The announcement of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement, in one fell swoop, definitively put to rest the groundless claims of ‘famine’ and ‘genocide’ that were leveled at Israel for more than 15 months by Hamas and its supporters around the world.

Despite those allegations, after the ceasefire agreement was announced, crowds of healthy Gazans, clearly not suffering from any famine, holding late-model smartphones, took to the streets to celebrate.

But that hasn’t stopped the narrative in many corners of the Canadian news media. In a January 16 broadcast for CBC News entitled: “‘Vast destruction’ in Gaza hinders aid, even with ceasefire, says Oxfam,” host Heather Hiscox spoke with Diana Sarosi, Oxfam Canada director of policy and campaigns, for her thoughts.

Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, trucks entering Gaza will increase to roughly 600 a day, which according to Sarosi, “is about what it was before the war began,” failing to point out that the large majority of those trucks were not humanitarian aid, but industrial and building supplies, and in fact, far more food trucks have entered Gaza on a daily basis after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attacks than beforehand.

The conversation then pivoted to UNRWA, the disgraced United Nations agency with ties to Hamas and whose staff took part in the October 7 atrocities, which has been banned in Israel, as noted by both Sarosi and Hiscox. Sarosi argued that the agency “played such a central role in the delivery of aid.”

Bizarrely, despite both guest and host mentioning that UNRWA was banned in Israel, not a word was uttered as to why. Viewers were not told that UNRWA has long incited hatred and violence against Israel in its official Palestinian school textbooks, that a number of its employees have been Hamas terrorists, that a large Hamas tunnel was found directly underneath its Gaza headquarters, and much more.

By omitting this central information, CBC News left the distinct impression that Israel banned UNRWA for capricious reasons, or merely to starve Palestinians, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, despite huge numbers of food trucks entering Gaza during the war, UNRWA’s incompetence ensured that hundreds of them would sit idly inside Gaza, not being distributed.

However, for all the misleading discussion around a non-existent shortage of food inside Gaza, it was Sarosi’s concluding remarks which were the most egregious. In response to a question from Hiscox about Gazans’ optimism about the future, she responded by saying that “you need to address the root causes of this violence, right, and that’s the illegal occupation, that’s the arbitrary detention of Palestinians, that’s the growing settlements into Palestinian land…as long as those are not addressed, it’s going to be hard to consider this the end of the war.”

Sarosi uttered virtually the same words the very same day in a CBC radio interview on the All In A Day program, where she blamed the Hamas-instigated war on the Israeli “occupation.”

Hiscox did not point out that, prior to October 7, 2023, Israel did not occupy Gaza; Hamas did. Moreover, Hamas has made it abundantly clear that no Israeli policy changes will deter it from its ultimate goal: the violent destruction of Israel, and in its place, the establishment of an Islamic state.

Hamas, not Israel, launched the war with its invasion and massacres more than 15 months ago, and blaming Israel, whether the result of ignorance or willful blindness, is indefensible. Sarosi is entitled to her views which seeks to blame Israel for Hamas terrorism, but CBC’s choice to give her two platforms in as many days to spew her disinformation and our public broadcaster’s choice to not challenge her is the real problem.