When Amnesty International, the group with a long history of anti-Israel activism, accused Israel of allegedly using “starvation” in Gaza – despite mountains of evidence to the contrary – it was predictably picked up by CBC News, which reported it breathlessly.
In a July 3 article for the publicly-funded broadcaster, “Militarized Gaza aid system shows Israel’s continued use of starvation as weapon of war, Amnesty report says,” Senior Writer Sara Jabakhanji devoted an entire report to the accusations, treating them as being de facto credible.
Months earlier, in late 2024, when Amnesty International accused Israel of genocide – even going so far as to redefine the term in order to do so – Sara Jabakhanji was there to report on it. Her article, “Amnesty report concludes Israel’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza constitute genocide,” left little doubt that the group’s allegations are credible enough that they should be the subject of a standalone news report.
And yet, when Amnesty International belatedly produced a report on the war crimes committed by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023 – some 26 months later – it was predictably ignored by CBC News.
For reasons that remain entirely unclear, Amnesty International was able to produce unfounded accusations against Israel in record time, yet penning a report on Hamas’ widely-documented massacres took more than two years. But as HonestReporting.com noted, the reasons are no secret: it stated that the group “deliberately delayed a report condemning Hamas’ October 7 atrocities for over two years. Not because of lack of evidence. Because of politics,” adding that the group, in an internal memo, stated that condemning Hamas earlier could “benefit Israel,” and therefore held off on doing so.
Amnesty International did eventually publish such a report, and in a study dated December 11, they documented the human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by Palestinian terrorists during their mass invasion of southern Israel two years earlier.
Yet for CBC News, and Sara Jabakhanji, suddenly there was no interest in being a stenographer for Amnesty International. The report received no coverage and was completely ignored.
This selective disinterest exposes how CBC News and other media outlets which uncritically regurgitated Amnesty International’s anti-Israel claims did so, not because of the credibility or legitimacy of the conclusions or study, but because it promoted a particular agenda targeting the Jewish State.
CBC News’ (and Jabakhanji’s) selective reporting has been nothing if not consistent. When activists accuse Israel of killing journalists in Gaza, it receives coverage. When scholars find widespread Hamas manipulation of casualty data, it gets ignored.
From Jabakhanji, this is entirely unsurprising. In 2021, she signed her name to an open letter which publicly called on news media outlets to adopt a more aggressively pro-Palestinian editorial stance. Scandalously, this has not prevented CBC News from continuing to give Jabakhanji an open platform to report on the very same subject. Unsurprisingly, over the last two years, Jabakhanji has produced reporting that has been consistently and aggressively biased, using anti-Israel allegations as the basis for articles while minimizing opposing views.
Sara Jabakhanji and CBC News’ overt anti-Israel bias remains on full display for all to see.
