More twisted facts versus Newsweek's claim to offer credible coverage of Israel or the Middle East - by Simon Plosker

...The Arab states that invaded the nascent Israeli state did not do so because they were “opposed to the displacement of Palestinians.” They did so because they were opposed to a Jewish state in any part of the Middle East. The displacement of Palestinians was a direct result of the war that the Arabs themselves launched and many of those Palestinians who left did so after encouragement from the Arab states to relocate while they drove the Jews into the sea. Once again Tom O’Connor demonstrates that he is not fit to write for Newsweek or any other publication claiming to offer credible coverage of Israel or the Middle East.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
16 January '19..

In July 2017, HonestReporting forced Newsweek to apologize for and retract two abysmal articles by Tom O’Connor. This represented a serious blow to his credibility and we asked whether he would be trusted in future to report on Israeli stories.

Sadly the answer is yes.

O’Connor’s latest piece demonstrates yet again why he has very little credibility.

Israel and Iran: A false and immoral equivalence

In a story focused on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings that Israel is prepared to confront hostile forces, O’Connor writes:

Israel and Iran have long swapped existential threats, with the latter claiming influential allies such as the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement active in both its native Lebanon as well as Syria, two countries bordering Israel. Just days after his own outgoing top military commander admitted Israel’s role in backing an insurgency in Syria, Netanyahu dismissed Iranian claims that Tehran only played an advisory role in Syria’s civil war.

To back up the assertion that “Israel and Iran have long swapped existential threats,” the article links back to a previous piece written by O’Connor that HonestReporting critiqued in December 2108. We took apart this claim, showing how only one side had made existential threats against the other i.e. Iran against Israel.

We stated that unlike the Iranian regime, Israel has no desire to destroy an entire country and its people and O’Connor’s claim draws a false and immoral equivalence between the genocidal intentions of Iran and the comments made by Israel to deter Iranian aggression.

Yet, O’Connor has repeated the very same falsehood.

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