In a recent broadcast, CTV News permitted a University of Ottawa researcher to engage in a nearly uninterrupted six-minute anti-Israel rant, spreading what we regard as vicious disinformation and propaganda, not once fact-checked or corrected by his host.
The November 10 interview for CTV Your Morning saw host Lindsay Deluce speak with Jeremy Wildeman, a fellow at the University of Ottawa’s “Human Rights Research and Education Centre.”
The segment, “Canada’s Possible Postwar Role in Gaza,” ostensibly focused on Canada’s role in Gaza, though Wildeman had little patience for that topic, beginning his rant by telling Deluce that he would begin by introducing viewers to the “context in Gaza.”
Click below to watch the video:
But what Wildeman gave was not context, but a carefully curated litany of anti-Israel talking points, including stating that “the entire population has experienced starvation, violence… hospitals and schools have been destroyed.”
Beyond carefully hiding any mention of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups that embedded themselves within Gaza and deliberately sought to create widespread damage in the enclave, Wildeman’s breathless and hysterical depictions are in sharp contrast to the reality that those in Gaza are actually showing to the world, including upscale restaurants, luxury cars and smartphones, markets and more.
More importantly, even according to Hamas’ own claims, there was never anything even remotely resembling starvation in Gaza.
But those images conflict with the image Wildeman was creating, so they were predictably ignored.
Even more obscenely, Wildeman – citing “Israeli military data” – claimed that the “vast majority of the casualties have been civilian.” Wildeman was presumably referring to Israeli figures that positively identified 17 of those killed as fighters for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The data did not state that the remaining deaths were civilian; only that 17 percent of deaths were able to be positively identified.
That led to reports, including in the Canadian media, that falsely took that data to claim that as a result, 83 percent of those killed were civilians, when the figures said no such thing. This is not the first time Wildeman has played fast and loose with data, having done so in a September column in The Toronto Star.
Wildeman, giving an academic veneer to his rant, claimed that “scholars have used terms like genocide,” conveniently ignoring that many scholars – including the world’s top expert on urban warfare – have vociferously disputed those claims, pointing out that Israel has taken unprecedented steps to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, even in the face of a truly genocidal Islamic terrorist effort to attack Israel and to put Gazans in harm’s way for propaganda purposes.
Even among those who have accused Israel of “genocide,” such as Amnesty International, they were forced to redefine the very term in order to promote their agenda.
But Wildeman, whose social media is replete with anti-Israel disinformation, including sharing content featuring UN official and conspiracy theorist Francesca Albanese, did more than simply misrepresent the reality in Gaza. He used his position to demand the Carney government funnel Canadian tax dollars towards UNRWA, the disgraced United Nations agency which has been marred by its connections to Palestinian terrorism.
At no time did Deluce ever challenge Wildeman’s wild allegations, and when he said Canada must help rebuild Gaza, she muttered “yeah,” and when he demanded that Ottawa needs to take an even more extreme anti-Israel stance, to “build on its recognition of Palestinian statehood,” she mumbled “right.”
Jeremy Wildeman is entitled to his views, as radical and unmoored from reality as they may be. But CTV News has a responsibility to challenge his false claims, rather than giving them an unfettered platform.
