Vapor stories

Even though the Palestinian Arab press will wildly exaggerate and completely mislead with their stories, usually there is some real event that happened that caused them to light up their imaginations.

Sometimes, though, I cannot find that real event.

Two recent cases, in which the first one sounds somewhat realistic and the second one a bit less so:

Yesterday, Firas Press wrote an article - which they said came from Yediot Aharonot - saying that Hamas was found to have been using Facebook as an intelligence tool, as IDF soldiers would inadvertantly be placing classified information and photos on their Facebook pages.

YNet did have two recent Facebook stories: one that the Defense Ministry warned against exactly this type of occurrence last April, and one where the IDF would use Facebook to find girls who claimed religious exemptions from the army doing decidedly non-religious activities.

It is possible that Hamas read the April article and decided to create a Facebook intelligence function, but I can't find any article saying that.

The second example is from today's PalArab newspapers where they claim that "Jewish extremists" went into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tried to attack monks and smashed wooden crosses in adjacent shops. (Palestine Press Agency helpfully illustrated the story with a picture of a bearded Jew praying, captioned "Jewish extremist.")

I can't find this story anywhere.

I did find that a Molotov cocktail was thrown into a synagogue in Lod and another one in Acre within the past few days.

Maybe they just mixed those stories up.