In a recent two-part series on CBC’s The Weekend Morning Show (Manitoba), host Nadia Kidwai – who has previously produced biased and one-sided coverage on subjects relating to Israel and Jews – did more of the same.

On October 20, she used the topic of Hamas’ October 7 Hamas murders in Israel – the most vicious and deadly mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust, and the subsequent rise of antisemitic hate crimes across the globe – to disparage a widely-accepted and important mechanism for fighting the scourge.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

Kidwai spent 20 minutes interviewing Ben Baader of the University of Manitoba to discuss the topic of antisemitism — a conversation which ultimately focused on objections to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, as well as the idea that opposing the Hamas-Israel war should be viewed as purely political and unrelated to questions of antisemitism.

The segment failed to meaningfully engage with the questions at hand beyond any surface-level talking points, and the lack of diversity of opinions offered left many obviously flawed and unfair viewpoints unchallenged.

Baader stated that “Jewish institutions … consider all critique of Zionism and Israeli politics antisemitic,” that “critique of how Israel leads the war in Gaza is considered antisemitic no matter what by many Jewish institutions,” and that “weaponization … [of] charge[s] of antisemitism [have become] a political tool… [and] there’s just no doubt about this.” This is exacerbated by the claim that Zionism — the Jewish people’s collective political movement for self-determination in their ancestral homeland — is based on “racist and colonial ideas,” much like the “founding of [Canada] was [also] a racist endeavour,” and bizarrely suggested that people are trying to consider it antisemitic to “discuss … aspects of racism” in Israeli society. He repeatedly stated that contemporary fights and political movements about Israel are categorically not antisemitic, but rather “political disagreements” — though he did acknowledge that certain expressions of animosity towards Israel or its policies can be “problematic.”

Unfortunately, this led listeners to be lectured about the host and guest’s own subjective view of how the politics of the Middle East override and dismiss overwhelming concerns the Jewish community has about the damage and discrimination this misrepresentation of Zionism has caused them.

Instead of blanketly dismissing these concerns as merely emotions, fears, and political disputes, the discussion should have addressed the widespread problem that Jews face in the world today — namely, an Islamist political/religious extremist movement from the Middle East which seeks to violently attack and wipe out the world’s Jewish population, or at the very least wipe out the country in which nearly half the world’s Jews reside, and the accompanying global movement by supporters who target broad swaths of Jewish institutions and people with both physical and political intimidation and discrimination.

One week later on October 27, Kidwai and Baader were back with another lengthy segment on the topic of Zionism. While Baader did acknowledge ancient Jewish connections to the land of Israel, the large majority of the conversation was spent on a revisionist retelling of Jewish history.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

Baader attempted to frame Zionism, the Jewish People’s national movement of self-determination in their historical homeland, as colonialism, despite – unlike colonialism – the Jewish People having thousands of years of history in the land, and were not a foreign appendage in the Middle East, despite anti-Israel activists attempting to claim so.

As Baader put it, Zionism should be seen in the context of Europe where the population “believed in the supremacy of European culture, the right and responsibility to dominate” others.

Fixing his gaze at current events, Baader sought to frame Hamas’ genocidal massacres on October 7, 2023 in a way that suited his radical ideology, arguing that “these massacres were not pogroms…these were not riots against an ethnic or religious population,” claiming that “it puts the events in a chain of Jewish eternal and unprovoked victimhood,” and instead arguing that it was simply the latest chapter in a bloody history between Israel and its neighbours.

But such a view is utterly wrong, as Hamas – the perpetrators of the October 7 massacres  freely admitted, stating that their worldview is thoroughly anti-Jewish, and not simply a war over real estate, as Baader would have had listeners believe. It is a war that is existential, not territorial.

With these two segments, Kidwai has once again shown little interest in even attempting to provide a thoughtful, balanced or fair conversation. Instead, she has used her platform to promote an extremist anti-Israel view for listeners, all on Canada’s publicly-subsidized broadcaster, the CBC.