On September 17, CBC Ombudsman Jack Nagler called on the publicly-funded broadcaster to do more to ensure balance is provided in its reporting of Israel. And two days later, the CBC radio program As It Happens, a persistent disseminator of anti-Israel disinformation, promptly disregarded that call, as it has done countless times over the last year.

One of the segments of the September 19 program entitled: “A former MP in Lebanon on what the days ahead could bring,” featured an interview with Basem Shabb, a former Lebanese Member of Parliament, for his thoughts on Israel’s apparent recent counter-terrorism strike against Hezbollah using electronic devices.

Click below to listen to the entire segment:

During the interview, Beirut-based Shabb repeatedly downplayed Hezbollah’s relentless and unprovoked rocket fire on Israel, which began on October 8, only one day after Hamas’ massacres.

Shabb referred to Hezbollah’s “limited engagement with Israel,” and complained that “the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel is becoming more asymmetric. Hezbollah is active against Israel within limits, but the Israeli response is becoming ever more aggressive.”

At first glance, this appears to be accurate, since following Hezbollah’s attacks in October, the terrorist group has largely targeted northern Israeli communities, but has not ostensibly launched an all-out war, using its entire arsenal of advanced missiles.

Nevertheless, this is utterly fallacious logic, and it went entirely unchallenged by the host, Nil Köksal.

In actuality, by firing dozens – and sometimes hundreds – of rockets into Israel virtually every single day for a year, targeting civilians, and driving tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes and making them refugees in their own country, Hezbollah has openly declared war on its southern neighbour, for no reason other than to show “solidarity” with its ally, genocidal terrorist group Hamas.

As such, Hezbollah has declared war, and Israel, in order to return some 70,000 of its citizens back to their homes, would thus have every legal and moral right to take actions against a proscribed terrorist group in order to bring safety and peace.

However, at no point did Köksal ever raise this point, nor was it ever pointed out to listeners that it was Hezbollah, not Israel, which launched the unprovoked war nearly one year ago, and which continues to fire rockets into a neighbouring country on a near-daily basis.

Although Shabb spent most of the program portraying an Islamic terrorist group as the hapless victims of its southern neighbour, he did acknowledge a critical point that has gone widely ignored in recent reporting on the exploding mobile devices, saying that “almost all (targeted in the strike) were Hezbollah affiliated,” throwing cold water on baseless claims made by some commentators that the counter-terrorism operation was “indiscriminate.”

The segment ended with Shabb calling for the United States to “put pressure,” not on Hezbollah, a genocidal terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction, but to Israel, for daring to defend itself after almost a year of receiving nonstop rocket attacks.

This latest segment for As It Happens is only the most recent in a long string of hosting almost exclusively anti-Israel guests, and failing to challenge them on their outlandish comments. At what point will As It Happens make an effort to even appear to provide balance for its listeners?