FEMMES FATALES
- Jul 20, 2024
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 22
In their ongoing effort to frame everything Palestinian as benevolent and peace-oriented, CBC sought once again to amplify the voice (and fabulous fabrications) of reporter and associate producer Keena Alwahaidi. Like so many before her, at the beginning of July Alwahaidi gleefully pushed the Gaza famine myth. That, of course, only came after this fiction had been debunked many times and on many fronts by anyone able and willing to muster the sympathy to look into the situation (such as Columbia professors Federgruen and Kivetz, the folks at Honest Reporting, and countless others.) In her CBC piece, titled Why it's so hard to get humanitarian aid to Gazans: Famine in Gaza is imminent once again, the UN warns, as aid trucks sit stalled at border crossings, Alwahaidi brought on the same aid worker CBC's As It Happens did just a few months earlier. There, as previously, Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, painted the same wildly misleading picture of the situation. As ever, that story included make-believe Israeli policy, false aid shipment figures, and indefensible civilian casualty numbers. And, just as is always the case, all of that story-telling received no push-back of any kind. So, what was Alwahaidi up to this week?
This time she brought on Canadian artist Dalia Elcharbini to share her work and wisdom. In her article, published in the Arts section, Alwahaidi tells us that Elcharbini was born in Kuwait and is based in Toronto but identifies as Palestinian. But that's about all we get for a biography or CV. (The ‘About’ portion of Elcharbini's personal website is unavailable, offering nothing, while her LinkedIn account doesn’t give us much other than she works in Ontario and did a degree in Hamilton more than a decade ago.)
The CBC article also highlights the Our Stars School Foundation, of which Elcharbini is co-founder and executive director. Sadly, you won’t learn much about the foundation in this article or from the foundation’s website or, curiously, even from its Instagram account. What you will learn is that the organization and its founder would like you to believe their aim is to serve hundreds of millions of kids around the world. They’re keen to share that “Nearly 200 million children are currently living in the world’s most lethal war zones.” They explain “This is precisely why Our Stars School Foundation was created with the focus on school-age children.” And they tell us, to that end, Our Stars School Foundation provides “workshops to help children in conflict-affected and underserved communities across the globe.” But is there any evidence that is what they're up to?
