Jesse Kline: CBC shows anti-Jewish bias with suspension of Neil Herland - National Post

A screenshot from an online video showing demonstrators harassing CBC radio personality Neil Herland on his way to a religious service. Photo by Neil Herland/XArticle contentIt has long been apparent that the CBC’s coverage of the Middle East has had a clear anti-Israel bias. But recent events hint at something much darker: an institutional willingness to downplay or minimize harms caused to Jews, including those living right here in Canada.

In the lead-up to last month’s 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the public broadcaster came under fire for an internal memo sent by its senior director of journalistic standards and public trust, Basem Boshra, cautioning journalists not to refer to the events as “terrorist attacks,” unless quoting someone else.

The backlash was so severe that Boshra ended up capitulating the following day, saying, “After reviewing our current language guidance, we have decided to adjust it to clarify that direct attribution is not required for describing the historic events of 9/11 as terrorism.”

But that policy change did not extend to the broadcaster’s coverage of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were brutally murdered — many having been raped, tortured and dismembered — and more than 250 were abducted into captivity by a group classified as a terrorist organization in Canada.

Whether that was a terrorist attack is apparently still up for debate, according to our taxpayer-funded public broadcaster.

The effects of the CBC’s refusal to call a spade a spade when it comes terrorism was on full display on Wednesday morning, after the co-pilot on a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv carrying around 180 passengers, mostly Israeli, allegedly stabbed the pilot, causing the plane to plummet over 5,000 metres in less than a minute.

The only thing that prevented another 9/11-style event was a group of heroic Israeli passengers who reportedly stormed the cockpit, restrained the would-be terrorist and managed to stabilize the plane, along with two off-duty pilots who successfully performed an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia an hour later.

Yet when the CBC published a Reuters wire story on the incident at 6:15 a.m. ET on Wednesday, its initial headline read: FlyDubai Flight En Route To Israel Descends Rapidly, After Reported Disturbance In Cockpit.

This was a clear attempt to minimize the incident by calling what appears to be an attempted hijacking a “disturbance in the cockpit,” and characterizing a narrowly averted plane crash as a rapid descent.

It is the opposite of clickbait: a headline crafted to ensure as few people as possible actually bother to read the story, which clearly stated that Israeli officials had characterized it as a “terror attack.”

Given the CBC’s history of bias against Israel, one has to wonder if the story would have been treated differently if the vast majority of the passengers weren’t Israeli.

Or perhaps I should say if the passengers weren’t Jewish, because while the broadcaster’s post-October 7 coverage has both denigrated Israel and highlighted the plight of the Canadian victims of antisemitism, the CBC showed its true colours in its handling of radio host Neil Herland.

Herland made headlines last week when he tweeted about his experience being accosted by protesters on his way to a Yom Kippur service held at the Meridian Arts Centre in northern Toronto. Video shared by Herland shows a group of agitators standing outside the front entrance of the building waving Palestinian flags.

A man with a megaphone can be heard shouting “Zionist alert,” as a woman beside him holds a sign reading, “Where’s Your Humanity.” Another man puts a megaphone next to Herland’s ear and repeatedly screams, “You’re going to hell!”

Others were also reportedly berated by the demonstrators, including a woman who was called an “ugly Jewish b–ch,” and a cantor (who’s responsible for the musical part of the service), who heard someone shout, “The Jew smiles while he murders babies in Gaza!”

Given what took place, I’d forgive Herland if he had some choice words for the people who had gathered to harass Canadian Jews attending a religious service on the holiest day of the year, but that’s not what he did.

Describing himself as a journalist who happens to be Jewish, he instead recounted his experience being “met by protesters trying to taunt and intimidate me from entering the building.”

In a series of follow-up tweets, he talked about how his father was an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust, and how he recently got an Austrian passport in case he needs to flee Canada due to rampant antisemitism.

He discussed how congregants at the synagogue were already on edge, given that the cantor’s nephew had recently been murdered in a suspected hate crime in Ukraine and a gunman tried to slaughter a shul full of people in Belleville, Ont., the night before.

He spoke out against this country’s antisemitism problem and the lack of awareness many Canadians seem to have about it. And he noted that the guest speaker that evening gave a speech about “making peace in the Middle East” — hardly something anyone should be protesting against.

It was, in other words, the sharing of a “lived experience” that one would think would warm the cockles of the hearts of the CBC’s lefty executives. Yet instead of praising, or offering sympathy for, Herland, they suspended him.

When the CBC received a complaint in 2022 that a Muslim journalist gave her personal opinions in an interview during the coverage of a vigil for the four Muslim victims of a truck-ramming attack in London, Ont., the previous year, then-CBC ombudsman Jack Nagler stated that her observations “should be seen as reporting based on ‘lived experience’ that gives non-Muslim Canadians insight into the lives and perspectives of Muslims in our community.”

Which is exactly what Herland did, only he was sharing insights into the lives of Jewish-Canadians.

Perhaps Herland is being treated differently because he’s a host, rather than a reporter or a pundit, or because his report was delivered via Twitter, outside the CBC’s editorial control.

It’s also possible that the CBC succumbed to a campaign launched by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, a group that commonly files complaints against anyone in the media who dares express pro-Israel sentiments and has lodged a complaint with the CBC ombudsman accusing Herland of spreading “disinformation that defames pro-Palestinian activists.”

Or maybe the broadcaster really does have a systemic bias against Jews and is trying to minimize Jewish suffering by writing misleading headlines and silencing Jewish journalists.

We don’t know because CBC execs apparently don’t think they’re accountable to the taxpayers who pay their salaries, and are refusing to comment on the situation due to “privacy” concerns.

Unlike the backlash against the broadcaster’s 9/11 policy, which affected people from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds in Canada and internationally, it would appear as though when Jews are the sole victims, it is largely left to the Jewish community to fight for what is right.

National Post jkline@postmedia.com Twitter.com/accessd

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