In late December, Israeli forces carried out a counter-terrorism operation inside a medical facility in Gaza, arresting some 240 terror suspects from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Among those detained was the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, whom the Israeli military said was a suspected Hamas operative. The CBC program portrayed Abu Safiya as a symbol of humanitarianism with concerns being expressed for his plight, not for his alleged complicity in Palestinian terrorism.

That story was covered in a January 7 segment on the CBC radio program As It Happens, co-hosted by Chris Howden and Nil Köksal. And while the topic is an eminently reasonable one to cover, once again, the program spoke with only one guest, who was predictably hostile to Israel, following an ongoing practice by multiple CBC programs to, when discussing the Hamas-Israel war, speak with only one anti-Israel guest while largely, if not entirely, silencing opposing voices.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

Köksal spoke with Guy Shalev, executive director for Physicians for Human Rights Israel, a multi-million dollar organization whose leader has called Zionism “colonialist” and advocated for a boycott of Israel, and which has made clear that it sees Israeli policy, rather than Palestinian terrorism and obstructionism, as the primary obstacle to peace. In other words, it is an overtly political group, despite its name suggesting otherwise.

Indeed, Shalev made that point crystal clear during his conversation with Köksal, accusing Israel of “violation after violation of international humanitarian law,” and of carrying out “an attack, a direct attack, on healthcare, a systematic attack on Gaza’s healthcare system.”

Shalev dismissed as baseless IDF claims that Abu Safiya was a Hamas operative, and rejected Israel’s finding 3 pistols and 4 hand grenades in the hospital, along with IDF claims that it detained 15 terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacres.

In her introduction of the topic, Köksal twice used scare quotes when quoting the Israeli military, but otherwise at no time challenged her guest in any of his assertions, including denying that the Kamal Adwan hospital was being used by Hamas terrorists.

When Köksal asked Shalev to comment on Israel’s statements about Hamas’ use of the hospital, Shalev immediately dismissed it, saying “We don’t see anything that resembles their claims.” To her credit, Köksal told Shalev of a video from Israel showing a terror suspect confessing to Hamas using the hospital, to which Shalev dismissed it again, saying “Yes, we cannot accept any kind of confession that might be taken under torture. The same way, unfortunately, Israel argues that the testimonies we get from hostages, from Israeli hostages under Hamas, saying that they cannot believe whatever they say because they are under pressure and under threat.”

In one breath, Shalev claimed that there is no evidence connecting Hamas to the Kamal Adwan hospital, only to then immediately pivot and dismiss evidence as being unreliable when it is presented to him. This was remarkable mental gymnastics on Shalev’s part, which unfortunately was not pounced upon by his interviewer, who could have pushed him to acknowledge what evidence, if any, could convince him that Hamas operatives were indeed present inside the hospital. Importantly, there is no evidence that this confession was made under torture, but that issue went unchallenged by Köksal. This serious allegation of war crimes received no challenge from the CBC.

While Shalev is entitled to reject Israeli assertions in total, there was a missed opportunity on CBC’s part to hold him accountable for his statements, including where he compared security prisoners detained by Israel to civilians kidnapped and taken hostage by Hamas 15 months ago and when he falsely claimed that no humanitarian aid is reaching Gazans.

But the bigger problem is that when As It Happens speaks about a topic related to Israel, the guest is invariably critical at best, and outright hostile at worst. In other segments in 2024, Köksal spoke with a former Lebanese Member of Parliament who blamed Israel, not Hezbollah, for the war in Lebanon, a segment discussing UNRWA while ignoring any criticism of the agency, a segment on the humanitarian situation in Gaza while offering no platform to an Israeli spokesperson, and much more.

As past CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler pointed out in September to editorial staff, the publicly-funded broadcaster has fallen short in showing balance on contentious stories. The January 7 segment of As It Happens featured, once again, a critical voice of Israel with no counterbalance offered to listeners and as a result, this program continues to violate the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices.