Hosting a guest who is essentially complaining—under a veneer of gentility—that the United States government supports Israel’s right to defend itself is noteworthy. Not calling her on it appears complicit, or at the very least journalistically lazy. Offering listeners no alternate viewpoint is just the new normal at the CBC, definitely on Jaymie Poisson’s Front Burner podcast.

Listen to the full segment below:

Poisson’s November 1 program entitled: “An undecided Palestinian Democrat in Michigan,” hosted Rima Mohammad, a professor, clinician, and lifelong Democrat in Michigan. She detailed at length her dissatisfaction with Kamala Harris, the vice president and Democratic presidential nominee’s lack of commitment in calling for a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East and a list of other pro-Palestinian demands.

As a result, she is part of the move to vote “uncommitted”, which has, to date, gathered the support of a total of approximately 750,000 voters. Poisson asked her what message she wanted to give the Biden administration when she first got involved. Mohammad answered: “The biggest push, the biggest reason was to ask for President Biden to change course when it comes to Israel and Gaza, to immediately implement a permanent and bilateral ceasefire, and to help rebuild Gaza.”

She later talked about the group’s demands, including supporting “an arms embargo” against Israel, effectively robbing it of the right to defend itself. Elsewhere in the podcast, she falsely referred to the non-existent “genocide happening in Gaza” and took aim at the Michigan Attorney General for convicting pro-Palestinian student protestors who broke the law.

Mohammad’s requests regarding the war in the Middle East are without any factual context. Poisson neglected to provide them. Mohammad placed Israel in the wrong, and the Gazans as the righteous victims. Hence the need for a ceasefire, an arms embargo, and to rebuild Gaza. Poisson just grunted seemingly in acknowledgement.

Given that Hamas, the terrorist instigators of the war, clearly state in their charter their commitment to the genocide of Israel, and their leaders are clear about their intention to repeat the massacres of October 7, 2023 until Israel is destroyed, it is hard to understand why Israel’s fight to survive should be impeded.

Mohammad referred to “the devastation that we’ve seen in Gaza, now in Lebanon and elsewhere,” which implied that her concern is for the impact of the war in Gaza.

Wars are indisputably terrible. All civilian suffering on both sides is a tragedy. But attributing responsibility to the wrong party doesn’t make anyone safer. On the contrary, it encourages the perpetrator. Defeating terrorism should not be negotiable, and those who destroy it are doing a service not only to their population, but to the world.

As is now de rigeur, Poisson didnn’t mention Hamas’s core strategy of hiding behind civilians and its inevitable impact on the casualty figures, despite Israel’s unprecedented efforts to minimize casualties, noted by Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz, “Israel has gone to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties,” he said. “Israel is not at war with civilians, it is at war with Hamas, which is at war with its own civilians.”

Poisson, unsurprisingly, neglected to point this out. Instead, she provided airtime for Mohammad to describe herself and other like-minded Palestinian Americans as experiencing “the feeling of dehumanization and the feeling of not belonging and not feeling safe.”

This emotional appeal for support whitewashed the issues. Feeling left out because one is on the wrong side of history is not something that deserves empathy.

Poisson seems to be offering Mohammad free, almost uninterrupted airtime. It is a dangerous journalistic practice to offer any political actor a blank slate. In fact, it is usually a highly regulated practice. Except not, it seems, by the CBC.