On October 10, the CBC Radio program As It Happens aired an interview with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières Project Coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke. In the seven-minute segment, Vuylsteke recounted the Israeli military actions against Hamas terrorists in the north of Gaza with host Nil Köksal.

Click below to listen to the full segment:

Vuylsteke, who is not there in the camp herself, claimed that anyone attempting to leave the camp after civilians were ordered to leave by the Israeli military is being shot. She, of course, did not say who is doing the shooting, although listeners are to assume it’s Israel. This is definitely not a certainty, when Hamas has routinely killed civilians who are attempting to follow the Israeli-issued evacuation orders. But host Köksal never asked her to elaborate. Vuylsteke then made the predictable assertion that there is no water and no food available in the camp. This has been an ongoing accusation thrown at Israel since the war began a year ago. However, claims of impending widespread famine and death from starvation never appears, and in fact, has been debunked with new data from the ground.

Köksal went on to quote UNRWA, the disgraced United Nations agency, saying that “400,000 people are trapped, with nowhere safe to go.” UNRWA, of course, has been completely discredited in recent months, given that several of their employees were shown to be directly involved in the October 7 massacres in which more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas terrorists. More recently, upon the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, his personal bodyguard was shown to have UNRWA identification on his person. Bafflingly, rather than attempt to address this horrific abuse of the United Nations name, United Nations head Antonio Guterres tweeted that “attacks against UN peacekeepers are completely unacceptable” and “are in breach of international law.” That a supposed journalist employed by the publicly-funded CBC would continue to quote such a problematic source is astounding.

When Köksal asked Vuylsteke what she thinks will happen if “people are not able to leave,” Vuylsteke said that she fears “going to see a return to the situation where we were earlier this year, in February, March” of “extremely unsafe conditions with large scale insecurity” and unsafe conditions. This is quite a confusing statement to be made, given that the anti-Israel commentators are consistently alleging a genocide, and that the conditions in Gaza are the worst anywhere, of any conflict, that anyone has ever seen. If that’s the case, how did they improve since February and March? If listeners are being told that conditions continue to deteriorate with every moment, how then can Gazans go back to the terrible conditions of previous months? Rather than question this obvious inconsistency, the host agreed and moved on.

From there, Köksal said that “Israeli military continues to claim that it is targeting Hamas fighters in the [refugee] camp.” She then asked Vuylsteke if she has any sense of how Hamas might be using the camp. Vuylsteke answered with the baffling claim that as a medical organization with no actual presence in the camp, they can’t comment on that, but that “they are all civilians” in the hospital.

One wonders if she is really this naive (after all, a Hamas fighter is hardly likely to request medical help from western sources and proudly proclaim their Hamas affiliation), or if she legitimately thinks Israel is so poor at waging war that they haven’t hit a single enemy combatant. She went on to cite a particular example of a 21-year-old woman who was caught in an airstrike, and lost her husband and her parents in the strike. Unsurprisingly, Köksal didn’t push back at all, to question if perhaps that woman’s husband and father were affiliated with Hamas, and that was why they were killed in a targeted strike.

Instead, Vuylsteke pivoted to the tired accusation that no aid is making it to the people, at first claiming that there were “zero commercial trucks” admitted in the previous week, then saying that instead of the “500 a day” needed, there were only “154.” The host, obviously, did not question this inconsistency, and instead made sympathetic grunts.

The segment ended with Köksal stating that Israel has said that they are not limiting humanitarian supplies into the Gaza Strip, and that if things aren’t reaching civilians in need, that it is Hamas that is to blame. Vuylsteke deflected the question, saying that they aren’t seeing the level of support that they need and that their supplies which were ordered in April are just now arriving. When pressed by Köksal as to who is to blame and who is restricting access, after a long pause Vuylsteke said simply “Israel.” A simple search of the listing of aid entering Gaza would show that thousands of tonnes of supplies are being delivered every week, including hundreds of tons of medical supplies. This data is all publicly available and meticulously catalogued, including the fact that, at any given time, there may be hundreds of trucks waiting to be collected inside the Gaza strip, that Israel has already processed – hardly the fault of Israel if this isn’t being properly distributed.

As It Happens has demonstrated yet again that it cannot or will not hold its anti-Israel guests accountable for the misinformation they spread.