In 2021, Sara Jabakhanji was among the signatories of an open letter, “An open letter to Canadian newsrooms on covering Israel-Palestine,” which called for more pro-Palestinian content to be disseminated in the Canadian news media.

By any reasonable standard, by signing that letter, Jabakhanji had publicly identified herself as someone whose reporting on Israel could not be trusted as being fair or balanced, and indeed, shortly after the letter was published, CBC stated that those reporters who signed their names would not be able to report on Israel for the foreseeable future.

That policy was short-lived, and soon enough, Jabakhanji was back at it, reporting on Israel for Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster.

And now, Jabakhanji is back with her second report on Israel in as many days entitled: “This 11-year-old does gymnastics atop the rubble of Gaza as the war rages on.” published September 19.

Even a reader unaware of Jabakhanji’s checkered history would immediately recognize the inherent anti-Israel bias in her article.

The report, profiling an 11-year-old Gazan boy and parkour enthusiast whose hobby has been upended as a result of the Hamas-Israel war.

While human interest stories are a reasonable element of journalism, Jabakhanji’s article is patently ridiculous.

Coming only one day after a virtually identical article profiling a Gazan man who received a prosthetic leg as a result of the war, Jabakhanji provided coverage to the emotional story of one Gazan child, all while casually brushing past both the causes of the current war, and the reasons for its tragic continuation.

The reason for the war’s genesis is hardly complex: it is due to Hamas’ genocidal October 7 massacres in southern Israel, and the war has continued since because Hamas continues to hold more than 100 Israeli hostages.

Jabakhanji wrote that the war in Gaza “has killed more than 41,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry,” which indefensibly refuses to acknowledge both that the ministry is entirely under the auspices of Hamas, and that the figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants, and can hardly be considered reputable.

Nowhere in the article was there any acknowledgement of Hamas’ culpability in starting and perpetuating the war, and in refusing to offer any context for readers, positioning Israel as the villain behind all suffering in Gaza, akin to blaming the Allies of World War Two for destruction in Germany, as opposed to Hitler’s Nazis, who launched a war of aggression.

Jabakhanji noted that the father of the boy profiled in the article was detained by Israeli forces, though she failed to offer any details, either on the allegations against him, once again strongly implying that Israel simply indiscriminately arrests Gazans for no particular reason whatsoever, and thus avoiding any mention or explanation of Hamas’ widespread presence in Gaza or the complicity of civilians who support Hamas terrorism.

Additionally, the article, as per CBC News’s apparent custom over the last year, is to all but entirely erase Israeli suffering, including the families of hostages being held in Gaza, or those Israelis who are still refugees in their own homes in southern Israel as a result of the war.

Sara Jabakhanji’s anti-Israel bias was on full display three years ago, and her September 19 article for CBC News shows how little has changed.