On February 18, CBC News anchor David Common introduced a report, “Food shortages overshadow 1st Ramadan in Gaza since October ceasefire” which depicted Gaza’s celebration of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan as marred by difficulty, primarily due to alleged food shortages, with no supporting evidence.
Click below to watch the segment:
Common opened by saying that people in Gaza City were gathering for morning prayers, adding that it was “amidst an ongoing food and humanitarian crisis across the region.” He then introduced Jerusalem-based reporter Cameron MacIntosh.
Macintosh has a history of making unsubstantiated, decontextualized claims about Gazan suffering.
MacIntosh described people “making do” and stated that “the staples of Ramadan are hard to come by if people can afford them.” He then stated, “It’s coming amidst an ongoing crisis around humanitarian aid.” He also said that the quantity of aid entering Gaza has increased, but that “it’s not enough.”
MacIntosh is based in Jerusalem, without access to first-hand information from Gaza. Neither he nor Common provided any evidence for their assertions of a humanitarian crisis. Nor did he acknowledge that widespread video footage coming out of Gaza refutes it, showing markets overflowing with abundance. Additionally, he ignored statements from COGAT, Israel’s organization that coordinates the entry of aid into Gaza. COGAT affirmed that “Gaza is saturated with food,” with an incredible four times the quantities they need having entered Gaza.
CBC’s journalists also overlook that hunger has been routinely predicted throughout the war, and it has never happened. The data used for these predictions has been robustly criticized for its faulty methodology and its hunger claims have been retracted in the past.
Common then included a clip of Sean Hughes, country director for the World Food Programme, who claimed that “75 percent of the population are still acutely food insecure.” He continued to say that a lot of the right food “is being held up.” MacIntosh concurred, saying, “what they say they really need is for all the crossings to open and stay open on a consistent basis.”
The article casts Israel as the de facto villain who, for no apparent reason, withholds essential food from the desperate Gazans. It entirely hid the context for the war: that Hamas, with much Gazan civilian support, invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering 1200 innocent people, often raping and mutilating their bodies, and taking 251 hostages, often torturing and starving them in captivity.
Not only that, but they plan to repeat the massacre until Israel is destroyed, a goal Hamas proudly defends.
Israel has been abiding by the negotiated ceasefire agreement despite Hamas reneging on the key condition to disarm. Calling for the opening of all crossings clearly opens Gaza up to the entry of people and goods that could be harmful to Israel. But Hughes and Common offered no acknowledgement of that broader picture at all.
It’s just another day, and it’s just another skewed, anti-Israel broadcast from CBC News that misinforms Canadian taxpayers through its selective sourcing and deletion of any edifying context, which results in an inversion of reality.
