Since Hamas’ unprecedented terrorist attack on October 7, killing 1,400 Israelis – representing the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – there has been a noticeable uptick in antisemitic attacks around the world. Sadly, this trend of increased antisemitism frequently takes place during times of increased conflict in the Middle East.

And on the heels of Hamas’ massacre of Jews, and antisemitic outbursts throughout the world, CBC Ottawa’s radio show “All in a Day with Alan Neal” on October 17, featured a segment on antisemitism, not on its pervasiveness, but on a fringe anti-Israel group’s opposition to a normative definition of it.

The segment entitled: “Not everyone who’s Jewish agrees on the definition of antisemitism,” featured Neal interviewing Sam Hersh, a member of the Ottawa chapter of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a notoriously anti-Israel pressure group which has falsely described Israel as an apartheid state and supports boycotts against the Jewish State.

During the interview, Hersh told Neal that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by dozens of countries around the world, including Canada, as well as eight Canadian provinces and scores of municipalities, aims to “silence some criticism of Israel.”

While anti-Israel detractors frequently claim the IHRA definition stifles legitimate criticism of Israel, nothing could be further from the truth. The definition spells out explicitly that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Hersh continued by appearing to blame North American Jews for the war between Israel and Gaza, telling Neal that “when there’s reports that there’s a bombing of a hospital that killed hundreds of people (in Gaza), which is terrible, the despair, grief and Jews are feeling (over antisemitism) shouldn’t be used to justify these attacks.”

Not only did Hersh tacitly blame Israel for bombing a hospital in Gaza (which intelligence reports now say clearly was the work of an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based Islamist terrorist group), he explicitly and falsely asserted that Israel’s military attacks are somehow a response to antisemitism.

Hersh’s statement – which went entirely unchallenged by Neal – totally ignores Hamas’ total culpability, both for its genocidal massacre of innocent Israeli civilians on October 7, as well as Israel’s required military action aimed at rooting out the Islamist terrorist group’s capacity to murder innocent men, women and children and rescuing its kidnapped citizens.

Wrapping up his comments, Hersh later described Israel as committing “genocide and ethnic cleansing,” a grotesquely false claim that is without any merit whatsoever. Unlike Hamas, which is totally dedicated to the eradication of Israel through violent means and purposely targets civilians for murder, Israel conversely fully withdrew all Israeli citizens from the Gaza Strip in 2005, pursuing an attempt at peace.

Hersh also claimed that Israel was committing “75 years of occupation and apartheid,” referring to the country’s 1948 independence, and thus explicitly denying Israel’s very right to exist. Any legitimacy or relevance any commentator claims to have in sharing perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is immediately rendered moot when someone like Hersh denies Israel’s very right to exist, parroting Hamas’ goals of a world free of a Jewish State.

Reasonable minds may disagree on what steps Israel ought to take in combatting Hamas’ terrorism, but claims such as those made by Hersh which include a denial of Israel’s right to exist, or false allegations of Israeli genocide against Palestinians, immediately renders the commentator entirely irrelevant and unmoored to reality.

At a time when Jewish communities around the world are reeling, not only from Hamas’ mega terrorist attack on October 7, but the subsequent rise in antisemitic activities across the globe, CBC Ottawa’s decision to broadcast a segment featuring an anti-Israel activist spouting patent disinformation is not only profoundly tone-deaf, but represents a remarkable lack of journalistic integrity and only serves to obstruct the necessary fight against Jew hatred.

Please also send your considered comments directly to CBC Anchor Alan Neal at: Alan.Neal@cbc.ca.