Twice within a span of a single day, Canada’s national broadcaster used the occasion of the Paralympic Games to indulge false propaganda narratives about Israel’s defensive war against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.

Disabled Gazan athlete Fadi Aldeeb participated in the Paralympics, sparking several instances of dedicated CBC coverage.

In an August 30 CBC Sports opinion column entitled “Gaza’s Fadi Aldeeb sparks ‘inclusion revolution’ as lone Palestinian Paralympian,” Shireen Ahmed, a journalism lecturer at TMU and senior contributor at CBC, devoted her entire article not to the triumph of an individual overcoming personal adversity to achieve something, but rather to the nationalistic political narrative driving his participation in the event.

If Ahmed’s name is familiar it’s because HonestReporting Canada previously condemned her for penning a column for CBC Sports Opinion suggesting that Israel should be kicked out of the Olympics.

She matter-of-factly informed readers that “[Aldeeb’s] existence is resistance, and his athleticism is part of the revolution,” as if it’s a given that Palestinian nationalistic ‘resistance’ and ‘revolution’ are things to be desired. One could be forgiven for momentarily forgetting which country’s national broadcaster they were reading, when violence against a core Canadian ally is being glorified in this manner.

She also editorialized that “barriers or blockades won’t stop” Aldeeb’s athletic success — reinforcing the false myth that Israel was controlling the people of Gaza for the past 18 years. But what Ahmed hid from readers is that the Gaza Strip was an autonomous Palestinian territory since 2005, and the only reason Israeli naval presence patrolled its borders afterwards was to try and combat the shipment of weapons of war to the terrorist group, Hamas, who took over the territory and used it as a launching base for constant attacks on Israeli civilian communities. The idea that Israel’s counterterrorism efforts were meant as a barrier to a Gazan pursuing athletics is laughably silly.

But most disturbing of all is how Ahmed managed to platform non-credible, extreme viewpoints and narratives while carefully running cover for the obvious falsehoods endemic to them. She quoted Aldeeb alleging that there have been “45,000 people killed in Palestine” during the war — a number higher than even Hamas’ already highly questionable official figure. She followed this quote not with a clarification, but rather with a deflection — offering a cherry picked statistic about the tragedy of child amputees in Gaza. Never at any point did Ahmed choose to acknowledge the historically high rates of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other serious mental health conditions amongst children in southern Israel due to 18 years of constant rocket bombardments culminating in a violent invasion and massacre of their families on October 7. Shouldn’t Israeli athletes who have overcome adversity caused by this same conflict be worthy of attention as well? They would be, if this were truly the intention of the article — rather than an excuse for more political propaganda. Instead, she choose to focus exclusively on one side of the story, but without even telling the full truth about that side.

None of this is surprising in the slightest coming from Ahmed, who has openly admitted her anti-Israel animus by signing a letter advocating for the insertion of unsubstantiated pro-Palestinian views into Canadian media and legitimizing their unverified claims in order to counter a supposed “power imbalance.”

Meanwhile, also on August 30, CBC’s Day 6 radio program aired a segment titled “More than 20 years after he was paralyzed by an an Israeli sniper, Fadi Deeb is carrying the Palestinian flag at the Paralympic Games,” in which Aldeeb was interviewed directly — though it would more accurately be described as a filibuster rather than an interview, since it’s essentially a four-minute uninterrupted soliloquy with no specific questions or follow-up offered by CBC host Brent Bambury. Even when Aldeeb twice alleged that a ‘genocide’ is taking place in Gaza — a baseless claim already refuted ad-nauseum by virtually every mainstream source — the host said nothing in response.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

In addition to sharing the sympathetic story of having lost relatives during the war, Aldeeb lamented the lack of sporting equipment available to Gazans, and noted that “this is my land…like blood contact” and that “we need our lands.” He stated that he should not have to “respect the rules” of leaving politics out of the sporting event, comparing Israel’s defensive war against terrorists in Gaza to Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine — once again, with no response from the host.

Both pieces stated that Aldeeb’s injury was the result of being “shot by an Israeli sniper during the Second Intifada” without explaining that the Second Intifada was a massive wave of violent Palestinian terrorist attacks and suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians — not merely protests “asking about freedom” as Aldeeb stated without any challenge.

There is nothing wrong with highlighting the personal stories of individuals who overcome adversity to achieve great feats, regardless of where they’re from or where they stand politically. There is, however, plenty wrong with using that as an excuse to peddle a false, incomplete, and inappropriate narrative, as this CBC Sports opinion column and Day 6 radio program did.