A “secret” Facebook group of foreign correspondents and human rights activists quickly devolved into an anti-Israel hate-fest on Tuesday following the release of a new Israeli government report that cleared the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of wrongdoing in the 2000 death of a Palestinian boy.So the anti-Israel media and "human rights" officials get all chummy and reinforce each others' lies, and they say that the IDF controls the media?
The Israeli government report contests the claim that the IDF killed a Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, in a famous 2000 incident in Gaza that helped ignite the Second Intifada.
Journalists and activists mocked the report, attacked the IDF, and claimed pro-Israel lobbyists were influencing the media coverage, in a private Facebook group for foreign correspondents known as the “Vulture Club.”
Peter Bouckaert, a senior official at Human Rights Watch, dismissed the report as “typical IDF lies.”
“As usual, it takes them a long time to really build up the falsehood,” wrote Bouckaert.
Bouckaert also blasted the New York Times for its coverage of the report.
“It really isn’t good journalism to write this up as if these are credible allegations when it is a pack of lies,” he wrote.
Correspondents from numerous outlets, including the Associated Press and the Agence France-Presse, also piled on.
“[T]he lobby uses all its strength and is able to push anything in majors [sic] English newspapers or in the NYT[imes],” wrote El Mundo reporter Javier Espinosa. “Israeli embassies call their contacts in all those newspapers and they agree to publish that information.”
“That reinforces lack of media credibility and conspiracy theories as we are being used as mouthpieces for propaganda,” Espinosa added.
Associated Press photojournalist Jerome Delay wrote, “The IDF thinks the earth is flat, btw.”
(h/t Noah)