To mark the official ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, on October 11 the CBC radio program Just Asking dedicated the vast majority of a lengthy episode to speaking with two guests, both of whom expressed stridently anti-Israel viewpoints.

In the 72-minute segment entitled: “Ceasefire Deal: What Happens Next?” host Saroja Coelho first conducted a brief interview with Israeli journalist Rachel Fink who offered nuanced insights into local reaction to the ceasefire deal. But the vast majority of the segment was spent with two guests: Ian Lustick, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, and Omar Dajani, a law professor at the University of the Pacific.

Click below to listen to the segment:

Dajani expressed skepticism at the ceasefire deal, laying the blame primarily at Israel, stating that many Israeli politicians are “pushing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and perhaps also the West Bank.” He furthermore spread the scurrilous “genocide and ethnic cleansing” slander, treating these baseless allegations as a matter of established fact, rather than personal opinion contrary to all available evidence.

Lustick, for his part, boiled down American support for Israel on little more than “the strength of the Israel lobby in the United States is why president after president has abandoned efforts to pressure Israel into a lasting peace.”

Despite both guests making striking comments characterizing Israel as the main impediment to peace, rather than Palestinian terrorists who remain violently opposed to Israel’s very existence, Coelho failed to challenge them.

The same day, Coelho featured another segment, 36 minutes long, “Help: Thanksgiving Cooking Tips,” which at first glance was a non-objectionable discussion about food preparation for Thanksgiving.

Two guests were interviewed, one of whom was Jennifer Crawford, described as a “food enthusiast” and the 2019 winner of MasterChef Canada.

Click here to listen to the segment:

During the interview – ostensibly about Thanksgiving food preparation – Crawford launched into a broadside against Thanksgiving, calling it “a holiday with its roots in colonization, in genocide.”

But she left her true ire for Israel, discussing the importance of “what it means to advocate for a free Palestine… and what it might mean to dismantle Zionism,” and condemning “Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”

Coelho once again made no effort to stop her guest’s bizarre anti-Israel ramblings, instead simply saying “food is always, always political,” and thanking Crawford.

It is not as if Coelho could proclaim innocence about the likelihood that Crawford would rant about Israel, no matter the discussion at hand. In fact, Crawford is a hardline anti-Israel activist who in the fall of 2024, was featured in Chatelaine Magazine, where she wore an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by Hamas to mark its targets.

In recent weeks, Coelho has made a name for her program as a hotbed of anti-Israel propaganda, on two separate times in less than two months providing hourlong segments attacking the Jewish State with little to no semblance of any balance.

On Just Asking, listeners have been treated not to journalism, but to an echo chamber where anti-Israel tropes are normalized and almost entirely unchallenged. By repeatedly inviting ideologues who label Israel’s self-defense as “genocide” while largely silencing Israeli or Jewish perspectives, Coelho has turned the Just Asking program into a platform for anti-Israel activism, rather than open-minded inquiry and neutral and objective reporting. In so doing, we are of the view that her program stands in flagrant violation of the CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices.