Jesse Kline: CBC lets Hamas apologist cheer Sinwar unchallenged

Thirteen years ago, U.S. President Barack Obama stood in front of the world and announced that, “The United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.” The death of the mastermind of 9/11, nearly 10 years after the attacks took place, was generally well received throughout the western world.

By contrast, it only took Israel a year to eliminate Yahya Sinwar, the man who meticulously planned and executed the October 7 massacre, known as “Israel’s 9/11” due to the scale of the death and destruction relative to the country’s population. But the reaction on western streets, and in the media, has been far different.

On Friday, a day after it was confirmed that Sinwar had been killed in a firefight with Israeli soldiers, CBC Radio’s “The Current” ran a 20-minute segment exploring how the Hamas leader’s death was being received in the Middle East and what it means for the war in Gaza.

It featured an interview with Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, who excused Hamas’s atrocities while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloodthirsty tyrant who’s solely responsible for the ongoing violence. “There’s a celebration of the man, including especially the manner in which he died,” Rahman said of Sinwar, who he described as a “martyr.”

There’s of course nothing wrong with airing the Palestinian point of view. From a journalistic perspective, it’s vitally important. But in the past, mainstream media outlets understood that it can be dangerous to legitimize voices who espouse the views of our enemies and dismiss the callous murder of innocent civilians. At the very least, they knew they had a duty to challenge such views. In this regard, the CBC has shirked its journalistic responsibilities.

Rahman couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the October 7 massacre, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were brutally raped and murdered, and 251 were taken into Hamas captivity, where many of them still languish to this day. He would only say that Sinwar’s “decision to launch October 7 will be judged in time.” But, he continued, “At the same time, I think people see what Hamas is doing as fighting the Palestinian people’s occupation and their dispossession. So he’ll be fit into that context.”

This is the argument that Hamas apologists have been making ad nauseam since October 7 — that even if the events of that day were horrific, they have to be put into “context.” Not the historical context of a beleaguered people who sought safe haven in their historic homeland after nearly being wiped out in Hitler’s death camps. Not the context of numerous two-state solutions that were rejected by the region’s Arabs in favour of bloodshed and violence.

Rather, they use the word “context” to justify terrorism, even on the scale of October 7 — an attack that was so barbarous, it leaves absolutely no room for moral equivocation. Or at least it shouldn’t. The CBC, it turns out, was more than happy to let Rahman describe Hamas as a “resistance organization,” rather than the terrorist organization that our own government — the one that provides the public broadcaster with over $1 billion a year — recognizes it as.

Host Rebecca Zandbergen was completely content to let Rahman espouse the blatant lie that, “Hamas has tried to reach a ceasefire. It wants to bring an end to the suffering,” while Netanyahu has “made it clear he’s not interested in a permanent end to this.” In fact, it is well documented that Sinwar had no interest in negotiating an end to the war, despite the immense suffering of the people he claimed to represent, because he believed that images of dead Palestinians furthered his own goals by turning world opinion against Israel.

Rahman went on to accuse Israel of committing a “genocide” and claim that Netanyahu intends to install a “permanent Israeli military presence” in Gaza, with his ultimate goal being “the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its population” — or, as he described it, “the crime of all crimes.” Of course, no evidence was provided to support these suppositions, but in today’s world, no evidence is needed — if you hear it enough times on TikTok, it must be true.

Zandbergen didn’t even try to challenge these blatant falsehoods. The only thing resembling a counterpoint that she offered was to ask about the “concerns we hear about the way Hamas has treated its own people.” To which Rahman responded by claiming that, “The primary oppressor of Palestinians is not Hamas or Fatah or the PA or whatever, it’s Israel.”

To its credit, the CBC then brought in Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, to offer a direct rebuttal. Despite his consistent failure to take a moral stand against anti-Israel resolutions at the UN, Rae’s response was surprisingly clear-eyed:

“I think his comments reflect a view about the conflict, which, frankly, doesn’t help us get to the next stage. I perfectly well understand the frustration and anger, but not to understand that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that Sinwar was the leader of this organization that led to the massacre in Israel and the suggestion that somehow this can all be described as ‘resistance’ is frankly a dangerous fantasy.”

Rae then went on to advocate for a negotiated ceasefire — a solution that I’d argue is simplistic and unrealistic, but still well within the bounds of acceptable discourse. And this is what it all comes down to. While everyone should have a right to voice their opinions, no matter how despicable they may be, the media also has an obligation to ensure that those who advocate for the enemies of western civilization do not go unchallenged.

Zandbergen showed she was capable of challenging her guests when she interjected in Rae’s discussion of how repressive Hamas has been with a question about whether Canada and the West will lose its “moral authority” if it fails to stop the bloodshed in Gaza. Yet she let Rahman spout his pro-Hamas nonsense uninterrupted.

The western media’s newfound willingness to legitimize voices that excuse the wanton murder of innocent civilians and hold up the Jewish state as the root of all evil in the world give license to the radicals in our streets who are calling for the death of Jews and burning Canadian flags.

Making the situation worse is the fact that every right-thinking Canadian taxpayer is forced to fund the CBC’s biased journalism. If the Conservatives win the next election and follow through on their promise to defund the public broadcaster, the CBC’s ivory tower elites will have no one to blame but themselves.

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