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53299
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: NY Times found no 7 October rape victims, reporter admits
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NY Times found no 7 October rape victims, reporter admits Ali Abunimah Media Watch 1 March 2024 The scandal is growing around The New York Times’ fraudulent “investigation” of mass rapes supposedly committed by Hamas fighters on 7 October – claims made by the newspaper that The Electronic Intifada thoroughly debunked in early January. On this week’s Electronic Intifada livestream we looked at some of the latest developments – in particular the revelation that Anat Schwartz, one of the two Israeli propagandists who assisted lead New York Times reporter Jeffrey Gettleman, apparently endorsed extreme anti-Palestinian views. You can watch that segment above. The third writer, Adam Sella, turns out to be a fresh graduate with little journalistic experience, and is the nephew of Schwartz’s partner, heightening concerns about nepotism and conflict of interest at the so-called newspaper of record. Schwartz herself has never been a reporter, but advertises herself as a filmmaker. As we explain, Schwartz and Sella convinced one woman to hand over a video that they believed would boost the evidence-free claims of rape by telling her it would help Israeli propaganda – or hasbara. “At first I didn’t consider it meaningful, I didn’t understand how important it was, but they didn’t give up. They called me again and again and explained how important this is to Israeli hasbara,” the woman told Israeli news outlet Ynet. Revelations keep coming Since Wednesday’s livestream, more explosive revelations have come out about the scandal around the now notorious New York Times article published in late December with the provocative title “‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” On Wednesday, The Intercept reported on an interview Schwartz gave in Hebrew to a podcast produced by Israel’s Channel 12. Schwartz admitted in the 3 January podcast that “I have no qualifications” to conduct such a sensitive and complex journalistic assignment. Also in that interview, “Schwartz details her extensive efforts to get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her inability to get a single confirmation from any of them,” The Intercept reports. Schwartz contacted 11 specialized facilities at Israeli hospitals that treat potential survivors of rape and sexual assault, but to no avail. “First thing I called them all, and they told me, ‘No, no complaint of sexual assault was received,’” she said in the Channel 12 podcast. “I had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. Like, I would go to all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of sexual assault.” She then followed up with the head of the sexual assault hotline in southern Israel, only to be told that there had been no reports of sexual violence related to the 7 October events. Times defends fraudulent reporting This total failure to find a single victim ought to have alerted the Times that the only story here was of a massive hoax intended to incite genocidal hatred and violence against Palestinians. But even to this day, the newspaper is defending its fraudulent reporting. Schwartz “was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assaults,” a Times spokesperson told The Intercept. “This however was just the very first step of her research. She then describes the unfolding of evidence, testimonies and eventual evidence that there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.” This spin cannot conceal that, in fact, Gettleman, Schwartz and Sella never positively identified a single specific victim of rape, living or dead. Nor do any of their four “eyewitnesses” of alleged mass rape incidents have any credibility. The best they could do was imply that an Israeli woman who was killed that day, Gal Abdush, had been raped. But that innuendo has been rejected by members of Abdush’s family who say they have never been shown any evidence that she was raped. They also accused the Times of manipulating and deceiving them into taking part in the Gettleman-led story. At an event at Columbia University last month, Gettleman too backed away from his own reporting, claiming that it wasn’t his job to produce “evidence,” but that he was merely sharing “information” and working to “give people a voice.” As The Intercept notes, the statement from the Times in effect “walked back the blockbuster article’s framing that evidence shows Hamas had weaponized sexual violence to a softer claim that ‘there may have been systematic use of sexual assault.’” But rather than re-examining its reporting honestly and transparently, the Times has launched an internal witch hunt to root out staffers who have leaked their concerns about the fraudulent reporting of the Gettleman team. And clearly the newspaper is rattled. Speaking on Democracy Now Thursday, The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill revealed that instead of correcting its own egregious errors and deceptions, the Times demanded a “correction” from The Intercept. The Times’ demand was based on the ludicrous grounds that Sella could not be called Schwartz’s “nephew” because he is actually the nephew not of Schwartz but of her partner. Schwartz also broke her silence Wednesday, thanking the Times for standing by her fraudulent reporting. She also lied that she had only “liked” one anti-Palestinian tweet and that it was “inadvertent.” The role of independent media While The Intercept has done some important reporting, adding to the pressure on The New York Times, it comes late to this story. Weeks after The Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, The Grayzone and the popular Twitter account @zei_squirrel had debunked the “mass rape” claims, The Intercept was still credulously promoting them. “One thing is true: Hamas and other Palestinian militants committed unspeakable sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7,” begins a 24 December article in The Intercept by Judith Levine. “Yes, some individuals and extreme-left organizations have denied these atrocities or upheld them as justified resistance,” Levine claims, an appalling smear The Intercept should retract. What we did and will continue to do is report based on facts. Will The Intercept show the level of accountability it now rightly demands of The Times for spreading Israel’s deadly lies? |
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[53329] [53309] [53352] [53300] [53311] [53304] [53305] [53307] [53317] [53318] [53323] [53325] [53328] [53332] [53348] [53320] [53330] [53322] [53308] [53312] [53310] [53306]
53329
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: The NY Times story was false(NT)
| (NT) |
Responses:
None
53309
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Four days later ... U.N. finds hostages have been raped in Gaza
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What, are you presenting Hamas as innocent ? Why? ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR U.N. finds 'clear and convincing' information that hostages have been raped in Gaza A senior U.N. official also found “reasonable grounds to believe” accounts of rape and gang rape during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Image: The site of a music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip The site of a music festival near the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on Oct. 12.Ohad Zwigenberg / AP file SAVE March 5, 2024, 12:26 PM CST By Anna Schecter A senior United Nations official found “clear and convincing” information that hostages have been raped and sexually abused in Gaza and “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, occurred during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack led by Hamas. “Based on the information it gathered, the mission team found clear and convincing information that sexual violence, including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment has been committed against hostages," the U.N. said in a report, adding that it "has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing against those still held in captivity.” Pramila Patten, the secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, said in the 23-page report that she was unable to determine the exact scope of sexual violence that occurred Oct. 7. She concluded that finding the precise number of sexual assaults and identifying the perpetrators of such crimes would require a full-fledged investigation and “may take months or years to emerge.” |
Responses:
[53352]
53352
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Four days later ... U.N. finds hostages have been raped in Gaza
URL: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/15/claims-of-mass-rape-by-hamas-unravel-upon-investigation/
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i certainly don't know what happened ut here is a rebuttal to the rape claims... March 15, 2024 Claims of Mass Rape by Hamas Unravel Upon Investigation by Arun Gupta Image by Jakayla Toney Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks that resulted in at least 1,163 deaths, rumors began circulating that Israeli women were experiencing horrific mass rape and sexual violence. Months later, a position paper by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and a New York Times investigation convinced many observers that Hamas used rape as a weapon of war. But an investigation by YES! examining both reports, other media investigations, hundreds of news articles, interviews with Israeli sources, and photo and video evidence reveals a shocking conclusion: There is no evidence mass rape occurred. The New Yorker, New York Times, Associated Press, and The Nation treat PHRI’s paper as the gold standard for proof of Hamas’ rape and sexual violence. But the paper is shockingly thin. It lacks original reporting and is based on media reports that are dubious at best with no corroboration—no forensic evidence, no survivor testimony, no video evidence. During a two-hour-long interview that was heated at times, Hadas Ziv, director of ethics and policy at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), acknowledged numerous problems with the position paper she co-authored, “Sexual and Gender-Based Violence As a Weapon of War During the October 7, 2023 Hamas Attacks.” Ziv admitted credibility problems with sources and that she did not review all available evidence. She was “unaware” numerous sources had fabricated atrocity stories about Oct. 7. Ziv said, “Yeah, that’s a problem,” about a soldier she quotes whose claim of rape was changed by the government. She quoted volunteers from Zaka, a scandal-plagued organization that collected human remains after Oct. 7, but Ziv did not realize Zaka openly talks of inventing stories. When discussing claims that women’s sexual organs were deliberately mutilated, Ziv conceded, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you can’t say that.” While admitting “I did not know all the stories that you speak about that discredit those witnesses,” Ziv also lashed out: “I feel like I’m a rape victim that’s being interrogated.” YES! responded, “Not every interview is a friendly interview.” Further, the PHRI paper is riddled with errors small and large. Names are misspelled, quotes don’t match links, and an individual is misidentified. Ziv was unaware that the Israeli government alleges it has forensic evidence of rape, which it has not produced publicly. Most egregious, Ziv didn’t realize her paper counted one alleged gang rape as two separate incidents. The New York Times’ Dec. 28, 2023, story, “Screams Without Words,” has also been treated as proof that Hamas committed widespread sexual violence. The cornerstone of that report is Gal and Nagi Abdush, a couple killed on Oct. 7. The Times says Israeli police believe Gal Abdush was raped. But the only evidence given is a “grainy video” of Gal’s burned corpse, “lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed.” Gal became known as “the woman in the black dress.” The story blew up in the Times’ face. Surviving family members denied she was raped. PHRI references the video of Gal Abdush as evidence of possible “sexual abuse.” The Times mentioned messages that Gal and Nagi, parents of two children, sent to their family during the attack. After Gal was killed, Nagi sent “a final audio message” to his brother Nissim Abdush at 7:44 a.m., “Take care of the kids. I love you,” right before he was killed. But the Times fails to mention other text and phone messages that make it almost impossible Gal was raped. She messaged at 6:51 a.m. about intense explosions on the border, based on an Instagram comment by Miral Altar, Gal’s sister. Nine minutes later, at 7:00 a.m., Nagi Abdush called his brother Nissim to say Gal was shot and dying. Mondoweiss said Nissim told his story to an Israeli TV station. He said Nagi never mentioned Gal was raped, nor did Israeli police indicate to the surviving family that Gal was sexually assaulted. The Times never explains how Gal could be captured, raped, fatally shot, and burned to death in nine minutes while Nagi messaged his family and never mentioned any physical contact with Hamas forces. YES! spoke with Nissim and Neama Abdush, siblings of Nagi. They said Nagi called twice, first to say Gal had been shot in the heart and had died, and then his farewell call asking them to take care of their children. Neama said, “No, no, no,” when asked whether Nagi said anything about Gal being attacked or raped. In a follow-up call, Nissim reiterated the police did not give any indication Gal was sexually assaulted, but he refused to offer any more details unless he was paid 60,000 “dollars, shekels.” Tali Barakha, another sister of Gal, wrote on Instagram, “No one can know if there was rape.” The Dubious Dozen PHRI’s paper stated there is “sufficient evidence to require an investigation of crimes against humanity.” The New York Times claimed “attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7.” Yet there are extraordinarily few sources. Twelve individuals account for the vast majority of rape and sexual violence claims in hundreds of articles. Eight of these sources are in PHRI’s paper and six are in The New York Times report. Investigations by The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Straits Times, BBC, AP, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, The New Yorker, and various CNN segments all rely on a combination of these 12 sources. All but one of the 12 sources are connected to the Israeli military and police, such as the Home Front Command. Five of the sources are Zaka volunteers who told stories that smack of fabrications. Five other sources claimed they saw corpses that bore signs of rape or sexual violence. Not one of these sources was professionally trained to make such assessments, and nearly all fabricated stories, as described below.  That leaves only two people who claimed they witnessed rape. The government of Israel’s entire case for mass rape is built on two allegations: a source known as “Witness S.,” or Sapir, put forward by the police, and an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) special forces soldier, Raz Cohen. The soldier has changed his story numerous times, making it suspect, while Sapir’s account is so fantastical as to defy belief, as explained below. Even if all 12 sources are considered entirely credible, their accounts lack photo and forensic evidence and survivor testimony. At best they are unsubstantiated claims. As for evidence, two reports have thrown cold water all over it. First, Ha’aretz reported on Dec. 24 that Israeli police sent a court order to “general and psychiatric hospitals” to “provide information on the victims of sexual offenses committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7.” It was a tacit admission that police lack survivor testimony. The court order also undercut claims that alleged survivors were not being identified to protect them as unique details would make it simple to identify them. Second, an even more revealing Ha’aretz report published on Jan. 4, 2024, pointed out that “[t]he police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault or witnesses to acts from the Hamas attack, and are unable to connect the existing evidence with the victims described in it.” Police are so desperate they appealed through the media, without success so far, “to encourage those who have information on the matter to come and testify.” United Nations experts have provided some evidence. On Jan. 29, a U.N. envoy in Israel investigating sexual violence on Oct. 7 issued a plea through the Israeli president’s office for “victims of alleged sexual assault [to] break your silence.” It was met with silence. Then on Feb. 19, four U.N. experts said they “expressed alarm over credible allegations” that Israel had subjected hundreds of Palestinian women and girls in Gaza to “arbitrary detention,” “degrading treatment,” “multiple forms of sexual assault,” including rape, and “deliberate targeting and extrajudicial killing.” Extrapolating “Evidence” From Hearsay Much of the coverage of Oct. 7 is reminiscent of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Reporters have tried to glean “truth” from ambiguous photos and jumped to conclusions without considering other possibilities. An undressed corpse does not equal sexual assault. Clothes might be torn off while fleeing, in panic, hiding in brush, or dressing wounds. The New York Times recounted the death of the Evens family in Kibbutz Be’eri, using texts and photos. Caught in a fire, “they stripped to their underwear.” Soldiers later found “several half-naked bodies lying under a line of trees.” The parents and two teenage boys “had all been shot dead.” Similarly, metal fragments in a body does not equal sexual violence. A Reuters report on Be’eri, one of the worst-hit communities on Oct. 7, described how grenade blasts in a safe room turned screws from a sofa into shrapnel that punctured the leg of a 13-year-old girl. If she had not lived would that now be a case of Hamas sexual violence? Asked about the Reuters report, PHRI’s Ziv admitted, “OK, if there’s alternative explanations you can’t say that” it was sexual violence. Alternative explanations applies to nearly every sexual violence claim in the media. Head in Hands Two witnesses, the anonymous source Sapir and Raz Cohen, provide the most dramatic claims of sexual violence in PHRI’s paper, the Times, and other media. Sapir and Cohen attended the Supernova music festival and claimed to see gang rapes taking place 50 to 150 feet away from their hiding spots. The Times places them a few miles apart, meaning Sapir and Cohen were describing different assaults. In early November Israeli police showed a three-minute video clip with Sapir’s face blurred to reporters, but they refused to take questions and have since “declined” to release the entire interview. Reports on the three-minute clip and shorter excerpts on the web were all that was known of Sapir’s story until The New York Times interviewed her “several times.” The Times says Sapir is “a 26-year-old accountant” who “has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses.” The Times said Sapir was wounded in her back and feeling faint. She hid near a road covered “in dry grass and lay as still as she could.” She claimed to see a group of “about 100 men” involved in the horrific rape and murder of “at least five women.” The Times said: The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back. She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast. “One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road.” … Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women. Compare this to what is known of the police video. In a 52-second clip of the police video, Sapir claimed a woman standing on her feet was raped by militants and passed around. Sapir said a militant “cuts her breasts. He throws it on the road. They are playing with it.” Referring to the police video, the BBC added that Sapir claimed a militant killed the woman and continued to rape her. “He … shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.” One journalist who viewed part of the video said Sapir claimed “some terrorists were carrying heads in their hands [beheaded] as trophies, saying there wasn’t a thing [they] didn’t do to the heads,” implying that Hamas fighters were having sex with severed heads. Sapir’s story and how it changes between the police video and Times report raises many questions. How could she see 100 militants and numerous assaults while lying still, covered? How does one victim of rape become five? Why did one woman who was raped and had her breast cut off in the police video become two women in the Times story? Given such a slaughter—severed heads, hacked-off parts, blood sprays, and five mutilated corpses—where is the forensic and photo evidence? Why are there no witnesses who can verify any of her accounts, such as sex with severed heads and corpses that sound like they are out of Dante’s Inferno? The Times published a follow-up defending the Dec. 28 report after it was hammered for poor sourcing and lack of evidence, but it only raised more questions about flimsy reporting. PHRI’s position paper bungles Sapir’s story as well, citing it as two separate incidents. It is first mentioned in the “Victims” section as “a woman who detailed the group rape and murder of a young woman by assailants dressed in military uniforms.” Then, PHRI cited Sapir’s story again under “Visual Testimonies” as it is a video. Hadas Ziv admitted the mistake to YES!, but no other media outlets have picked up PHRI’s error. Changing Stories Raz Cohen, the second eyewitness to claim he saw rape, is a former Israeli officer from “the elite Maglan unit.” Neither the original Times report nor PHRI mentions Cohen is an ex-special forces soldier or that his story has changed numerous times. Cohen hid in a streambed with friends after fleeing the Supernova festival. According to the Times, he claimed to see a white van pull up about 40 yards away and five men drag a woman across the ground, “young, naked, and screaming.” Cohen said, “They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words. Then one of them raises a knife, and they just slaughtered her.” Initially, Cohen’s story was different. On Oct. 7, he described hundreds of terrified people fleeing Hamas gunmen across a field as some were shot and fell. Cohen and others hid for six hours in the bush as gunshots whistled above them and a battle between “our army and the terrorists” raged around them. In the next three days, a shaken Cohen described similar experiences in videos and interviews. He said people were “slaughtered with knives.” The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in an Oct. 10 story based on an interview with Cohen that, “Hamas militants stabbed a group of women nearby.” But he made no mention of rape or sexual violence. Then Cohen’s story changed. Later in the day in an Oct. 10 appearance, Cohen said on PBS Newshour, “The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that.” In an Oct. 24 interview with the Washington Free Beacon he also claimed a woman was raped and murdered. It is notable that Cohen’s story is strikingly similar to Sapir’s: multiple gang rapes, killing with knives, sexual assault of corpses. No major media has picked up on the similarities, nor that the number of victims appears to go from several to one. Since both Sapir and Cohen’s accounts surfaced, a different companion who hid with each one has since come forward. The Times interviewed both, and their accounts don’t back up those of Sapir or Cohen. There are other accounts of rape and sexual violence, but the sources can’t be identified or say they “heard” but did not visually witness rape. Further undermining Sapir and Cohen are reports on the massacre of 364 people at the festival. CNN, BBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New Yorker, ABC News, and NBC News reconstructed the killing field using photos, videos, social media, and interviews with dozens of festival goers. It was a horrific slaughter, but no one mentioned torture, sexual violence, or rape. Nor have police substantiated Sapir or Cohen’s stories despite possessing “over 60,000 ‘visual documents’ including videos from GoPro cameras worn by attackers, CCTV footage and images from drones.” YES! reviewed every graphic video and photo it could locate, including in a Telegram channel, Israeli government websites, and a five-part series of, frankly, snuff films. They show militants, brutal killings, and hundreds of corpses, but nothing like the scenes Sapir or Cohen described. Body Bags and Money Grabs The dearth of evidence of mass rapes has been attributed to Israeli government claims that religious concerns and chaos prevented the gathering of forensic evidence. But other reports indicate Israel manipulated evidence, forensics, and Zaka testimony that all create the appearance of a campaign of mass rape. Ha’aretz reported Zaka volunteers sidelined soldiers in collecting evidence after Oct. 7. [The] IDF decided to forego the deployment of hundreds of soldiers specifically trained in the identification and collection of human remains in mass casualty incidents. Instead, the Home Front Command chose to use Zaka, a private organization. A Nov. 12 Ynet report suggests why Zaka took the lead. An information specialist in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office boasted to Ynet that Zaka testimonies “had a tremendous impact on the reporters” by portraying Hamas as “human-monsters.” That bolstered Israel’s narrative that “Hamas is equal to Isis … deepening the legitimacy of the state to act with great force,” the official said. On top of serving as war propaganda, stories by Zaka volunteers appear invented. This author described in a recent Intercept investigation how Zaka officials say “we’re using our imagination” when they recount atrocities and “the bodies is telling us the stories that happened to them.” Western media is full of Zaka atrocity claims, nearly all of which are fabrications, dubious, or unsubstantiated. Even more shocking, Zaka was founded decades ago by Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, who allegedly sexually assaulted at least 20 minors over decades before being exposed in 2021. Meshi-Zahav and relatives reportedly used “shadow organizations” to divert millions of dollars from a nearly insolvent Zaka into a “slush fund” to finance “a lavish lifestyle in 5-star hotels and a multi-million dollar villa.” Ha’aretz reported that during Oct. 7 recovery efforts, a financially troubled Zaka used “the dead as props” for fundraising. In the process, Ha’aretz says, Zaka wrecked forensic evidence that could prove or disprove rape claims. PHRI’s paper includes testimony from two Zaka volunteers. After being told a few Zaka stories, Hadas Ziv told YES!, “I didn’t know that they are unreliable. … But maybe I’m just trusting people who tell the story as it is and I don’t look into [it].” Reuters, CNN, The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, NBC, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post also quote Zaka volunteers with no mention of past scandals or present controversies. A Flood of Disinformation Remaining sources also have credibility problems. One is an anonymous paramedic with Unit 669, an elite Israeli search-and-rescue outfit. The soldier claims he found a dead girl, “14, 15-years-old teenager,” on the floor of a home in a kibbutz. She was “on her stomach, her pants are pulled down, and she is half-naked. Her legs are spread out, wide open, and there are remains of sperm on her back. Someone executed her right after he brutally, brutally raped her.” He first spoke on Oct. 25 with Republic World, a right-wing Indian news channel, his back to the camera. Ziv linked to a clip in the PHRI paper from the same interview that Eylon Levy tweeted the same day. A spokesperson for Netanyahu, Levy is a conduit of disinformation. In the full interview, the paramedic said a teammate “pulled out of the garbage” a 1-year-old baby “multiple times stabbed all over his body.” He also claimed there were “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses [with] the blood of the people that were living in those houses.” One infant was killed on Oct. 7, 10-month-old Mila Cohen, “who was shot while in the arms of her mother,” who survived. Needless to say, these stories appear to be fabrications as well. More significantly, the paramedic is typical of other major sources. Their claims are wild, there’s no other witnesses, no independent reporting, no photo or forensic evidence, no information about the deceased. Further weakening his credibility, the paramedic initially identified Kibbutz Nahal Oz three times as the site of the attack and translated its name as “River of Strength.” In Nahal Oz, at least 60 soldiers were killed and 12 civilians. Five family members were killed in one home, including two sisters, but they were adults, aged 18 and 20. Perhaps realizing none of the victims in Nahal Oz matched the paramedic’s description, Eylon Levy changed the location to Be’eri in a tweet and trimmed the clip to cut out all references to Nahal Oz. When talking to The New York Times, AP, The Washington Post, and CNN, the paramedic only referenced Be’eri as the location. The number of victims changed as well, hardly a minor point, from one to two, to half a dozen, and back to one or two. When asked about how she did her research for the PHRI paper, Ziv said, “I checked every report that was available to me.” The Republic World interview of the paramedic was available to her as she linked to the short clip Levy tweeted out in the PHRI paper. After listening to a description of the paramedic’s false stories, Ziv said, “No, I didn’t see this one.” YES! asked, “So you didn’t look at all the evidence then?” Ziv responded, “No I didn’t, probably.” Ziv also said, “Yeah, that’s a problem” about the fact Netanyahu’s office altered the paramedic’s story and that he is an anonymous military source. Dead Babies Six of the 12 sources fabricated dead-baby stories, including Shari Mendes. A volunteer military reservist who worked in the Rabbinate Corps at the Shura military morgue in Central Israel for two weeks, Mendes helped “medics with fingerprinting and cleaning female soldiers’ bodies,” according to Reuters. On Oct. 20, Mendes told The Daily Mail, “A baby was cut out of a pregnant woman and beheaded and then the mother was beheaded.” Senior personnel at Shura, Col. Rabbi Haim Weisberg and retired Brig. Gen. Rabbi Israel Weiss, also claimed they discovered a pregnant mother killed with her fetus. Ha’aretz says, “This horrific incident … simply didn’t happen.” PHRI quotes Mendes from a Nov. 9 Times of Israel report. Mendes says, “Yes, we have seen that women have been raped. Children through elderly women have been raped. Forcible entry, to the point that bones were broken.” Mendes has also alleged, “We saw genitals cut off, heads cut off, babies, hands, feet, no reason.” She says, “This is not just something we saw on the internet, we saw these bodies with our own eyes.” PHRI cites Capt. Maayan, an IDF reservist and dentist at Shura, from the same article. The Times of Israel wrote: Maayan said on October 31 that she has seen several bodies that had signs consistent with sexual abuse. “I can tell that I saw a lot of signs of abuse in the [genital region],” Maayan said, using her hand to euphemistically demonstrate. “We saw broken legs, broken pelvises, bloody underwear,” and women who were not dressed below the waist, she said. The Times of Israel said Mendes is not “legally qualified to determine rape.” Likewise PHRI cautioned that “emergency and medical personnel who provided testimonies” were not “professionally trained to determine whether rape had occurred.” But PHRI tries to have it both ways. It cites claims of rape and sexual abuse from Shari Mendes, Capt. Maayan, the paramedic, Itzik Itah and Simcha Greiniman of Zaka, and its final source, Rami Shmuel, a music festival organizer. If these sources can’t determine rape, why include them? PHRI also says “the accounts they provided indicate the perpetration of sexual violence.” What qualifies them to conclude wounds are deliberate signs of sexual violence and not from weapons? When asked how Mendes could have known broken pelvises were caused by mass rape, Ziv said, “She doesn’t, she doesn’t. She can only say that this is what she saw. She can’t say this is a result of rape.” So why is Israel seemingly making untrained civilians the face of mass rape claims? At a high-profile U.N. session on Dec. 4, organized with the help of tech mogul Sheryl Sandberg, Mendes, and Greiniman testified and parts of Sapir’s video were shown. Greiniman, a deputy commander in Zaka, claimed naked women were tied to trees at the Supernova festival, he found a toddler with a knife stuck through its head, and he discovered foreign fighters—they left their IDs in their pockets. Why did Israel choose to present sources with some of the most bizarre and hard-to-believe stories to the world? Why have doctors, pathologists, or soldiers who recovered remains not offered testimony or documentation of rape, sexual assault, or other atrocities? Israel has produced videos of forensic investigations of Oct. 7 victims. Media were given access to document atrocities at the National Center of Forensic Medicine on Oct. 16. On Oct. 14, Reuters, Ha’aretz, and Politico joined a media tour of Shura organized by Israeli officials. Reuters reported, “Military forensic teams … found multiple signs of torture, rape and other atrocities.” Rabbi Israel Weiss, who helped oversee the identification of the dead, said “Many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.” Capt. Maayan said, “Forensic examination found several cases of rape,” according to Politico. But, according to Reuters, “The military personnel overseeing the identification process didn’t present any forensic evidence in the form of pictures or medical records.” Not long after, Zaka volunteers, Shari Mendes, and the Unit 669 paramedic began making a splash in the media. Little has been heard from the forensic experts since. Tali Shapiro provided research help for this story. This piece first appeared in Yes! Arun Gupta is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York and has written for publications including the Washington Post, the Nation, Salon, and the Guardian. He is the author of the upcoming “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: A Junk-Food-Loving Chef’s Inquiry into Taste” (The New Press). |
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None
53300
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: and they didn't find any beheaded or killed babies
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that Netanyahu and folks talking before the security consul of the un. |
Responses:
[53311] [53304] [53305] [53307] [53317] [53318] [53323] [53325] [53328] [53332] [53348] [53320] [53330] [53322] [53308] [53312] [53310] [53306]
53311
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: And then there's truth ... Dozens of Children Died Hamas’ 10/7
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(Does this exonerate Israeli activities in Gaza? No. It does not pretend Hamas is some sort of righteous organization.) Dozens of Children Died in Hamas’ Oct. 7 Attack on Israel, As we said, the U.N. has reported that at least 29 of the roughly 1,200 people who were killed in Israel were children. Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, maintains an ongoing list of officially confirmed casualties that includes 29 children. There has been extensive news coverage of the Oct. 7 attack and the war, including stories on video footage from that day showing “Hamas gunmen cheering with apparent joy as they shot civilians on the road, and later stalking the pathways of kibbutzim and killing parents and children in their homes,” as BBC reported. As we have written, Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine has been working to identify the remains of those killed on Oct. 7. Forensic pathologist Chen Kugel, the head of the center, said the ages of those killed ranged from 3 months to 80 or 90 years, according to The Media Line, an American news outlet that covers the Middle East. Kugel also told the Los Angeles Times that initially most of the bodies could be identified through DNA. Now, the staff’s work involves “reassembling and reconnecting pieces” of remains found in the landscapes where the killings occurred. For example, what initially appeared to be a piece of charcoal was examined through a CT scan, Kugel said. The scan revealed, “These were people who were hugging one another and burned while they were tied together. It might be a parent and a child.” |
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53304
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: US Media/Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of 'beheaded
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and I don't think president Biden has publicly corrected his lie about seeing photos of beheaded babies either. shocking, ain't it? MARCH 8, 2024 US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories WaPo: Biden yet again says Hamas beheaded babies. Has new evidence emerged? The Washington Post (11/22/23) said it couldn’t make a definitive assessment of whether Biden’s atrocity claims were true. But Israel’s official casualty list (11/11/23) had already debunked them. In late November, the Washington Post (11/22/23) factchecked President Joe Biden’s repeated claims that babies had been beheaded during Hamas’s October 7 attack in Israel. Biden’s remarks during a November 15 news conference triggered the factcheck: Hamas has already said publicly that they plan on attacking Israel again, like they did before, to where they were cutting babies’ heads off to burning women and children alive. Despite acknowledging a lack of confirmation of such atrocities, the Post stopped short of branding Biden’s statements false, and declined to dole out any of its iconic Pinocchios. “It’s too soon in the Israel/Gaza war to make a definitive assessment,” Post Factchecker Glenn Kessler wrote, noting that even the most basic facts weren’t yet known. “The Israeli prime minister’s office has said about 1,200 people were killed on October 7, down from an initial estimate of 1,400,” he said, “but it’s unclear how many were civilians or soldiers.” An authoritative count That statement isn’t true. While the exact number killed amid the extreme violence and chaos of October 7 may never be finalized, an authoritative count of civilian deaths—as well as data that definitively refutes claims babies were beheaded—was available to anyone with access to the internet little more than a month after the attack. That’s when Bituah Leumi, or National Insurance Institute, Israel’s social security agency, posted a Hebrew-language website (11/9/23) with the name, gender and age of every identified civilian victim and where each had been attacked. Two days later Bituah Leumi (also transliterated as Bituach Leumi) posted an English-language news release (11/11/23) publicizing the website as a memorial to the civilian victims of the “Iron Swords” war—Israel’s name for Hamas’s attack and Israel Defense Forces’ response. (The news release refers to “695 identified war casualties,” but there are no wounded; all the victims are listed as “killed.”) The journalistic importance of the memorial website was shown less than a month later, when Haaretz (12/4/23), Israel’s oldest newspaper, used the social security agency’s data to debunk some of the most sensational atrocities blamed on Hamas. ‘Proved untrue’ Haaretz: Hamas Committed Documented Atrocities. But a Few False Stories Feed the Deniers Haaretz (12/4/23) reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most sensational atrocity claims were “inaccurate.” Haaretz’s 2,000-word, English-language article was cautious, with allowances for mistaken and exaggerated reports from traumatized observers describing horrific scenes of carnage. But unlike the Washington Post’s factcheck, the Israeli newspaper didn’t pull its punches, flatly concluding that some of the claims of atrocities “have been proved untrue.” Chief among the claims disproved was that Hamas fighters deliberately slaughtered dozens of babies—beheading some, burning and hanging others. “According to sources including Israel’s National Insurance Institute, kibbutz leaders and the police, on October 7 one baby was murdered, 10-month-old Mila Cohen,” the Haaretz article stated. “She was killed with her father, Ohad, on Kibbutz Be’eri.” The child’s mother survived. In addition to a single infant, the social security agency’s list of victims includes only a few other young children. Haaretz’s reporters were able to determine the circumstances of each of their deaths: According to the National Insurance Institute, five other children aged 6 or under were murdered, including Omer Kedem Siman Tov, 2, and his 6-year- old twin sisters Arbel and Shachar, who were killed on Kibbutz Nir Oz. There was also 5-year-old Yazan Zakaria Abu Jama from Arara in the southern Negev, who was killed in a Hamas rocket strike, and 5-year-old Eitan Kapshetar, who was murdered with his parents and his 8-year-old sister, Aline, near Sderot. Haaretz also used the social security data to refute allegations made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Biden that Hamas targeted and tortured children: There is no evidence that children from several families were murdered together, rendering inaccurate Netanyahu’s remark to US President Joe Biden that Hamas terrorists “took dozens of children, tied them up, burned them and executed them.” ‘Details still sparse’ The Washington Post (12/4/23) acknowledged the Haaretz story the same day it was published, with a one-paragraph “update” inserted into its November 22 factcheck. While crediting Haaretz with doing a “detailed examination of unverified accounts of alleged atrocities disseminated by Israeli first-responders and army officers,” the Post downgraded the Israeli newspaper’s conclusion, saying only that “no accounts of beheaded or burned babies could be verified.” While the Post noted that Haaretz “could document only one case of a baby being killed in the Hamas attacks,” the update did not explain that the source of that critical fact was an agency of the Israeli government. Nor did the Post alter the factcheck’s inconclusive, mishmashed “Bottom Line”: Almost two months after the Hamas attack, details are still sparse on claims of beheading of babies. One IDF official says he found a decapitated baby; a first responder says “little kids” were beheaded, though an exact number was not provided. Forensic records that would document the cause of death have not been released. There also are reports of at least two beheadings of adults—a soldier and a Thai worker. First responders say they viewed these bodies. There is little dispute that many of the civilians killed by militants on October 7 died in especially brutal ways. But caution is still warranted, especially at the presidential level, about statements that babies were beheaded. The available evidence does not need exaggeration. An unnecessary retraction PolitiFact: How media outlets and politicians amplified uncorroborated reports of beheaded babies in Israel PolitiFact (11/21/23) retracted this story (10/20/23) because it didn’t include Israeli claims about mutilated babies that—according to Israel’s official records—didn’t exist. The Post wasn’t the only factchecker that wavered when judging reports of slaughtered Israeli babies. The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact retracted its story (10/20/23), headlined “How Politicians, Media Outlets Amplified Uncorroborated Report of Beheaded Babies.” PolitiFact took the embarrassing action after being savaged by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, better known as CAMERA. CAMERA, which Haaretz (9/5/16) described as “a right-wing media watchdog that routinely attacks news outlets over their coverage of Israel,” blasted PolitiFact as “unethical,” “sloppy and misleading” (11/8/23) for failing to include in its story all reports of mutilated babies made by Israeli military spokespeople, government officials and emergency response workers. PolitiFact (11/21/23) conceded “our initial story was incomplete,” and published a revised story (11/21/23) that included many of those comments. The new version also quoted an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson stating “that verified testimonies state some people were beheaded, but they could not confirm how many.” Like the Post’s Factchecker, PolitiFact drew no conclusions about the truth or falsity of those claims, declining to issue a rating on its “Truth-O-Meter.” ‘Details still emerging’ Snopes: Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza? Snopes (10/12/23) says it’s still too soon to say whether babies were beheaded on October 7, thought it promises, “We will update this story once more information comes to light.” The factchecking website Snopes (10/12/23, last updated 12/18/23) also declined to provide a definite answer to the question posed in its headline: “Were Israeli Babies Beheaded by Hamas Militants During Attack on Kfar Aza?” “At present, details are still emerging from communities affected in Israel, the death tolls are still being counted, and the manner of many deaths have not yet been confirmed,” Snopes stated. In one of eight updates, Snopes cited Haaretz’s December 4 “analysis of child deaths during the October 7 attack.” But, as with the Washington Post’s update, Snopes did not mention that the newspaper had used Israeli social security data in its investigation. FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, (10/13/23) did find that a Facebook video was correct in saying “that ‘no evidence has been provided’ for the viral claim that ‘40 babies’ were ‘beheaded’ by Hamas.” But a November 14 update, included in the story, quoted the head of Israel’s National Center of Forensic Medicine saying that “many bodies” of victims he had examined were “without heads.” But he couldn’t determine whether the decapitations were deliberate or the result of explosions. FactCheck has not published any more on the issue. The missing proof FAIR: Unconfirmed ‘Beheaded Babies’ Report Helped Justify Israeli Slaughter FAIR.org (10/20/23): “The claim about beheading babies was…a shocking story that served to turn off logic and critical thinking.” There’s a reason why the major factchecking organizations hesitate to pass judgment on the widespread claim of slaughtered babies: They rightly conclude that the lack of verifying evidence, such as photos or autopsy reports, does not conclusively prove the claims are false. FAIR contributor Saurav Sarkar made that precise point in his report (10/20/23) lambasting “corporate media” for “their repetition of the shocking, unsubstantiated claim that Hamas had beheaded 40 babies in its violent attack on a kibbutz in southern Israel on October 7.” “So we have a story, and that story was generated in a grossly irresponsible way, and then repeated over and over,” Sarkar stated. “But what proof do we have that the story is false? After all, even if it was reported badly, and repeated without additional substantiation, it might be true.” Bituah Leumi, the Israeli social security agency, provided that missing proof when it posted the official list of victims that showed only one infant was killed in the attack. The mainstream US news media ignored that authoritative evidence. ‘War on truth’ AFP: Israel social security data reveals true picture of Oct 7 deaths AFP (12/15/23) reported that data from Israel’s social security agency “invalidates some statements by Israeli authorities in the days following the attack.” The first major news outlet outside of Israel to use data from the social security agency’s website was the French wire service Agence France- Presse. The AFP’s 1,000-word, English-language dispatch, headlined “Israel Social Security Data Reveals True Picture of October 7 Deaths,” was picked up by France24 (12/15/23), the Times of India (12/15/23), the financial weekly Barron’s (12/15/23) and a scattering of small newspapers, including the Caledonian (Vermont) Record (12/15/23). The AFP story covered much the same ground as Haaretz’s analysis, listing the same slain infant—Mila Cohen—and five other young victims under 7 years old in refuting claims of wholesale slaughter of babies. While Google searches found no US mainstream media reporting on the Israeli social security agency’s data, several independent journalists did. Gareth Porter, an American historian and journalist whose credentials go back to the Vietnam War, cited the social security data in an article in Consortium News (1/6/24) that argued that the Netanyahu government sought to build support for the invasion of Gaza by “inventing stories about nonexistent atrocities and planting them with credulous US news outlets.” In February, Jeremy Scahill used that data to make the same case in a 8,000- word article, headlined “Netanyahu’s War on Truth,” in the Intercept (2/7/24), the investigative website he helped found. Both journalists credit the December 15 AFP dispatch as the source of the Israeli social security data. (Porter’s story provides a link to the Times of India; Scahill links to France24.) Earlier this week a third independent journalist, Glenn Greenwald (3/3/24), quoted the December 4 Haaretz report, which used the Israeli social security data, in a YouTube video, titled “October 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal & More.” Emotion-inflaming stories Al Jazeera: 0 Years Old--didn't reach their first birthday Media focus on the imaginary beheaded babies helped Israel get away with killing hundreds of actual babies (Al Jazeera, 1/25/24). In the months since the Haaretz and AFP reports were published, Bituah Leumi has updated its civilian death count to 779, including 76 foreign workers, as more victims are identified (Jewish News Syndicate, 1/15/24.). But a detailed examination this week of the 16-page list of victims on the memorial website found no additional infants or young children—only those already accounted for by Haaretz and AFP—and a total of 36 children under 18 years old. Mila Cohen remains the only infant reported killed in the October 7 attack. US corporate media’s failure to cite the social security agency’s data to forcefully refute claims of butchered babies and other outrages comes at a high cost. Such emotion-inflaming stories continue to foul the public debate over whether Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 30,000 Palestinians (AP, 2/29/24)—two-thirds of those women and children (PBS, 2/19/24)—is a criminally disproportionate response to the Hamas attack. Al Jazeera (2/29/24) broke down the Palestinian death count further, citing Gaza Health Ministry figures: The ministry said of the 30,035 people killed so far in the conflict, more than 13,000 were children and 8,800 women. At least 70,457 people have been injured, of which more than 11,000 are in critical condition and need to be evacuated. In January, when the Health Ministry had estimated the number of children killed at 10,000, Al Jazeera (1/25/24) published the names of more than 4,200 Palestinian dead under 18 years old. Of those children named, 502 were under 2 years old—that is, infants. Unfounded horror stories about Hamas’s infant victims that should have been debunked were still being repeated by Biden (12/12/23) at a campaign fundraiser more than two months after Israel was attacked: I saw some of the photographs when I was there—tying a mother and her daughter together on a rope and then pouring kerosene on them and then burning them, beheading infants, doing things that are just inhuman—totally, completely inhuman. This time the Washington Post didn’t factcheck Biden—even though the White House stated months earlier that the president had never seen such photos (CNN, 10/12/23). Still no Pinocchios. |
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53305
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: US Media/Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of...
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the apologists around here will either a. find an excuse, justify it as 'fog of war' b. attack anyone who points out the truth & accuse us of working for Hamas or being 'emotionally reactive' c. remain silent |
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53307
From: etc., [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: US Media/Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of...
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Bombs rain down on everyone’s head and they cry to their God “why have You forsaken me?” while at the same time ignoring their own hate that brings destruction upon themselves. Revenge and retribution. Both sides are their own worst enemies at the price of their own children’s lives. No land or power or win will fill that space or loss in their hearts. Yet they continue for generation after generation. Revenge. Retaliation. Retribution. Repeat… |
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53317
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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MAY 18, 2021 Israel/Palestine Coverage Presents False Equivalency Between Occupied and Occupier GREGORY SHUPAK WSJ: Israel Strikes Hamas Targets After Rockets Fired at Jerusalem The Wall Street Journal headline (5/10/21) presents the Gaza violence as a clear-cut case of aggression and retaliation. Media coverage of heightened violence in Israel/Palestine has misrepresented events in the Israeli government’s favor by suggesting that Israel is acting defensively, presenting a false equivalency between occupier and occupied, and burying information necessary to understand the scale of Israeli brutality. Corporate media have presented Israel’s killing spree as defensive, as a reaction to supposed Palestinian aggression. A Financial Times headline (5/10/21) read, “Hamas Rocket Attacks Provoke Israeli Retaliation in Gaza.” The New York Times’ description (5/12/21) was, “Hamas launched long- range rockets at Jerusalem on Monday evening, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes.” An article in Newsweek (5/12/21) had it that “Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets, and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza.” A CNN headline (5/12/21) said, “At Least 35 Killed in Gaza as Israel Ramps Up Airstrikes in Response to Rocket Attacks.” The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21) ran the headline, “Hamas Attack on Israel Aims to Capitalize on Palestinian Frustration,” which makes it sound as if Israel were simply minding its own business and Hamas lashed out for no reason. The Journal reinforced this impression by describing Israel’s bombing of Gaza as merely a “response” to and a “counterstrike” against the rockets from Palestinian resistance factions. Imagine for a moment that the entire history of Israel/Palestine began on May 10. Even then, Hamas’ rocket fire was a follow through on its promise (Ynet, 5/10/21) to fire rockets in “response” to and “retaliation” against Israel if the latter didn’t remove its forces from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah, where Israel has been attempting to force Palestinians from their homes and repressing the resultant protests, and from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which Israel had just raided during Ramadan, Islam’s holiest month (Jacobin, 5/14/21). More to the point is that Israel, and its forerunners in the Zionist movement, have been carrying out a war against Palestinians for over 100 years, so Israeli self-defense against Palestinians is a logical impossibility (Electronic Intifada, 7/26/18). As an occupying power, Israel does not have a legal right to claim self-defense against the people it occupies (Truthout, 5/14/21). Israel has been subjecting Gaza to a military siege for 12–14 years, depending on the metric one uses to determine the starting point, which has left the territory effectively unlivable (Jacobin, 3/31/20); a siege is an act of war, so the party enforcing it cannot claim to be acting defensively in response to anything that happened subsequent to the start of the blockade. ‘Both sides’ narrative NBC: Over 70 killed as Israel, Palestinians exchange worst violence in years — and prepare for more NBC News (5/12/21): “Both sides appear to be preparing for more violence.” Similarly, media have had a long-running tendency to amplify the view that violence across historic Palestine should be understood as roughly equivalent fighting on “both sides.” This remains a commonplace feature of the coverage, exemplified by NBC headline (5/12/21), “Over 70 Killed as Israel, Palestinians Exchange Worst Violence in Years.” A Washington Post editorial (5/11/21) was headlined “New Israeli/Palestinian Fighting Serves Political Agendas on Both Sides.” It said that “the worst conflict in years has erupted between the two peoples, with Palestinian missiles raining down on Israeli cities and airstrikes rocking the Gaza Strip.” A David Ignatius article in the Post (5/13/21) was headlined, “The Vicious Cycle Gets Worse for the Israelis and Palestinians.” The author wrote that Israelis and Palestinians “both” are “swept up yet again by the cycle of violence.” The word “clash” is frequently employed to avoid acknowledging that violence is overwhelmingly inflicted by one side on the other, as in headlines like Reuters‘ “Israeli Police, Palestinians Clash at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa, Scores Injured” (5/8/21). The headline gives no clue that 97% of the injuries were being suffered by Palestinians. The fatal flaw in the “both sides” narrative is that only the Israeli side has ethnically cleansed and turned millions on the Palestinians’ side into refugees by preventing them from exercising their right to return to their homes. Israel is the only side subjecting anyone to apartheid and military occupation. It is only the Palestinian side—including those living inside of what is presently called Israel—that has been made to live as second-class citizens in their own land. That’s to say nothing of the lopsided scale of the death, injury and damage to infrastructure that Palestinians have experienced as compared to Israelis, both during the present offensive and in the longer term. Amnesty International: End brutal repression of Palestinians protesting forced displacement in occupied East Jerusalem Amnesty International (5/10/21) declared unequivocally that “Israeli security forces have used repeated, unwarranted and excessive force against Palestinian protesters in occupied East Jerusalem.” The “both sides” approach, however, permeates the coverage. The New York Times (5/12/21) relied on a bogus symmetry between oppressor and oppressed, with Jerusalem bureau chief Patrick Kingsley writing: For weeks, ethnic tensions had been rising in Jerusalem, the center of the conflict. In April, far-right Jews marched through the city center, chanting “Death to Arabs,” and mobs of both Jews and Arabs attacked each other. In contrast, Amnesty International (5/10/21) documented: “Evidence gathered by Amnesty International reveals a chilling pattern of Israeli forces using abusive and wanton force against largely peaceful Palestinian protesters in recent days. Some of those injured in the violence in East Jerusalem include bystanders or worshipers making Ramadan prayers,” said Saleh Higazi, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International. “The latest violence brings into sharp focus Israel’s sustained campaign to expand illegal Israeli settlements and step up forced evictions of Palestinian residents—such as those in Sheikh Jarrah—to make way for Israeli settlers. These forced evictions are part of a continuing pattern in Sheikh Jarrah, they flagrantly violate international law and would amount to war crimes.” Eyewitness testimonies—as well as videos and photographs taken by Amnesty International’s researchers on the ground in East Jerusalem—show how Israeli forces have repeatedly deployed disproportionate and unlawful force to disperse protesters during violent raids on Al-Aqsa mosque and carried out unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators in Sheikh Jarrah. The Wall Street Journal (5/12/21) presented the Israeli police as neutral peace keepers, obscuring power differentials between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel: Israel is also facing an internal conflict, as pro-Palestinian Arab residents clashed with their Jewish neighbors in mixed towns, prompting the government to bring in border police troops to quell riots. The reality is that Israeli police have violently assailed Palestinian demonstrators across Israel. That the Palestinians arrestees have been denied legal rights and necessary medical treatment is also omitted. Another Journal (5/12/21) article referred to “Palestinian anger over what they see as years of efforts to push them out of Jerusalem and limit their access to land they claim, as well as infringing on their basic rights.” Yet these views are not simply a matter of “what [Palestinians] see as” discrimination. As Human Rights Watch (5/11/21) noted: Nearly all Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem hold a conditional, revocable residency status, while Jewish Israelis in the same area are citizens with secure status. Palestinians live in densely populated enclaves that receive a fraction of the resources given to settlements and effectively cannot obtain building permits, while neighboring Israeli settlements built on expropriated Palestinian land flourish. Israeli officials have intentionally created this discriminatory system under which Jewish Israelis thrive at the expense of Palestinians. The government’s plan for the Jerusalem municipality, including both the west and occupied east parts of the city, sets the goal of “maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city” and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain. This intent to dominate underlies Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution. Presenting as debatable the indisputable fact that Palestinians in Jerusalem are denied “their basic rights” is a form of “both sides-ism,” taking incontrovertible factual information about the status of Palestinians in Jerusalem and reducing it to merely one of multiple possible narratives. Important facts left out I looked at Gaza coverage during the first four days of Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket fire, focusing on the databases of the five US newspapers with the highest circulation: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Crucial aspects of what is happening in Gaza have been severely underreported. For instance, Israel closed Kerem Shalom Crossing on May 10, “blocking the entrance of humanitarian aid and fuel destined for Gaza’s power plant” (Gisha, 5/12/21). Kerem Shalom is also Gaza’s main commercial crossing, which means that the closure will further devastate Gaza’s economy, already in ruin thanks to the Israeli siege. Between May 10 and May 13, the five newspapers published a combined 114 articles that refer to Gaza. Only two pointed out that Israel has tightened the siege during the bombing campaign. The New York Times (5/10/21) ran an article that noted that Israel “shut a key crossing between Gaza and Israel,” but said nothing about the consequences of doing so. WaPo: Israel’s military assault on Gaza threatens to worsen the pandemic in the enclave In the first four days of the assault on Gaza, this Washington Post article (5/13/21) was the only report in a major US newspaper that mentioned that the Israeli government had blocked humanitarian aid, including Covid vaccines, from entering the occupied territory. A Washington Post report (5/13/21) quoted Sasha Muench, Palestinian territories director for the US-based humanitarian group Mercy Corps: At the moment, no goods or people can enter Gaza because the border crossings are closed. This means no medical supplies, including vaccines, can enter…. In addition, no fuel to run the generators can enter, and Gaza authorities are warning of increased blackouts, including at hospitals, and potentially having no electricity in Gaza at all within a few days. The latter is the only one of the 114 articles that mentioned that Israel has been blocking the entrance of humanitarian aid even more so than before it began this round of violence against Gaza. On May 12, the Israeli human rights group Gisha noted that Israel is “banning all access to Gaza’s sea space, a cynical and punitive measure that harms fishermen’s livelihoods and food supply,” and that this move is a form of collective punishment that is illegal under international law. Restricting Palestinians’ food access is particularly egregious, given that 68.5% of Gaza residents are already food insecure. Collectively, the five newspapers ran 88 articles that mentioned Gaza between May 12 and 13. Just one mentioned anything about Israel barring access to the sea, a New York Times piece (5/10/21) that said Israel “barred fishermen from [Gaza] from going to sea,” but did not point out that there is already a major problem with food access in the Strip that Israel’s move is sure to worsen. In fact, zero of the 88 articles mention that there is widespread food insecurity in the territory that Israel is incinerating. Thus, the enthusiastic cheers for attacks on Palestinians, coming from, say, the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (5/13/21), are not the only form of media misdeeds against Palestinians. It’s the inversion of attacker and attacked, or the flattening of distinctions between the two. It’s the burying of information that clarifies the scope of Israeli criminality. Such approaches can confuse the public about the differences between those who fight for liberation and those who fight to snuff it out. FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission. |
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53318
From: etc., [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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Sadly, you yourself promote the death of their children, both Israeli and Palestinian, by taking sides in the revenge retribution loop. And you can’t even admit what they and you are doing. It’s just like two drivers jumping out of their cars in road rage to fight, only to have their cars hit by traffic and killing their children inside. Totally mindless. |
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53323
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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dwhat would happen if israel gave Palestine their freedom and quit stealing palastine property. maybe hamas rockets would go silent. |
53325
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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But Charles, you read the Covenant. Hamas would not stop, the Palestinians must get rid of the hate mongerers and only they can do it. Then the moderate Israelis who understand societal problems are only perpetuated with military solutions, and there are better ways, must outnumber the militants. I'm not even going to address the religious extremists which are embedded in Israeli politics and the very word Hamas means Islamic Resistance Movement. How sick of war must people be to realize it is not the way? |
53328
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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the warning followed by the4 darkness. God has a solution. i have faith. |
53332
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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That's the problem. Both sides have faith and are willing to kill and die for it. And there's so much beauty in both, it is a tragedy for those who purchase it with their lost and injured lives. And of course, the generations of people who are raised in a black and white world and never know they are the rainbow that Noah saw. |
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53348
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: etc's False Equivalency Between Occupied & Occupier
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"And of course, the generations of people who are raised in a black and white world and never know they are the rainbow that Noah saw..." Oh, I like that. |
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53320
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: "Sadly, you yourself promote the death of their children"
| you are so full of shit, etc. |
53330
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: and you're one of the most toxic, dishonest people here -good riddance(NT)
| (NT) |
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53322
From: etc., [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: "Sadly, you yourself promote the death of their...
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You made this personal. And you are the most impolite reactionary emotional poster I’ve ever dealt with. How many times have you complained of posters calling people names and swearing? Then you turn around and do that same thing. But I don’t. I do not do revenge and retribution, name calling and use vulgar words. I truly see the children in Israel and Palestine being killed by their own parents’ hate and revenge tactics for years on end. If they truly wanted peace you would see both sides desperately working for it. Instead, they strike out, always hurting others and themselves in the process. It has become a Middle East mindset. You are stuck in the same mindset and pattern here in your posts. One sided. Blind sighted. Blaming others. And not taking personal responsibility or actually discussing serious situations and proposing viable solutions. Just throwing out blame and ridicule. Which is fruitless. |
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53308
From: chaskuchar@stcharlesmo, [DNS_Address]
Subject: israel is finally admitting that they killed many of israel 10/7
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i still think maybe half of those who died, military and police. they wanted captives, not to kill them. |
53312
From: mitra, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: israel or propaganda?
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Are you referring to friendly fire? Any link? How many of the purported 1200+ people killed by Hamas were actually killed by Hamas? What does the UN say? |
Responses:
None
53310
From: etc., [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: israel is finally admitting that they killed many of israel 10/7
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Charles, both sides have been victims and both sides kill and have for decades. This is their history. And that is what my post was about. And how they put their own children in danger every time they choose to retaliate and perpetuate revenge. I’m thinking God would want them to protect their children at all cost and break the revenge cycle. But they do not. |
Responses:
None
53306
From: Joe, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: US Media/Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of...
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How could glorious leader Joe ever lie? The truth finally seems to be coming out. |
Responses:
None
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