On May 30, The Walrus magazine Editor Samia Madwar interviewed former ambassador Jon Allen for an article entitled: “Is the Joint Statement on Gaza Too Little, Too Late?”

The Walrus is a taxpayer-subsidized magazine with a notable track record of recurring anti-Israel bias. Jon Allen, too, has a long history of very critical attitudes towards Israel in the context of both the current war and the broader conflict.

Despite being structured as an open discussion of various issues, and while Allen did indeed take time to acknowledge the rise of antisemitism and the legitimacy of the Jewish State, this piece made several critical missteps.

The main issue is the interview’s baseline bias towards anti-Israel assumptions and narratives, repeatedly reinforcing such attitudes while failing to meaningfully or accurately engage with opposing viewpoints.

Right away, the headline itself tacitly set up an expectation that Canada’s role inherently ought to be doing more to actively try and end Israel’s military campaign. The same assumption is continuously present when discussing matters like aid delivery, hostages, the two-state solution, and antisemitism globally. Never did Madwar and Allen actually try to hold Palestinian terrorists accountable for the various consequences of their own actions, or suggest that Hamas is the entity that needs to be stopped.

Allen told readers that Israel’s temporary restrictions on aid movement while transitioning from a chaotic system where Hamas stole and controlled a great deal to a new American-led distribution mechanism was “collective punishment of innocent human beings.” He added that “if you flow ninety-six trucks’ worth [of aid into Gaza], then the criminal gangs will get some and Hamas will get some. That’s not a reason not to flow aid. It’s the precise reason to be flowing a lot of aid, so that it gets to the people who are starving because you have put them under siege for eleven weeks.”

Astonishingly, here is Allen openly acknowledging that Hamas steals a large portion of the aid from the people, which also means stealing fuel from hospitals to keep their tunnels operating, and his response to this is not to condemn this theft but to attack Israel for not letting in extra aid to account for both the theft and enough left over for the people?

What justification could a serious former diplomat possibly have for this level of comically egregious double standard?

The same double standard was applied across the board, including to sensitive issues like the hostages and global antisemitism. Allen went to great lengths to attack the Israeli government for failing to secure a hostage deal, calling the hostage issue “deprioritized.” Yet, he had nothing whatsoever to say about the unacceptably evil nature of Hamas holding dozens of innocent Israelis as hostages for all this time in the first place? When it comes to the antisemitic and pro-terrorist protests all over the world, at a time when we are witnessing even more violent and extreme incidents than before, he focused his attention on how Israel “has become a pariah state in the minds of citizens around the world and some governments.”

The people who deserve blame on all these fronts are the Palestinian terrorists whose actions are directly responsible for this situation — not the victims. This remains true whether or not one agrees with the political decisions made about how best to respond and address the issues — and such criticisms must be kept in this appropriate perspective by all observers with any sense of responsibility and fairness whatsoever.

In addition to his double standard in excusing the behaviour of anti-Israel thugs while demanding perfection from the Israeli side, Allen also persistently applied a similarly biased double standard to the question of nuance and understanding of viewpoints.

Allen never once sincerely delved into the other side’s perspective on any of the specific issues he discussed, evidently preferring instead to offer straw man arguments, disproportionate attention to the statements of fringe extremists, and blanket declarations without supporting evidence. He said that the temporary January ceasefire ended “for purely political reasons” and that “there was no military or strategic reason” for reducing the quantity of aid trucks during the resumption of active combat.

Whether or not he agrees with the arguments of supporters of these policies, they do have actual political rationales behind them — such as the desire to cut off Hamas’ control over the governance of the local population and to pressure Hamas into surrendering to terms of a ceasefire deal that can ensure a future where Israel’s population isn’t under threat instead of setting up future repeats of this same catastrophe.

At the same time, when it comes to things like the wanton murder of two American Jews in Washington, DC recently, Allen pointed out that the “shooter, deranged or not, yelled ‘Free Palestine.’ He didn’t yell, ‘I hate the Jews,’ or ‘Down with the Jews.’ So it was in a context,” and also added that “October 7…also happened in a context.” Suddenly, when it comes to Palestinians and their supporters massacring Jews, Allen found room for nuance, context, and understanding, but the viewpoints of Israelis who have different understandings of how best to achieve an end to the conflict or not to be acknowledged or considered? This is blatant hypocrisy and inversion of morality — and it’s indefensible.

Finally, there are numerous points where Allen’s grasp of the facts is just sloppy — unsurprisingly, always in the direction of supporting anti-Israel narratives. He asserted as a plain fact that the “IDF (Israel Defense Forces) ensuring that the aid actually gets to the people who need it” is “require[d]” by international law, despite this being his own opinion and very much a matter of legitimate legal dispute within mainstream understandings of the Geneva Conventions.

Unsurprisingly, he parroted the assertion that Israeli communities in Judea & Samaria (West Bank) are inherently “illegal” despite this being contested by legal experts.

Allen may not like Israeli actions to try and protect themselves, but he obviously doesn’t have a better alternative than just wish it away and leave others to worry about the consequences when this fantasy doesn’t materialize.

Regardless, if The Walrus wants to be taken seriously as a source of open political discussion about these issues, it needs to start addressing the biased tone of its coverage and to do a better job of presenting more than one point of view.