CTV’s Anne-Marie Mediwake Interviews Two Anti-Israel “Aid” Workers, Letting Them Spew Disinformation Unchallenged

On January 27, Israeli soldiers recovered the body of the last remaining Israeli hostage, Ran Gvili, who was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023. Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group was supposed to return his body nearly four months ago, but it failed to do so.

But as Anne-Marie Mediwake, host of CTV’s Your Morning program told it, the “remains of an Israeli police officer returned home” to Israel, erasing any mention of him being a hostage, and using passive language to imply that it was Hamas who “returned” him, rather than Israel retrieving his remains.

That erasure of these facts was a fitting warm-up to a fawning interview with two anti-Israel activists who were introduced as “aid workers” in the January 28 report, “Aid Workers Denied Entry to Gaza.”

Click below to watch the segment:

One interviewee was Dorotea Gucciardo, director of development for Glia, an organization that includes among its listed team members a number of controversial figures, including Tarek Loubani, a physician and anti-Israel activist in London, Ontario who was previously shot and injured by Israeli soldiers in unclear circumstances and who previously was in an Israeli jail, as well as Benjamin Thomson, a nephrologist at Richmond Hill’s Mackenzie Health Hospital who was suspended for spreading the conspiracy theory that there was no sexual violence by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023.

Gucciardo, for her part, has previously penned an opinion column where she spread ‘starvation’ falsehoods about Gaza while erasing any mention of Hamas.

The other interviewee was physician Rizwan Minhas, who also goes by Mohammad Rizwan Minhas, and who practices family medicine in the Toronto area. Beyond his medical practice, he is a vocal anti-Israel activist who has spread disinformation, including accusing Jerusalem of “genocide.”

Just three weeks after Hamas’ murderous invasion of Israel in 2023, he signed an open letter claiming Israel was committing “genocide,” and which somehow erased any mention of Hamas and the hundreds of Israeli hostages inside Gaza.

The entire interview focused on allegations from Gucciardo and Minhas that Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza, statements which at no time did Mediwake ever challenge.

Gucciardo hysterically proclaimed that Gaza is in a “constant state of survival,” an absurd depiction given that Gazan social media shows life very much having returned to normal in Gaza, with shops, restaurants, luxury items and more throughout the coastal enclave.

Minhas’ narrative was no different, claiming that “there’s no clean water” in Gaza, a demonstrably false claim, and stating that Israel had previously struck Nasser hospital in Gaza.

What Minhas chose to ignore is that Hamas has widely used Nasser hospital – and other civilian infrastructure – for its terrorism, making them entirely valid targets in wartime according to international law as such facilities lose their protected status when they are exploited by terrorists. Mediwake, yet again, failed to remind viewers of these pertinent details.

CTV News promises the public that its Your Morning program “delivers original perspectives and unique insights into the headlines of the day.” But what Gucciardo and Minhas offered was neither original nor unique, and if CTV News wants to provide thoughtful commentary, then its host Anne-Marie Mediwake is obligated to hold her guests accountable for their disinformation, rather than doing nothing as it is repeatedly peddled in front of her.