404 Journalism

An anti-Semitic press lies to destroy Israel

Last week, Palestinians bombed the parking lot of al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, which is run by the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem. Christians founded the hospital in 1882. While press reports claim it was an errant missile, Palestinians blamed Israel too harshly and too quickly to be anything but another deliberate sacrifice of Palestinians to the Palestinian god of war.

That the hospital itself was spared showed unusual restraint on the part of Palestinians, who generally have no problem killing their own women and children. Perhaps they had not had time to move whatever war materiel they stored inside the facility. The horror was meant to keep Israel from full retaliation for Palestinian war crimes. Terrorosm works because after 50 years of terrorizing Israel, Palestinians are still there as Israel cares more about world opinion than its own safety.

The English-speaking press gladly accommodates Palestinian terrorism because the press now sees itself as an academic enterprise rather than a trade. Master’s degrees in journalism now dominate the hiring at newspapers. Newspapers prefer degrees from prestigious schools, which always made me smirk because if you have a degree from Harvard, why are you working for peanuts at the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia?

But that background explains why the press promotes Palestinian terrorism against Israel. American universities are citadels of anti-Semitism. Liberals have bestowed victimhood upon the terrorists. Foolishly, I believe, because they will turn on liberals before liberals have the chance to turn on them. Terrorism is by definition a cut-throat enterprise.

American journalists blissfully ignore this as they carry the water for Palestinians.

When Palestinians bombed the parking lot of Christian hospital in Gaza, every single major news outlet in America blamed Israel and said the missile destroyed a hospital.

The New York Times ran a file photo of damage and not the parking lot because the Times always casts Israel in the worst light. The story said the missile killed 500 people. The reality is 10-20 people died, a significant number but nowhere near the carnage NYT editors fantasized and hoped for thousands of miles from the frontline.

That AP blamed Israel is revenge reporting. AP knows firsthand that Israel uses precision bombing and warns innocents to leave. Two summers ago, Israel gave AP an hour’s notice to evacuate its offices in Gaza City because the IDF was blowing it up because the building housed the Palestinian military’s intelligence apparatus. AP knows Israel would never bomb a hospital — and certainly not without warning.

Despite this, AP blamed Israel knowing first impressions matter in propaganda because once said, the lie never dies.

When the press must report a Palestinian war crime, it blames Hamas, but Hamas is a bogeyman meant to take the blame for Palestinians, as if there were a difference. When Israel gave Gaza to Palestinians, they elected a Hamas government because the reality is Palestinians want to kill all the Jews, as well as the Arabs and Muslims who live in Israel (about one-quarter of the population).

I have stopped playing that Hamas game.

The Palestinian attack took months to plan and was well-financed.

The Jerusalem Post reported, “Israel's Shin Bet security service and Police force jointly interrogated six detainees from Gaza who participated in the destruction and mass murder of October 7, 2023.

“The footage from the interrogation was released on Monday and showed selected clips from six separate interrogations.

“Each terrorist had a slightly different experience, but Israeli intelligence forces noted a number of common themes. All the Hamas agents were given explicit instructions to kill and kidnap civilians including the elderly along with women and children. While they did this, their commanders stayed behind in Gaza.

“One of the terrorists told Israeli forces that ‘whoever brings a hostage back [to Gaza] gets $10,000 and an apartment.’

“They said that the plan had been to take over the towns they attacked and hold positions there once they had finished killing and kidnapping the residents.”

Israel does none of those things and yet the American press treats Israel as the bad guy. The press decries Israel withholding water and other supplies to pressure Palestinians to release those $10,000 hostages but fail to criticize Palestinians for taking hostages.

And why do the Palestinians still rely on Israel for the basics after nearly 20 years of independence and billions of dollars in aid? Is farming forbidden under the sharia law that governs Palestinians? A reader said AK-47s make terrible plows.

News outlets in America are trying to show regret about being caught in a lie about that hospital. They do so without accepting responsibility for their erroneous reporting. The New York Times refused to apologize or even admit an error. It published its excuse on Monday:

“On Oct. 17, The New York Times published news of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza City, leading its coverage with claims by Hamas government officials that an Israeli airstrike was the cause and that hundreds of people were dead or injured. The report included a large headline at the top of The Times’s website.

“Israel subsequently denied being at fault and blamed an errant rocket launch by the Palestinian faction group Islamic Jihad, which has in turn denied responsibility. American and other international officials have said their evidence indicates that the rocket came from Palestinian fighter positions.

“The Times’s initial accounts attributed the claim of Israeli responsibility to Palestinian officials, and noted that the Israeli military said it was investigating the blast. However, the early versions of the coverage — and the prominence it received in a headline, news alert and social media channels — relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.

“The Times continued to update its coverage as more information became available, reporting the disputed claims of responsibility and noting that the death toll might be lower than initially reported. Within two hours, the headline and other text at the top of the website reflected the scope of the explosion and the dispute over responsibility.

“Given the sensitive nature of the news during a widening conflict, and the prominent promotion it received, Times editors should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified. Newsroom leaders continue to examine procedures around the biggest breaking news events — including for the use of the largest headlines in the digital report — to determine what additional safeguards may be warranted.”

Excuses, excuses, excuses. They ran an unverified report that tidily fit their narrative, but not the facts.

They said Israel bombed a hospital. It did not. That warrants a full apology, but NYT has no honor nor does it care about the truth.

After covering every American war since the Mexican War, NYT should know better than to chose sides, but it does because it is pushing its politics. It favors Ukraine because it supports the corruption, bribery and money-laundering that feeds Democrats and RINOs.

It sides with Palestinians in this war because despite the lineage of its nepotistic string of publishers, NYT is now hopelessly anti-Semitic.

Despite flat-out lying without consequence, the press is demanding special privileges. Axios reported, “At least 23 journalists have been killed in the first two weeks of the Hamas-Israel war, according to the latest tally from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Many others have been reported missing or injured.”

19 are Palestinians, which raises the question of what is a journalist. Are they reporters or are they just gathering information for the Palestinian military?

The journalist complaints are directed at Israel, not Palestinians.

Axios said, “Reuters Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni on Monday called on Israeli authorities to conduct an investigation into his death, noting; ‘Eyewitnesses at the scene said the shell that killed [a videographer] came from Israel.’”

How dare Reuters demand Israel take the time from its fight for survival to investigate its complaint?

Axios also said, “The National Press Club urged U.S. government officials, as they meet with the Israeli government, to ‘raise the issue of journalist safety for the protection of all journalists working in the field.’”

If the area is unsafe for their employees, Reuters and the rest should not send them in. The union should file a complaint with OSHA over the lack of workplace safety. Coal miners must be licensed in safety. Why not war correspondents?

Note these journalists are not complaining to Palestinians, the people who started this war with rapes, beheadings and burning people alive. Only Israel must play by this set of arbitrary rules of engagement that even the American military does not abide by.

The more one-sided the stories, the less I consider the story tellers to be journalists and the less I care what happens to them.

For real journalism, always turn to actor James Woods.

To err is human.

To err continually in favor of evil is Satanic.