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OTTAWA — Canada has taken the rare step of not signing onto a multi-country statement that demands Israel stop banning foreign journalists from entering Gaza and that local journalists be protected in the Palestinian territories.
Ottawa co-founded the Media Freedom Coalition in 2020 and has signed more than 65 statements on issues ranging from legislation in Georgia and arrests in Venezuela, to Burkina Faso sanctioning journalists and Russia detaining Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
But Ottawa is not among the 27 countries which “urge Israel to allow immediate independent foreign media access and afford protection for journalists operating in Gaza,” in the statement released Thursday.
The statement reads: “We call on the Israeli authorities and all other parties to make every effort to ensure that media workers in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — local and foreign alike — can conduct their work freely and safely.”
The signatories include Australia, France, Japan, Sierra Leone and the U.K.
The Canadian Press has reached out to Global Affairs Canada but has not yet received a statement.
The only other time Canada did not sign a multi-country statement from the coalition was during the 2021 election campaign.
Some of the other coalition statements Canada has signed include a December 2023 statement expressing concern over deaths in Gaza, and a 2022 statement calling for accountability in Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.
Thursday’s joint statement comes after Canada and others condemned Israel for deliberately killing six journalists earlier this month, including Al Jazeera reporter Anas Al-Sharif.
Ottawa rejected Israel’s claim that the network’s prominent reporter Anas Al-Sharif led a cell of Hamas, and press advocates said an Israeli “smear campaign” stepped up when Al-Sharif cried on air over starvation in the territory.
Israel bars foreign journalists from entering Gaza if they aren’t embedded with Israel’s military, a practice the Committee to Protect Journalists says is unheard of in modern times.
Observers have called this the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent memory, with at least 192 journalists killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began.
Al Jazeera, which is partly funded by the Qatari government, is among the few outlets still fielding a large team of reporters inside the besieged Gaza Strip, chronicling daily life amid airstrikes, hunger and the rubble of destroyed neighbourhoods.
Israel blocks Al Jazeera from broadcasting there, and soldiers raided the network’s offices in the occupied West Bank last year.
Last week, the Canadian Association of Journalists joined global groups like Reporters Without Borders in condemning Israel’s “targeted killing of journalists in Gaza,” and calling on Israel to protect journalists covering the war.
“These acts are egregious breaches of humanitarian law and require independent investigations,” the group wrote.
In a separate joint statement on Thursday, Canada joined Australia, Japan and multiple European countries to urge Israel to retract plans to build settlements that would restrict Palestinian access to Jerusalem and separate the city from the West Bank
The statement calls the E1 plan “unacceptable and a violation of international law” and condemened the move “in the strongest terms.”
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the E1 plan will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state, and the Thursday statement argues the move “risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2025.
Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
