Yesterday, in an interview on the CBC program Front Burner about recent fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists, freelance reporter Irris Makler claimed that the Gaza Strip is an “open-air prison.”

Listen to this segment immediately below and listen to the full interview by clicking here.

Makler said the following:

The big concern is that like in 2014, this doesn’t end. The big concern is the nature of the Gaza Strip: It’s small, it’s crowded, it’s full of very poor people who can’t leave because there’s an embargo. So what that basically means is that it’s an open-air prison and they’re being pounded from the sky. So if you’re living in an open-air prison and the kind of bombs are falling, the amazing firepower the Israeli army has and Israel says it is trying to avoid civilian deaths, but I’d say and we’ve seen this from 2014 that it’s almost unavoidable.”

For a CBC journalist who’s tasked to be politically neutral and objective to claim that Gaza is an “open-air prison,” saw this reporter disguise her opinion as news. We’d expect to hear a statement like that from an anti-Israel protagonist, not a journalist who works as a freelancer for the CBC, our public broadcaster.

In truth, Israel and Egypt jointly carry out a blockade of Gaza to prevent Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups from carrying out attacks and to acquire dangerous weaponry, like the long-range rockets (2,000 which have been fired as of this writing) at Israel. Israel has an obligation to protect its citizenry and its efforts are in accordance with international law.

We call upon Ms. Makler and the CBC to immediately retract her comments and we encourage you to file complaints with CBC (click here) and send tweets to Ms. Makler calling on her to walk back this statement. Stay tuned to this page for future updates.