Daily Beast and IBTimes lie in report about abuse of Palestinian child prisoners

From The Daily Beast, in an article written by Creede Newton:

Israeli jails are known to be brutal and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club, a group that campaigns for Palestinians arrested inside Israel, recently released a report saying that 40 percent of Palestinian children detained in Jerusalem have been sexually abused.

His link for the report goes to an article in International Business Times by Tabatha Kinder:

A justice group for Palestinians arrested in Israel has released an explosive report claiming that 40% of children detained by Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have been subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of Israeli police.

Around 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in Jerusalem since June 2013, the International Middle East Media Centre news agency reports. This means approximately 240 minors could have been abused during their arrest or investigation by Israeli authorities, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PCC).

That report links to Muslim News UK, which copied word for word an article from the rabidly anti-Israel IMEMC website.

The IMEMC made this up.

Even though the Palestinian Prisoners Club is run by convicted terrorists, and even though it is known to have made up plenty of lies about conditions in Israeli prisons, in this case the IMEMC completely misreported what the PPC had said.

Although I cannot find the original PPC report online - their webpage has been down for a while - their Facebook page has a summary of the report, and it was widely reproduced in Arabic media last week.

According to the actual report, 600 youths between 14-17 have been arrested by Israeli authorities since June 2013 - which are 40% of the total number of people arrested. The report further claims that the "bulk" of them were physically abused during arrest or interrogation.

Abuse!!!!!!

Nothing at all was said about sexual abuse. And even the allegations of physical abuse are probably based on asking them leading questions for which they know what answer the interviewer wants to hear. Any physical contact when detaining them becomes "abuse " according to these "rights groups." It would be crazy to expect reporters to actually check out the trustworthiness of a group of convicted terrorists when they release a paper, right? NGOs are sacred, they wouldn't lie! (In this case, the PPC is hardly even an NGO; its former head is now the Minister of Prisoner Affairs for the PA and they make joint announcements.)

In this case, IMEMC lied, as it often does. And lazy, stupid reporters like Creede Newton and Tabatha Kinder repeated the lies of an anti-Israel propaganda outlet without spending five minutes to check the facts independently.

So we have Western reporters outdoing an already suspect "rights group" in libeling Israel because they cannot do the most basic things reporters are supposed to do. One would expect that a true reporter would at the very least check out who the Palestinian Prisoners' Club is to begin with, and look up their actual report, rather than mindlessly parrot the lies of IMEMC.

But then that assumes that reporters have a modicum of interest in the truth.

(h/t Adam)