Gaza-Israel Conflict | 2023-2024

Solomon2 said:
Abdalla al-Jamal was a ‘journalist.’ He was also guarding hostages for Hamas. Eli Lake for The Free Press.

A cameraman films while smoke plumes billow during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on October 12, 2023. (Mohammed Abed via Getty Images)

Why We Shouldn’t Trust ‘The Facts’ Coming Out of Gaza​

Abdalla al-Jamal was a ‘journalist.’ He was also guarding hostages for Hamas.

By Eli Lake
June 9, 2024
https://www.thefp.com/p/why-we-shouldnt-trust-the-facts-coming#
Imagine, if you will, living during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979. You come upon an article in a small progressive newspaper, describing how the CIA had a plan to poison the water supply in Tehran. Later, you learn that the reporter who wrote that piece was one of the people responsible for keeping U.S. citizens hostage at the embassy. You’d probably start doubting that reporter, his outlet, and whether news can actually be reported from inside the Ayatollah’s Islamic Republic.

Well, that’s pretty much what happened in Gaza.

After Israel rescued four Hamas hostages over the weekend, Israel Defense Forces said that three detainees had been held in an apartment belonging to Abdalla al-Jamal. Al-Jamal, who was killed in the raid that liberated Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, had been a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle. Since October 7, al-Jamal had published 16 stories for the Chronicle, an English-language news website and nonprofit registered in Mountlake Terrace, Washington, which has featured contributions from prominent progressive American intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky.

And al-Jamal’s articles read like a parody of Palestinian propaganda.

“Cries of Gaza Survivors: When Will We Rescue Our Children from Under the Rubble?” blares one headline. “Actions, Not Words,” featuring interviews with local Gazans pleading with Hezbollah to increase attacks on northern Israel, is another. For one of his last stories, al-Jamal covered survivors of what his outlet called the “Nuseirat School Massacre.” A Gazan named Ibrahim Ayad said that Israel’s strikes on the building that harbored between twenty and thirty terrorists were “the very definition of genocide.”


Photo of Abdallah Al Jamal shared by The Palestine Chronicle. ( @PalestineChron via X)

In an obituary, the Chronicle wrote that al-Jamal (who wrote a total of 107 stories) had contributed on a volunteer basis. But if the Chronicle ever paid al-Jamal for his work, they could be in violation of U.S. counterterrorism laws preventing any material support or payment to designated terrorist groups like Hamas.

Whether or not he was paid, Al-Jamal’s reports offer a window into the slanted coverage of Gaza in the western media. If one wonders why it always seems that every building hit by Israel is a hospital and every casualty is a child or a woman, the story of a journalist with a side hustle as a hostage guard provides some answers.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has said 108 reporters and media workers have been killed so far in the Gaza war. As the story of al-Jamal shows, the definition of “journalist” in a place like Gaza is loose to say the least. And yet that statistic has been recycled many times over since the war began, painting the picture of Israel as a criminal regime.

Hamas’s most effective weapon is the war’s high body count. According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health, more than 36,000 Palestinians have perished since the war began. That’s more than thirty times the approximately 1,200 people slaughtered by Hamas in Israel on October 7.

The Gaza Ministry of Health, like all branches of Gaza’s local government, is controlled by Hamas. And yet very few mainstream journalists have expressed skepticism about the statistics it publishes. During Israel’s raid, which freed four hostages, several outlets focused on the number of civilians that allegedly died in the process. One BBC headline, for example, said: “Gaza Health Ministry Says Israeli Hostage Rescue Killed 274 Palestinians.”

But recently, a Western report has cast doubt on the accuracy of one of Hamas’s key facts, namely that “70 percent” of Palestinian casualties in the war are women and children.

On June 7, the Associated Press published an analysis discrediting this claim. By combing through actual data behind the ministry’s figures, the agency found that the percentage peaked in late October, when 64.4 percent of 6,745 dead were women and children. That percentage dropped to 59.3 percent for casualties reported on January 5, then 45 percent for March 29, and 38.1 percent for April 30.

The total percentage of women and children casualties in the war so far is 54.3 percent. Adult-aged males are most likely to be combatants in wars. The AP analysis shows that the ratio between combatants and civilians killed in Gaza is closer to one to one, a figure much closer to counterinsurgency wars America and its allies have fought in the Middle East.

The 70 percent figure has become a key talking point for Israel’s opponents. It was cited prominently, for example, in a report by UN Women in January. Here is that figure again from an NPR story at the end of February.

The AP analysis is a watershed moment, said David Adesnik, the director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who has tracked the casualty numbers since the conflict began.

“This is a scrutiny that has not been applied by any mainstream prestige outlet until now,” Adesnik told The Free Press. “And it’s particularly important coming from the AP because they were among the most vocal in defending the ministry’s credibility.”

The AP analysis only goes so far. Adesnik pointed out, for example, that the agency still hasn’t examined how at least 10,000 of the total casualties reported from the Ministry of Health lack complete information like names, ages, and gender. Adesnik argues that these statistics were not based on reports from morgues and hospitals, but rather what the ministry initially called “reliable media reports.”

Which brings us back to al-Jamal. If the IDF is correct that the hostages were rescued from his apartment, then it indicts more than just The Palestine Chronicle. A Hamas-run ministry has relied on media reports in a place where many alleged “journalists” are helping the Hamas war effort. Perhaps the Western press should notice that its supposedly objective sources in Gaza are sometimes the combatants.


Eli Lake is a Free Press columnist. Follow him at @EliLake, and read his piece, “Rashida Tlaib Speaks at Detroit Conference Tied to Terrorist Group.”
Click to expand...


Liar Liar Yamaka on Fire!
 
That_Guy said:
Do you know what fundamentalism is? Define it for me.
Click to expand...





fun·da·men·tal·ism

noun

a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.
"there was religious pluralism there at a time when the rest of Europe was torn by fundamentalism"
  • strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.
 
Falcon29 said:
It's most certainly run by Jews. Christians in America are not practicing nor religious. They might seem slightly more conservative than Europeans, and hence get labelled as a religious society. It is not a religious society. It's highly secular. It's Jewish fundamentalism which drives these policies.

Christians in America hardly practice and don't even believe in most of religion. It's a projection of Jewish fundamentalism onto American Christians. To pin blame on American Christians that have no such aspirations. Once Jewish fundamentalism took over the church, is when this Israel worship culture began.
Click to expand...

You are right not only on the 'Jewish Fundamentalism' which manifests in various ways, the most ugly of which is the Zionism but you are also right on the Christians in America. They are, for the most part, 'Christians' in names only. Vulgar 'mega churches' cheering on wars. However, the influence of the Evangelical Christians as an idiotic and cruel pro-Israel force in America can't be ignored.

PS. Every year, and for the last many years, I am usually the only one who says 'Merry Christmas' during family 'Christmas Dinners'. Others exchange gifts, eat, chat a little and go home. (I enjoy Christmas because of all the lights / decorations on houses/streets, and a general slow down at work/relaxed time but that's it).
 
Ali_Baba said:
As yet - Intel has paused its investment - not cancelled it. Will the resistence turn that into full cancellation by reaching out and touching those factories ?
Click to expand...
It also requires BDS movement to target intel

If the pressure mounts and they get connected to war crimes etc we can break them
 
hussain0216 said:
It also requires BDS movement to target intel
If the pressure mounts and they get connected to war crimes etc we can break them
Click to expand...

I have a friend who works at Intel in America. He said after October 7, Intel made the employees contribute to help Israel! He is not a friend of Israel and resents that. He is a Vietnamese-American.
 
Meengla said:
I have a friend who works at Intel in America. He said after October 7, Intel made the employees contribute to help Israel! He is not a friend of Israel and resents that. He is a Vietnamese-American.
Click to expand...

Probably Zionists or Jews at the helm

But fundamentally it's a company that's requires profit and answers to shareholders, if we can hit them in Israel or make life difficult for them where their brand risks being tarnished then we can force change
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 23 (members: 7, guests: 16)

Pakistan Defence Latest

Country Watch Latest

Latest Posts

Share this page

Back
Top