On September 22, Robyn Bresnahan, host of the Ottawa Morning radio show on CBC Radio One, featured Anton Abu Akleh as her guest.

Abu Akleh is the brother of the deceased Al Jazeera news reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed while covering a gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists in the Palestinian city of Jenin in May, 2022.

Abi Akleh was interviewed to mark Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication naming an award after his sister, The Shireen Abu Akleh Emerging Reporter Award in Social Justice Journalism.

While the full findings related to Shireen Abu Akleh’s death have not been made public, Israel has publicly apologized to the Abu Akleh family, and acknowledged that there was a “high possibility” that she was shot by an Israeli soldier. However, despite the attempts by anti-Israel detractors to accuse Israel of intentionally targeting the journalist, no such conclusion has ever been established; rather, an extensive Israeli investigation in 2022 found that Abu Akleh was likely killed by unintentional Israeli fire.

Following her death, Israel reached out to the Palestinian Authority (PA), offering to partner on a joint investigation to help uncover the details surrounding her shooting, but was rebuffed by the PA.

Nevertheless, during the interview, Abu Akleh repeatedly accused Israel of intentionally murdering his sister, telling Bresnahan that his sister “was clearly targeted by this Israeli sniper who aimed to kill her.”

You can listen to the interview in full by clicking below:

During Abu Akleh’s interview with CBC Radio One, he discussed his late sister’s reporting for Al Jazeera, theorizing that because his sister covered Palestinian issues, the Israeli government wanted to silence her. He claimed that Israel “decided to silence her because apparently her reports were damaging their plans.”

Abu Akleh, who has attempted to frame himself as an advocate for peace, telling reporters in 2022 that “we want to live in peace” with Israel, made a remarkable claim during the radio interview where he delegitimized Israel’s right to exist.

During the discussion with Bresnahan, Abu Akleh made the comment that his sister’s work helped to tell the story of “Palestine, who have been under occupation for almost 75 years, and (is) still going on.”

Seventy-five years ago, 1948, marked Israel’s proclamation of independence and its genesis as a modern nation-state. Israel gained independence following the United Nations (UN) voting in favour of the UN Partition Plan, which split the British Mandate into a Jewish State, an Arab State, and an international zone for Jerusalem.

While anti-Israel activists often claim that Israel’s presence in Judea & Samaria (often called the “West Bank” by news media outlets) and eastern Jerusalem following the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel was victorious in a defensive war against neighbouring Arab countries, the allegation that Israel has been an illegal occupier of Palestinian lands for 75 years posits that all of Israel is illegitimate.

Consequently, when Abu Akleh referred to the “occupation for almost 75 years,” he was referring to all of Israel as an illegal occupier, delegitimizing the Jewish State in its entirety.

The allegation that Israel has been an illegal occupier of Palestinian land for 75 years is a favourite claim made by anti-Israel campaigners, who refer to Israel’s creation as a “nakba,” or Arabic for catastrophe.

Remarkably, Abu Akleh’s claim that all of Israel represents an “occupation” went unchallenged by Bresnahan, who failed to hold him to account for his statement denying Israel’s right to exist.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first instance in which a CBC radio program has failed to push back when a Palestinian uses their platform on the public broadcaster to delegitimize Israel.

A May, 2023 episode of Day 6, a CBC radio program hosted by Brent Bambury of Day 6 featured an interview with a prominent Palestinian artist who referred to the “nakba” without being challenged by Bambury. That same month, an episode of CBC Radio One’s Let’s Go program included a promotion of an event in downtown Montreal, which according to the on-air intern, featured “a 1948 nakba survivor.”

While Robyn Bresnahan is not responsible for the words uttered by her guest, Anton Abu Akleh, as a journalist, she is responsible for carrying out sufficient research beforehand, and being able to competently challenge Abu Akleh when he denied Israel’s right to exist. Tragically, she failed to do that and consequently, CBC listeners were misled and Israel’s legitimacy was denied.