If one needed further proof of anti-Israel bias at Canada’s publicly-funded national news outlet the CBC, look no further. Journalist Sara Jabakhanji, one of the signatories to the 2021 document: “An open letter to Canadian newsrooms on covering Israel-Palestine,” which criticized the idea that Canadian news media had a duty to be objective or ‘hear both sides’ of the Arab-Israeli conflict, has produced a string of anti-Israel articles in recent days (see here, here, here and here). Despite CBC declaring that those who signed off on the letter would not be allowed to cover stories about Israel, in 2022 CBC changed their minds.

Throughout September, Jabakhanji penned a number of articles spotlighting Gaza, including a September 25 piece chronicling the supposed hair loss suffered by a Palestinian girl in Gaza due to the trauma of living through war. The article, “The stress of life in Gaza has taken most of this little girl’s hair,” told the story of 8-year-old Sama Tabeel who allegedly lost all of her hair within two days in June during Israel’s counter-terrorism operations against the Hamas stronghold of Rafah.

Although Jabakhanji never mentioned it, the Israeli assault on Rafah was done to free the Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas, including two young children. Despite Hamas’ widespread and documented use of its own population as human shields, Israeli forces have since freed several hostages being held there, and retrieved the bodies of many others. Rafah, in fact, was the site where Israeli soldiers found the bodies of six Israeli hostages who were executed by Hamas in underground tunnels. An honest accounting of Israel’s time in Rafah would show the necessity for Israeli forces to have entered the city. If one was truly worried about Palestinian civilians, one ought to be condemning Hamas for hiding the hostages in civilian areas, necessitating Israel’s presence there.

But it’s clear that Jabakhanji isn’t interested in a comprehensive view of the conflict. Rather than attempting to find a neutral source to evaluate the claim, Jabakhanji interviewed Dr. Abdul Basith. A Toronto physician, Basith has worked in Gaza, and claims “The children of Gaza have experienced an unprecedented level of trauma.” This is objectively an absurd claim for a physician to make, considering the millions of children living in conflict zones around the world today, and throughout history. Suggesting that the current conflict in Gaza, where Israeli forces take every measure possible to safeguard civilians and in which civilian casualties have been the lowest of any urban conflict in modern times is producing ‘unprecedented’ levels of trauma in children is unsubstantiated, and an affront to those children who lived through the horror of Assad’s Syria, to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or Hitler’s Germany.

But the blame doesn’t lie with ideological doctors. It lies with CBC, Canada’s publicly-funded news agency. The CBC has a duty to report accurately and fairly on a conflict that has also seen hundreds of thousands of Israelis internally displaced and made refugees in their own home, thousands who were brutally raped and slaughtered, and hundreds taken hostage – nearly half of which have yet to be returned home. Where is the CBC coverage chronicling the effects of Hezbollah rockets on the children of Israel’s northern regions, where thousands of hectares of land have been scorched, and where children routinely run to bomb shelters for safety? Where is the piece chronicling the pain of families whose loved ones – including children – are still being held in terror tunnels beneath Gaza?

Allowing activists like Jabakhanji to not only write one-sided pieces like this and to present overtly and unapologetically biased coverage is an outrage for a news agency being paid for by Canadian tax dollars.

It is inconceivable that someone who signed a letter which overtly and clearly argues the position that it is wrong to objectively report on the Arab-Israeli conflict is allowed to not only continue working as a journalist, but is also being permitted to file stories on that very conflict. It is impossible for CBC News to continue to claim that they don’t have an agenda in their coverage of the war if they allow people like Jabakhanji to write for them.