Alan Neal, the host of the CBC radio program ‘All in a Day,’ recently hosted Ottawa filmmaker Deena Alsaweer on his program on November 6 speaking about her latest short film, Stitches. Neal began his interview with the highly misleading claim that Israel has banned wedding dresses from Gaza.

Listen to the full segment below:

Neal, who has previously failed to hold anti-Israel activists accountable for their statements on his program, opened by claiming that “In 2018, Israel banned more than a thousand commodities from entering Gaza,” including wedding dresses.

That supposed ban on wedding dresses is also the starting point of Alsaweer’s movie, which premiered at the Toronto Palestine Film Festival in September. It’s about a Palestinian-Canadian dressmaker who’s outraged over the supposed ban. The dressmaker decided to smuggle wedding dresses into Gaza.

Alsaweer insists that she’s “not interested in making films about politics.” Instead, her twelve-minute film promises “humour, cultural nuance, and a touch of bittersweet reality.”

In fact, the film is entirely out of touch with reality. Yet Alsaweer had the audacity to talk about authenticity and “ethical storytelling” when her entire movie is based on anti-Israel propaganda.

Neal simply went along with it, asking Alsaweer about the filmmaking process rather than providing a much-needed fact-check or filling in crucial background information.

The supposed ban on wedding dresses started when, in 2018, in response to Hamas’ continued smuggling of weapons into the coastal enclave and firing of weapons into Israel, Jerusalem temporarily closed the Kerem Shalom crossing, the entry point for commercial goods, to all but humanitarian deliveries. Israel reopened the crossing just over a month later.

What preceded the temporary restrictions was a series of arson attacks on Israel using kites and helium balloons, causing tens of millions of dollars in damage to Israeli farms and forests.

Gaza shares borders with both Egypt and Israel. Hamas, a terrorist organization, has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006. So both Egypt and Israel must enforce strict border controls for their own security, lest weapons get smuggled into the territory to be used by Hamas.

Egypt has long feared that Hamas militants could escape Gaza and join jihadist insurgents already fighting in Sinai. And if they began attacking Israel from Egyptian territory, Israel might strike back against Egypt, with catastrophic results.

Those fears are well-founded. Dozens of tunnels have been discovered between Gaza and Egypt. For years now, terrorists from Gaza have smuggled weapons, drugs, and other contraband into Gaza from Egypt.

Israel, too, has reason to fear attacks from Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. Like any other country, Israel must maintain security at its border crossings.

In peacetime, the crossings between Israel and Gaza remain open. In August 2023, less than two months before Hamas’s deadly attacks of October 7, 59,000 people entered Israel from Gaza through the Erez Crossing alone. During conflicts, crossings are more limited.

During the brief closure, activists set up an exhibit in Gaza showcasing over a thousand items that couldn’t enter Gaza. They sent out photos to the rest of the world, offering no insight into the reason for the closure.

That story took off, first in Arab media and then around the world.

Wherever the story travelled, outraged media assumed that the items showcased in the exhibit were based on a draconian list of consumer goods that Israel had banned. In reality, there was never a “banned items” list. No non-humanitarian supplies could enter Gaza while the crossing was closed. And even though the crossing was quickly re-opened, many believe those “banned items” are still forbidden today.

That’s how a fake ban on wedding dresses has become one of pro-Palestinian activists’ favourite falsehoods foisted against Israel. And that’s the falsity that Neal began his interview with that’s central to Alsaweer’s entire film.

The “wedding dress blockade” certainly has elements of what’s sometimes called “truthiness,” a term used for ideas that seem like they could be true. A quick fact check would have proven otherwise.

For instance, it is true that Israel maintains a list of “dual-use” items. These need special permission to bring into Gaza because they could be used as weapons or for terror activities. Wedding dresses were never on that list either.

Alsaweer, who grew up in Bahrain, was a Fulbright scholar and holds a Master’s degree in film and television. She’s smart enough to know better—and perhaps she does. But it’s tough to weave a nuanced story based on the truth. The complex security concerns Israel navigates every single day wouldn’t fit into a 12-minute movie. So, she’s based her story instead on anti-Israel fiction.

And Neal just nodded and went along with it. By not fact-checking Alsaweer’s story, and by encouraging listeners to go see the movie, he perpetuated a baseless falsehood, and left CBC listeners in the dark about the complex reality on the ground.