Twice, just days apart, the CBC radio program As It Happens dedicated entire segments to discussing the new US proposal to redevelop the Gaza Strip after the war, perpetuating the propagandistic narratives and ideological talking points of Palestinian and Arab nationalists, while failing to meaningfully discuss the facts of the plan, the circumstances that sparked it, and more importantly, offer any balanced discussion on the matter.

Both days, host Nil Köksal spoke with guests who gave the same perspective and outlook, while failing to push back on their statements in any meaningful sense.

In the February 5 segment entitled: “Disbelief over Trump’s plan for ‘Riviera of the Middle East’,” Koksal cited some of the criticism of the proposal, and featured a discussion with Ghaith al-Omari, a former Palestinian negotiator, who condemned the proposal, saying it smacked of “ethnic cleansing” and was reminiscent of the 1948 Arab-Israel war, when Palestinians were “expelled from their homes,” though many, if not most did so on their own volition and after the urging of Arab leaders at the time, a point overlooked by Koksal.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

In the February 7 segment, the CBC host reiterated that the plan has “repeatedly been called ethnic cleansing” among critics and that it’s been called a “recipe for radicalism,” before failing to question a guest who referred to Israel as “the aggressor” in the current war.

In both segments, the hosts uncritically accepted these biased premises and facilitated largely assertion-based discussions consisting of tired regional talking points.

In the February 7 segment, host Nil Köksal spoke with Jawad Anani, a former Jordanian government minister, who condemned the proposal, saying “We cannot award the aggressor, which is the current Israeli government, by making life, its life, easy. That they can go and disrupt, and destroy, and kill people and children. And then, at the end of the day, that other countries will take the, will take the debt off Israeli shoulders.”

Click below to listen to the full segment:

What Jawani glossed over is that Israel is not the “aggressor,” but the respondent to Hamas’ declaration of war on October 7, 2023. Koksal made no effort to correct her guest.

The facts of this situation are quite clear — and none is more important to convey than the indisputable reality that, tragically, despite enormous and endless international efforts for decades now, the Gaza Strip is one of the world’s most treacherous and violent bastions of terrorism, radical extremist beliefs, war, and intractable chaos in recorded history. However, for listeners of As It Happens, there was no balance, nor diversity of opinion offered.

There can be no doubt that Gaza’s history in recent years is characterized by violence and mayhem.

In the early 20th century, both the Strip’s ancient and modern Jewish communities were forcibly evacuated by British authorities due to rioting and violence from the local Arab population. During the 1948 war, the Strip received an influx of refugees from other parts of newly-independent Israel — many of whom found themselves fleeing due to their participation in waging war and attacks against the Jewish communities and/or the IDF, self-selecting for the area to be a hub of extremist views. This was exacerbated when UNRWA was established, systemically keeping future generations of the population living in refugee camps and committed to extremist fantasies about Israel eventually disappearing so they could “return” there rather than integrate into new lives — all funded by Western and international tax dollars. The extremism and ideological rigidity was so severe that when Egypt took control of the Strip in 1949, they banned the residents from traveling freely into general Egyptian territory or from obtaining Egyptian citizenship. After 1967, when Israel took control of the Strip in a defensive war, it became a constant hotbed of terrorism and violence for decades. When new Israeli communities were established there, their neighbours showered them with incessant assault by rockets, gunfire, and suicide bombings.

Finally, in 2005, in a major unilateral gesture towards the peace process, Israel voluntarily expelled all 8,500 of its own citizens who resided within the Strip and completely removed its military presence from the territory as well — leaving it completely available for the local Palestinians to develop into their own fully-independent state, as Western conventional wisdom suggested was their true gripe and goal. Instead, the radicalized population chose to riot, pillage, and destroy the existing agricultural infrastructure Israel had left behind (along with burning synagogues, blocking access to historic sites, and even desecrating Jewish graves). When the US ensured that the territory would have a free and fair election, the population immediately elected the internationally-sanctioned terrorist organization Hamas to be their leaders and official government. Within months, Hamas violently asserted complete authoritarian control over the entire territory, executing minorities and all political rivals in grotesque public displays.

During the 18 years since, Hamas regularly indiscriminately launched tens of thousands of rockets at civilian towns and cities in Israel, rendering normal daily life in some of them almost impossible, including the October 7, 2023 attacks, where Hamas launched a massive unprovoked invasion of Israel, massacring and burning multiple entire communities and families in their homes, mass-raping and gunning down hundreds of concertgoers, destroying critical defense infrastructure, and ultimately murdering over 1,200 people and taking another 250 people hostage — dozens of whom are still being held, starved, and tortured to this day. Throughout all of this, thousands of Gazan civilians took the opportunity to celebrate, leer, abuse, pillage, and join in on the violence.

Meanwhile, the impact of the past sixteen months of war to eliminate Hamas’ massive and unprecedented terror infrastructure from the cities into which they were entangled and embedded has rendered much of the area damaged and uninhabitable, leaving a large civilian population with no permanent place to live.

The hosts of As It Happens have every right to take whatever opinion on this proposal they wish to, just as Israeli society and beyond are also having that debate right now. However, facts are facts — and Canadian listeners deserve to hear them presented accurately and fairly and to hear a diversity of views which serves to add to the marketplace of ideas.