Like most news media outlets, CBC News has taken to acting as judge and jury when it comes to Israel’s presence in its ancestral lands, regularly using highly charged and disputed terminology and presenting it as factual.

On the August 21 episode of CBC News’ The National program, host Adrienne Arsenault told viewers about Israel planning construction in a suburb outside Jerusalem, informing viewers about the “widely-condemned settlement project in the West Bank,” before adding that the Carney government had condemned it as a “serious breach of international law” and that it was “harming the integrity of the Palestinian territories.”

Watch the full clip below:

That Israel building apartments in a suburb of its ancient capital city should attract widespread international condemnation is absurd in its own right, a point that CBC News simply treated as obvious without ever failing to challenge the dominant narrative.

In fact, completely absent from Arsenault’s sharing of the news was any acknowledgement that Israel – pointing to its extensive historical and legal rights – disputes claims that the land is “occupied.” By unambiguously referring to the lands that Israel considers its own “occupied,” and completely erasing any semblance of nuance or even basic context, CBC News has effectively presented opinion as fact.

There is nothing inherently wrong with CBC News reporting that the Carney government has condemned Israel’s presence in its own land. The problem is the failure to distinguish between a government’s position and an uncontested fact. By describing the project as a “settlement” and the territory as “occupied” without acknowledging Israel’s extensive legal and historical claims, CBC News has not reported the issue, but effectively adjudicated it. Viewers are left with the impression that there is no legitimate dispute over the underlying issues, when there plainly is.

As Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar noted in a social media post castigating the British government for its condemnation on the construction, “the Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel, just as the British have the right to live in London and throughout the United Kingdom,” adding that “the Jewish people’s connection and right to this land is the most extensively documented of any people in human history.”

That point, though directed at the British government, applies no less to Ottawa. While the Carney government condemns Israel for its presence in its historic lands – claims repeated uncritically by the taxpayer-funded CBC News – Israel possesses far more historic ties to the territories than virtually any other country does in lands that it claims as its own.

Adrienne Arsenault’s report is just the latest in a long string of examples indicating a fixation with Israel’s so-called “settlements,” both by CBC News and in the broader Canadian news media.

In recent days alone, Global News reporter Redmond Shannon produced multiple reports erasing Israel’s ancient ties to Judea & Samaria (“West Bank” in media parlance), The Toronto Star devoted some 2,000 words to portraying Israeli “settlers” as radicals, and CBC News has produced reports breathlessly covering reports of Israeli violence against Palestinians, while conveniently ignoring decades of terrorism by Palestinians against Israeli civilians.