For years, the CBC radio show As It Happens has aired a steady stream of anti-Israel guest speakers since October 7, 2023. Most recently, on May 6, co-host Nil Köksal gave seven minutes of publicly funded airtime to a British non-governmental organization (NGO) with a long history of anti-Israel animus.

Listen to the full segment below:

Köksal began by asking Steve Cutts of Medical Aid for Palestinians about Israel’s planned upcoming major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Cutts immediately jumped to the first of many wild untruths: that Israel broke the ceasefire. This was no slip of the tongue. He made this accusation several times, in several different ways, saying that “ever since the ceasefire… was broken by Israel back in March,” and that the ceasefire “has been unilaterally ripped up by Israel.”

Saying it over and over doesn’t make it true. In fact, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas didn’t “break” and it wasn’t “broken” (or “ripped up”). Phase One of the ceasefire expired on March 1. When Israel sought an extension, Hamas stalled and refused.

Given this game-playing on the part of Hamas, Israel returned to fighting, attempting to control the flow of Hamas fighters and weapons throughout Gaza and to free the hostages.

Unsurprisingly, Cutts didn’t mention Hamas at all, except to say that they haven’t diverted any of his organization’s aid. Despite extensive and repeated evidence of Hamas hijacking aid trucks, Cutts dismissed this idea as “an excuse to take more control and move forward with the other aims that Israel has for Gaza.”

Those aims, for Cutts, include ethnic cleansing, forced displacement, and reoccupation of Gaza.

Unfortunately, at no point did Köksal offer any pushback to these claims or provide context or discussion of Israel’s security needs or its aims for the war. She did not mention that the war was started by Hamas with its brutal massacre of October 7, 2023. Nor did she mention that the effects of the war have been particularly devastating for the people of Gaza due to Hamas’ use of civilian infrastructure and human shields.

Köksal did mention a proposal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior security advisors which would see future aid deliveries distributed through private security contractors to Gaza families in need with Israel overseeing security.

Cutts immediately said: “No, that wouldn’t help anything.” That’s understandable given that the plan would cut his and other NGOs out of the loop. 

He added: “…aid should be impartial. It should be given freely. It should flow smoothly.” That may be the ideal—but it’s also completely impossible while Gaza remains in the grips of Hamas.

Throughout the interview, Cutts’s agenda was made crystal clear. He wants the West to condemn Israel. He wants “maximum pressure on Netanyahu to stop this carnage.” He also demanded an end to arms sales to Israel and “full accountability” under international law.

Cutts then repeated casualty figures he cited directly from Hamas Health Ministry press releases.

Köksal didn’t call him on this either, though Hamas casualty figures have repeatedly been debunked. For one thing, Hamas figures don’t include the large number of combatants that has been closely targeted by Israeli strikes. They also include deaths by natural causes as war casualties.

Cutt’s organization, Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), founded in 1984, has a long record of political activism. In the past, it has promoted distorted anti-Israel narratives, endorsed controversial events and publications, and aligned itself with groups linked to Palestinian terror organizations.

Despite its claimed neutrality, MAP has repeatedly used accused of using its medical advocacy as a cover to advance anti-Israel and antisemitic causes.

Obviously, As It Happens is free to feature any guests it chooses. However, dedicating such a long segment, ostensibly about a news item, to a one-sided and twisted depiction of such a complex situation is an insult to listeners’ intelligence.

While As It Happens did recently feature an interview with the family friend of a recently-released American-Israeli hostage, Edan Alexander, it represented an extremely rare exception to the rule, lost in the shuffle of an ongoing barrage of anti-Israel guests who spread hostile disinformation with little challenge.