“Putin’s Russia is closing in on a devastating victory. Europe’s foundations are trembling.”
This was the headline atop a Dec.9 commentary in The Telegraph, the farthest right of the major London dailies. The subhead elaborated the theme in yet graver terms: “Kyiv’s counteroffensive has ended in failure. This could be NATO’s Suez moment.” The piece that followed included all sorts of goodies in this line.
It is not official, not yet, that Ukraine’s grand counteroffensive, the great Russophobic hope of the Zelensky and Biden regimes earlier this year, has proven a bust and that defeat is in the offing. The closest we have to such an admission came from Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, when the Ukrainian president declared that the counteroffensive “did not achieve the desired results.” I loved that moment, to be honest. It reminded me of Emperor Hirohito’s famous declaration on August 15, 1945, when he announced the surrender on Japanese radio. “The war,” he told his desperate subjects, “has not necessarily progressed to our advantage.”
O.K., let’s leave Zelensky to Zelensky, Joe Biden to Joe Biden, and Antony Blinken to Antony Blinken. We can count news of failure unofficially official when mainstream media start dropping such news on their readers and viewers. The Telegraph, so far as I know, was the first big daily on either side of the Atlantic to make such blunt admissions. Others have already followed, if in gentler, more oblique language—in Zelensky-speak, this is to say.
A significant moment may be upon us. What will follow once it is acknowledged that the Nazi-infested crooks in Kyiv have failed? President Biden, as is his consistently unwise wont, radically overinvested in the proxy war he chose to start with the Russian Federation as soon as he took office three years ago next month. Having defined the Ukraine conflict as a war in the name of democracy and freedom —“values” rather than interests, this is to say—he has left the U.S. and its European clients no room for compromise and nearly none even for negotiation. What is the next move when defeat is too obvious any longer to deny?
If we are about to enter uncharted territory, will it prove dangerous ground? It may, but this is not yet clear. It will be uncertain and probably unstable: This we know. Of the many things I do not like about this circumstance, I will mention a few straightaway. Biden may be the stupidest president of the postwar era on the foreign policy side: He exhibits no capacity whatsoever for nimble or imaginative thought. He is a warmonger of long standing, an election year is upon us, and he is by now in obvious danger of being impeached. His mental incompetence, atop all this, is plain for all to see. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
‘“People Snatchers:’ Ukraine’s Recruiters Use Harsh Tactics to Fill Ranks,” appeared Dec. 15. In it, Thomas Gibbons–Neff describes how plainclothes goons have taken to kidnapping draft-age Ukrainian men, some with mental or physical disabilities, and forcing them into the military induction process. This is sometimes done at gunpoint. People are taken off the streets, at factory gates, from inside shop:
Recruiters have confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs and, in at least one case, tried to send a mentally disabled person to military training, according to lawyers, activists and Ukrainian men who have been subject to coercive tactics. Videos of soldiers shoving people into cars and holding men against their will in recruiting centers are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media and in local news reports.
The harsh tactics are being aimed not just at draft dodgers but at men who would ordinarily be exempt from service — a sign of the steep challenges Ukraine’s military faces maintaining troop levels in a war with high casualties, and against a much larger enemy.
Lawyers and activists say the aggressive methods go well beyond the scope of recruiters’ authority and in some cases are illegal. They point out that recruiters, unlike law enforcement officers, are not empowered to detain civilians, let alone force them into conscription. Men who receive draft notices are supposed to report to recruitment offices.
We are reading here about a desperate regime that has sent too many of its able-bodied to their deaths and is now running out of bodies.
A day later, Carlotta Gall, with several colleagues sharing the byline, published “Ukrainian Marines on ‘Suicide Mission’ in Crossing Dnipro River.” Here we read about incensed grunts at the front condemning the Kyiv regime’s incessant propaganda as to the military’s progress against Russian forces. Again this is very effective reporting:
Soldiers and marines who have taken part in the river crossings described the offensive as brutalizing and futile, as waves of Ukrainian troops have been struck down on the river banks or in the water, even before they reach the other side …
In the case of the Dnipro, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other officials have suggested recently that the marines have gained a foothold on the eastern bank. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a statement last month claiming they had established several strongholds.
But marines and soldiers who have been there say these accounts overstate the case.
“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” said Oleksiy, who withheld his last name. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there.”
“It’s not even a fight for survival,” he added. “It’s a suicide mission.”
…… The Times is not yet prepared to state plainly that Kyiv is not far from defeat. But, in that way, The Times thinks American readers must be gently prepared for bad news, as if we are a nation of kindergartners—well, let’s not “go there”—we are being so prepared.
…………………………………………………………..In plain English, the kind you and I speak: The Biden regime has no idea what to do in the face of failure, but, as failure cannot be admitted, it must be dressed up as a new strategy.
I recently became the recipient of the Women and Media Award from the Women’s Institute of the Freedom of the Press. While it’s truly an honor to receive this recognition for the journalism that I direct at MintPress News, it’s nearly impossible for me to revel in this accolade when my heart is weighed down heavily by the ongoing turmoil in Gaza.
As a Palestinian-American journalist who has lived under the oppressive shadow of Israeli occupation and witnessed firsthand the relentless brutality of the apartheid regime, I cannot remain silent as my people face relentless oppression and violence.
I want to dedicate this award to the fearless journalists in Gaza who are risking their lives to show us the raw reality of life under Israeli bombs.
Since October 7th, the death toll stands stark and horrific – Israel is systematically taking out journalists, one by one, and killing their families. The Israeli military has already claimed the lives of at least 82 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. These courageous individuals, committed to unveiling the truth, have become direct targets of a regime desperate to cloak its genocidal actions from the world’s scrutiny.
Israel doesn’t want the world to see the reality of its genocidal onslaught in Gaza, so it’s assassinating the messengers.
In most parts of the world, wearing a flack jacket marked “press” gives you protection. But right now in Palestine, it may as well be a target, as Israel has turned Gaza into what the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has called a “cemetery for journalists.”
And you’d think mainstream corporate journalists would talk about the targeting of journalists in Gaza, but they’re not. If legacy media outlets like the New York Times or CNN cover Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza, they don’t have the basic journalistic integrity to say who killed them and fail to point out that Israel is systematically targeting them.
Corporate media are whitewashing Israeli crimes and playing the fool, pretending not to understand where the missiles come from. They pretend not to hear the genocidal rhetoric emanating from Tel Aviv. And even as Israel makes Gaza the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist, they ignore what is in front of their eyes, manufacturing consent for ethnic cleansing.
Brave women have lost their lives trying to document the Israeli onslaught. Women like Alaa Taher Al-Hassanat, a presenter for the AlMajedat Media Network, whose house was bombarded by Israeli missiles on November 20.
Or Salma Mkhaimer, killed alongside her child in an Israeli air strike on her house in Rafah, Gaza.
And Freelance journalist Ayat Khadoura was also killed in her home by an Israeli air strike. In her “last message to the world” posted on Instagram, she said: “We used to have big dreams, but now our dream is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”
This only continues a long history of Israel systematically targeting journalists since its founding in 1948.
Just last year, Israel went so far as to murder our beloved Shireen Abu-Akleh, an American citizen and recipient of the same Women and Media Award that I’m receiving today. And in 2021, it blew up the Associated Press building in Gaza. Yet throughout all this, Israel continues to get a free pass in corporate media.
Despite the hardships, many journalists are risking their lives working around the clock to document the genocide in Gaza. Journalists like Motaz Azaiza, Younis Tirawi, Muhammad Smiry, Motasem Mortaja, Wael Dahdouh, and Hind Khoudary, to name a few, speak truth to power, chronicling the horrors in Gaza.
These people show us in real-time the courage it often takes to be a journalist. And because of that, dozens pay the ultimate price for their bravery.
This award I humbly dedicate to them—the fallen journalists who were mercilessly taken by Israel and those who, against all odds, continue to broadcast to the world the unimaginable horrors of life under incessant bombings.
As for journalists like myself, we vow to carry on their legacy and amplify their voices in the West. We will repeat their message of hope and truth while we challenge and confront the very system perpetuating my people’s destruction, supported directly by our governments and their lapdog media.
If wars can be ignited by deceit, then let us rally for peace through unwavering truth.
because Zionism requires a Jewish state, the people who lived in those occupied territories could not be treated as citizens. Maintaining Israel’s veneer of democracy requires the political fiction that these undesirables are not part of the country that rules them, but instead belong to non-sovereign entities—like the Palestinian National Authority and the Gaza Strip—whose raison d’etre is to provide a rationale for why the bulk of the Palestinian population isn’t allowed to vote in Israeli elections.
“Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?” a New York Times article (12/10/23) by Jonathan Weisman asked. Trying to pinpoint the moment when “anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry,” Weisman suggested there were different kinds of anti-Zionism based on different visions of what Zionism means. But his effort to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable critics of Israel painted principled supporters of equal rights as antisemitic bigots.
Weisman offered one definition of Zionism—the way it was “once clearly understood”—as “the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors.” To oppose this kind of Zionism “suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews”—which he said to many Jews “is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.” Their argument is:
Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time and again.
On the other hand, wrote Weisman, “some critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of expanding the Jewish state.” This kind of anti-Zionism merely opposes “an Israeli government bent on settling ever more parts of the West Bank,” land that could serve as “a separate state for the Palestinian people.”
These two views of Zionism seemed to represent the poles of acceptable and unacceptable anti-Zionism. The piece quoted Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) explaining that “some anti-Zionism” isn’t “used to cloak hatred of Jews”; Nadler stressed, though, that “MOST anti-Zionism—the type that calls for Israel’s destruction, denying its right to exist—is antisemitic.”
The Nexus Task Force, a group associated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, has a definition of antisemitism that is more tolerant of criticism of Israel than that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, also cited by the Times. But it still insists, Weisman wrote, “that it is antisemitic to reject the right of Jews alone to define themselves as a people and exercise self-determination.”
Not ‘self-determination’
The phrase “self-determination” is doing a lot of work here. In international relations, it is generally used to mean that the residents of a geographical area inhabited by a distinct group have a right to decide whether or not they want that area to remain part of a larger entity. It’s a right that seems to come and go depending on political allegiances: When Albanians in Kosovo wanted to secede from Serbia, their right to do so was enforced with NATO bombs. If ethnic Russians who wanted to split off from Ukraine got help from Moscow, though, that wasn’t self-determination but a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.
To call Zionism a belief in Jewish “self-determination,” however, perverts the concept to include moving to a geographic region and forcibly expelling many of the people who already live there, in order to create a situation where members of your group can have a “sovereign homeland” where they “are assured of governing themselves.”
Ensuring the dominance of a particular ethnic group through forced migration is not usually called “self-determination,” but rather “ethnic cleansing.” This is the older version of Zionism that Weisman seems to suggest can only be opposed by antisemites.
It’s true that there is another vision of Zionism, unsatisfied with expelling the indigenous residents to the fringes of Israel/Palestine, that insists on incorporating those fringes. Ever since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has occupied the remaining parts of what was the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate, where many refugees from the establishment of Israel were forced to live.
But because Zionism requires a Jewish state, the people who lived in those occupied territories could not be treated as citizens. Maintaining Israel’s veneer of democracy requires the political fiction that these undesirables are not part of the country that rules them, but instead belong to non-sovereign entities—like the Palestinian National Authority and the Gaza Strip—whose raison d’etre is to provide a rationale for why the bulk of the Palestinian population isn’t allowed to vote in Israeli elections.
As it happens, this is precisely the strategy that white-ruled South Africa employed to pretend that white supremacy was compatible with democracy; it called the fictitious countries that the nation’s Black majority supposedly belonged to “bantustans.” This and other resemblances to white South Africa are why leading human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem call Israel an apartheid state.
But both versions of Zionism involve the dismissal of one group’s rights in order to create a polity dominated by another group—a project that can certainly be opposed in either iteration without signifying animosity or prejudice toward anyone. (To be sure, there are antisemites who use “Zionists” as a transparent codeword for Jews. These are generally pretty easy to spot.)
A smear that needs correction
There is much to take issue with in Weisman’s article, but there is one point he makes that really warrants a correction. As an example of straightforward “Jew hatred,” he cites “holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions”—and offers as an example that this is what “pro-Palestinian protesters did last week outside an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia.”
But the protesters at Goldie, a vegan falafel restaurant, weren’t blaming “Jews around the world” for Israel’s assault on Gaza; they were holding Goldie’s owner, Israeli-born Michael Solomonov, responsible, because his restaurants had raised $100,000 for United Hatzalah, a medical organization that supports the Israeli Defense Forces.
According to the Guardian (12/8/23), which interviewed “protesters and current and former employees at Solomonov’s restaurants,” critics both inside and outside the staff were concerned that Solomonov hosted a fundraiser for prominent pro-Israel politicians, and had “booked and paid for multiple, lavish private dinners…for IDF members preparing to deploy to fight for Israel.” (The New York Times article—12/4/23—that Weisman linked to did not appear to be based on interviews with any protesters, but instead quoted numerous politicians condemning their demonstration.)
Obviously Solomonov and his critics have different views of his actions. But there is no evidence that protesters were targeting his restaurant simply because he was Jewish, and it’s an irresponsible smear for Weisman to assert that they were
ACTION: Please tell the New York Times to correct its false claim that people protesting at a Philadelphia restaurant owned by a prominent supporter of the Israeli Defense Forces were “holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions.”
CONTACT: You can send a message about factual errors to the New York Times at nytnews@nytimes.com.
As a journalist based in Cumbria, I appreciate your investigations into Sellafield (Sellafield nuclear site workers claim ‘toxic culture’ of bullying, sexual harassment and drugs could put safety at risk, 6 December). The exposés are long overdue. The reaction of many, however, has been distinctly muted and is directly linked to how Sellafield has been getting away with it for many years: geography. The fact that Sellafield lies on the west coast of Cumbria makes it easily forgettable to large swathes of the media and the public.
Were Sellafield based within a hundred miles of London there would have been a national uproar, but its “out of sight, out of mind” location means it can be ignored easily. It is indicative of the public’s attitude towards Cumbria being just the lakes and nothing more. Isaac Cooper Cumberland News,Carlisle
A climate of fear is gripping U.S. newsrooms as a growing list of journalists have been fired, suspended, or otherwise sidelined after refusing to abide by the pro-Israel bias across the U.S. news media.
The New York Times, Associated Press, BBC, and Los Angeles Times are just a handful of the more prominent news outlets where journalists say they were sidelined after criticizing Israel or expressing sympathy for Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the death toll in the Gaza Strip now exceeds 18,000, and more than 80 percent of Palestinians there have been displaced by the war.
Since October 7, there have been numerous incidents reported in which journalists were fired, demoted, suspended, or otherwise silenced after voicing criticism of Israel, including:
The German media giant Axel Springer fired Kasem Raad, a 20-year-old apprentice at the company, after he questioned the company’s Israel policy through internal channels.
Thirty-eight Los Angeles Times journalists have been barred from covering Gaza for a minimum of three months after signing an open letter criticizing media coverage of the war and Israel’s targeting of journalists.
The BBC took six Arab journalists off the air after they allegedly showed “anti-Israel bias” by liking and publishing pro-Palestinian posts on social media.
Mona Chalabi, the data journalist and illustrator who won the Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times earlier this year, said she’s been unable to get commissioned for additional work from the paper since the war started.
Artforum editor-in-chief David Velasco was fired after wealthy art collectors objected to an open letter by artists expressing solidarity with Palestinians was posted on the magazine’s website.
The Harvard Law Review killed an article on the Gaza war and Nakba after it was commissioned, edited, fact-checked, and prepared for publication.
Two weeks ago, MSNBC canceled the Sunday night show hosted by Mehdi Hasan, one of the only cable news hosts willing to openly challenge Israel and a valued former Intercept colleague.
While the reasons for some of these moves against journalists have been disputed, there’s been an undeniable chilling effect across the U.S. media landscape as a result of incidents like these.
In the words of Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Abdallah Fayyad, a “culture of fear in many newsrooms” is leading many journalists “to take the easier route and continue the mainstream media’s pro-Israel slant.”
In the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing backlash on Palestine, Meta has engaged in unjustified content and account takedowns on its social media platforms. This has suppressed the voices of journalists, human rights defenders, and many others concerned or directly affected by the war.
This is not the first instance of biased moderation of content related to Palestine and the broader MENA region. EFF has documented numerous instances over the past decade in which platforms have seemingly turned their backs on critical voices in the region. In 2021, when Israel was forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes in Jerusalem, international digital and human rights groups including EFF partnered in a campaign to hold Meta to account. These demands were backed by prominent signatories, and later echoed by Meta’s Oversight Board.
The campaign—along with other advocacy efforts—led to Meta agreeing to an independent review of its content moderation activities in Israel and Palestine, published in October 2022 by BSR. The BSR audit was a welcome development in response to our original demands; however, we are yet to see its recommendations fully implemented in Meta’s policies and practices.
The rest of our demands went unmet. Therefore, in the context of the current crackdown on pro-Palestinian voices, EFF and 17 other digital and human rights organizations are issuing an updated set of demands to ensure that Meta considers the impact of its policies and content moderation practices on Palestinians, and takes serious action to ensure that its content interventions are fair, balanced, and consistent with the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation.
Why it matters
The campaign is crucial for many reasons ranging from respect for free speech and equality to prevention of violence.
Free public discourse plays an important role in global conflicts in that it has the ability to affect the decision making of those occupying decisive positions. Dissemination of information and public opinion can reflect the majority opinion and can build the necessary pressure on individuals in positions of power to make democratic and humane decisions. Borderless platforms like Meta, therefore, have colossal power to shape narratives across the globe. In order to reflect a true picture of the majority public opinion, it is essential that these platforms allow for a level playing field for all sides of a conflict.
These leviathan platforms have the power and responsibility to refuse to succumb to unjustifiable government demands intended to skew the discourse in favor of the latter’s geopolitical and economic interests. There is already a significant imbalance between the government of Israel and the Palestinian people, particularly in theireconomic and geopolitical influence. Adding to that, suppression of information coming out of or about the weaker party has the potential to aid and abet further suffering.
Effective governance of Britain’s nuclear industry is critical to saving a hazardous industry from itself
There will be many reasons why Britain’s energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, went public with her unease about “serious and concerning” allegations raised by the Guardian this week over cybersecurity, site safety and a “toxic” workplace culture in Sellafield. There was the “longstanding nature” of the matters in question, raising questions over the site’s management. Neighbouring governments have had serious concerns. The plant holds enough plutonium to potentially make thousands of atomic bombs of the size that obliterated Japan’s Nagasaki in 1945. By asking for assurances from its state-controlled owner and its regulator, Ms Coutinho emphasises that effective governance of Britain’s nuclear industry is a critical issue.
This is a sensible response to these scandals. The cabinet minister is right to publicise her concerns about a hazardous industry that can inflict catastrophic environmental damage and deaths. She has sent a helpful signal about valuing public safety over secrecy. Sellafield in Cumbria, and about 20 smaller sites, need to be monitored and protected, as the waste stored can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. Yet the nuclear establishment is at best opaque. Britain’s postwar development of nuclear weapons grew alongside the construction of nuclear energy reactors. The industry’s military connections have influenced its approaches to corporate governance for the worse.
There is an urgent problem of nuclear waste disposal. Britain was one of the first economies to generate nuclear energy. But that meant radioactive waste has been left for decades without a permanent storage solution. This has seen the cost of temporary storage soar and the risk of catastrophe increase. Sellafield is one of the most dangerous places in the world, a notoriety bolstered by crumbling buildings and tanks leaking irradiated sludge. It is no stranger to trouble, going as far as changing its name to distance itself from being the site of one of history’s worst nuclear accidents in 1957.
The consensus today for an enduring answer is to bury nuclear waste deep underground in “geological disposal facilities”. Finland will open one next year. Its spent nuclear fuel will be packed in copper canisters, and these entombed in the bedrock on the Gulf of Bothnia at a depth of 400m. France and Sweden are pursuing similar schemes. Britain has homed in on three sites, but finding an area willing to host a £53bn underground dump is not easy, given public safety concerns.
It would be better to have cheap, green energy that doesn’t create toxic waste. But demand for electricity is growing, and – without the battery technology to effectively store energy – this will have to be met at times when there is no sun or wind. Hence countries aim to use nuclear energy to try to cut fossil fuel dependence. But, say experts, ambitious government targets for more nuclear power stations could see Britain run out of room to store the radioactive waste produced. Opportunities arise too. Half of the world’s 420 nuclear reactors will need dismantling by 2050. Sellafield is at the heart of a billion-pound UK decommissioning industry. Its expertise could be sold worldwide. But that relies on a reputation for safety and competence, something that Ms Coutinho’s intervention doubtless seeks to salvage.
ABC’s 1983 film ‘The Day After’ — the subject of a new documentary as well as a book —not only blew America’s (and Ronald Reagan’s) mind, but it may also have changed the course of human history.
“………………………………… Next to the moon landing, it’s hard to think of a TV moment that had a bigger impact on the collective psyche than The Day After, ABC’s white-knuckle drama depicting the aftermath of a nuclear strike on the United States. Its airing 40 years ago — which is being commemorated on Dec. 4 with a new PBS documentary, Television Event, as well as a just-published book about the film, Apocalypse Television — didn’t just terrify the nation. It may have also altered the course of human destiny, which at that time, the red-hot height of the Cold War, seemed to be barreling towards an inevitable atomic showdown……………
“I’ve come to believe that’s true,” says Nicholas Meyer, 77, who directed the three-hour film. “The movie may have indeed helped prevent a nuclear war. It certainly changed one person’s mind on the subject, and that person just happened to be the President of the United States. Ronald Reagan wrote about watching the movie in his memoir. His biographer, who spent three years in the White House, said the only time he ever saw Reagan flip out was after seeing the movie. Ultimately, it sent Reagan into such a tailspin, he signed the Intermediate Missile Range Treaty, the only treaty that ever resulted in the physical dismantling of nuclear weapons.”
The brains behind The Day After, the one who deserves most of the credit not only for conceiving the concept but also strong-arming a reluctant ABC into putting it on the air, was the late Brandon Stoddard, then the network exec in charge of ABC’s made-for-TV movies.
“Brandon was stunned by Three Mile Island,” recalls Meyer. “And that’s how he came up with The Day After. ‘What if we showed a nuclear exchange and what would happen to regular people if they got nuked?’”
Unsurprisingly, ABC’s top executives were not entirely onboard with Stoddard’s vision…………………………………
For one thing, there was considerable political pushback. Conservative groups went on the warpath against the network, claiming the movie was Soviet propaganda designed to undermine America’s nuclear deterrent (even though Hume’s script never identified who launched the strike against the U.S. or why). For another, the subject matter of atomic war was, predictably, radioactive to advertisers. They began pulling out in droves………………………………………………………… https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/how-the-day-after-saved-the-world-12357
A cover image of the New York Post (11/16/23) depicted a supposedly shocking find. The headline “Guns Behind the MRI Machine” accompanied a photo of what Israeli troops had allegedly uncovered: Hamas guns at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
On the Post cover were fewer than a dozen AK-47s and matching magazines, as well as a few tactical vests. In its subhead, the Post called this “proof Hamas used hospital as military base in stunning war crime.”
Many other media outlets reported Israel’s claims—and accompanying photos and videos the IDF offered as evidence—with little pushback other than Hamas’s denials and an acknowledgment that the outlet could not independently verify the claims. “IDF ‘Found Clear Evidence’ of Hamas Operation out of Al-Shifa Hospital, Says Spokesperson,” was an NBC News headline (11/15/23); Fox News (11/15/23) had “Watch: Israel Finds Weapons, Military Equipment Used by Hamas in Key Gaza Hospital After Raid, IDF Says.”
Israel’s assault on Al Shifa hospital provoked widespread international outrage, so a great deal hinged on its claim that the hospital was being used as a military base. But there are many reasons to question this display of weaponry, questions that imply that not only did the Israeli military make a weak case, but that some media outlets and pundits were too quick to take this presentation at face value.
The laws of war
While civilian infrastructure, and in particular medical infrastructure, are protected under the laws of war, the Israeli government claimed that the hospital’s protection was nullified because Hamas was using it as a military base, using the medical staff and patients as human shields.
The IDF released a 3D animation (YouTube, 10/27/23) depicting Al Shifa as “the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity,” with a warren of underground chambers hiding crates of weapons, missiles, barrels and meeting rooms bedecked with Islamic flags.
The US government supported this line of thinking (ABC News, 11/16/23). The Wall Street Journal editorial board (11/14/23) spelled out the argument:
The law of war in this case is clear: Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Hamas’s use of Al Shifa for military purposes vitiates the protected status granted to hospitals. Israel is still required to give warning and use means proportionate to the anticipated military advantage, and it has.
But the law of war is not, in fact, clear in the way the Journal claims. “Even if there is a military facility operating under the hospital, this does not allow Israel to bomb the site,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (11/7/23) said in a statement before the hospital raid.
Even if a hospital were used for “acts harmful to the enemy,” that does not give that enemy “the right to bombard it for two days and completely destroy it,” Mathilde Philip-Gay, an expert in international humanitarian law at France’s Lyon 3 University, told the Guardian (11/17/23).
“Even if the building loses its special protection, all the people inside retain theirs,” Rutgers Law School international law expert Adil Haque told the Washington Post (11/15/23). “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue, they’re obligated to do.” The director of the hospital, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said that 179 patients died while the facility was surrounded by Israeli forces and had to be buried in a mass grave (Al Jazeera, 11/14/23). (Abu Salmiya was later arrested by Israeli forces along with other Palestinian medical personnel—Al Jazeera, 11/11/23.)
After the raid, viewing the evidence, Human Rights Watch was not at all persuaded. “Hospitals have special protections under international humanitarian law,” said Human Rights Watch UN director Louis Charbonneau (Reuters, 11/16/23):
Doctors, nurses, ambulances and other hospital staff must be permitted to do their work and patients must be protected. Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises. The Israeli government hasn’t provided any evidence of that.
DECEMBER 1, 2023
Press Relayed Israeli Claims of Secret Hospital Base With Insufficient Skepticism
A cover image of the New York Post (11/16/23) depicted a supposedly shocking find. The headline “Guns Behind the MRI Machine” accompanied a photo of what Israeli troops had allegedly uncovered: Hamas guns at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
On the Post cover were fewer than a dozen AK-47s and matching magazines, as well as a few tactical vests. In its subhead, the Post called this “proof Hamas used hospital as military base in stunning war crime.”
Many other media outlets reported Israel’s claims—and accompanying photos and videos the IDF offered as evidence—with little pushback other than Hamas’s denials and an acknowledgment that the outlet could not independently verify the claims. “IDF ‘Found Clear Evidence’ of Hamas Operation out of Al-Shifa Hospital, Says Spokesperson,” was an NBC News headline (11/15/23); Fox News (11/15/23) had “Watch: Israel Finds Weapons, Military Equipment Used by Hamas in Key Gaza Hospital After Raid, IDF Says.”
Israel’s assault on Al Shifa hospital provoked widespread international outrage, so a great deal hinged on its claim that the hospital was being used as a military base. But there are many reasons to question this display of weaponry, questions that imply that not only did the Israeli military make a weak case, but that some media outlets and pundits were too quick to take this presentation at face value.
The laws of war
Israeli computer animation (YouTube, 10/27/23) depicting what was claimed to be “the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity” beneath Al Shifa Hospital.
While civilian infrastructure, and in particular medical infrastructure, are protected under the laws of war, the Israeli government claimed that the hospital’s protection was nullified because Hamas was using it as a military base, using the medical staff and patients as human shields.
The IDF released a 3D animation (YouTube, 10/27/23) depicting Al Shifa as “the main headquarters for Hamas’ terrorist activity,” with a warren of underground chambers hiding crates of weapons, missiles, barrels and meeting rooms bedecked with Islamic flags.
The US government supported this line of thinking (ABC News, 11/16/23). The Wall Street Journal editorial board (11/14/23) spelled out the argument:
The law of war in this case is clear: Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Hamas’s use of Al Shifa for military purposes vitiates the protected status granted to hospitals. Israel is still required to give warning and use means proportionate to the anticipated military advantage, and it has.
But the law of war is not, in fact, clear in the way the Journal claims. “Even if there is a military facility operating under the hospital, this does not allow Israel to bomb the site,” the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem (11/7/23) said in a statement before the hospital raid.
Even if a hospital were used for “acts harmful to the enemy,” that does not give that enemy “the right to bombard it for two days and completely destroy it,” Mathilde Philip-Gay, an expert in international humanitarian law at France’s Lyon 3 University, told the Guardian (11/17/23).
“Even if the building loses its special protection, all the people inside retain theirs,” Rutgers Law School international law expert Adil Haque told the Washington Post (11/15/23). “Anything that the attacking force can do to allow the humanitarian functions of that hospital to continue, they’re obligated to do.” The director of the hospital, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, said that 179 patients died while the facility was surrounded by Israeli forces and had to be buried in a mass grave (Al Jazeera, 11/14/23). (Abu Salmiya was later arrested by Israeli forces along with other Palestinian medical personnel—Al Jazeera, 11/11/23.)
After the raid, viewing the evidence, Human Rights Watch was not at all persuaded. “Hospitals have special protections under international humanitarian law,” said Human Rights Watch UN director Louis Charbonneau (Reuters, 11/16/23):
Doctors, nurses, ambulances and other hospital staff must be permitted to do their work and patients must be protected. Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises. The Israeli government hasn’t provided any evidence of that.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that “experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza shows that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.”
ScheerPost publisher Robert Scheer commented on the importance of the piece, stating, “The so-called paper of record finally acknowledges the unprecedented degree of violence visited upon civilians in Gaza by the Israeli government.”
Using U.S.-made bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds “that can flatten [apartment towers],” Israel has killed “roughly 10,000 women and children” according to the Times. Women and children make up almost 70 percent of all deaths reported in Gaza.
According to Rick Brennan, the regional emergency director for the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean office, the opposite is typically expected. “In past clashes between Israel and Hamas, for example, about 60 percent of the reported deaths in Gaza were men,” according to the Times.
Further, “U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb — a 500-pound weapon — was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria,” according to the Times. As the Times reported:
“‘It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,’ said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may ‘have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.’”
The paper also reported that “People are being killed in Gaza more quickly…than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.”
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, the Israeli military spokesperson, claims that civilian casualties are inevitable because of Hamas’s alleged strategy of deliberately embedding itself within the civilian population of Gaza. Gaza is, however, one of the most densely populated cities on Earth, standing 25 miles long and 5 miles wide.
The Israeli military claims that the numbers of dead Palestinians reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry cannot be trusted because the Ministry operates under Hamas. Conricus claims “We do a lot in order to prevent and, where possible, minimize the killing or wounding of civilians.”
As the Times reported, international experts do not share the same skepticism of the Palestinian Health Ministry’s numbers that the Israeli government does:
“[Brian Castner, a weapons investigator for Amnesty International and a former explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Air Force,] said Israel appeared to be moving too quickly to reduce harm to civilians…”
“After initially questioning the death toll in Gaza, the Biden administration now concedes that the true figures for civilian casualties may be even worse.
Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House committee this month that American officials thought the civilian casualties were ‘very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.’”
“While the experts urged caution around public statements about the specific number of people killed in a particular strike — especially in the immediate aftermath of a blast — they said the aggregate death tolls reported by the Gaza Health Ministry have typically proved to be accurate.”
The Intercept previously uncovered evidence that the Gaza Health Ministry numbers were accurate, and possibly underreported.
Further, since Israel began its bombardment of hospitals in Gaza, recording the death toll has become increasingly challenging since the Gaza Health Ministry, according to international experts the Times spoke to, “gathers death figures from hospitals and morgues across the enclave, which tally the dead and report the names, ID numbers and other details of people killed.” The majority of Gaza’s hospitals have been shut down by Israel, which has necessitated “other government officials [to begin] updating the number of killed instead of the ministry,” according to the Times.
The numbers will likely rise in the coming weeks. After Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Israel launched a “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off food, water, electricity, and fuel. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu stated that “this will be a long war.”
I have had BBC News on in the background for the last two hours. In that time there have been three lengthy interviews with different relatives of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. There has not been a single interview with a Palestinian relative of a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel.
Today 13 Israeli prisoners and 39 Palestinian prisoners are due to be released. 90% of the BBC mentions of prisoner releases do not include the Palestinians at all. Just finished is a ten minute interview of a Professor in Kent on the psychological effects on Israeli hostages. Earlier there was an expert from Tel Aviv on the psychological impact on Israeli hostages’ families. There has been no report whatsoever of the impact on Palestinian prisoners and their families.
The BBC simply does not treat the Palestinians as human, whereas the emphasis on Israeli personal victimhood is incessant and unrelenting.
Of the 300 Palestinian women and children prisoners on the list possibly to be released during the ceasefire, 252 have never been charged with any crime. 23 were charged with stone throwing.
Since October 8 over 200 Palestinian children have been taken prisoner, none of whom had anything to do with the October 7 attacks. That rather puts the possible release of 33 children and six women today into perspective. But it is not a perspective the BBC would ever give you.
Over 2,000 Palestinians are held by Israel in “administrative detention”, without charge or trial. Some for over twenty years.
Since 1967 Israel has made over 1 million arrests of Palestinians. This “justice” system is an essential part of the imposition of apartheid and the slow genocide, which did not just start this autumn. The BBC won’t tell you that either, and appears to have no problem with permanently showcasing its Israel based correspondents churning out the Israeli propaganda narrative, with no attempt at either perspective or balance.
The official U.S. military publication Army University Press published an article written on behalf of the Department of Defense calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and destruction of Lebanon in a November 2023 online exclusive.
This outlet is described on its website as “the US Army’s premier multimedia organization”, and an “entry point for cutting-edge thought and discussion on topics important to the Army and national defense”, which “makes timely and relevant information available to leaders in the military, government, and academia.”
While the article notes that “the views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the U.S. Army, Department of Defense, or any other agency of the U.S. government.” the fact that such a radical proposal was published in the top U.S. Army publication, demonstrates that explicit support for ethnic cleansing and genocide is well accepted in its intellectual and policy-making circles.
The article’s publication comes amid Israel’s unprecedented genocidal assault on the besieged Gaza Strip following the October 7 Hamas attack. Israeli occupation forces have targeted residential buildings, schools, hospitals, ambulances, medical personnel, rescuers and first response teams, journalists, United Nations employees, mosques, churches, infrastructure, and have cut off electricity and of communication services. On November 10, the Gaza Health Ministry announced it had lost the ability to track casualties, with its last official count at 11,078 deaths, including 4,506 children, 27,490 injuries and an additional 2,700 people trapped under the rubble. An estimated 1.7 million people are displaced, including 900,000 in 154 UNRWA shelters, some of which have been bombed by Israel.
The article (archived) was written by Omer Dostri, a former Likud apparatchik who is now a national security strategist at the hawk Jerusalem Institute For Security and Strategy think tank and researcher at the Israel Defense And Security Forum.
Established in 2017 to influence domestic Israeli discourse, and drawing much of its staff from the Likudnik Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, JISS is funded by the Tikvah Fund, a cutout of the U.S. Republican party which seeks to promote a western-style neoliberal capitalist model. A creation of the late New York billionaire mogul Sanford Bernstein (who later changed his first name to Zalman upon taking Israeli citizenship), it is apparently funded today by his estate, along with contributions from American Zionist oligarchs including Rebecca Sugar, a secretive group of Jerusalem businessmen, and Australian venture capitalist Greg Rosshandler. Tikvah is chaired by neoconservative financier Roger Hertog.
“I am pleased to introduce a study I authored on behalf of the US Department of Defense and the US Army’s Military Review journal. The research delves into the political, strategic, and tactical aspects of the #Hamas attack on #Israel and the war in #Gaza,” Dostri boasted on LinkedIn.
“Well done,” commented Miriam Reichman, former political intern at Israel’s mission to the UN.
While the U.S. army paper describes October 7 as a terrorist attack, repeating the discredited Israeli government claims about beheadings and rapes, it acknowledges the sophisticated nature of the operation.
“This heinous attack was the work of a terrorist organization, yet it displayed an exceptional military and professional approach akin to the methods employed by special forces in regular armies. This underscores the significant military and intelligence capabilities that Hamas had meticulously developed over the years, specifically in preparation for this devastating event,” he wrote.
‘The optimal choice for Israel is to occupy the Gaza Strip’
Dostri explains how Israel’s “deterrence policy” has collapsed as a result of the attack, and why it must formulate a new strategy to maintain its system of supremacy.
He lists four options to accomplish this. The first three serve as window dressing, described in brief, until he arrives as the preferred choice of ethnic cleansing.
……………………………………………………………………………….. The ideal option, and that which Dostri believes will re-establish “deterrence” and provide “security”, and achieve victory, is for Israel to re-occupy Gaza for the long term, ethnically cleanse hundreds of thousands of its Palestinian residents, exponentially expand the size of the kill zone, and establish Israeli settlements inside Gaza.
“From a security perspective, the optimal choice for Israel is to occupy the Gaza Strip and establish a lasting military presence,” he writes.
Dostri cites public support for establishing settlements in Gaza from “some members of the Knesset, public figures, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations” who maintain the long-standing Zionist belief that stealing land and establishing colonies is the proper response, rather than one that engenders violent reaction from Palestinians.
While Dostri presents confiscation of land and creation of settlements as an innovative concept, this has always been the basis of Zionism, ideologically and practically.
In his bookEthnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine, Israeli scholar Ofer Yiftachel describes the process of Judaization, in which Zionist authorities expropriate land from Palestinians, transfer it to Jews, restrict Palestinian development while promoting Jewish-only colonies, and Hebraization of Palestinian place names, and redrawing boundaries to ensure Zionist dominance. This has been put into practice in the Galilee and Negev, which are part of modern-day Israel, as well as the occupied territory of the West Bank.
This method has been a constant since the creation of the State of Israel until today.
………………………………………………………………………………………… Dostri is even more explicit in opinion pieces published in Israeli media outlets. In a November 19 article in the Jerusalem Post, he calls for Israeli settlements to be established in Gaza – essentially using Israeli civilians as human shields – in order to provide security…………………..
Dostri reiterates his call for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, writing that ” Israel should resist the return of the hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents who evacuated to the southern Gaza Strip,” and calls to make agreements with regional countries to expel Palestinian refugees into the Sinai.
He hails the war on Gaza as a “historic and unparalleled opportunity to reshape the threat landscape and “alter the demographic balance in the region.”
Finally, he concludes that Israel should deceive the world about its true intentions, writing that “The country’s leaders should not let this opportunity slip away, and certainly, they should avoid loudly announcing their renunciation of it to the entire world in advance.”
Strategy for war on Gaza
To accomplish these goals, Dostri’s Pentagon paper proposes a “a comprehensive and synchronized military operation with the aim of occupying the Gaza Strip” consisting of an aerial bombardment campaign followed by a ground operation. His plan largely follows what the Israeli military is currently implementing, and calls for the ground operation to last two to three months.…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The destruction of Lebanon’s national and critical infrastructure’
The paper recognizes that the war in Gaza can easily escalate into a regional war. He calls for Israel to create “the perception that Israel is behaving unpredictably in Gaza” to deter Hezbollah and argues that the more Israel intensifies its attacks on Hamas, with greater and more lethal force, the more likely it is that Hezbollah will be deterred.” He believes that Israel’s deterrence vis-a-vis Hezbollah is understood “particularly when the United States deploys its most formidable forces to the region and openly and resolutely supports Israel, coupled with explicit U.S threats against Israel’s adversaries considering involvement in the conflict.”
…………………………….. Dostri argues that Israel must also maintain the possibility of an all-out war on Lebanon, involving a massive air campaign and ground invasion into the southern part of the country. This option would mean the “complete annihilation of Hezbollah, and the destruction of Lebanon’s national and critical infrastructures, which will eventually lead to the country’s collapse.”
……………………. Genocide into a regional war
Overall, Dostri’s paper amounts to a call to commit crimes against humanity. It adds to the numerous statements that, in the case of a war crimes trial, would serve as clear evidence of intent to carry out genocide, which is notoriously difficult to establish. The fact that this call was published on behalf of the Department of Defense and in the U.S. Army’s premiere media arm raises the questions about American culpability in the genocide of Gaza, which is being carried out primarily with bombs and missiles manufactured in the American factories, and what the U.S. government’s intentions truly are…………………… more https://www.uncaptured.media/p/pentagon-publishes-proposal-for-ethnic
Israel and Hamas have reportedly agreed to a four-day ceasefire which will entail the release of 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for 150 hostages held by Israeli forces.
In an article titled “Biden admin officials see proof their strategy is working in hostage deal,” Politico describes the deal as “the administration’s biggest diplomatic victory of the conflict” and reports that White House officials are calling it a “vindication” of Biden’s decision making. Which is an entirely inappropriate level of verbal fellatio for an achievement as minimal as not murdering children for a few days.
Tucked away many paragraphs into this report is a sentence which is getting a lot of attention on social media today saying that according to Politico’s sources there has been some resistance to the pause in fighting within the administration due to fears that it will allow journalists into Gaza to report on the devastation Israel has inflicted upon the enclave.
“And there was some concern in the administration about an unintended consequence of the pause: that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel,” Politico reports.
In other words, the White House is worried that a brief pause in the Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza will allow journalists to report the truth about the Israeli massacre of civilians in Gaza, because it will hurt the information interests of the US and Israel. They are worried that the public will become more aware of facts and truth.
Needless to say, if you’re standing on the right side of history you’re not typically worried about journalists reporting true facts about current events and thereby damaging public support for your agendas. But that is the side that the US and Israel have always stood on, which is why the US empire is currently imprisoning Julian Assange for doing good journalism on US war crimes and why Israel has a decades-long history of threatening and targeting journalists.
Both the US and Israel have been attacking the press in this way because their governments understand that whoever controls the narrative controls the world. They understand that while power is controlling what happens, ultimate power is controlling what people think about what happens. Human consciousness is dominated by mental narratives, so if you can control society’s dominant narratives, you can control the humans.
This is why the powerful have been able to remain in power in our civilization — because they understand this, while we the public generally do not. That’s why they bombard us with nonstop mass media propaganda, that’s why they work to censor the internet, that’s why Julian Assange languishes in prison, that’s why Israel routinely murders journalists, and that’s why the White House is afraid of what will happen if worldwide news reporters are able to get their cameras into Gaza.
Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars.
During Israeli military offensives in the Occupied Territories, it is common for the Israeli government and its supporters to claim media are biased in favor the Palestinians, often by invoking that there is “no moral equivalence” between the Israeli government and Palestinian militant organizations like Hamas (American Jewish Committee, 10/17/23). Akin to Alex Jones falsely smearing grieving parents of school shooting victims as “crisis actors,” pro-Israel advocates sometimes dismiss media images of Palestinian suffering as staged fakery they call “Pallywood” (France24, 10/27/23).
Now Israeli government officials are accusing major news media of coordinating with Hamas, essentially painting Palestinian stringers as terrorist operatives. At least one Israeli official threatened to “eliminate” anyone involved in the October 7 attacks, and indicated that some journalists were included included on that list.
The pro-Israel media advocacy organization HonestReporting (11/8/23) raised questions about the presence of AP, Reuters, New York Times and CNN photographers near the sites Hamas attacked in southern Israel on October 7:
“What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and the New York Times, notify these outlets?”
‘No different than terrorists’
Israeli officials are taking the group’s words seriously, going hard against these news agencies and individual Palestinian stringers. These accusations were featured throughout the corporate media.
The Financial Times (11/10/23) reported that Benny Gantz, who has held numerous Israeli military and ministerial roles, said “journalists found to have known about the massacre, and [who] still chose to stand as idle bystanders while children were slaughtered, are no different than terrorists and should be treated as such.” Knesset member Danny Danon (Twitter, 11/9/23), Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, said that Israel would “eliminate all participants of the October 7 massacre,” adding that “the ‘photojournalists’ who took part in recording the assault will be added to that list.” Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu called these journalists “accomplices in crimes against humanity” (New York Post, 11/9/23).
Politico (11/9/23) reported that Israel’s “Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi accused the foreign media of employing contributors who were tipped off on the Hamas attacks.” It added that Nitzan Chen, director of Israel’s government press office, had asked the four media outlets “for clarifications regarding the behavior” of their photographers.
‘Mobilized by Hamas’
The affair was covered in many other outlets, including the New York Times (11/9/23), The Hill (11/9/23), Newsweek (11/9/23) and the Daily Beast (11/9/23). The Jerusalem Post (11/10/23) took the government and watchdog’s allegations as fact and said in an editorial:
“These so-called photojournalists made no effort to stop or distance themselves from the barbaric events. On the contrary: They were mobilized by the Hamas terrorists to glorify their acts, help promote their terrorism and spread fear among their enemies—Israel and the West. In this way, too, Hamas recalls ISIS, which deliberately recorded its beheadings and other barbaric murders.”
In a statement, Reuters (11/9/23) “categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on October 7.” Al Jazeera (11/9/23) reported that “AP also rejected allegations that its newsroom had prior knowledge of the attacks”; the agency said in a statement that the
“first pictures AP received from any freelancer show they were taken more than an hour after the attacks began…. No AP staff were at the border at the time of the attacks, nor did any AP staffer cross the border at any time.”
Neither HonestReporting nor Israeli officials raising a stink about this have provided any evidence of unethical behavior by these media outlets or their stringers (Reuters, 11/11/23). HonestReporting has shrouded its rhetoric with the disclaimer of “just asking questions.” The AP (11/9/23) reported that “Gil Hoffman, executive director of HonestReporting and a former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, admitted…the group had no evidence to back up” its suggestion that the photographers had “prior coordination with the terrorists.” Hoffman “said he was satisfied with subsequent explanations from several of these journalists that they did not know.”
Nevertheless, CNN and the AP stopped working with Hassan Eslaiah, one of the freelancers mentioned in the HonestReporting report, who in fact “got extra emphasis in the HonestReporting story, which resurfaced a several-years-old photo of him posing with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar,” according to the Washington Post (11/9/23).
Deadly time for journalists
Any journalist who read HonestReporting’s questions had to smirk a bit. Journalists all over the world are tipped off by all sorts of sources to get somewhere at a certain time, with the undetailed promise of some hot footage. This is just the nature of the job, and doesn’t mean that a journalist’s relationship with a source is the same as working together on a common message.
have already written at FAIR (10/19/23) that Israel’s killings of journalists in Gaza, combined with legal attempts to silence media critics within Israel, are a threat to the public’s ability to know about the nature of the ongoing violence, which is financed with US tax dollars. The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/15/23) said that 42 journalists have been killed in the month since fighting broke out, making that period “the deadliest for journalists since it began gathering data in 1992” (UPI, 11/8/23).
Now Israeli officials have insinuated that if you are too physically close to a Palestinian fighter and get a good photo in the process, their government may consider you an enemy combatant. That is another chilling escalation of a troubling trend in Israel’s relationship with the press.
Information stranglehold
It’s all part of the Israeli government’s attempt to keep a tight stranglehold on information coming out in the press. Recently, the government used the tried and true method of embedding journalists within military units; in exchange for on-the-ground access, the military gets to review the footage journalists’ obtain (New Arab, 11/8/23). Israel also moved to criminalize the “consumption of terrorist materials” (Al Jazeera, 11/8/23) and to shut down media deemed a threat to national security (International Federation of Journalists, 10/20/23). NBC (11/11/23) reported that the Israeli government has “cracked down on broadcasts, reports and social media posts that” are deemed “a threat to national security or in support of terror organizations since Hamas’ October 7 assault.”
As the Israeli publication +972 (9/18/23) pointed out, before the outbreak of the current war, Israeli government censorship had actually declined, but it still found that in 2022, the
Israeli military censor blocked the publication of 159 articles across various Israeli media outlets, and censored parts of a further 990. In all, the military prevented information from being made public an average of three times a day—on top of the chilling effect that the very existence of censorship imposes on independent journalism that seeks to uncover government failings.
While Israel likes to think of itself as a bastion of Western enlightenment in a sea of backward nations, this anti-media trend in the country makes it more like its neighbors than its supporters would like to believe.
In the case of the death of famous British correspondent Marie Colvin, a judge ruled that she was intentionally targeted by the Assad regime for giving a voice to opposition factions (BBC, 1/31/19). Egypt frequently detains journalists for the supposed crime of collaboration with subversive organizations and foreign powers (Reporters Without Borders, 6/30/23). The rate of the Turkish government’s jailing of journalists has accelerated (Voice of America, 12/15/22), and last year the government “detained 11 journalists affiliated with pro-Kurdish media for their alleged links to Kurdish militants” (AP, 10/25/22).
This is the club Israel belongs to. And such hostility toward the free press makes it harder for journalists to deliver clear, fair reporting about the Middle East conflict. And that’s the point. The insinuation that media organizations who report freely on the Israel/Palestine conflict are anti-Zionist agents is meant to keep the situation shrouded in haze.
Honest Reporting’s claims against Palestinian photographers were echoed by Israeli leaders and media. But they’re factually and journalistically unfounded.
On Nov. 8, Honest Reporting, an organization that claims to monitor “anti-Israel” bias in the media, published an “investigation” accusing Palestinian photojournalists in the Gaza Strip of having advance knowledge about Hamas’ lethal October 7 attack on southern Israel. ……………………..
The report quickly gained traction, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the Government Press Office both sharing the report on their official X pages (the former has since deleted the post). Israeli leaders rushed to put out their own condemnations of the journalists, equating them with those responsible for the massacres…………………………………..
However, even a cursory examination of the investigation’s claims revealed major discrepancies……………………………………
Indeed, the allegations against the Palestinian journalists appear to be completely baseless. Gil Hoffman, Honest Reporting’s director and a former longtime correspondent at the Jerusalem Post, admitted as much two days after the report’s publication, in response to refutations issued by the four outlets implicated by the claims: Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, and The New York Times.
…………………………………………………………………….. Claims debunked
In order to properly respond to the dangerous claims made by Honest Reporting, it is necessary to understand how both photo agencies and international media outlets work with photographers.
First, these organizations usually use staff photographers, independent photographers, and/or photographers who either approach agencies and outlets to sell their photos or are contacted by these bodies to buy their work.
On October 7, there were no international photographers in Gaza (who would require permits from the Israeli authorities to enter the Strip), and since Hamas’ attack and the start of Israel’s intensified siege and bombardment, none have been able to enter. Therefore, for the purpose of covering the events of that day, the media relied on their permanent local Palestinian staff as well as additional Palestinian photographers.
The Israeli media, which parroted Honest Reporting’s allegations unquestioningly, claimed that the Palestinian photographers “documented the massacre.” This is false: while one journalist photographed a mob attacking the body of a dead soldier that had been removed from an Israeli tank along the Gaza fence, none of them documented killing. The photographs mentioned in the report went online in real time, with full credit to the photographers, and Israeli media outlets themselves used these photos extensively. Some of them have become iconic, such as the image of a commandeered tank that was set on fire next to the Gaza fence.
Nonetheless, the international outlets mentioned in the report took Honest Reporting’s claims seriously, and conducted their own investigations. CNN, The New York Times, AP, and Reuters all looked into the allegations and offered responses. AP, for example, emphasized that it did not know in advance about the attack, and that the initial photographs — taken by freelancers — were taken more than an hour after the attack began. The other outlets published similar clarifying statements.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Even after Honest Reporting admitted they had no proof that the photographers were complicit in the attack, most of the Israeli media that reported on the initial findings did not bother to publish anything about the organization’s sudden change in tune. The claim that Palestinian journalists were responsible for Hamas’ war crimes has already taken root and become just one more example in the wave of attacks by the Israeli public against Palestinian journalists.
A flawed logic
Like photojournalists all over the world, the Gaza-based photographers arrived to fulfill their journalistic duty and document a difficult, painful, and cruel event, of which they did not know all the details at the time………………………………………………………………………
The Palestinian photographers set out to document an event that took place near their homes. That same morning, Israeli photojournalists — myself included — set out to document the events in the south. We filmed the wounded, the bodies lying on the ground, and the gun battles at the Sderot police station between Palestinian fighters and Israeli security forces. Does this mean we had a hand in the events or could have helped? Of course not.
………………………………………………………… It is difficult to accept that an unfounded investigation was accepted by large parts of the Israeli media as fact, went viral on social media, was quoted without reservation, and strengthened the incitement against those who are trying in impossible conditions to document the reality on the ground. Israel has killed at least 39 journalists in Gaza since the war began. The accusations made by Honest Reporting serve to legitimize their deaths and the bloodletting of others.
Had the organization bothered to contact the various media outlets for a response before publishing their claims, the damage could have been avoided. But as Hoffman told AP, Honest Reporting doesn’t “claim to be a news organization,” and thus, it seems, the traditional journalistic standards of asking for comment before publication does not apply to them. Honest Reporting is a right-wing, hasbara organization with a clear agenda, and should be treated as such by all who interact with it.
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