CNN becomes a mouthpiece for Palestinian propaganda

From CNN:

The official Palestianian news agency is reporting that Israeli settlers have chopped down and seized about 800 Palestinian-owned olive trees near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron.

The report, by WAFA, the Palestine News & Information Agency, cited "a local source," whom it did not identify. Israel has yet to comment on the report.

The source, described by WAFA as "a local activist," told the agency that residents of the Israeli settlements of Bani Kadim and Asfar broke into an olive orchard near the town and chopped down the trees, which belonged to people who lived in the area.

Really? CNN has sunk so low as to parrot Wafa's lies without doing a modicum of fact checking?

OK, how can we tell that this is garbage? By looking at the wording in Wafa. It says "Israeli settlers Sunday chopped down and seized about 800 olive trees belonging to Palestinians near the town of Shuyukh, east of Hebron, according to a local source."

What does "chopped down and seized" mean? 400 chopped down and 400 seized? Or did they chop down 800 olive trees and then put them onto a convoy of trucks to cart them away?

It takes a long time to chop down a mature olive tree. New saplings, which are often planted by Palestinians in order to steal public land, are relatively easy to uproot, but this says "chopped down and seized."

No photos. No videos. No named sources. No corroboration. WAFA reports a story that matches none of the normal standards of journalism- and CNN parrots it under the guise of only reporting what anti-Israel Arab media is saying.

But it doesn't stop there.

Also Sunday, more than 175 right-wing Jewish extremists entered the Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, escorted by Israel police and security personnel, according to sources inside the mosque. The sources cannot be named for security reasons.

175 is a much larger crowd than the usual 30 or so, and one would think that other media would have photos or video of such an event.

But there is no such video on the Waqf website, or at Hona Al Quds, or QPress YouTube page, which jealously show any video they can find of Jews walking peacefully on their holiest site, usually to aggressive screams by the Muslims.

The best video I could find from Sunday was a couple of dozen Jews who may or may not have exited from the Temple Mount, singing.

But there is one video that was taken from the Temple Mount today. It shows hundreds of Arabs screaming anti-Israel slogans!



Wow, I found more evidence for Arab hate against Jews in two minutes of searching than CNNs' scores of reporters found of Jewish hate for Arabs.