A toxic mix of ignorance, disinformation and anti-Israel animus was at the centre of a recent broadcast by Nadia Kidwai, host of the CBC radio program The Weekend Morning Show (Manitoba).

Speaking on June 21 about the Iran-Israel war, Kidwai spoke with Nathan Derejko, an assistant law professor at the University of Manitoba, a favourite guest of CBC programs looking for a reliable anti-Israel voice.

Listen to the full segment:

The topic of the program was about the legality of Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but given the biographies of both Kidwai and Derejko, one hardly needed to have listened to know how the conversation was going to progress.

In her introduction, Kidwai grossly misrepresented the nature of Iran’s nuclear program, saying that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “had also said that it seen no evidence that Iran’s enriched uranium was being steered towards military or non-civilian purposes,” and that “Tulsi Gabbard, president rumps director of national intelligence, also told congress earlier this year that US intelligence agencies did not believe Iran had made a decision to weaponize its nuclear program.”

This is a clever effort at cherry-picking data on Kidwai’s part, ignoring that just days before Israel’s strike on Iranian targets, the United States Central Command (CENTOM) said that Iran was days away from as many as 10 nuclear weapons, and in the same March testimony, Gabbard said that “Iran’s enriched uranium stockpiles is at its highest levels, and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

Derejko, for his part, denied that Israel had any right to strike Iran, saying “there is no legal basis for Israel’s actions under the UN charter,” and yet that Iran had a right to self-defence in return. He made no mention of the fact that Iran has de facto, with its active support for its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, fired literally tens of thousands of rockets at Israel over the last 20 months.

Either these facts – widely available and which are not in dispute by any credible source – are completely unknown to both Derejko or Kidwai, or otherwise they chose to hide them from listeners.

But perhaps the depth of the anti-Israel animus on display was when Derejko sought to justify Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israeli civilian targets, saying that Israel’s military sites were “embedded right into a civilian area,” adding “you should never build a military headquarters or command and control centre in the centre of a civilian area, because that is a legitimate target.”

Despite Derejko’s sudden awareness that military sites can be in close proximity to civilian infrastructure, he has remained strangely silent about this reality in Gaza, where Hamas has transformed much of Gaza into a terrorist base, forcing Israel into a situation where every strike on Hamas would potentially incur collateral damage.

In any case, Derejko’s comments are a clear (though unintended) vindication of Israel’s counter-terrorism operations in Gaza.

At no time in the conversation did Kidwai ever remind her guest – nor listeners – of the many sources pointing to Iran’s nuclear weapons program being advanced, nor about how, given the war launched by its proxies at Israel, Tehran could be reasonably held accountable, nor about Tehran’s openly-stated genocidal intentions. Instead, she allowed Derejko to twist the law to suit his ideological agenda, and ended the interview by making the odious comparison between Israel and Iran, saying that there should be a “two-way arms embargo” on both parties.

Failing to recognize the difference between a genocidal Islamic theocracy and a liberal democracy defending its right to exist is more than ignorant; it is dangerously naive at best, and complicit with Iran’s fanatical agenda at worst.