who have been here for seven years and have three children under six, the pull was greater opportunity and a better standard of living.
Then there is Esther Barna, a teacher by training, newly arrived from Budapest. “Hungary is not a good place to be a Jew,” she says. “There is a lot of antisemitism. I was looking online for a better place to go and came across the GrowWinnipeg website. I love it here.”
In her concluding remarks, Dalia Szpiro, herself an immigrant from Uruguay about 20 years ago, thanked the many Jewish organizations and individuals in the community who have helped to make GrowWinnipeg the success that it is.
“Over 250 volunteers each year meet with our exploratory visitors – opening their homes, their hearts, their time, their insights and their networks,” she noted. “There is something very special about our community and our province. Every exploratory visitor who comes here as part of their immigration journey discovers it.
“This 25-year milestone is a reason for pride and celebration – and a renewed commitment to the future. We are already working on new strategies – to strengthen what we have built, support immigration, foster inclusion and create more opportunities for newcomers to grow and prosper.”
Local News
Long time community members Bryan Schwartz, Myriam Saitman receive rabbinic ordination
By MYRON LOVE On June 21, Bryan Schwartz and Myriam Saitman received their rabbinical ordination through the Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute (JSLI) Rabbinical School – bringing the number of JSLI rabbinic graduates in our community to seven.
“I felt a calling,” says Saitman, who is the new spiritual leader of Temple Shalom, our community’s roughly 60-year-old Reform Congregation. Saitman notes that she is Temple Shalom’s fourth female rabbi.
Originally from Buenos Aires, Saitman and her family answered our community’s call for new young Jewish families that began with the Federation’s GrowWinnipeg campaign. They arrived here in 2003.
“We were attracted by a community that offered a safer environment for raising a family and better economic opportunities,” she recalls.
Although raised in a secular family, she notes that, as a young adult she was drawn to learning more about Judaism. “I took Hebrew classes in Argentina and started on a spiritual path,” she recalls.
Soon after coming to Winnipeg, she found her spiritual home at Temple Shalom. Over the last many years, she has served as a volunteer in several capacities at the synagogue – both at the school and as a long time member of the board. Since 2016, she was also one of the lay service leaders, often leading Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday evenings.
When her predecessor, Allan Finkel – also a JSLI grad – let it be known that he was planning to retire after six years as the congregation’s spiritual leader, Saitman put her name forward as a potential successor.
“Judith (Huebner) and Ruth (Livingston) (Temple Shalom’s president and past president respectively) were really supportive as were the board and the congregation,” Saitman says. “I began leading services.”
As for the JSLI program, Saitman notes that it is intensive. “It meets a need,” she observes. “It prepares us well for all the requirements of being a congregational rabbi.
“We at Temple Shalom want people to know that we are here and we welcome interfaith families,” she adds. “Our motto is that we follow tradition and embrace modernity. Our services (on Friday evenings) reflect the essence of Reform Judaism where we allow for individual choices. I’d like to stress that individual choices are informed by an educated interpretation based on knowledge of the laws and customs.”
Unlike Saitman, Rabbi Bryan Schwartz was not considering a career as a congregational rabbi when embarking on the JSLI program. For Schwartz, “rabbi” is the latest title in a lifetime of achievement. As this writer noted in a story in the Post about Schwartz last year, he “is the very model of a modern-day, Jewish, Renaissance scholar.”.A long-time professor at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law, he is also a passionate Zionist, student of the Holocaust and an in demand commentator on modern legal and constitutional issues. He has written or contributed to 34 books and over 300 publications in all – in a legal and teaching career that stretches back more than 40 years. His works within a Jewish context encompass the gamut of Jewish life from ancient times to the Holocaust to the current Jewish situation. In addition, he is a poet, playwright and songwriter.
“My main purpose in taking the JSLI course,” he observes, “is to be better positioned to help deal with the challenge of Jewish survival. I want to be able to pass on Jewish tradition to the younger generation and impress upon younger Jews – who have grown up in largely secular homes – the value of our 2,500-year-old literature, culture and religious traditions.”
He observes that there is something for everyone in Jewish tradition. “There are many people who are looking for a spiritual community. I believe that Judaism provides us with a sense of our place in the universe.”
Schwartz – a lifelong student himself – notes that he has been building to this moment for a long time. In his early 20s, he notes, he audited a few courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In his 50s and 60s, he learned Hebrew at different ulpans.
“I had been looking around for a while for a rabbinic program,” he says. “JSLI seemed to be the best one. It was hard work – but well worth it. I learned a tremendous amount.”
So what is Schwartz – who is a member of the Shaarey Zedek – planning on doing as a rabbi?
“I would like to be able to offer weekly dvar Torahs,” he says.
He would like , among other things, to do creative and educational projects for the community, like his weekly dvar torah in the Times of Israel. The commentary that he gave on the weekend of his Smicha ceremony is called “From Burning Synagogue to Rising Lyon,” and can be found at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/from-burning-synagogue-to-rising-lion/
“I have also been writing books and musicals inspired by the Tradition, and hope to find forums to share them in the years ahead,” he adds. “My mission is to share in the radiance of our Tradition and help inspire the next generations to see its warmth and illumination”
Local News
Winnipeg Fringe performer Melanie Gall subjected to antisemitic attack – for second year in a row
By BERNIE BELLAN (July 20, 2025)
Melanie Gall is a talented performer who is a veteran of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival – having appeared here many times.
Last year Melanie found herself being subjected to antisemitic attacks that were initiated by a site supervisor for the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, someone by the name of Eric Rae.
As I wrote on my story about Melanie’s experience, “…on the third day (of the Fringe Festival), she said, ‘the site supervisor (Rae) came and was wearing a pro-Palestinian symbol’ and told Melanie that he was wearing that deliberately because he was coming to Melanie’s venue.
“He told her, ‘that stance you’re taking (on social media) is a political symbol.
Rae also posted on social media: “We have a Zionist in our midst harassing pro-Palestinians.”
There was a concerted effort on social media last summer to boycott Melanie’s shows (She had three different shows altogether.)
As Melanie said during a phone conversation we had last summer about what happened to her, “This is so ridiculous. I’m being harassed and bullied because I’m Jewish…it’s not about Israel.”
Eric Rae was relieved from his duties after Melanie complained to the Fringe office staff, Melanie noted during our conversation.
She adds that other Fringe employees also complained about Eric Rae’s behaviour: “I wasn’t the only one who complained last year,” she wrote in an email sent today. “Several staff members complained, as Eric was not adhering to the Fringe policy that did not allow political symbols to be worn by staff. From what I heard, he refused to stop wearing it, and he did publicly target me. The Winnipeg Fringe upheld their safe spaces policy, and they were wonderful in the way they handled it.”
Further, Melanie was the target of an organized campaign on pro-Palestine social media calling for her shows to be boycotted.
(You can read the full story about what happened to Melanie, also to her mother during last year’s Edmonton Fringe Festival, at Melanie Gall.)
Just today we received another email from Melanie informing us that the same individual who targeted her last summer is targeting her again during this year’s Fringe Festival.
Melanie wrote: “Hi! Thanks so much for the mention in the preview article! I just wanted to let you know that Eric Rae is at it again.”
Attached to that email was a picture taken from Rae’s Instagram account.
As of the writing of this post, Melanie said that she is out of town for three days and is not aware whether any of her posters have been defaced – the way they were last summer.
She did add, however, that “I assume by ‘make her feel unwelcome’ (which is what is written on one of the pictures on Rae’s Instagram account) he is planning something. Ugh.”
Melanie also said that “The one post is too close to a threat to ignore.”
In a subsequent email Melanie also sent a screenshot of an exchange that took place on Rae’s Instagram account between him and someone who goes by the handle “Kat Cat.”
If we hear more about what’s been happening to Melanie we’ll update this article.
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