In a segment on the CBC Day 6 radio program on December 9 entitled: “A Palestinian psychologist reckons with the trauma Gaza children face after two months of attacks,” host Brent Bambury interviewed Iman Farajallah, a California psychologist born in the Gaza Strip, about the impact of war on children in the coastal territory.

While it is within Bambury’s rights to interview a psychologist about the impact of war on children, it’s noteworthy that nowhere in his segment did he interview an expert who could discuss the trauma of war on children in Israel, nor did he even acknowledge the suffering of Israelis throughout decades of Hamas terrorism against the Jewish State. Bambury’s omission of any mention of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, the single largest massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust, is particularly egregious in the context of a segment about the suffering of children in war.

During their conversation, Bambury’s guest, Iman Farajallah, made a number of false statements, including that the Palestinians are “faced with genocide in 2023.” This is demonstrably untrue, and in fact is an indefensible allegation. Despite the widespread use of this groundless claim by anti-Israel detractors in recent weeks, genocide refers to the wholesale attempted extermination of a people. Notable examples include the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and other “undesirables,” and the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when nearly a million innocent people were murdered based on their ethnic identity.

Listen to the full segment below:

In sharp contrast, Israel’s counter-terrorism operations in the Gaza Strip against Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group responsible for decades of mass violence against Israel, is aimed at degrading the organization’s ability to murder and maim, and is not a campaign of mass executions, though with her irresponsible use of the term genocide, Farajallah suggested exactly that.

But rather than challenging Farajallah on this outlandish claim, Bambury said nothing.

Later, Farajallah falsely referred to longstanding alleged “Israeli occupation” of Gaza, notwithstanding that, prior to the ongoing war, Israel has not occupied Gaza for more than 18 years, since the summer of 2005, when it forcibly removed its combined armed forces and 8,500 Israelis from the coastal enclave, in an infamous gesture of peace that remains unrequited.

Once again, Bambury failed to correct her, or point out this false statement to listeners.

At the end of their conversation, Farajallah told Bambury that “This war, this blockade, this starvation, having people and children being in a big concentration camp, needs to end, in order for their trauma to end.”

Farajallah’s statement is highly misleading. The “blockade” she refers to is aimed at keeping more military armaments out of Hamas’ hands, but thousands of trucks filled with humanitarian aid have entered the Gaza Strip, and more enter daily, in addition to air drops of aid.

It is Hamas, not Israel, which is the culprit behind the suffering of Gaza’s children. Hamas, which has ruled the enclave for 16 years since it took control in a violent coup, steals international aid and uses Gaza’s civilian population as human shields in its war against Israel.

Farajallah’s use of the term “concentration camp” to describe Gaza is grotesque, indefensible, and an antisemitic assault on the memory of those who suffered under concentration camps under Nazi Germany and elsewhere.

Yet once again, Bambury said nothing in the face of this appalling tirade, failing to uphold basic journalistic standards.

Bambury’s choice or inability to hold his guest accountable for her statements were not the only failings of this segment.

During his introduction, Bambury told listeners that “Gaza health authorities say more than 17,000 people have been killed in the last two months, including more than 7,000 children. Those numbers can’t be verified independently but human rights groups say they are credible and have been reliable in the past.”

What Bambury failed to add is that these numbers – which come from Hamas and its so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health” – do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, nor between those killed in Israeli strikes and Palestinian rockets, nor did he define what constitutes “children,” given that Palestinian sources have often described teenage combatants as such.

Just weeks before, Bambury was the source of another HonestReporting Canada alert when a segment of his radio program, focused on tensions in Judea & Samaria/West Bank, failed to provide listeners with any context about Palestinian detainees in the territory.

HonestReporting Canada has filed a complaint with CBC News and we encourage you to do the same. To email host Brent Bambury directly, send emails to: Brent.Bambury@cbc.ca.