Only days after publishing a reality-inverted opinion column in The Globe and Mail where he accused Israel, and not Hamas, the fanatical Islamic terrorist organization, of committing genocide, Avi Lewis, an associate professor of geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC), was a guest on CBC Vancouver on January 19, where he repeated his scurrilous accusations against Israel.

In the five minute segment entitled: “B.C. prof. says Canada should back South Africa’s call for court to rule on Israel’s actions in Gaza,” Lewis spoke with Dan Burritt, host and producer of CBC Vancouver News, and claimed that South Africa’s allegations of genocide against Israel were “utterly devastating” to Jerusalem.

As evidence, Lewis made reference to “the incitement statements from cabinet ministers…talking about flattening Gaza…we’re dealing with non-human animals…”

But simply providing a litany of weak arguments do not together constitute a strong argument.

When it comes to the charge of genocide, which is the attempted mass extermination of a people, the proofs cited by Lewis do not stand up to scrutiny.

While a number of Israeli officials have made irresponsible statements, none of them represent Israel’s official policy in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, both Israel’s prime minister and defense minister have explicitly stated that their enemy is Hamas, not the civilian population of Gaza, so while Lewis is eager to share statements which purport to support his contention, he utterly ignored statements from Israel’s key decision-makers which entirely refute his argument.

The other side to South Africa’s case, as articulated by Lewis, is the impact of Israel’s counter-terrorism operations in Gaza, including “every civilian attacked, the hospitals, the journalists killed,” but this too is a misrepresentation of genocide.

While the impact on Gaza’s population of the war is undeniable, there is no evidence that Israel’s intent has been to harm civilians. In fact, Israel’s air strikes have been targeted, as demonstrated by satellite imagery, which also largely overlaps with known Hamas subterranean tunnel systems.

Additionally, as of January 23, 219 Israeli soldiers were killed fighting on the ground in Gaza, where they were placed directly in harm’s way. If Israel had no concern for civilian lives, it could have operated exclusively with air power, protecting its soldiers.

Israel has taken steps unprecedented in modern warfare to minimize civilian casualties, including actively providing warnings to civilians in Gaza before carrying out air strikes, and when civilians are harmed, it is entirely as a result of Hamas’ cynically placing their terrorist infrastructure among civilians in a grotesque attempt to kill more Palestinians purely to demonize Israel.

At no time during the conversation did host Burritt ever challenge Lewis on these points, or even when Lewis falsely stated that mainstream Jewish and pro-Israel organizations “do not represent what I believe is a less and less silent majority” of Jews opposed to Israel. In fact, a wide-ranging 2018 study of Canadian Jews found that roughly 80 per cent said they were very or somewhat attached to Israel (AKA “Zionists”), in stark contrast to Lewis’ attempts to claim the opposite.

This connection is hardly surprising. Israel is the world’s only Jewish State, and the ancestral homeland of the Jewish People for the last three thousand years, and a country that, like Canada, is a liberal democracy providing equal rights to all its citizens. Contrast Israel with Hamas, a jihadist Islamic terrorist group where the genocide of Jews is a central tenet to its ideology.

In his appearance on CBC Vancouver, Avi Lewis presented no evidence that a reasonable observer would conclude constitutes anything resembling genocide taking place, and by failing to challenge Lewis a single time on his comments, host Dan Burritt did not provide viewers with any semblance of balance. In so doing, this CBC program, in our view, violated our public broadcaster’s journalistic standards and practices, a matter which we’ve conveyed directly to CBC News executives.

To send your concerns directly to the CBC, please send emails to Brodie Fenlon, the CBC’s Editor-In-Chief at: Brodie.Fenlon@cbc.ca.