Media Review: “What is worse: Israel’s lies about Gaza or amplifying these lies by supporters?”

Media Review: “What is worse: Israel’s lies about Gaza or amplifying these lies by supporters?”

    Friday, May 03, 2024   No comments

To close this week, our media review highlights an article in UK media that focused on a theme our readers should be quite familiar--the fake stories that were amplified by political leaders and Western media about the war on Gaza are many. The problem has been the lack of retractions by the media, a mere tweet often appears to be enough, in the view of their editors and publishers, to absolve them of any responsibility for the injuries and harm (including deaths in a couple of cases), they have caused.

We begin today's media tour with an article published by Mehdi Hassan in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled "What is worse, Israel's lies about Gaza or its Western backers who are repeating them?"

Hassan begins his article by quoting an Italian proverb that says, “If a man deceives me once, it is not my fault, but it is my fault if he deceives me twice.”

Mehdi Hassan says, “Since the horrific attack that occurred on October 7, the far-right Israeli government and its army have deceived Western politicians and journalists, not once, not twice, but several times.”

He adds that there are many lies and distortions that must be traced, including “the story of the forty children who were beheaded by Hamas,” which “did not happen.”

Hassan recalls that, in his opinion, there was no hideout under Al-Shifa Hospital, and the list hanging on the wall of Al-Rantisi Hospital did not display the names of those detained by Hamas, but rather just the days of the week in Arabic.

Hassan asks about those atrocities that the Israeli forces denied committing - out loud - and then revealed that they were responsible, according to the writer, who considered that there are “examples of this, such as the flour massacre in February, the bombing of the refugee convoy last October, and the attack White phosphorus in southern Lebanon in October as well.

But Hassan believes, according to him, that “there is no Israeli lie more harmful, destructive and deadly than the one that claimed that UNRWA and its employees had colluded with Hamas and participated in the attack on October 7.”

He comments on the question, “Why was this the most harmful lie?” Then he answers: “You have helped deepen a devastating and ongoing man-made famine inside the Gaza Strip.”

As a result, Mahdi says, 16 donor countries, including the United States, the main funder of UNRWA, suspended about $450 million in aid provided to the agency.

He added that "Israel starved the people of Gaza," criticizing "the fools who helped it justify this."

Hassan explains that the parties funding the Israeli file against UNRWA were warned that it contained only “false and unproven allegations,” but - according to Hassan - they trusted Israel.

The author continues by saying that many countries have resumed their funding to UNRWA, including the German government, which is the agency’s second largest source of funding, after an independent review of UNRWA’s work concluded that the agency’s work “remains pivotal in providing life-saving humanitarian assistance and basic social services.”

Hassan confirms that the independent review stated that Israel has not yet provided evidence to support these allegations, so it was, once again, “a lie from Israel.”

The writer says that, worst of all, is the statement made by Anthony Blinken, the Democratic Secretary of State, on January 29, when he admitted that “the United States did not have the ability to investigate the allegations itself.” Despite this, Washington went ahead Describing the unverified Israeli allegations as “highly credible.”

He added, "Blinken has not yet apologized for his false claim or even retracted it."

Media Matters: Elon Musk, owner of "X", suspends the account of Mandela's grandson

Media Matters: Elon Musk, owner of "X", suspends the account of Mandela's grandson

    Saturday, April 27, 2024   No comments

 In a total tone-deafness, and lack of awareness of the symbolism and reality, the former white settler in South Africa and self-declared free speech absolutist, Elon Musk, suspended the account of the nephew of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s freedom icon, without even burdening himself with an explanation—although the reasons are obvious.

Social Communication Platform X (formerly Twitter), Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela account, grandson of the late President of South Africa Nelson Mandela، After his statements in support of the "International Fleet of Freedom", which is to be sailed from Turkey within days, to break the siege on Gaza Strip.

Mandela had arrived in Istanbul at the beginning of the week to attend the fifth conference of the Jerusalem International Parliamentary Forum, and to support preparations for the International Freedom Fleet in Istanbul.

 Mandela attended the press conference of the International Freedom Fleet, which is made up of NGOs from 12 countries last week, before expressing his support for the fleet and breaking the siege on Gaza, through several publications on the platform "X".

US Government: Infants were placed in the oven and cooked alive

US Government: Infants were placed in the oven and cooked alive

    Friday, April 26, 2024   No comments

When the president of the United States, Biden,  amplified the fake story of 40 babies beheaded by Hamas, some excused his actions by claiming that he was duped by Israel intelligence to ascertain his unwavering support for the war Israel intended to unleash. 

With another US government official making a similar and even more shocking allegation, amplifying another fake story, that excuse becomes untenable.  

The third in line in the order of succession in the US government, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Johnson, on the same "trusted" news outlet that propagated the beheadings, CNN, repeated a story that was first made by some Israel person, Eli Beer, speaking at the Republican group’s summit in Las Vegas on October 28, that were later debunked by more than one investigative reports. Johnson, on that basis, claimed that Hamas "placed infants in the oven and cooked them alive". 

  

Media Matters: Clash of views about Gaza, Palestine, human rights abuses, and Iranian retaliation on attack on its diplomatic mission in Syria

Media Matters: Clash of views about Gaza, Palestine, human rights abuses, and Iranian retaliation on attack on its diplomatic mission in Syria

    Sunday, April 21, 2024   No comments

One of the most representative clashes between two worldviews: Iranian worldview versus Western worldview as represented in Piers Morgan's interview, debate with Iranian Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi.

Morgan repeating the fabricated story of 40 babies beheaded by Hamas, to justify to mass killings in Gaza, and Mirandi referencing the investigative journalists and NGO reports that challenged the narrative of beheadings, and finding that Israeli forces have committed sexual violence and torture against Palestinians, turned Morgan flustered and rude. 

The interview is available on a number of Internet sites, and embedded from a couple of sites below.

  

New York Times tells its journalists which words to use when covering the war on Gaza

New York Times tells its journalists which words to use when covering the war on Gaza

    Tuesday, April 16, 2024   No comments

According to a leaked memo, The New York Times restricts its journalists from covering the war on Gaza. The New York Times has instructed journalists covering the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing,” and to avoid using the phrase “occupied territories” when describing the Palestinian territories, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. American.

According to the site, the New York Times memo also directs journalists not to use the word Palestine except in very rare cases, and to stay away from the term “refugee camps” to describe the places to which Palestinians have historically been displaced within the Gaza Strip, who fled from other parts of Palestine during the Arab-Israeli wars. Previous.

It is noteworthy that the United Nations recognizes the areas to which Palestinians were displaced as camps housing hundreds of thousands of registered refugees.

The memo, written by New York Times Standards Editor Susan Wesling, international editor Philip Ban, and others, provides guidance on some of the terms and other issues that have imposed themselves on the scene since the start of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip last October.

While the document is presented as a blueprint for maintaining journalistic principles of objectivity when dealing with the war on Gaza, several New York Times journalists told The Intercept that some of its contents provide evidence of the newspaper adopting the Israeli narrative.

The website quoted a source in the New York Times newsroom - who requested anonymity for fear of being held accountable - saying that the matter “seems professional and logical if you do not have knowledge of the historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but if you do know, it will be clear how much it identifies with the Israeli narrative.” ".

The Intercept noted that the guidelines were first distributed to New York Times journalists last November, and were updated regularly over the following months.

On March 14, demonstrators supporting the Palestinian cause stormed the building of the New York Times newspaper in protest against its bias towards Israel in the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip. This is the second storming, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators had previously occupied the newspaper’s lobby on November 11, demanding an immediate cessation. Because of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, they accused the newspaper of bias towards Israel in its coverage of the war on the Gaza Strip.

The deliberate use of key words and adjectives by Western media, and all media outlets for that matter, is and established fact. 

The language used by the media became a reflexive way of describing the events. CNN consistently describes the Oct. 7 attack as "brutal" and "terrorist, but uses no adjectives to describe Israel's retaliation, for example.

Western media will add the adjective “brutal” when talking about Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, but will use “war in Gaza” without attributing who is waging the war and what kind of war it is, which is brutal, destructive, and genocidal according to NGOs, many governments’ officials, and the International Court of Justice.

During the same time period, Western media used the phrase "Hamas' brutal" at least 554,000 times; whereas the "war in Gaza" was mentioned 33,900,000 times without any adjectives or qualifications despite the heavy loss of life and structures--a war that was described by independent observers, including the same media outlets who use this biased language, as unprecedented in the number and size of weapons dropped in the densely populated area just in in the first three weeks.

...

News media platforms’ use of guidelines, algorithms of sort, to create an acceptable narrative for their audience, financiers, shareholders, or governments is no secret nor is it practiced by limited, marginal media platforms. Journalism is a profession that teaches people who work in the field how to use words the same way a soldier is trained to use weapons.

Many people who believe in the need for free press to inform the public thought that the best model is the creation of media platforms that are not beholden to anyone. They thought a structure where a media outlet is guaranteed funding from the government with full and complete editorial independence is the way to go. This is the model of the British BBC and the American NPR. However, a close examination of the editorial policies and practices would reveal that even this model is still controlled by politics, ideology, or leadership still. The recent revelation about NPR is a good lesson in understanding the synergy between politics and journalism. Here is some reporting about the struggles inthe NPR organization.

 

In the letter published on Free Press, NPR’s senior business editor Uri Berliner claimed Americans no longer trust NPR – which is partly publicly funded – because of its lack of “viewpoint diversity” and its embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Berliner wrote that “an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America”. He acknowledged that NPR’s audience had always tilted left, but was now no longer able to make any claim to ideological neutrality.

In the piece on Free Press, a site run by Bari Weiss, a former opinion editor at the New York Times, Berliner noted that in 2011 the public broadcaster’s audience identified as 26% conservative, 23% as middle of the road and 37% liberal. Last year it identified as 11% very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal.

 

Media Review: The New York Times debunks its own reporting on alleged sexual assaults in Kibbutzim by Hamas on October 7

Media Review: The New York Times debunks its own reporting on alleged sexual assaults in Kibbutzim by Hamas on October 7

    Tuesday, March 26, 2024   No comments

The US newspaper "The New York Times" is reporting about a new video that demolishes the story of the alleged sexual assault, which was previously reported by the same newspaper--The New York Times, in which it alleged that Hamas committed "crimes of sexual violence and rape on the 7th of last October."

The newspaper referred to a previous claim by an Israeli military medic, in which he claimed that “two teenage girls, killed in the October 7 attack, were subjected to sexual assault.”

The New York Times reported that the unnamed medic, who is from an Israeli commando unit (and served as the source of the allegation), was among dozens of people who were interviewed in an article published by the newspaper on December 28, which dealt with “sexual violence on the 7th of May.” October". He claimed that he discovered "the bodies of two partially clothed girls in a house in the Kibbutz settlement (Be'eri) with signs of sexual violence."

However, now the newspaper reports about footage taken by an Israeli soldier who was in “Be’eri” on October 7, and which it reviewed, refuting this narrative. The paper explained that this footage shows “the bodies of three female victims, fully clothed and with no clear signs of sexual violence in a house where a number of residents believe the assaults allegedly occurred.”

The newspaper quoted the settlers as saying, “there was no talk about the killing of two teenage girls in any other house in Be’eri.” Accordingly, the settlers concluded from the video that “the girls were not subjected to sexual assault.”

The newspaper referred to what was said by Nili Bar-Sinai, a member of a kibbutz group, who researched allegations of “sexual assault” at home, and said that “this story is false,” denying the existence of victims of sexual assaults.

On March 4, the spokesman for Kibbutz Be’eri, Michal Paikin, denied the accounts contained in the report published by the New York Times in December of last year, under the title “Screams Without Words,” which reported it contains allegations that Hamas used “sexual violence as a weapon on October 7,” according to the newspaper’s description.

In his statements to the US website The Intercept, the spokesman for Kibbutz Be'eri, an agricultural community within the Gaza Strip, refuted the accounts reported by the NYT newspaper.

Kibbutz Be'eri spokesman Michal Paikin cast doubt on "the graphic, highly detailed claims of the Israeli Special Forces medic, who served as the source of the allegation, and whose claims were published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN" and other media.

It should be noted that while reporting on the alleged sexual violence committed by Palestinians was extensive and persistent in western media outlets, UN reported sexual violence committed by Israeli officers, which US officials seem to confirm recenlty as well as by UN experts, went underreported or unreported. Researchers have also noted that when allegations of serious abuses or violations committed by armed forces of Western States are reported, Western media will go beyond due diligence to verify the information and sometimes refute it through resource-heavy investigations. However, when instances of alleged abuse by at the hands of non-Western actors are reported, Western media will report it without due diligence checks. The reporting of the fake story about Hamas beheading 40 babies and other atrocities, which was spread at the highest level of government and by mainstream media outlets is a good example of this media bias.