As has been the case since the barbarous attack on Israel by Hamas aided by Palestinian civilians, international organizations have chosen by their silence to ally themselves with the butchers instead of condemning the 10/7 attack. Canary Mission, which tracks anti-Semitism (and these days it’s not untoward to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, because it comes from the same fetid font: hatred of Jews and the globalists’ anti-nationalism) notes the silence of those entities from whom we were led to expect more:
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking as head of the WHO (World Health Organization); Amnesty, the International Red Cross, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur, Human Rights Watch, the EU Commission, Malala Yousafzai, chief of UN women.
Canary Mission is not alone in this observation.
Dr. Einat Walif:
In a better world, on October 8, the UN Secretary General, the head of the International Red Cross and other luminaries would have stationed themselves on the Egyptian border with Gaza demanding the full, immediate, and unconditional release of all the kidnapped hostages, insisting that Israel owes absolutely nothing to Hamas for the release of children, mothers, the elderly, and civilians because there is no world in which such acts are OK. Israel is forced to negotiate with the twisted leaders of Hamas for our children only because so many people in official and non-official positions of power failed to do their job and normalized the idea that kidnapping children from their beds and keeping them as bargaining chips is somehow a legitimate act that leads to negotiations rather than to stringent condemnation and global ostracism.
The "free press" can fairly be characterized as outright liars and enablers of Hamas. Hamas, as the world has long known, has used hospitals, mosques, schools, and ambulances in clear contravention of international law to store military weaponry, and hide and transport fighters. Israel claimed at the start something that everyone in Gaza -- including the UN personnel stationed there -- knew: Underneath the hospital was the Hamas operational headquarters and series of tunnels leading to and from the hospital. Major news outlets suggested strongly that Israel’s claim was a lie. After Israel took over the hospital and secured the underground, definitively proving how the hospital had been used by Hamas, including how it drained electricity and water from it to maintain its operations, how its terrorists took refuge there, and even transported hostages there. the lie had spread around the world. Why did the press do this disparage Israel?
Omri Ceren offers up as good an explanation as any:
Here's the thing about all those outlets that ran stories suggesting Israel lied about Hamas using Shifa Hospital as a military HQ:
1st, it was all of them.
2nd, it shows the incentives and disincentives that used to make journalism reliable have been nuked. They've been replaced by attaboys for whatever helps the home team win a couple of news cycles. The home team for them right now, weirdly but undeniably, is Hamas.
Incentives: Journalism wasn't designed so reporters could guide you towards truth. Mostly because they're bad at it, as the bulk of them don't know very much and the very best are still generalists. But also, because it becomes subtly corrosive in the way we saw during Trump, where they all convinced each other to print the same partisan line by telling each other it's the truth (which they'd be the last to know, because see above). Instead, journalism is supposed to be about facts and, more specifically, it's supposed to be a competitive industry where the incentives are about printing facts out before anyone else. "Scoops."
Which means that when you see them all printing the same thing, you can tell the incentive structure has broken down. [snip]
Disincentives: There was a time when having to print a correction was the most professionally mortifying thing imaginable. [snip] As journalism declined, and especially during Trump, they used all sorts of tricks with each other to take out the sting. Things that should have been "corrections" got downgraded to "editor's notes," and things that should have been "editor's notes" got downgraded to stealth edits. They had to, because they were simply making things up as they went along, and it wouldn't have worked otherwise. [snip]
For this Shifa Hospital news cycle, they ALL KNEW the Israelis would eventually publish evidence they were wrong. Everyone has known for a decade the hospital is a Hamas operation center. They did it anyway, because the stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side.
Ceren is right, too, that journalists “don’t know very much.” Hussain-Abdul-Hussain, a Lebanese-Iraqi at the Foundation for the Defense of Freedom examines the ignorance of the Washington Post writers:
The @washingtonpost gauges Arab public opinion using voodoo reporting. As the Post imagines them, the Arabs have no debate or division between different views (like here in the US, older folks with Israel, younger people with Hamas). The imagined "Arab Street" is one monolithic bloc that is in consensus over the "Palestine cause." Did the Post ask itself what would happen to Arab dissenting voices who think that the "Palestine cause" is a lie behind which all corruption and terrorism hides? Did the Post ever seek out dissenting voices to try to see why they can't say their opinions out loud? Garbage samples: "The prevailing view throughout the Middle East is that while Israel is doing the fighting, this is an American war." And this: "In Arab nations, where solidarity with the Palestinian cause has endured for decades."
You rarely in the press see dissenting views even from Arabs outside the control of the authoritarian thugs who rule so many of these countries. Nor is much play given to the words and actions of Palestine’s neighbors, none of whom are willing to take refugees from there. Did you know that Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al -Sisi made this proposal this week:
@EhabH91
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi proposed, "We are prepared to support the demilitarization of the Palestinian state, ensuring safeguards through NATO, UN, Arab, or American forces -- whichever is preferred.
This question should be directed to Hamas regarding whether they accept to stop the shedding of the blood of our people in Gaza.
Winner of the most stupid journalist of the week is Sky News presenter Kay Burley, who asked Eylon Levy, Israeli government spokesman, whether the fact that Israel had agreed to release 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for just 50 hostages showed that “Israel does not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives.” Levy explained that absurd question failed to acknowledge that this was the deal Hamas insisted upon, at which point the idiot presenter said the suggestion she had advanced was given her by an unnamed “hostage negotiator.”
As for the status of the exchange, Hamas released none of the American hostages -- 13 Israeli women and children, the women mostly aged and frail (indeed, Hamas had earlier reported one had died in captivity) and a number of Thais and a Filipino whose exchange had been negotiated separately with Iran by the government of Thailand. Not one American was released. Not one young woman. Not a nine-month-old baby, Other breaches by Hamas have occurred and more are likely. The deal required ICRC access to all the hostages to assess their health -- and whether they are even alive -- and this never happened. The IDF has surrounded the fighters in Northern Gaza and that was the line set by agreement. Hamas is trying to break this by encouraging young men in the south to come to the north (and probably by reprovisioning with stolen relief supplies).
Friday night in front of a loud cheering crowd on the West Bank a Palestinian mob bound two men by hands and feet upside down and blindfolded, claiming that they had communicated with Israel. The men were hung, one was dismembered, and their remains were ceremoniously thrown onto a garbage heap. It was all videotaped, certainly to intimidate every watcher. One of the men executed was Hamza Ahmed Hamza Mubarak, a 31-year-old Afro-Palestinian, a descendent of slaves brought there by Arabs whose descendants still suffer humiliation and discrimination.
As we go to press, Hamas is playing a delaying game by refusing to release the second batch of hostages -- remember these hostages include children and a nine-month-old baby. Israel has given them until 12 midnight on Saturday night to release them or the pause will be over and the attack resumed.
As Hamas delays, it and its allies are drumming up street mobs around the world, and posting ridiculously phony videos on social media, appealing to the credulous and partisan -- things like Hamas fighters wearing Israeli uniforms and bragging about stealing a necklace and demolishing a building, and more of the same Pallywood pictures of kids smeared with paint which they claim are the victims of “genocide.”
It’s time to wipe Hamas out, and follow the suggestion of Egypt’s president. These people can neither govern nor comply with the basic requirements of decency and international law, and they never will be able to.
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