In an August 16 episode of the CBC radio program “Day 6,” a show with a long history of platforming anti-Israel guests, guest host Nav Nanwa interviewed CNN reporter Katie Polglase regarding controversies and abuse allegations surrounding the Netzah Yehuda battalion of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Listen to the full segment below:

Netzah Yehuda is a small battalion, which according to media reports, in which some of its members have been accused at times of violent or inappropriate conduct in recent years.

While it is completely legitimate for media to discuss and report on the controversies surrounding them, and while all abuses of power should of course be condemned and prosecuted, this particular interview fell short of providing a complete and accurate understanding of the issue.

Right from the get-go, the host repeatedly uses language which falsely framed the broader context of the discussion as one in which Israel is a big, bad antagonistic figure, with this story being just the latest example to reaffirm this stereotype. The CBC’s guest host matter-of-factly stated that “Gaza’s Health Ministry announced that more than 40,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks.” Is that really an appropriate or accurate way to contextualize this discussion? No mention of the “Gaza Health Ministry” being a politically-controlled wing of the Hamas terrorist organization, or of the accuracy of its reported casualty figures being routinely questioned by experts?

It hardly “announces” anything so much as “alleges,” but this was entirely lost in the picture painted of the situation by this one wording choice. And is Israeli “attacks” an appropriate or accurate way of referring to Israel’s defensive war against a totalitarian violent terrorist organization that invaded its borders and sadistically abused and massacred thousands of its people, in an ongoing and openly professed effort at genocide? This false framing and failure to provide the full context created the false impression for listeners that the Netzah Yehuda controversy is a more widespread issue than the isolated problem that it actually is.

On top of this, the coverage of the controversy itself was very skewed. The discussion focused solely on the allegations against members of the unit and speculative claims about its internal culture and Israel’s supposed acceptance of this behavior, completely ignoring the rest of the story — such as the fact Israel has done a lot to try and deal with this problem. On top of investigating and at times prosecuting individuals accused of misconduct (something dismissed in the interview as a “bad apples” whitewashing tactic, in one of the most egregious cases of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ in recent memory), Israel has taken measures to prevent the problem from continuing — most notably physically moving the unit to a different geographic area inside Israel where its work would not involve interacting with Palestinians at all.

But the problem with this interview is even more basic. This is yet another example of CBC programs choosing to devote entire segments to obscure, isolated, and at times unsubstantiated issues within the Israeli side while refusing to adequately contextualize them or engage at all with the bad behavior and controversies on the Palestinian or Iranian sides. No matter how small the issue, or how questionable its source, CBC staff seem to go out of their way to grant it legitimacy and attention so long as it’s an Israeli who is being scrutinized.

Even in this segment, the host managed to find an opportunity to note that recently released Palestinian detainees — i.e. those suspected of working with Hamas (not that this would ever be mentioned by the hosts) — have claimed they were mistreated while in prison. While these claims are taken at their word and alluded to in this discussion, the accounts shared by rescued Israeli hostages about Hamas’ systemic and open abuses of them for months are not noted at any point. Why are so many CBC stories and broadcasts fixated on anti-Israel stories, while not seeming to be interested at all in any of the many Palestinians participating in horrific atrocities and war crimes each and every day at a systemic state-sanctioned level?

This bias and blatant lack of balance or context just means that rather than offering meaningful insight and analysis into serious issues that can and should be addressed, this discussion and other recent ones like it have instead merely sowed the seeds of further animosity and mistrust amongst Canadians who care about peace and justice in the region and want to see a real path forward someday.