In 2006, Jimmy Carter, the former president of the United States, published a book entitled: “Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid.” It was criticized as being “riddled with errors and bias,” and his interpretation of events as being “simply wrong” by a leading former US diplomat on the Middle East.

While his book was lauded by pro-Palestinian activists and others, it was indisputably a controversial position 19 years ago, and remains so today. Following Carter’s recent death, his book was the subject of a segment on the January 3 episode of Day 6, a CBC radio program hosted by Brent Bambury.

But rather than meaningfully engaging with both perspectives on Carter’s book, the segment entitled: “Nearly 20 years later, some of Jimmy Carter’s critics say he was right to use the term apartheid to talk about Israel,” saw Bambury speak with Peter Beinart, a longtime and strident detractor of Israel, who praised Carter’s positions.

Beinart told Bambury that the former US president was “ahead of his time,” and that his arguments were “quite difficult to refute.” While he is certainly entitled to hold those views, Bambury never challenged his guest, offering criticism that many found problematic about Carter’s positions.

Instead, criticism of the book was positioned by Beinart as being the result of knee-jerk reactionary views, without engaging with the material concerns.

Beinart then continued by taking his own outlandish positions, including making the statement that “the question of Gaza is really the question of genocide,” and that “Israel’s impunity… has contributed to the utter destruction in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel has taken more steps to protect civilians in Gaza than virtually any military in the history of modern warfare, leading to a historically low civilian death ratio, even in the face of Hamas deliberately embedding itself within a densely populated urban environment.

Characterizing Israel’s counter-terrorism operations against Hamas in Gaza as being with “impunity” is not only mistaken, it is catastrophically wrong. Impunity would not have led to hundreds of Israeli soldiers dying in close urban fighting; instead, impunity would likely be Israel avoiding virtually all combat deaths because instead, it would opt to avoid exclusive use of air power, as other countries would certainly do in similar circumstances.

Political theorist Shany Mor has noted that “one could make a career out of correcting the errors in Beinart’s writing about Israel.” And while nobody would expect Day 6 host Brent Bambury to aggressively correct Beinart in his comments, his choice not to even modestly push back on his guest’s accusations against Israel represent not just a missed opportunity, but a failure in journalism.

This is not the first time Day 6 has done so; throughout 2024, Bambury interviewed a number of guests expressing stridently anti-Israel views, consistently and regularly failing to properly (and often even at a most basic level) challenging their statements and offering listeners a semblance of balance, fairness and context.

If CBC wants to discuss Jimmy Carter’s 2006 book and his views on the Israel-Palestinian comment, that is their prerogative. However, the publicly-funded broadcaster’s consistent pivoting to showcasing only hostile voices to Israel has gone on for far too long.