The Washington Post humanizes terrorists - and doesn't do basic fact checks

Washington Post reporters are very proud of themselves for scoring an interview with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades:

Zoufi is the commander of the camp’s branch of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terrorist group by Israel and the United States. He founded the armed militant cell just over a year ago as Israeli military raids spiked across the West Bank.

The Washington Post spent time with him and some of his 15 fighters, as well as with militants in two other Palestinian refugee camps — Jenin and Askar — over three days in July. The visits, agreed to on the condition that full names and specific locations be withheld, afforded a rare window into the lives and actions of fighters on one side of the worst violence to grip the West Bank in decades.

 ...Making contact with Zoufi and his fighters meant navigating a clandestine network of intermediaries inside the camps. After being handed off by a string of trusted escorts — walking along narrow lanes laced with sagging electric cables and papered with posters of slain fighters — the Post reporters were led to a room deep inside Balata Camp.

Several men there were eating mana’eesh, a flatbread with za’atar. Weapons rested in their laps or against the walls.

“Welcome. Yalla, join us,” said one man, known in the camp as Goblin.

It is exactly what we have seen countless times before - humanizing terrorists and trusting what they say implicitly while including the bare minimum of Israeli "claims."  

I found this paragraph interesting:

The fighters, who inspire both fear and fealty, enjoy cultlike status in the camp. There are no sports teams here. Male unemployment is nearing 90 percent. With few role models of any kind, boys collect stickers, posters and necklaces bearing images of slain militants.

The male unemployment rate in the West Bank altogether is 12.4% (2021). UNRWA says that for all camps, it is 17%.  This site says the Balata camp's unemployment rate is 25%. I cannot find any source that says it has an unemployment rate anywhere close to 90%.

The Washington Post does not provide a link to this statistic. It appears that someone they interviewed made it up and they parroted it.

And what, exactly, stops Balata's residents from finding jobs? It isn't Israel. Residents can move out of the camp and go wherever they want in the West Bank. They can get jobs in Israel the way tens of thousands of other Palestinians do. 

The only difference is that they have free housing, courtesy of the world paying UNRWA. 

Moreover, why is the camp still only a single square kilometer? Why doesn't the Palestinian Authority expand the boundaries so the people aren't so crowded? It isn't Lebanon, and there are open spaces outside the camp.

It is true that there are no sports teams in the overcrowded camp itself. But Balata, the town, does have a sports club - the Ahly Balata club - which includes an entire sports and youth program that also teaches job skills to teens. 

According to Google Maps, it is easy walking distance from the camp. 

The "90% unemployment" and the "no sports teams for kids" were factoids that were too good to check for the WaPo's reporting team. And for their editors. 

How many other things were they told that are simply terrorist propaganda? And why are they so willing to swallow it?

I asked that question in the comments on the article. We'll see if anything changes.

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Terrorists covering streets in camps with tarps to hide their movements from drones

From Palestine Times:

When you cross the long market street in Balata camp, east of Nablus, you can hardly see the sky, after the resistance fighters, with the help and initiative of the youth of the camp, covered the main streets and alleys with plastic sheets and fabrics. This is done in order to protect the resistance fighters, facilitate their movement, and reduce the possibility of them being monitored by the occupation reconnaissance planes.

The same idea was done by the resistance fighters in the Jenin camp, and it achieved great success, which prompted the "Balata Battalion" to repeat it, due to its success in protecting the resistance fighters and neutralizing the threat of the occupation, its planes and snipers.

Regarding the importance of the step, a fighter from the Balata Brigade told Palestine Today that the introduction of drones by the occupation in its pursuit of the resistance fighters, and later their use in bombing sites, homes and moving vehicles, as happened in Jenin, prompted them to expedite the installation of these barriers.

Who cares that thousands of residents in crowded camps won't see the sky? Terrorists' lives are at stake! And, as always with Palestinians, what the majority wants is not nearly as important as what the self-appointed leaders decide. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Depraved society: Palestinians celebrate "the journalist who preferred the gun to the camera"

Last week, a 21 year old Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunman named Ahmed Abu Junaid was killed while shooting at IDF soldiers in Balata.

The Palestinian preference for terrorism over peace can be seen from this article in Safa News celebrating his death:

Only one year separated Ahmed Abu Junaid from graduating from university and obtaining a journalism certificate to join his fellow journalists, but he preferred to carry a gun instead of a camera in order to obtain the highest degrees.

Abu Junaid, 21, was martyred hours after he was critically wounded, in an armed clash with Israeli special forces that stormed Balata camp, east of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, at dawn on the eleventh of January.

Ahmed's mother, who attended his funeral and showed a great deal of patience and perseverance, did not hide her pain at his separation.

She tells Safa news agency: "Praise be to God who honored me with the martyrdom of Ahmed. Praise be to God that he was martyred while resisting and defending his land. He was martyred while carrying the gun."

The accounts of his family and friends reveal an aspect of Ahmed's life, who wished for martyrdom and worked hard for it until he deservedly obtained it.

And his mother adds, "Ahmed did not want to get married. I told him I want to marry you. He told me, I do not want to get married.. I want a martyrdom."

Amer Abu Junaid, the father of the martyr Ahmed, said with tears filling his eyes: "He asked for martyrdom and obtained it. He lived his life honorable and pure and died like that."

Ahmed was on the verge of his academic achievement and was interested in developing his capabilities in the field of journalism, and his classmates saw him as a promising journalistic project, but nevertheless he saw himself as a martyr's project and his resistance work took priority over any other interests.

And he used to talk to some of his companions about his desire for martyrdom and tell them: My blood is for Palestine, and he asked them not to grieve over him, and they tried to dissuade him, but he had made up his mind and chose his irreversible path.

He wanted to be killed by Israel. He told everyone of his desire, including his own mother. And this person who worshipped death is regarded as a hero.

There are no stories, ever, that say that if Palestinians would prefer to become coders and doctors and writers instead of terrorists, they would be in much better shape. 

Their choice of heroes, and their choice of what makes someone admirable, tell you everything you need to know about Palestinian society. And it is a story that the Western media studiously keeps from its consumers.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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