In the July 17 broadcast of Front Burner, a CBC podcast entitled: “Israel steps up attacks in Gaza,” host Jayme Poisson was joined by freelance journalist Akram Al-Sattari from Gaza to discuss his observations on the Hamas-Israel war from inside the coastal territory.

While such a discussion is eminently worthwhile, the conversation was overwhelmingly lopsided in favour of lambasting Israel and largely minimizing the role of Hamas in continuing to perpetuate the war.

Al-Sattari was previously a guest on Front Burner on May 1 to discuss unsubstantiated allegations that Israel was behind a mass grave found in Gaza, which the program tacitly blamed on Israel, despite evidence strongly indicating it was dug by Palestinians.

It did not take long for Al-Sattari to make it clear that he was not going to be offering anything resembling a well-rounded view. Almost immediately into the interview, he began referring to Israeli soldiers as “Israeli occupation forces,” a favoured term used by anti-Israel activists.

Hamas Cannot Be Relied Upon As A Trusted Source

Poisson asked Al-Sattari to discuss Israel’s recent strike targeting Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’ military wing and the mastermind behind the terrorist group’s October 7 massacres in Israel. Hamas has claimed that 90 others were killed, though it has not substantiated those claims, nor indicated how many were civilians, and how many were combatants. But undeterred, Al-Sattari took Hamas’ figures and embellished them further by stating “around 100 Palestinians” were killed, while failing to acknowledge Hamas as the sole source of that claim.

But it was Al-Sattari’s comments next which was highly illustrating, when he stated that “people are wondering “in Gaza, why wouldn’t they (Israel) just target one person and kill that one person? Why would they cause that chaos in around 500m radial while they know the exact location of that person? Why wouldn’t they be targeting one thing only?”

The answer is clear to anyone who has even a passing familiarity with Hamas’ tactics in Gaza. The Islamic terrorist group uses Gaza’s entire population as human shields in its war with Israel, a reality which Hamas has made little attempt to conceal, but which went entirely unsaid during the radio program.

Instead, on multiple occasions throughout the interview, the term “safe zone,” “safe area,” “safe space” or the like were mentioned by Al-Sattari, Poisson and audio clips, highlighting that Deif was in an area which was supposed to be a zone free of combat.

But Deif’s presence changed that. Israel, which designated the safe zone in an effort to minimize civilian casualties, is not the party at fault when Deif, the most-wanted terrorist with the blood of scores of innocent people on his hands, deliberately used a safe haven to hide amongst civilians. It is Hamas, not Israel, which transformed a civilian area into a combat zone, but that foundational point was never acknowledged by either Al-Sattari or Poisson.

One of the other consistent themes in the interview was, according to Poisson, “aid or a lack of aid getting into Gaza.” Although in a brief moment of recognition, she noted that the topic has been discussed “for months,” failing to realize that, as she put it, “a lack of medicine, a lack of food,” if continued for months, has obviously not occurred, since if it did, many, if not most, of Gazans would have died long ago of starvation.

There’s No Famine in Gaza

But that never happened, and it’s precisely because there is no “lack of food” in Gaza. Every single day, hundreds of trucks bearing humanitarian aid enter Gaza, providing enough sustenance for the population, plus food being grown and prepared from inside the territory. In early June, a humanitarian organization – which had previously claimed famine was imminent – walked back its earlier doomsday predictions, saying it did not see evidence of famine after all.

One of the most egregious comments made by the host was when she said to Al-Sattari – citing bogus claims of 100 killed journalists in Gaza – that “you’re putting yourself at great risk to tell people about what’s going on there.”

By defaming Israel, Al-Sattari is not putting himself at risk at all. It is only if he began telling the truth – such as about Hamas’ theft of aid, its use of human shields, for example – that would put his safety in danger with Hamas’ fanatical terrorists.

While discussing the very real suffering taking place in many parts of Gaza is a worthwhile topic, doing so without making clear that the culprit behind that suffering is Hamas is both intellectually dishonest and morally cowardly.