In three recent news reports for CBC News, correspondent Chris Brown continued his deeply problematic news coverage of Israel and the Middle East.

One report, published on November 6 entitled: “Trump’s presidency could change trajectory of Middle East conflict,” covered the impact of Trump’s presidential election win on the Hamas-Israel war.

Watch the full clip below:

His report lined up his sources to portray Israel as against peace due to its actions in Gaza. His video footage showed a damaged Khan Yunis in Gaza and featured Abu Assama Nayeem, a resident of Khan Yunis as saying, “today the Americans voted for an administration that’s refused a two-state solution …so the war will continue and destruction will continue.”

Brown continued to say that “Israeli attacks have killed 43,000 Palestinians in the past 13 months according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel says it’s targeting Hamas militants, although the vast majority of the dead are civilians, with more killed Wednesday.”

The news video showed Donald Trump commenting on Israel’s role in the war in Gaza, saying “you should let him go and let him finish the job.” Brown then brought in Diana Buttu, who is referenced as a Palestinian lawyer and activist. CBC neglects to mention that she is also a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization and who though she is a fierce critic of Israel’s, lives in the Jewish state in Haifa. She says of Trump, “In his imagination of quote ‘finish the job,’ I don’t think that he means that there should be a ceasefire, I don’t think he means that Israel should be stopping, I think that he means that he’s going to let Israel do whatever it wants to do.”

So Brown has painted a caricature that portrayed Israel as causing wanton destruction in Gaza and obstructing peace. It obscured any reference to the causes behind Israel’s actions, nor did he fully reference the Israeli side.

The principal cause is that Hamas is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Its heinous massacre on October 7, 2023 is something they want to repeat until Israel is no more. It clearly states its goal in its charter, and its supporters have used a variety of slogans to convey its meaning, including, “There is only one solution, intifada revolution”. Intifada literally means “uprising” but refers to periods starting in 1987 and again in 2000 when Palestinian Arabs committed violent, murderous attacks on Israeli civilians. Another slogan is “We don’t want no two-state, we want ’48” which, referring to Israel’s independence in 1948, clearly has no interest in any solution with Israel in it.

Two days later, Brown published another report entitled: “Israel has deliberately made northern Gaza unlivable, say Palestinians. What comes next?” In that article, he gave an extended platform to accusations against Israel of “inflicting starvation” on Gaza, as well as the ever-popular and yet entirely unfounded “genocide” claim.

Additionally, Brown gave oxygen to the baseless allegation that Israel is planning to “establish Jewish settlements” in Gaza, despite Israel’s prime minister explicitly saying otherwise.

Brown also wrote that “night after night, the IDF subjected communities there (in Gaza) to attacks from the air,” seeming to downplay if not outright ignore who exactly Israel is targeting, and implying it is civilians, not Hamas terrorists

The same day, Brown released a  news report on the anti-Jewish pogroms in Amsterdam, “Dutch PM condemns violent attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam,” which portrayed the violence in the Dutch capital not as a proven premeditated attack on Jews, but as simply “football hooliganism” which led to a “toxic mess.”

Despite evidence suggesting that the attacks were planned and orchestrated, the overwhelming impression provided to viewers by Brown is that isolated instances of problematic behaviour by some Israeli soccer fans somehow provoked a wide-scale explosion of violence against anyone Israeli or deemed to be Jewish. 

These three reports are just the latest in a long string of news reports from Brown which fall far below the journalistic standards expected of Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster.