The announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas spurred a flurry of news reports across Canada, sharing the news and offering extended analyses about its consequences.

However, for one CBC radio program, which featured three separate segments covering the story over the course of two days, the ceasefire announcement appeared to be an opportunity to present Israel as the culprit behind the war.

On January 15, the All in a Day radio program’s host Alan Neal spoke with Yvonne Ying, a physician in Ottawa who recently traveled to the Gaza Strip with Doctors Without Borders (also known as Médecins Sans Frontières). The discussion surrounded her experiences working in a hospital, including in detail explanation of medical procedures.

Click to listen to the full segment below:

Ying stated that there was a shortage of supplies in Gaza, and repeated unverified claims of hypothermia in the coastal territory. While Ying avoided the temptation of many guests in such situations to demonize Israel, no mention was made of Hamas, either, despite the terrorist group retaining control of much of Gaza.

Doctors Without Borders, while it presents itself as a humanitarian organization, has long been vocally hostile to Israel, accusing the Jewish State of manifold crimes. And while Ying did not do this, the segment’s exclusive focus on suffering in Gaza – while entirely valid – effectively prioritized discussion of suffering of Gazans over Israelis.

The following day, Neal spoke with Diana Sarosi, the director of policy and campaigns at OXFAM Canada, an organization whose main international branch, like Doctors Without Borders, engages in overt anti-Israel advocacy, belying its claims to be humanitarian in nature.

Click to listen to the full segment below:

The discussion centred exclusively around Gaza once again, with Sarosi falsely claiming that – referring to aid into Gaza – that “some months, there was nothing going in,” when there is no evidence whatsoever to substantiate these claims. She further promoted UNRWA, the disgraced United Nations agency with ties to terrorism and whose staff took part in Hamas’s October 7 massacres of 1,200 Israelis, and which has been criticized for its ineptitude in failing to deliver huge amounts of aid into Gaza, by saying that “they play such a central role in the delivery of aid.”

No challenge was offered by Neal to these statements.

But Sarosi left the worst for last, when she concluded her remarks by saying that the “root causes of this violence” between Israel and Hamas are “the illegal occupation, the arbitrary detention of Palestinians, the expansion of settlements and so on.”

The current war, started on October 7, 2023 with Hamas’ massacres in Israel, were not in response to Israeli settlements in Gaza, for there were none, having been forcibly removed 18 years earlier. Nor were they about the supposed “illegal occupation” of Gaza, which was non-existent since the same date in 2005.

If Sarosi had actually listened to Hamas’ leaders, rather than presuming to speak for them, she would have heard them say clearly that their massacres are merely the opening salvo in their ever-present efforts to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic caliphate. To Hamas, all of Israel, every inch of it, is illegal, and Israel, in its totality, must be destroyed.

This statement of hers, blaming Israel for Hamas’ genocidal violence, scandalously went unanswered by Neal.

That same day, in a third segment on the topic, Neal spoke with Mira Sucharov of Carleton University. While Sucharov was far more balanced in her remarks, she nevertheless repeated unverified Hamas death toll claims, stating matter-of-factly that “46,000 Palestinians have died,” failing to attribute that claim to Hamas, and that the terrorist group makes no distinction between civilians and combatants, nor that the figure is entirely unverified.

Click to listen to the full segment below:

But arguably Sucharov’s most problematic comment – in discussing how Palestinians and Israelis can hope to rebuild trust one day – was when she said that “each side believes that the other just wants to annihilate them.”

While that may be true that many on both sides believe that, it does not make those beliefs true in both cases.

Hamas is proudly genocidal, and has made no effort to hide its goal of the total and violent destruction of Israel, while the Jewish State has taken extraordinary and unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. While many Gazans may believe Israel is trying to kill them all, there is simply zero evidence to suggest this, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary, but Sucharov, in an effort to appear balanced and even-handed, gave false beliefs equal weight to true beliefs.

In recent months, CBC Anchor Alan Neal has given many opportunities for anti-Israel statements to be spread, typically failing to offer little to nothing in the way of challenge or even providing basic context for listeners. And in these three segments, listeners were given an overwhelming Palestinian perspective which downplayed Israeli suffering, and at best made no distinction between a terrorist group and a professional army fighting those same terrorists.