Exposing the lie about Palestinian journalists

(David Collier just published a report on journalists in Gaza. http://tinyurl.com/ye9v9nt4  Some headlines of his article are reproduced here. It makes compelling reading)

 Hamas, NGOs, and key media figures have been spreading an antisemitic conspiracy about Israel killing journalists in Gaza to silence them. Some well-known skewed ‘journalists’ like Alex Crawford at Sky News are consistently posting about journalists being killed. In this post she references 109 journalists dead – simply parroting raw Hamas propaganda

 While Hamas (and activist journos like Crawford) are claiming 109+ have died, the American NGO ‘Committee for Protecting Journalists’ (CPJ) claim it is about 70.

 I took these lies as a challenge and did what I do best; I went looking for the social media accounts of the 107 journalists who had been named (to 4/1/24). I successfully found 100 of them. Today in the report I am publishing the results of what I found.

Working backwards to confirm journalists

It is impossible to overstate how bad the information circulating about these journalists is. It is easy to be dismissive and say that ‘Hamas’ lie, but many people have bought into this fiction, which is why I needed to address it. I focused on the CPJ list because it is given far more credit and legitimacy in the west. Having researched it thoroughly, the CPJ deserve nothing but shame.

What is effectively happening is that Hamas is making up stories in Gaza and using its international anti-Israel network to take the lies viral. Western media figures sympathise with the story of the dead journalists and rush to stand in solidarity with their ‘brave fallen colleagues’. Western NGOs (like the CPJ) take the exaggerated Hamas figure, dust off a few of the more obvious fake ones, and hold up the rest as genuine. That act of ‘professionalism’ earns them airtime with global news outlets such as the BBC. The whole thing is bogus.

Hamas operatives as journalists

Half of the people that the CPJ list as journalists work for Hamas or Islamic Jihad channels. The CPJ admit some do, but either from ignorance or laziness they appear unaware of the others. In any case they still list them all as journalists. This is in direct breach of the CPJ’s own guidelines which says working for terrorist groups (they call them militants) should discount them. The situation is absurd.

Hassuna Salim has his own Telegram Channel. On the morning of 7 October he made 100s of celebratory posts. But he also posted a call from the Islamic Jihad for everyone to rise up, grab their weapon and fight. Calls such as these were the driver for 100s of ‘civilians’ to cross into Israel and rape and murder Israelis.

It is an offensive lie to refer to this person as a journalist. This is what the CPJ are protecting. It is disgraceful.

Because the CPJ did not research properly, the entire CPJ list was full of errors and the report gives dozens of examples. It also means that to the CPJ the subject never became a real person. It is how I know many of those included in the lists are not journalists at all.

By linking to their social media, I could see their images, their connections, and the real-world ‘flavour’ of the account.

For example, Mohamed Ayash made a post in June mourning the loss of his best friend. In July, when he had a baby, he even named the baby after his friend. His best friend’s name was Mohieddin al-Sadoudi – a Hamas terrorist – who died in a training accident.

Time after time I saw brothers, cousins, fathers, and sons of these ‘journalists’ posting images of themselves with weapons, images of Hamas material, or images of dead ‘martyr’ relatives.

Another part of the report shows how many of these people supported terrorist attacks that murdered innocent civilians. In total around 70% did. Which means there are examples of 54 ‘journalists’ who posted multiple celebrations– posted as seven Israelis were slaughtered outside a synagogue in Jerusalem on January 27 2023.

The report runs to 150 pages and includes many examples / issues not covered here. It is full of evidence and there is far too much to cover in a single article. The bottom line is simple; Israel is not targeting journalists. This is just another antisemitic lie going mainstream.

The report is downloadable here.