Yet another CBC News article has taken anti-Israel talking points and disingenuously presented them as being factual.

In their March 10 article entitled: “Gaza desalination plant could run out of clean water after Israel cuts off power supply,” Sara Jabakhanji and Yasmine Hassan, two reporters who have produced countless imbalanced and biased articles over the course of the Hamas-Israel war and one who signed an anti-Israel petition, covered the news that Israel has cut electrical supply to the Gaza Strip.

While such a topic is entirely fair game to cover, the pair wrote that “under international law, Israel, as the occupying power, is required to make sure the basic needs of Gazans are met, including food and water.”

No source was provided to back up this claim by Jabakhanji and Hassan, who instead presented a contentious claim and presented it as being an undisputed fact.

However, not only is it far from clear that Israel has such obligations under international law, significant evidence suggests exactly the opposite.

As pointed out by international lawyers Arsen Ostrovsky and Mark Goldfeder in their recent Newsweek analysis that Article 23 of the 4th Geneva Convention, frequently cited to demonstrate the requirement to facilitate humanitarian aid in warzones, cannot be used in the case of Gaza.

As Ostrovsky and Goldfeder wrote, “Article 23 is very explicit in outlining that a High Contracting Party, such as Israel, shall allow the free passage of humanitarian supplies, but that is if, and only if, there are no serious reasons to believe these supplies are being diverted from their destination or used for military purposes.”

Not only does Hamas in Gaza operate with a huge amount of freedom, it has actively and demonstrably stolen humanitarian aid meant for the civilian population of Gaza, and stolen it for its own uses. One of the ways Hamas has used this aid is by stealing it, creating an artificial scarcity, and then re-selling it at a huge markup in order to finance its ongoing terrorism against Israel.

But if CBC News readers were expecting to learn the comprehensive truth about the legalities surrounding humanitarian aid in Gaza, they would be sorely mistaken.

The article quoted two Palestinian civil servants, a Hamas spokesperson, the head of the disgraced United Nations agency UNRWA (known for its terror ties to Hamas and for its staff participating in the October 7 massacres), the head of the Gaza bakers’ union, and a Palestinian mother in Gaza, and no Israeli official beyond a brief paraphrasing in the second-last paragraph commenting on an unrelated issue.

Another seemingly insignificant line in Jabakhanji and Hassan’s article was highly misleading, when the pair wrote that “The suspension of goods entering Gaza has taken a toll on the Palestinian enclave,” quoting UNRWA leader Philippe Lazzarini saying that there will be “deepening hunger” in the territory.

However, this was extremely misleading, and Ostrovsky and Goldfeder pointed out that, far from running out of food any time soon, there could be as much as five month’s worth of food in Gaza thanks to Israel’s facilitating enormous amounts of aid (25,000 trucks worth of aid) to the enclave since the first phase of the ceasefire began in January.

Anyone who has observed the heinous and macabre hostage release circuses in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists paraded hostages – or their bodies – in front of a jeering crowd of Gazans, would witness an elaborate display which one would not see in a place allegedly on the brink of starvation, but the March 10 CBC News article would have readers believe exactly that.

Importantly, no country in history – other than Israel – is demanded to feed and provide aid to the enemy aggressor of war.

Contrary to the CBC, international law doesn’t require a country at war – a war Israel didn’t start mind you – to supply an enemy-run territory with humanitarian aid which will then be (mis)used to advance its terrorist war efforts.

CBC is duty bound to correct this bold falsehood its reporters spread.