With the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas no longer, a CBC radio program based in Winnipeg sought out a true expert on the subject: the lead singer of a local “all-Palestinian rock band” for his take.

In the March 18 edition of Up to Speed, host Faith Fundal spoke with Tarek Abdel Aziz of the musical group Op-Ed for his opinions on the Hamas-Israel war, and helpfully provided free advertising for the band’s upcoming fundraiser, benefiting an American charity working in Gaza. Curiously, despite CBC describing the band as “all-Palestinian,” it is unclear if any of the other band members, let alone all of them, are actually Palestinian.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

The eight-minute segment began poorly, with Fundal telling listeners about recent events in Gaza, claiming that “more than 400 people were killed in a wave of Israeli strikes,” falsely stating unverified Hamas propaganda as truth, and offering no attribution that the source of these allegations is none other than a banned terrorist group that has unabashedly played fast and loose with the facts to promote its extremist agenda.

During the interview, Abdel Aziz told Fundal that Israel was carrying out “war crimes that we’re seeing day after day.” In the face of these claims, Fundal could have challenged this point, mentioned the Israeli hostages being kept in Gaza, acknowledged the role of Hamas in provoking and perpetuating the conflict, or any number of related points.

Instead, Fundal responded with: “how hard is it to put together a concert… how do you decide what to sing?”

Fundal and CBC cannot have it both ways. If the interview is of a non-political nature, then Fundal should not have asked Abdel Aziz for his opinions on the Middle East, but if it is political, then Fundal was bound by journalistic standards to ensure that balance, or at the bare minimum, context, was provided to listeners. Unfortunately, Fundal did neither.

This is not the first time Fundal has hosted anti-Israel guests and failed to challenge them on their radical rhetoric. Twice in 2024, Fundal spoke with anti-Israel lecturer at the University of Manitoba Nathan Derejko, where Derejko attacked the Jewish State with no pushback from his host.

At one point, Abdel Aziz made what is arguably the most demonstrably false claim out of all his statements, arguing that “I feel that, what’s been missing for the most part in this part of the world is the Palestinian narrative… it’s unfortunately not given the same amount of focus or spotlight as the other side of the story is.”

Despite claiming that “the other side of the story,” or Israel, somehow gets a monopoly on narratives, this could not be further from the truth, a point once again glossed over by Fundal. Just at CBC, Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster, virtually every anti-Israel protest or campaign is given coverage, often by journalists who have expressed extreme anti-Israel views, and Palestinian voices are overwhelmingly, nearly exclusively, platformed while Israelis are sidelined to the point of being virtually erased entirely.

Near the end of the interview, the singer praised how Palestinians are “hanging onto (their) humanity.”

It is unclear which Palestinians Abdel Aziz had in mind when he said they are keeping their “humanity,” clearly excluding the thousands of Gazans who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, the others, including ‘civilians’ who helped keep Israeli hostages in their apartments, and the ghoulish terrorists who murdered the two Bibas brothers with their bare hands.

Still, some of Abdel Aziz’s statements shone a light on the internal inconsistency of anti-Israel activists. In an effort to demonstrate the resilience of Palestinians, the singer added that Palestinians are “still making dance videos,” perhaps unintentionally not realizing that “making dance videos” is not typically what is seen in the middle of a genocide, which is what anti-Israel activists claim is happening in Gaza.

In the March 18 episode of Up To Speed, host Faith Fundal allowed a local singer to pontificate about the Hamas-Israel war and make radical anti-Israel comments with no effort to hold them accountable or even provide factual accuracy to listeners.