In late September, the Carney government announced its recognition of a ‘Palestinian’ state, and to help provide background and commentary, multiple CBC radio programs predictably relied upon someone who has made unfounded and extreme anti-Israel comments.

Rex Brynen, a McGill University professor who has falsely accused Israel of creating an “engineered humanitarian catastrophe” and who has praised Ottawa for recognizing a Palestinian state, was the guest on September 22, and in multiple interviews, leveled absurd anti-Israel allegations.

In an interview for the Windsor Morning program, Brynen noted that Ottawa’s move was a response to “all the things that Israel is doing.” As a result, he made an inadvertent admission, namely that the recognition was not due to the Palestinians’ legal rights, but simply aimed at providing a diplomatic slap in the face to Jerusalem.

Click below to listen to the segment:

More odiously, Brynen compared Israel to “apartheid South Africa,” making no effort to note that unlike South Africa, which discriminated against its own citizens on the basis of the colour of their skin, Israel is home to two million Arabs who enjoy full legal and civil rights under the law. In Judea & Samaria (“West Bank”), Palestinians are not citizens of Israel, but of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Brynen, apparently eager to find international examples, also compared Israel’s “occupation” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, evidently seeing no difference between Moscow’s belligerent invasion of a neighbour to Israel’s possession of lands to which it possesses legal and historical title. Such details, it seems, have little value when radical denunciations can work instead.

The same day, Brynen appeared on Saskatoon Morning, where host Stephanie Massicotte – a regular platformer of anti-Israel guests and excluder of pro-Israel ones – spoke with him about Ottawa’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state.

Click below to listen to the segment:

In that interview, Brynen repeated his absurd comparisons between Israel on one hand, and Russia and South Africa on the other, and Massicotte for her part duly failed to mention that Israel, and not the others, is a liberal democratic state, and not a repressive and authoritarian regime like the others.

Despite Brynen proclaiming that Ottawa’s announcement was support for the “two-state solution,” Massicotte failed to note criticisms of the move, saying that critics said it was tantamount to a reward for terrorism, or that the Palestinians, for their part, have long opposed Israel’s very existence, but that didn’t stop them from being recognized.

For more coverage of the topic, Massicotte spoke with another guest. Not one who offered a diverse perspective, but Renee Nunan-Rappard, a member of the Saskatoon chapter of Canadians for Justice & Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), a radical anti-Israel group which has whitewashed Islamic terrorism.

Nunan-Rappard has made scandalous comments before, including having been criticized for rationalizing terrorist attacks by the Yemen-based Islamic group Ansar Allah, commonly known as the Houthis. In early 2022, she participated in a demonstration which called for Canada to leave NATO.

But rather than quoting any opponent of Ottawa’s recognition of a Palestinian state, Massicotte decided to speak with not one, but two anti-Israel voices to the total exclusion of anybody else.

Unsurprisingly, Brynen was also featured as a guest by Stephen Quinn, host of the CBC radio program Early Edition. Quinn has extensively interviewed anti-Israel guests over the last two years, all while avoiding providing a platform to virtually anybody with an opposing viewpoint.

Yet again, when CBC decided to tackle an issue of global importance, it demonstrated that balance and nuance are less important than a reliable anti-Israel voice.