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Israel justified its murder of Al Jazeera’s crew on the grounds that one among them, Anas al-Sharif, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, was secretly a “Hamas terrorist”.
Sharif, we are told, similarly found time between breaks from his 22-month, frantic reporting schedule - much of it on camera - to serve as a Hamas commander “directing rocket attacks on Israeli civilians”.
We now know exactly where this ridiculous story originated: from something Israel calls its “Legitimisation Cell”. The intelligence unit’s name, which was surely never supposed to come to light, is the give-away. Its job has been to legitimise Israel’s atrocities with stories vilifying its victims and thereby making the genocide more palatable to Israeli and western audiences.
The Israeli news website +972 exposed the cell within days of Sharif’s killing this month, reporting that it was formed after 7 October 2023 - the day Hamas and other groups broke out of their Gaza prison camp, spreading carnage, following 17 years of a brutal siege.
But while Israeli mendacity is entirely to be expected - after all, it is the whole purpose of its official hasbara industry - what astonishes most is the western media’s continuing connivance in promoting Israel’s litany of lies.
Germany’s most popular paper, Bild, published a front page that might as well have been written by the Israeli military: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.” No claim, no quote marks. Just a statement of fact.
The UK media was little better, with most outlets prominently featuring Israel’s unevidenced “legitimisation” smears of Sharif in headlines and coverage. Astonishingly, BBC coverage on its flagship News at Ten swallowed whole Israel’s framing of Sharif as a legitimate target - as well as uncritically peddling the presumption that Israel was targeting him and him alone.
The context that has been missing from western coverage is this: Israel has killed more than 240 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past two years - more than all the journalists killed in both World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the Afghanistan War combined.
This is a pattern - a glaring one - but seemingly one to which western journalists are entirely blind, even as Israel continues to bar them from reporting in Gaza, nearly two years into its genocide.
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Actual journalists won’t say someone is a murderer even if there’s a video of the person shooting a guy pulling out their ID and showing it to the camera and say “my name is ___ and I murdered this person”.
When the person is charged then they will be termed “alleged murderer”. Before there’s charges they’re termed something like “shooter” not murderer. Only once someone is convicted of the crime will they be called “murderer”.
Genocide is a much greater crime than murder. It’s not responsible journalism to make accusations like this. If a body like the ICJ convicted Israel’s leadership on charges, or maybe id the country the media organization is based in made a declaration, then a journalist will start using the word genocide.
“Alternative media” have no journalistic standards and will say such things to lead their audiences to conclusions. If you’re reading articles that are telling you how to think about a story, it’s not actually journalism. Real journalism is about telling people what’s happening, not telling people how they’re supposed to think about, and definitely not about making accusations in an effort support activist causes.
Regardless of the content of the article.
I want to remind people that the Middle East Eye is directly run by the Qatari Embassy in London
When Saudi Arabia and the UAE blockaded Qatar, the Middle East Eye started hitting them 24/7. Media organizations fund themselves in 3 different ways :
- Advertising
- Subscriptions
- Donations
Notice how the Middle East Eye has no advertising, no subscriptions, no donations.
Again, this is not an attack on the content. But people should know this is a state-run website.
Your article doesn’t provide any evidence or your claim. Nor does it debunk the article itself.
It would be very cool if Qatar was the only country doing actual journalism about Gaza, but from my reading of MEE I severely doubt it’s Qatar running the operation.
MEE writes plenty of critical reports about Qatar. They do almost always go very soft on one specific country though. And it’s not the one you named.
Are you going to remind us again when someone posts a BBC or PBS or NPR article?
They are so obviously and transparently bullshitting us and the west is NOT CALLING THEM OUT ON THEIR BULLSHIT ffs, this is blood-boiling to say the least!
Nobody cares what western citizens think. But esp if they oppose the genocide
Is it really the media at this point or is just that anyone with power is owned
Lets be real. The Israeli lobby has tons of money. They buy out the politicians and wield power to silence critics. Everything that challenges their power becomes ‘antisemitic’.
Yes yes, but what kind of framing is
the day Hamas and other groups broke out of their Gaza prison camp, spreading carnage, following 17 years of a brutal siege.
Sounds like an excuse to a terror attack with almost exclusively civilian targets. Why is it so hard for advocates of the Palestinian cause to condemn this attack??
Those civilian were not targets of Hamas (though I’m sure there was collateral damage); they were the targets of the IOF’s Hannibal Directive.
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You mean> 90% military targets according to Western standards, of which more than 33% on active military duty?
Just look at the West Bank and find out what non violent resistance leads to.
You must not be used to being provided with the actual context of October 7. Very shocking to learn that Palestinians were actually in a concentration camp for 17 years and broke out. I wonder why that part of the both sides story never gets reported.
That doesn’t justify attacking civilians, just like the attack on the music festival doesn’t justify Israel attacking civilians.
Yes, it totally does since every Israeli is a military citizen from my understanding
Mandatory military service is a shitty excuse to kill civilians.
lol no. You’re killing a person who has been trained to kill, totally fine by me
No they are not.
military service is mandatory for most Jewish Israelis. So yeah, buddy, I was right, stop trying to fucking gaslight people online, Israel is paying you enough?
Israel shouldn’t put a “music festival” next to a military base guarding a concentration camp. And especially not have armed active duty IDF soldiers using the festival as human shields.
Why did they attack the music festival?
Because the music festival was in between the path to a military base and should have already ended by that day.
Why did they attack more than 5 military bases around Gaza responsible for their concentration camp you ask? Or did the Western media not tell you about that?
They could have walked around it. The festival wasn’t the only massacre of civilians that day. This was not a military maneuver, it was directly targeted at civilians, specifically women and Jews.
Where’s your evidence that Hamas specifically targeted the killing of women & Jewish civilians? I think you have nothing but hasbara.
There were armed soldiers at the festival and it was next to a military base. Not sure what you think ‘walking around it’ means. Also “women and Jews” lol.
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Ok baby.
