The Gaza They Don't Want You to See - by Bassam Tawil

How can Hamas and its supporters around the world continue to complain about poverty and misery when new shopping malls and supermarkets filled with clothes, and various types of luxury goods are being opened every few weeks in the Gaza Strip?

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
10 June '20..

The Palestinian terror group Hamas has warned Palestinians in the Gaza Strip not to publish photos from the Gaza Strip on social media platforms.

In a June 9 statement, the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior claimed that "Israeli intelligence agencies have been asking residents of the Gaza Strip -- through social media -- to use their mobile phones to take pictures of various places in the Gaza Strip."

Hamas warned Palestinians against complying with the alleged Israeli request and claimed that Israel was using social media accounts to "recruit collaborators and obtain information."

Hamas added that its security forces were monitoring Israeli and Palestinian social media accounts and would take "legal measures" against Palestinians who interacted with the purported Israeli intelligence agencies.

Is Hamas actually worried that the Israeli security authorities would use the photos to "recruit" informants or that Palestinians might take pictures of its tunnels and rockets? Not exactly.

Hamas is worried that the photos and videos taken by Palestinians would reveal to the world a different reality of the situation in the Gaza Strip -- a reality that runs contrary to all the stories and images of "poverty," "misery" and "suffering" of Palestinians there.

What Hamas seeks to conceal from the world are the shopping malls, supermarkets, fancy restaurants, sleek coffee shops and modern clothing stores that have sprung up in the Gaza Strip in recent years.

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Surprise? Dishonest Headlines Parrot Hamas Claim - by Emanuel Miller

As HonestReporting tweeted on Sunday, journalists are responsible for telling the whole story, not just the parts that fit in with their worldview. Anything less is a professional failure.

Emanuel Miller..
Honest Reporting..
05 May '19..

Any journalist worth their salt knows that their work requires describing what has happened, and reporting the whole story. When reporters are unable to determine exactly what happened, standard procedure is to report what the various parties claim, and let the readers make their own judgments.

Those simple standards, however, were repeatedly not met by numerous reporters covering the latest flare-up of violence between Israel and terror organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.

More than 600 rockets have been fired at Israel since Saturday morning, and Israel is responding by targeting terrorists, as well as Islamic Jihad and Hamas’s facilities. Amid the ongoing exchange of fire, a pregnant woman and her 14-month old daughter were killed in unclear circumstances. Despite the IDF refusing to accept responsibility for the deaths, Palestinian sources were predictably swift to blame Israel, and the British media quickly picked up on the story.

The IDF later put out a statement on Twitter, reading: “Today we can say with certainty, after looking into the event, that they were killed as a result of an explosion of combustible materials during the activation of a Hamas explosive device.” A later tweet went further, accusing journalists of complicity, saying they had “amplified the lie.”

Headline Fails

More than any other part of an article, headlines matter the most. The vast majority of people don’t read any given article, only skimming through newspapers and social media feeds. As such, headlines frame the way people read and remember stories.

Despite the paucity of evidence to back up the claim that the IDF was responsible for the deaths, numerous media services parroted the claims put out by the Hamas-run Gazan Ministry of Health – frequently in the most prominent place – the headline.

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(update) Once again, world media assumes baby probably killed by Hamas rocket was killed by Israel - by Elder of Ziyon

Mistake #1: Assuming that all Gaza casualties are the result of Israeli airstrikes. Traditionally, the number of Gaza rockets that fall short and never reach Israel, or that explode as they are fired, is over 35% -and sometimes as high as 80%!. Between June 12-25 (2014), terrorists fired 41 rockets at Israel, of which 24 exploded in Gaza, killing one child and injuring six more children. That is a 58% failure rate.

Elder of Ziyon..
05 May '19..

We've seen this happen so many times before.

On Saturday evening, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported that a 14-month-old Palestinian child, Saba Mahmoud Hamdan Abu Arar, had been killed and her mother, Falastin Saleh Abu Arar, when an Israeli airstrikes hit their house in Gaza City. Several hours later, the ministry said that Falastin had succumbed to her wounds.

On Twitter, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic-language spokesman said the mother and child did not appear to have been killed in an Israeli attack.

Adraee indicated that the deaths may have been caused by a failed rocket attack against Israel, noting that many of the projectiles fired at Israel were launched from within populated areas.

“There are more and more indications reaching us from the Gaza Strip that put serious doubt on the truth of the statement from Hamas’s healthy ministry about the death of the baby Saba Mahmoud Hamdan Abu Arar and her mother Falastin Saleh Abu Arar,” Maj. Avichay Adraee wrote in a tweet.

“According to these indications, the death was caused by terrorist activities by Palestinian militants and not by an Israeli strike,” he said.

But AFP headlines the story, "250 rockets fired from Gaza, Israeli response kills four including baby."

The Independent wrote "A pregnant mother and her 14-month-old baby girl have been killed by an Israeli airstrike, as cross-border violence continues near Gaza."

ITV: "Palestinian baby and pregnant mother killed in Gaza airstrikes."

CNN: "250 rockets fired from Gaza at Israel; 1-year-old child among those killed in retaliatory airstrikes."

Reporters have made this mistake before. I listed a bunch of them a few years ago in an open letter to journalists on not making assumptions during these flareups in Gaza:

Mistake #1: Assuming that all Gaza casualties are the result of Israeli airstrikes

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As expected, Guardian again falsely accuses Israel of “massacring civilians” in Gaza - by Adam Levick

...Such charges at the Guardian are nothing new, and in fact arguably reflects the official position of the media group as expressed in an editorial last month on the Gaza “protests” that included the simply risible accusation that the IDF has been “killing” unarmed slogan-shouting Palestinians who “posed no credible threat”.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
12 February '19..

Stephanie Convery, deputy culture editor of Guardian Australia, penned an article about efforts to boycott the upcoming Eurovision event in Tel Aviv (Australia’s Eurovision hopefuls and SBS face pressure to boycott event in Israel, Feb 7) which included the following accusation:

In May 2018, former senator Lee Rhiannon questioned SBS’s then managing director Michael Ebeid over planned coverage for the 2019 event, particularly in the wake of the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in May.

Such charges at the Guardian are nothing new, and in fact arguably reflects the official position of the media group as expressed in an editorial last month on the Gaza “protests” that included the simply risible accusation that the IDF has been “killing” unarmed slogan-shouting Palestinians who “posed no credible threat”.

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Focusing on Guardian ‘photos of the week’: Gaza and Syria. A case study in ‘disproportionality’ - by Adam Levick

...To get a sense of the scale of this imbalance, note that the Gaza riots have claimed 209 Palestinian lives, whilst roughly 16,000 Syrians died during that time, with another 800,000 or so driven from their homes

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
28 January '19..

The Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel is in part driven by their near obsession with the plight of the Palestinians – a story almost always framed, regardless of the facts, in terms of the latter’s suffering at the hands of the former. This disproportionate focus was evident in our review of their ‘Photos of the Week‘ series, which they describe as “The best photographs in news and culture from around the world”.

Our survey of this series since March 31st – when the Hamas-led ‘Great March of Return’ began – found that 31 photos depicted scenes from the weekly Gaza border riots.

(This count doesn’t include photos related to other non-protest related Gaza violence – such as IDF responses to Hamas rocket attacks – or events in the West Bank. If we were to include such photos, the count would be significantly higher.)

In contrast, the Guardian published a mere 21 photos depicting the Syrian Civil War over the same 10 month period.

To get a sense of the scale of this imbalance, note that the Gaza riots have claimed 209 Palestinian lives, whilst roughly 16,000 Syrians died during that time, with another 800,000 or so driven from their homes (extrapolating from 2018 totals as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights).

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They try harder? Guardian’s hatred towards Israel reaches new low - by Adam Levick

The Guardian’s insistence on denying, downplaying and otherwise obfuscating this extremist group’s malevolent intent, whilst simultaneously demonising the Jewish state they seek to destroy, is more than merely a commentary on the media group’s fanatical hostility towards Israel. It is, to be sure, a reflection of their institutional failure to understand and take seriously modern antisemitism – a Corbyn-style atavistic reflex which – whilst condemning racism in every form – when confronted with ‘the Jewish problem’ sees Jews as the problem.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
23 January '19..

We’ve been monitoring the Guardian and commenting on the media group’s institutional hostility to Israel for nearly 10 years, and nothing much shocks us at this point. Yet, an official editorial published yesterday reaches a new low in malice and plain out dishonesty. The headline alone, using language you’d normally use when describing totalitarian regimes, is repulsive – representative of the kind of ugly, baseless anti-Zionist smear you’d expect to see at Electronic Intifada and other extremist outlets.

The op-ed begins:

In the last nine months of 2018, according to the United Nations, Palestinians – many of them children – were killed at the rate of around one a day while taking part in protests along Israel’s perimeter fence with Gaza about their right to return to ancestral homes. They included medics and journalists. Most of the dead were unarmed and posed no danger to anyone, with little more than rocks in their hands and slogans on their lips. Yet Israel continued with an immoral and unlawful policy that sees soldiers of its military, which is under democratic civilian control, shoot, gas, shell and kill protesters, including those who pose no credible threat.

What the Guardian suggests are peaceful ‘protests’ by ‘slogan’ shouting marchers are actually organised violent riots which include the use of Molotov cocktails, the planting of IEDs and countless attempts to cut through the security fence and infiltrate the border.

To claim that thousands of rioters attempting to breach the border and attack civilians pose “no danger” turns reality on its head – especially given the fact that most of the rioters killed have been identified as operatives of terror groups.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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NY Times Retreats From Gaza Medic War Crime Investigation - by Ira Stoll

...Publishing one front-page news article pushing the “far stronger party” story line and then a weeks-later corrective op-ed acknowledging “that’s not the way Israelis see it” and that in fact was a “misunderstanding” and an “illusion” may be a smart short-term business strategy for the Times. It gets the Israel-haters to click on the story accusing “far stronger” Israel of “possibly a war crime,” and it gets the Israel-lovers to click on the story about how the first story was wrong. From a longer-term perspective, though, this approach has its risks.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
18 January '19..

Two and a half weeks after a front-page Sunday investigative project in which ten New York Times journalists accused Israel of “possibly a war crime,” the Times is backing away from it by endorsing the Algemeiner’s criticism of the article.

The Times investigative project jumped to three full inside broadsheet pages of the December 30, 2018 New York Times.

One of my many criticisms of the piece for the Algemeiner was this: “The Times, for example, describes Israel as ‘the far stronger party’ relative to the Palestinians. But there are somewhere between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, and around 14 million Jews. There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries, and one small Jewish state. The Muslims also have a lot of the oil. It may be convenient for the Times to stir sympathy for the Palestinians by depicting them as the underdogs, but it’s not as clear-cut a factual matter as the Times describes it.”

I wrote that for the Algemeiner on December 30, the same day the Times article appeared.

Now, on January 17, the Times has waddled in, belatedly, with its own story acknowledging precisely this point. Times “contributing opinion writer” Matti Friedman writes for the Times op-ed page:

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The BBC’s continuing monochrome framing of Gaza’s chronic utilities crisis - by Hadar Sela

...Although BBC audiences have long been steered towards the inaccurate view that (as also claimed by Hamas) all the economic and humanitarian problems in the Gaza Strip are attributable to Israeli counter-terrorism measures, while the roles of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in creating and exacerbating the crisis are downplayed or airbrushed from the story, that framing clearly does not meet the BBC’s obligation to provide its funding public with “accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming of the highest editorial standards”.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
17 January '19..

Last month the BBC aired reports from the Gaza Strip presented by Radio 4’s Mishal Husain which included multiple references to issues concerning water, electricity and sewage.

As was noted here at the time:

“…listeners heard that “more than 90% of the population don’t have access to safe drinking water” and that “the desalination system in Gaza has broken down” because of “electricity”. No effort was made to clarify the full background to those statements or to explain that – as the BBC knows – the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip (and resulting problems with water and sewage) has nothing to do with “the blockade”.”

The portrayal of those issues focused mainly on framing them as being primarily attributable to Israel’s counter-terrorism measures while no effort was made to explain the role of Hamas terrorism in bringing about those measures. The effects of Hamas’ financial prioritisation of terrorism over civilian welfare, its chronic mismanagement of services and utilities and infrastructure and the influence of the Hamas-Fatah split on the situation in the Gaza Strip were not adequately explained in the BBC’s reporting.

Like other BBC reporters before her, Mishal Husain did not bother to clarify that the “shortage of clean water” in the Gaza Strip is the result of years of over-pumping.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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From the Obvious, But Must Be Said Department: It Was a Riot, Not a Protest - by Amb. Danny Danon

“Nonviolent” protestors do not carry knives, wire-cutters and improvised firebombs.

Amb. Danny Danon..
JNS.org..
10 January '19..

Over the past several weeks, much discussion has been made about the events last spring on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. Many have equivocated the actions of violent rioters inspired by Hamas (a terrorist organization) and those of Israel’s soldiers charged with defending the sovereignty of a liberal democracy. This abhorrent argument demonstrates a false moral equivalence and, above all, misses the context of the events.

Last spring, Hamas-inspired rioters gathered on the Gazan side of the border fence with Israel in what was billed as the “Great March of Return.” With such a provocative name, the question bears asking: a return to where?

Palestinian rioters burn tires as part of a violent demonstration on the Gaza-Israel border that turned deadly on Oct. 12, 2018, when a Gaza exploded a bomb and infiltrated the security fence in the attempt to attack Israeli soldiers. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
The answer that much of the media believed is “to their ancestral homelands.” This is a politically correct euphemism for saying: to destroy Israel.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was more explicit: to “tear down their [Israel’s] border and tear out [Israelis’] hearts.” In carrying out this directive, a group of rioters that briefly managed to infiltrate into Israel were brandishing butcher knives and shouting “Jews, we’re coming to slaughter you!”

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Unsurprisingly, Longtime Israel Critic, Avi Shlaim, Distorts History on Anniversary of Gaza Operation - by Simon Plosker

...One wonders just how far his definition of “lawful resistance” extends given his refusal to define Hamas actions as terror. It appears that ten years after Operation Cast Lead, commentators such as Avi Shlaim are attempting to alter both history and reality in order to attack Israel.

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

At the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s 2008/09 Operation Cast Lead, it’s expected that we will see articles in the media critical of Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza.

This was the first of a number of Israeli military operations in response to indiscriminate rocket and mortar fired from Gaza towards Israeli civilian targets.

So it is the case, unsurprisingly, in The Guardian, where UK-based Israeli academic and longtime Israel critic Avi Shlaim launches his own assault on Israel. According to him, Operation Cast Lead:

was not a war or even “asymmetric warfare” but a one-sided massacre. Israel had 13 dead; the Gazans had 1,417 dead, including 313 children, and more than 5,500 wounded. According to one estimate 83% of the casualties were civilians. Israel claimed to be acting in self-defence, protecting its civilians against Hamas rocket attacks. The evidence, however, points to a deliberate and punitive war of aggression. Israel had a diplomatic alternative, but it chose to ignore it and to resort to brute military force.

Casualties as a Moral Barometer

Shlaim begins with a typical case of using casualty figures as a moral barometer. By quoting the mismatch in the deaths and injuries between the two sides stripped of context, Shlaim signals that Israel is the aggressor despite the fact that readers:

- Will not know that Hamas embedded itself in the civilian population leading to higher numbers of civilian deaths.

- Will also be unaware of Israel’s enormous efforts to prevent loss of innocent lives.

- And the reason for the lower Israeli casualty figures? Simply that Israel goes to great lengths to protect its people.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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From the 'newspaper' that incessantly blames Israel for the crime of responding to Palestinian attacks - by Jerold Auerbach

...If that accident of fate was a “war crime,” what language aptly describes the Times evasion of the intentional murder of six million Jews because it did not want to be seen as a “Jewish” newspaper?

Jerold Auerbach..
Algemeiner..
31 December '18..

Imagine appropriate news coverage of the horrific Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. Then imagine coverage, by the same newspaper, of the accidental killing — six months earlier — of a 20-year-old Gaza nurse by a ricocheting bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. The Holocaust story, in the memorable title of Laurel Leff’s scathing book, was “Buried by the Times.”

The Gaza story, accompanied by two photos, appeared on the Times front page (December 30). It covered more than half the page. Credit was given to five reporters, with authorship by New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halbfinger. But that was only the beginning. Coverage spread across three full inside pages, half of them devoted to the Times‘ reconstruction of the death of Rouzan al-Najjar. To show how she was killed, the Times proudly claimed to have analyzed “over 1,000 photos and videos,” while capturing “the fatal moment in a 3-D model” and interviewing “more than 30 witnesses and commanders.”

What actually happened? According to the Times account, which there is no reason to doubt given the range and depth of its research, Ms. Najjar became “fearless and outspoken” and determined to become a nurse after witnessing the death of her pregnant aunt, intentionally pushed down the stairs of their Gaza home by her grandmother.

Ms. Najjar “saw her role as part of the Palestinian struggle … never refusing an interview request” to plead her righteous case, as she explained back in May when the Times first noted her admirable ambition. She proudly proclaimed: “I’m an army to myself, and the sword to my army,” writing on Facebook that “her bloodstained uniform carried the ‘sweetest perfume.’” The Times recounts how “young men and their parents paraded through the Najjars’ home seeking betrothal to the now famous Rouzan.” But she rejected their entreaties because “she had her own goals in mind.”

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Ten NYT Journalists, Thousands of Words to Accuse Israel of ‘Possibly a War Crime’, a Demonstration of the Times at Its Worst - by Ira Stoll

...If one were to take a Timesian approach, one would write it with a question headline: “Times Pays More Attention To a Palestinian Death Than to an Israeli American One. Was It an Accident?” And then one would weasel around the issue: “the Times journalism appears to have been careless at best, and possibly a blood libel.” But I’ll reject that approach and be more direct and forthright. The New York Times “investigation,” for all its dignified trappings, is just the same old Israel-bashing you can get for free on any extreme right or extreme left Internet site or social media feed. Save yourself the time and the money and the heartburn and skip it.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
30 December '18..

The New York Times devoted a lot of resources to its investigative project about the death of a 20-year-old Gaza medic named Rouzan al-Najjar. The article runs at the top of the front page of the Sunday newspaper and then consumes an additional three full broadsheet pages inside. It carries the front-page bylines of five Times reporters (at least one a veteran of Al Jazeera) and also credits inside an additional five named Times journalists and a photographer.

Alas, however, rather than being a Times tour de force, a display of the newspaper at its best, the article ends up as a flop, a demonstration of the Times at its worst. The Times may use thousands of words, millions of dollars worth of highly paid journalists, and elaborate computer graphics to convey its message. But strip away the attempt at a dignified presentation, and the message is effectively the same as a sign scrawled by some ignorant far-left or far-right Israel-hater at some extremist Christmas-season rally — Jews, this libel goes, are guilty, blood-drenched killers.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Very clever. A Guardian contributor’s artful lie on Gaza’s declining Christian population - by Adam Levick

Such holiday trickery reminds us that though events in the region may change from year to year, the British media’s annual tradition of blaming Israel for ruining ‘Christmas in Palestine’ continues, unimpeded by facts, statistics or even the most painfully obvious observations.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
25 December '18..

Donald Macintyre is a journalist with years of experience covering the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He’s written for the Guardian, was the former Middle East correspondent for the Independent and, as readers of this blog may know, has a penchant for obfuscating Hamas’s role in Gaza’s misery and their malevolent influence in the region.

His Dec. 23 piece in the Observer, sister site of the Guardian, titled “Faithful few: can Gaza’s Christian community survive?” focuses on the problems of Christians in Gaza during Christmas, and includes a classic example of using smoke and mirrors to cover for Hamas and advance the desired anti-Israel narrative.

Here’s one relevant passage:

But although Gazans switched rapidly to Islam after Arab victories in the seventh century, Christianity did not die out. There is archaeological evidence that what rapidly became a minority religion coexisted peacefully with the new Muslim one – as it still does today. But its shrinking has accelerated during the military turbulence of the past half-century.

In the mid-1960s, before the six-day war and Gaza’s occupation by Israel, there were about 6,000 Christians in Gaza; today there are an estimated 1,100.

Get it? According to McIntyre, Israel is presumably to blame for the flight of Gaza’s Christians. However, a look at the population stats reveals something that runs counter to this suggestion.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Violent clashes at the Israel-Gaza border? When is a journalist not a reliable eyewitness? - by Tamar Sternthal

Who qualifies as a reliable witness who can shed light on murky or unsubstantiated specific events in a hotly-disputed ongoing conflict? Specifically, who qualifies as a credible witness when it comes to violent clashes at the Israel-Gaza border?

...credible witness?

Tamar Sternthal..
JNS.org..
20 December '18..

Despite the recent erosion of public confidence in the media, many readers probably consider journalists trustworthy eyewitnesses. Journalists are duty bound to rise above their personal or national interests and report events impartially.

So when a news account cites an eye witness who happens to be a journalist, that witness’s testimony carries more weight than that of the average bystander.

But what if that journalist, in his native language, and unknown to the English-reading news consumers, calls for violence against one of the parties to the conflict? What if the source praises terror attacks in which innocent worshippers were massacred during prayers?

Is that alleged eyewitness credible?

These are not hypothetical questions.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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When Associated Press reporting ignores their subjects active roles in violence at the Gaza border - by Joe Truzman

...The article isn’t entirely misleading, but it does not give us the entire story on some of the Palestinians discussed. Their membership in Palestinian border units commanded by members of militant groups, and their active roles in violence at the Gaza border, puts them in grave danger of being injured, a factor which is entirely missing from the article. More research on the subjects would have revealed their membership in these violent units and would have likely changed the article dramatically.

Joe Truzman..
Ground Briefs..
16 December '18..

On December 9th, the Associated Press published an article titled, “In Gaza protests, Israeli troops aim for the legs.” The subject of the article was the injuries inflicted on 10 Palestinians shot by IDF troops during Gaza border protests. Let's take a closer look at some of the Palestinians profiled in the article to see if there's more to this story than what we know.

Mohammed Al-Esawei

According to the AP article, Mohammed Al-Esawei was shot several times while throwing rocks with a slingshot. What the article does not mention is Al-Esawei’s membership in one of the Palestinian border units and his violent activities against IDF soldiers at the Gaza border.

Here we see Al-Esawei’s Palestinian border group, called “Confusion Unit.” One of the members throws an explosive towards the security fence at the Gaza border. You can see Al-Esawei when he shows his face to the camera.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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More of the same Gaza framing from BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM‘ - by Hadar Sela

...While the British surgeon remarked that “this volume of severe injuries is something that most countries never see” in both versions of the report, Bateman made no effort to explain to BBC audiences that those injuries could have been avoided had Hamas – which is also in charge of the local health system described by Bateman as “already under huge pressure” – not planned, encouraged, facilitated and financed this particular terror project.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
26 November '18..

Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM‘ on November 23rd heard an item which was rather clumsily and confusingly introduced by presenter Jonny Dymond.

[emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Dymond: “Nearly six thousand residents of Gaza have suffered bullet wounds over the course of this year as Israeli soldiers have attempted to drive them back from the tightly packed strip of land in which they live and southern Israel – the border between the two. Most of those injuries are to young men who have been hit in the leg – shot in the leg. All of them require medical assistance of course and doctors in Gaza have become pretty adept at treating such injuries, assisted by John Wolfe, a retired consultant vascular surgeon from St. Mary’s Hospital in West London. Our Middle East correspondent Tom Bateman reports.”

Over the past eight months we have repeatedly documented the fact that the BBC has downplayed or erased Hamas’ role in initiating, organising and facilitating the ‘Great Return March’ violent rioting along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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BBC News once again ignores abuse of Israeli humanitarian aid to Gaza - by Hadar Sela

...With its audiences being repeatedly steered towards the inaccurate belief that all the economic and humanitarian problems in the Gaza Strip are attributable to Israeli counter-terrorism measures, it is significant that once again the BBC has shown no interest in reporting a story which clarifies why such measures are necessary.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 November '18..

On November 22nd the Israel Security Agency announced that it had uncovered attempts by Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to establish a terror network in Judea and Samaria. The plot included exploitation of Israel’s humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“The Hamas operation was uncovered with the arrest of Oweis Rajoub, 25, an alleged member of the terrorist group from the Palestinian village of Dura, near Hebron, on September 23, the Shin Bet said.

The goal of the West Bank cells was to conduct large terror attacks against Israeli military and civilians targets at the same time as rockets and mortar shells were being fired from the Gaza Strip, in order to challenge Israel on two fronts simultaneously, the internal security service said. […]

The coordination and planning between the operatives in the West Bank and Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip were conducted, in part, by Palestinians travelling from the coastal enclave to hospitals in Israel. Gazan businessmen with permits allowing them to travel to the West Bank were also reportedly found to have passed messages between the two groups. […]

In August, Rajoub received a cellphone from his Hamas handlers. A few days later, he was told to go to Bethlehem to meet with a woman who gave him “trousers into which a cloth strip had been sewn on which instructions for using his phone had been written,” the Shin Bet said.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise? BBC World Service radio programme presents an inverted portrayal of Gaza rocket attacks - by Hadar Sela

...Obviously the basic editorial aim behind this item – which Ben James had told listeners was “your guide to the important stuff happening now” – was to promote a sense of false equivalence between the actions of terrorist groups deliberately targeting civilians and a regular army targeting the assets of those terrorist organisations. In promoting that aim the producers of this programme blithely sacrificed the accuracy and impartiality to which the BBC claims to adhere as well as the first of the corporation’s public purposes.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
16 November '18..

As we saw in a previous post, the lead item in the November 13th edition of the BBC World Service radio programme OS – formerly ‘Outside Source’ – was described in its synopsis thus:

“It’s the heaviest exchange of aerial fire between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants since the full-blown conflict in 2014. The violence follows an Israeli special forces operation inside Gaza which went wrong late on Sunday, causing the deaths of Palestinian militants and an Israeli soldier. We hear from local people living in Gaza.”

After listeners had been given some bizarre and entirely one-sided ‘context’ to that story (with no mention whatsoever of the fact that Hamas has been attacking Israeli civilians with rockets and mortars for 17 years), presenter Ben James introduced his first inadequately identified interviewee in what he had previously described as “your guide to the important stuff happening now”.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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They’re quite willing to exploit the death of the heroic Officer “M,” who gave his life for the State of Israel - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...So you have to look to see if they are quoting an actual, credible Israeli official saying that it was botched. None of the outlets have that. The evidence just isn’t there. So clearly, they just want to smear Israel. And they’re quite willing to exploit the death of the heroic Officer “M,” who gave his life for the State of Israel, to do so. They simply have no shame.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elderof Ziyon..
15 November '18..

Officer “M” was killed in an operation so secret, we’re not allowed to know his name. By all accounts, the operation was important and Officer “M” was a hero. Why then, is the media rushing to call the operation “botched?”
Reuters:

It's like a contagious disease, this word "botched." Yet there is no proof that the operation was not a success.

None of these articles carry quotes from Israeli officials to the effect that the operation was “botched." Probably because it wasn't. Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, the IDF spokesperson, to the contrary said, "We are talking about an operation that was well-planned right down to the smallest of details. It is the sort of thing that takes place every night, and in most instances remains under the media's radar.”

This time, added Manelis, the soldiers had found themselves in a "very complicated situation.”

In no way does anything Manelis said suggest the operation was “botched.” Something happened. That doesn’t mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. That someone died does not mean the operation didn’t achieve its goal. There is just not enough information out there for us to come to that conclusion or to any conclusion at all.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Anyone surprised that NY Times creates a false equivalence between Hamas and Israeli rockets?

Why does the New York Times pretend Israeli civilians are "caught up in the fighting" between Hamas and Israel instead of acknowledging that Hamas targets Israeli civilians? Perhaps because that gets in the way of the newspaper's preferred "both sides" narrative.

CAMERA..
13 November '18..

The New York Times often downplays Palestinian extremism or violence if the emphasis can’t be placed on Israel, Israeli counterattacks, or Israeli blame for ongoing violence. A case in point is the attention given to the escalating violence from the Gaza Strip.

From start to finish, today’s Times article about fighting between Hamas and Israel downplays the extent of Hamas violence while suggesting Israel is responsible for the group’s rocket attacks. Meanwhile, Israeli retaliatory strikes on Hamas targets are portrayed as being no different than the Hamas’s indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians — largely because the article fails to mention even once that Hamas is a terror group, that it is sworn to Israel’s destruction, or that the rockets it fires are indiscriminately lobbed toward Israeli civilians in their towns and cities in violation of international law.

The piece’s opening paragraphs set the tone, with the reporter suggesting Israeli responsibility by insinuating Israel’s prime minister is failing to prevent pointless shooting:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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