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False Report: UAE Did Not Repatriate Israelis from Morocco, France Assisted
Wednesday 20 May 2020, by
Al Jazeera reported on May 18 that the United Arab Emirates had sent a plane to repatriate the Israelis stranded in Morocco. This information is false and erroneous, as it was France that helped Israel repatriate its nationals stranded in Morocco with the help of the Jewish billionaire, Sheldon Adelson.
In a video showing face masks and revealing the interior of a luxury plane, Al Jazeera claimed that the Emirati authorities had helped the Israelis stranded in Morocco return home. A sequence from the video was also posted on an unverified Twitter account on May 16, with the caption: "The plane the United Arab Emirates sent to Morocco to bring back the Jewish Zionists stranded in Morocco to Palestine."
This information is not verified. The video does indeed concern a repatriation flight of Israeli citizens stranded in Morocco after the closure of the country’s borders. But the private plane that transported these Israelis was sent by the Jewish billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, and not by the United Arab Emirates. France first transported these 26 Israelis from Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca to Paris. Then Adelson’s private jet operated the Paris-Tel Aviv flight.
Al Jazeera, which had not verified the authenticity of the video sequence, rushed to claim that this repatriation operation would be the "proof" of the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.