July 9, 2021
Mr. Brodie Fenlon
Editor in Chief & Executive Director, Daily News
CBC
Dear Mr. Fenlon,
Canadians rely on the CBC to present programs that help to keep Canada a strong democratic and tolerant society. With the exception of the indigenous people, we are all immigrants in one way or another and share a common bond as Canadians. That bond is respect and pride in our democracy, our tolerance, our commitment to peace.
The CBC program Unforked demonstrates that CBC cannot be respected for truth in reporting, for understanding the historical nature of the Israel/Arab conflict and that it is a party to spreading lies, demonizing the Jewish state and fomenting more conflict.
The Palestinian Arab perspective that you presented is so filled with untruths and historical errors. I’m surprised you would have taken the plunge to aggravate this conflict under the brand that bears a Canadian-funded banner.
Under no circumstance can the Arabs of Israel or the disputed territories claim that hummus is a food that they introduced. That is humorous in the extreme. While the dish likely arose first in the Middle East several centuries ago, and the first written recipe came from Egypt, the Jewish people also have lived in the Middle East for over 3000 years while the people now called Palestinians, are from all over the region and only identified as a “national entity” in 1967. Prior to that, all historians will confirm that while there were Arabs living in the Mandate for Palestine, they are the same people as in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon; and came from those countries and Egypt, Iraq etc to settle in what became Israel. Jordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria from 1949-67 but during that time the Arabs were Jordanians, only to lose that citizenship when stripped of it by Jordan after Israel liberated its territory. The truth is that all peoples of the Middle East and Greece, Turkey and beyond have enjoyed variants of the original hummus dish for centuries.
Please tell me if I make spaghetti, have I committed the crime of cultural appropriation? If I make steak and kidney pie, have I appropriated English culture or simply learned a recipe that I enjoy? Variants of all recipes exist throughout the world and no one can claim something as absurd as cultural appropriation but they can cook what suits them.
There has been a consistent Jewish presence in Israel long before Jordan took over Judea and Samaria and the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and cleansed them of Jews.
After five Arab countries invaded Israel, they made life for the nearly 900,000 Jews in their lands unbearable and or deadly, and forcibly drove them away, creating the wave of Jewish refugees that Canada recognizes but CBC seems not to. Jews had lived in Arab lands since before Islam’s creation. Would you not think that they had learned how to make hummus even before arriving in Israel?
Today Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews from Spain, Portugal, North Africa, the Middle East and the Ottoman countries make up half the population in Israel. Hummus belongs to them too!! In fact, it did so long before the Arabs arrived in the land that is now Israel.
But this is a trite point but what flows like an undercurrent at CBC is an ongoing sentiment that is against Israel, a country that is the only outpost for democracy and civil rights in the entire Middle East. We have books and information to share should you or anyone at CBC that needs information to help promote the historical truth of the situation and how the lies you propagate are infesting Canadian lives with Jew hatred and antisemitism.
Every untruth you present, fuels the flames of Jew hatred, endangers Canadian lives, drives wedges amongst our people and encourages more lies. Ignorance is no excuse. We demand that your journalists, programmers, writers, readers, newscasters, researchers and public relations staff, along with management, get educated on the history of Israel and the Jewish people and the arrival of Arabs and Islam in the Middle East.
Further, since CBC has a tradition of misleading the public about the conflict between the terrorist regime of Hamas and the democracy of Israel and its most moral military, we would like to share with you the true goal of Hamas and encourage you to speak it, write it and share it. Here it is presented at the United Nations by Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan on May 20, 2021.
Canadians need the truth and we pay you to provide it.
Sincerely,
Andria Spindel