It was a busy night on the airwaves,despite the absence of two of the nation’s loudest figures — El Hekaya’s Amr Adib and Ala Maso’uleety’s Ahmed Moussa. The talkshows were packed with coverage of the war on Gaza (we have the latest developments in this morning’s War Watch, above), criticism about the pace of the government’s privatization drive, and a cyberattack that hit the Cairo Airport website.

#1- PRIVATIZATION (or rather the lack of it): Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi voiced frustration about the pace of the government’s privatization drive last night following Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly’s announcement that he will soon hold a press conference to provide updates on the program. “The PM says he will hold a press conference announcing an upcoming offering plan. What happened to the privatization plan announced in February ?” El Hadidi said. “We don’t want promises of what’s to come, we want announcements of sales that have happened,” she added (watch, runtime: 1:21).

“[Madbouly’s announcement] is very confusing and a little strange … movement has been very slow on the privatization plan,” economist Medhat Nafei told El Hadidi (watch, runtime: 7:36), voicing skepticism of the government’s plan to sell down its ownership in 32 companies and assets by the middle of 2024.

#2- GAZA- US humanitarian envoy defends siege of Gaza hospitals: The Biden administration’s Middle East humanitarian envoy David Satterfield sat down with Kelma Akhira’s Lamees El Hadidi (watch, runtime: 24:16) to give the US position on events in Gaza. “Al Shifa [hospital] is the cover for, the protection of, the shield of a major Hamas facility,” Satterfield claimed, defending the Israeli military’s use of tanks and snipers to attack the facility. At one point, El Hadidi held up several images portraying the suffering being endured by Gazans, which Satterfield justified with references to Hamas as a “cult of death.”

Has Israel committed war crimes? “We do not comment on the day-by-day conduct of this campaign,” Satterfield said.

Al Shifa Hospital has gone out of service: “Al Shifa Hospital has been completely besieged for the past couple of days … no one can come in and no one can leave and those who tried ended up killed or wounded,” the hospital’s general director, Mohamed Abu Selmia, told Masa’a DMC (watch, runtime: 4:42). Water and electricity has been cut off and the hospital is no longer able to function, he said.

“CNN stands for Credibility Not Now”: That jibe came from communications professor Sami Abdelaziz, who appeared on Masa’a DMC to discuss the Western press’ slanted coverage of the conflict (watch, runtime: 3:49).

#3- HACK ATTACK- First the Fawry scare, now the Cairo Airport website under cyberattack? The Cairo International Airport’s website went offline for a little while yesterday following an aggressive cyberattack, the airport’s head of technology Abdel Khalek Lotfy told El Hadidi (watch, runtime: 6:15), explaining that the airport’s systems remain untouched protected by “some of the most advanced international systems.” Yesterday’s incident was a denial-of-service attack, an attempt to bring down the website and make it unusable. “Over the past period, the airport’s website has been under a number of individual ransomware attacks aimed at deleting some information from the website but our firewall and security measures were able to counter these attacks,” he added.

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