Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: pallywood

Showing posts with label pallywood. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

No, a settler didn't deliberately ram his car into two Palestinian brothers (update)

On Saturday night, two Palestinian brothers whose car was having some problems were hit by an Israeli car, which killed them.

Immediately, Palestinian leaders and Arab and Muslim media accused the Israeli "settler" of "deliberately" ramming the car into them to kill them. Gruesome video of the dead brothers sprawled on the road incited Palestinian hate. Palestinian leaders called for an investigation for what they already determined was a deliberate double murder.

It was clearly not deliberate. It was a hit and run accident.

The Jerusalem Post shows photos of the car, heavily damaged and pushed into a ditch so hard it was on its side.

Here's a classic case of psychological projection.

Palestinians ram their (expensive) cars into Jews, not worried about the damage to the car, for two reasons: it is easier to get closer to the victim than with shooting, and because they don't expect to survive the incident - if they are killed during the attempt, they don't care about damage to the car.

Israelis have no incentive to crash their cars into another car - heavily damaging their own. They don't risk their lives (or even their property) to attack Palestinians. That's something only Palestinians do.

My guess is that the driver didn't see the brothers on the road, crashed into them, panicked, crashed into their car pushing it into the ditch and then drove away.

Israeli police are assuming it was an accident based on their initial evaluation.

The immediate rush to judgment by the Palestinians, accusing Jews of acting towards Palestinians the way Palestinians act towards Israelis, is another manifestation of antisemitism.

UPDATE: Apparently it wasn't even a hit and run. Israellycool found a video of the damaged Israeli vehicle at the scene.

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St. Louis @KSDKNews promotes false propaganda about an American girl detained for no reason by Israel

The top story on St. Louis KSDK news last night was about a dual citizen Palestinian American who was detained by the Israeli army as she tried to go through a checkpoint to Jerusalem:

Israeli Defense Forces detained a St. Louis college student on Friday and held her over the weekend after she attempted to cross the border from Ramallah into Jerusalem to visit revered holy sites with her family.

Hala Kasim Salameh, a 22-year-old Palestinian-American woman from St. Louis, was visiting the West Bank with her mother, sister, aunt and cousin.

According to her family, Salameh is an American citizen who had proper documentation, a travel permit, a U.S. passport and her Palestinian I.D. card when she approached the first checkpoint but was turned away.

"Sometimes it doesn't really go how you want, and they can refuse your entry for no reason at all, and that's exactly what happened to my sister," her younger sister Yumna Salameh told 5 On Your Side in a video call on Sunday night.

"She tried to ask them twice to go in, and they still refused her entry," she said. "They kind of got aggressive with her, too."

After being separated from her family at the first checkpoint, Salameh tried again to reconnect with them in a taxi cab. She managed to make one final phone call to her family before she was arrested.

Neveen Ayesh, a St. Louis advocate with the Missouri chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, is working with Salameh's family to get her legal representation.

"To begin with, she was not wrong because she did have a permit to enter," Ayesh said. "The soldier just decided he didn't want to let her in."

The story is very strange. Why would the soldiers let her family through and not her? Why would she be put into jail for something so minor - why not just release her?

If you listen carefully, the video of the story answers both questions, with two buried details that are not in the written story.

At 2:23, after the video report, the news anchor mentions as an aside, "The family tells us that she did have the proper documentation, but did not have it on her when she was detained."

Suddenly, things are starting to make sense. The family and lawyer in the news story were lying when they said she had all her documentation, and then - perhaps upon further questioning from a skeptical reporter - the family changed their story. But that detail didn't make it into the print and video story, which still quotes the AMP lawyer as saying she had her permit on her.

Now look at the video at 1:00: "Now, separated from her family, she tried to enter a third time, in a taxicab." Her sister then says, "Oh, the third time they said, 'you disobeyed us, and now we catch you.'"

Meaning, they let her go twice, but she still tried to sneak into Israel a third time by hoping that they wouldn't check her papers from a taxicab.

This isn't a story of an American girl being abused by the IDF. It is the story of a person trying, three times, to cross a border without documentation - and the third time, knowingly trying to sneak past the border guards.

This is what would happen at any border crossing worldwide.

The family turned to pro-terror American Muslims for Palestine for help. AMP saw an opportunity for a propaganda bonanza, so they immediately contacted the media and concocted a story about a forlorn American girl of Palestinian ancestry who was arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned for no other reason except that Israelis hate Palestinians.

And KSDK happily runs with the story as their top story of the evening. Not only that, they illustrate the part where she gets arrested with this photo of Israeli police detaining a violent protester, as if this was how Hala was treated:

This is not news reporting. This is anti-Israel propaganda.

A proper news organization would have reported this the way they would report anyone trying to bypass security at an airport - as a potential terrorist trying to illicitly cross an international border.

(h/t RealJerusalemStreets)

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Pallywood: Hamas introduces a "tank"

Today, Hamas members escorted this "tank" through Gaza. Presumably this was meant to impress the audience for Hamas' 35th anniversary celebration today.

It is pretty obvious that this is no tank. The treads are not moving, for one. It is merely a truck with a covering - essentially, a parade float. It might be made of papier-mâché.

This isn't the first time Hamas tried to pull this stunt. In 2016, Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida tried to impress Gazans when he delivered a speech from a "tank" that they claimed they captured from Israel, but everyone could see the rubber tires underneath it.

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Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh met with Palestinian filmmakers on Tuesday and gave them one message: produce pro-Palestinian propaganda.

He stated, "The strength of our narrative in the face of poisonous funding lies in its sincerity, and every Palestinian has a narrative that must be told, and supporting the cinema sector in Palestine is one form of steadfastness. The private sector and society must participate in it alongside the government."

Shtayyeh stressed the importance of film as propaganda, in "highlighting our Palestinian cause and its justice, and communicating it to the world through cinematic and documentary works, because it leaves a great impact on the hearts of peoples around the world ."

The PA ministry of culture intends to create a committee to regulate the film industry - meaning, not to allow any films that do not adhere to the Palestinian, anti-Israel narrative.

If there was any independence in Palestinian cinema to date, it is certainly gone now. Not that Palestinian filmmakers ever showed a desire to create films that counter their narrative: their smiling faces above show that they have no problem whatsoever with being told what kinds of films they will be allowed to make.

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10/14 Links Pt1: Lapid's Two State Solution; Ruthie Blum: It makes sense to be suspicious of the maritime deal; Israel must prepare for a nuclear Iran

From Ian:

Lapid's Two State Solution

What did Yair Lapid mean by his foregoing statement? Did he mean 2 states in an undivided Jerusalem or Jerusalem undivided as an Israel state with the Palestinian Arab state established elsewhere? If the former, he would find a majority in Israel would not accept this. If the latter, no Palestinian Arab or Arab leader would accept it.

What he should have done was to make use of an expert historian to proof positive Jewish indigenous rights to the Land of Israel, After all, during Temple Times , we learn of the Jews and the Romans. Subsequently the Greeks. The words, "Palestinians" and Arabs" don't appear until many centuries later.

To begin with, he could share the words of Lloyd George, who was outraged by the claim that Arabs had been treated unfairly in Palestine---":

"No race has done better out of the fidelity with which the Allies redeemed their promises to the oppressed races than the Arabs. Owing to the tremendous sacrifices of the Allied Nations, and more particularly of Britain and her Empire, the Arabs have already won independence in Iraq, Arabia, Syria, and Trans-jordania, although most of the Arab races fought throughout the War for the Turkish oppressors---[In particular ] the Palestinian Arabs for Turkish rule."[ A Mandate for Israel by Douglas J. Feith].

Perhaps the greatest lesson for Lapid is demonstrated by history - Appeasement mostly does not work and it certainly does not win.

Ruthie Blum: It makes sense to be suspicious of the maritime deal

Jaw-dropping press conference
LAPID’S PRIME-time press conference was just as jaw-dropping. Lauding the great “achievements” that Israel made by (ostensibly) rejecting a set of Lebanon’s additional demands, he boasted that the cabinet had approved the deal and thanked Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron for their help and support. Oy.

He proceeded to acknowledge that the agreement “staves off the possibility of a flare-up with Hezbollah,” quickly averring that “Israel is not afraid of Hezbollah. The IDF is stronger than any terror organization, and if we went to battle, we would deal it a heavy blow. That being said, if it’s possible to prevent war, it’s the job of a responsible government to do so.”

Questioned by a reporter about the government’s consent to circumvent a Knesset vote, he blabbered about the legality of the decision. Then he let the cat out of the bag.

“In light of the utterly profligate behavior of the opposition, we didn’t think that it would be [the] right [thing to do],” he explained.

In other words, the risk of Hezbollah interference in Israel’s gas mining is smaller in Lapid’s eyes than a potential parliamentary thumbs-down. Which brings us to Iran.

Biden's horrific foreign policy
DESPITE THE ongoing protests across the Islamic Republic that are providing a glimmer of hope about the ultimate fall of the regime, the US administration is continuing to convey its desperation to revive the nuclear pact and fill Tehran’s coffers with billions of dollars. This travesty is typical of Biden’s horrific foreign policy.

Israel cannot afford to follow in such ill-fated footsteps. Nevertheless, National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata defended the gas deal on the ridiculous grounds that it “goes against Iran’s interest in Lebanon and weakens Hezbollah’s hold on the government in Beirut.”

Really?

No wonder Udi Adiri, Israel’s longtime lead maritime border and gas extraction negotiator, resigned a couple of weeks ago in exasperation over the contents of the document that was crafted against his better judgment. This didn’t have an effect on what is going to be a signed, sealed and delivered deal on October 31, the day of Aoun’s exit and 24 hours before Israelis head to the polls.

No, you don’t have to be a maritime expert to grasp the magnitude of the gambit. Common sense and experience ought to suffice, if not in Israel’s soon-to-be-shuffled halls of power, then at least at the ballot box.

'All my family and friends turned against me when I enlisted in the IDF'

The Israel Defense Forces' Desert Reconnaissance Battalion is one of a kind: not only are its fighters volunteers, but they come from Muslim, Christian, and Circassian backgrounds, often having left their families and friends, who opposed their enlistment, behind.

They have served on the border with the Gaza Strip for many years, protecting Israel and putting their lives on the line.

According to one of the fighters, "there are people here whose identities cannot be revealed not because of the operational aspects, but because of what would happen to them if their photos or names were made public." The unit was established in 1986 in order to regulate the enlistment of Bedouin youth in the IDF. What began as a small unit has over time grown into a battalion.

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, the unit became operational and was stationed along the Gaza border. During the Second Intifada, between 2000 and 2005, the fighters participated actively in operations in the strip, especially the Philadelphia Route, combating underground tunnels and the spread of terror.

In January 2002, four of the battalion's fighters were killed in an attack on an outpost near the Kerem Shalom border crossing, where several years later Gilad Shalit would be captured, and where the fighters carried out patrols with us, the journalists, in the dead of night.

Lt. Col. Guy Madar, 33, married and father of five from the Karmei Katif settlement in southern Israel, has been commanding the battalion for the past three months. He grew up in the Givati Brigade, and when he reached the rank of major general, he naturally wanted to continue his service in the purple brigade.

But today, he says, he could not be prouder of his fighters, even though sometimes the Arabic language, which is used outside of operational activity – as that is only conducted in Hebrew – is a challenge for him.

"I manage. The soldiers know Hebrew, and othertimes, they help me. My ambition is to learn Arabic. This is my first job as a battalion commander, but I got to know the Bedouin patrol unit because they are trained in a Givati base. But you only think you know something before you actually do it. Before that, there are a lot of preconceived notions. When I joined, I discovered how amazingly they operated. I grew up in Givati and I wanted to be an officer in Givati, and I will honestly say that at first, I was a little disappointed because I had a lot of fears, we all have our prejudices. It was only when I joined that I found out how serious this unit is. The fighters really don't get the appreciation they deserve.

"When I say that I am the commander of the Bedoun patrol unit, everyone tells me that it must be challenging and asks how I manage. My answer is that it is like any fighting unit in the IDF. That it is a group of fighters who want to contribute. They are strong, good fighters, and know the sector like the back of their hand. I have a company commander who has been here since 2013. Everyone who comes across the unit discovers that they are wonderful guys, not spoiled, who just want to fight and contribute to the country."

A child cries in Gaza (video)

Hamas-affiliated website Al Resalah features this video.

It shows a very sad Gaza child. He is crying. He is inconsolable. The music is dramatic. What happened to this poor child?

Was his brother killed by the Israelis? Was his father jailed? Is he starving?

Then, the camera pans to what he is crying about....

His large, wall mounted color TV is showing that Manchester United defeated his favorite Liverpool team, and its star Mohamed Salah, 2-1.

Life is so cruel for Gaza kids.

Notice how easy it is to create Pallywood-style propaganda with nothing more than a mobile phone. This is no less absurd than hundreds of similar videos and photos of Gaza children who are prompted to act for the cameras to tug at Western heartstrings.

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The Pallywood lies of "eyewitness" Ali Samoudi

As the US has finally pressured the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that they claim killed Shireen Abu Akleh (and Israel is handing over the only weapon that they say could have shot in her direction on May 11,) it is worth looking a little more at how the main "eyewitness" to her death is a pathological liar.

We've already discussed how Jenin journalist Ali Samoudi was known decades ago to prompt "witnesses" to say whatever lies would be most dramatic in accusing Israel of crimes. There is no reason to think he would act any differently himself when he is the witness himself.

On May 11, Samoudi said that this is what happened (CAMERA's translation:)

’After several minutes we heard the sound of bullets pouring on us from the direction where the occupation’s soldiers were concentrated, they were on the rooftops of the buildings in front of us. [This was] amidst the shouts of Palestinian citizens, calling us: get down to the ground, the snipers are targeting you.’

“Samoudi says: ‘I was hit by a bullet at the lower back, and Shireen shouted: ‘Ali was hit, Ali was hit.’ Not even a few seconds went by before Shireen fell on the ground after blood covered her face, and one of the colleagues carried us to the graveyard’s fence to protect us from the soldiers’ bullets, which went on for 10 minutes nonstop.’

“He said: ‘I was miraculously spared from certain death after a bullet hit me in the lower back, but the doctors described my condition as moderate. However the diagnosis requires hospitalization for several days, to make sure there are no complications in the coming hours.’

This is a series of lies.

There were two volleys of bullets. Ali Samoudi can be seen in this screenshot (7:06) right before the first volley, as one of the journalists with light colored sleeves in the background less than a second before the shooting:

Here is a video showing the above scene, and then a synced video showing Samoudi rushing to a car before the second round of shots.

Samoudi didn't witness Abu Akleh get shot. She was killed in the second round of gunfire, after trying to take cover. Samoudi wasn't helped by anyone. He wasn't pinned down for ten minutes of gunfire.

And he wasn't hit in the lower back. He was grazed in the shoulder, as his own video at the hospital shows quite clearly, rushing from that same car to the emergency room where he videos everything.

Here you can see his wound on his left shoulder:

But AP reported weeks later, based on his "testimony:"

Samoudi said the soldiers fired a warning shot, causing him to duck and run backwards. The second shot hit him in the back. Abu Akleh was shot in the head and appears to have died instantly,

.... Samoudi says the bullet that struck him shattered, leaving some fragments inside his back.

Sounds dramatic. And provably false.

The New York Times was somewhat more accurate in what his injury was, but still exaggerating it:

“They’re shooting at us,” Mr. Samoudi shouted. He turned around, he said, and felt his back explode as a bullet pierced his protective vest and tore through his left shoulder.

“‘Ali’s been hit, Ali’s been hit!’” Ms. Abu Akleh shouted, Mr. Samoudi recalled. It was the last time he would hear her voice.

No female voice can be heard in the video.

It appears likely that Samoudi was hit from the front in the first volley - he made up the story of a warning shot, turning around and being hit from behind because that makes Israeli soldiers look worse. (Later he said there were no warning shots.)

He said that the soldiers were on rooftops of buildings before he knew that there were no soldiers in buildings - so that part of his "testimony" disappeared after May 11.

And AP shows him, absurdly, in a wheelchair eight days later in the same spot. He clearly never needed a wheelchair - he ran quite quickly about 20 meters in ten seconds to the car after supposedly being "shot in the lower back."

His posing in a wheelchair is pure Pallywood.

By the time the New York Times interviewed him, it was already clear that he was an accomplished liar. Yet they still quote him as if he is a credible witness.

But here's the thing: Ali Samoudi is not an anomaly. Most Palestinian witnesses to events, when they give their names, will say what the Palestinian Authority or Hamas want them to say. They are conditioned to always blame Israel no matter what, even when evidence points to Palestinian terrorist culpability. After all these years, one would think that reporters would treat Palestinian "eyewitness" testimony with the knowledge that they are often either enthusiastic accomplices in trying to make up stories about Israel (as Samoudi has been) or frightened of saying something that their leaders do not want to be said.

(h/t Gail)

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The main witness to Shireen Abu Akleh's death appears to be a known Pallywood liar

Ali al-Samoudi is the Jenin journalist who was next to Shireen abu Akleh in Jenin when she was shot. He was shot himself. As such, he has been the main source of information as to the circumstances of her death - insisting that IDF soldiers shot them, that the IDF knew they were there and that there were no Palestinian gunmen in the area, and how "We were in a place far from armed clashes with Palestinians, from where we couldn't reach that area as the Israeli forces sealed it off." (So why were they hanging in a place where they couldn't report on anything?)

Nearly 20 years ago, Pierre Rehov made a documentary, "The Road to Jenin," where he documented case after case of how Palestinian journalists create the news they want.

CAMERA describes one section of the movie:

Underscoring the Palestinian penchant for inventing “news,” Rehov even manages to capture on film the manufacturing of a fictitious news story. On Jan. 25, 2003, he accompanies Palestinian journalist Ali Smoddi of the PA-controlled Jenin television station as he and his crew set out to interview a Palestinian man and his wife whose baby was just delivered by a doctor. In the car on the way there, Smoddi constructs a fictitious story in which the husband was forced to deliver the baby: “I want to emphasize certain elements. The husband has no experience in delivering and in spite of that he’s the one who delivers his wife. It’s the climax of all tragedy.” Smoddi then takes a call from the couple’s doctor, and asks: “You’re the one who delivered her? . . . No, don’t let them go.”

At the hospital, Smoddi’s crew does several “takes” of the father’s account of the birth, each with a different spin. In one version, the father claims that the ambulance they intended to meet was held up at a checkpoint for 15 minutes, and he was forced to deliver his infant son in the car, as the ambulance had not arrived. In another telling, the father says: “The soldiers took me down to the ambulance to check my identification and my wife gave birth in the ambulance and went to the hospital.” In each account, Smoddi prompts the father and makes suggestions about the events. Smoddi then prompts the new mother: “The tank stops you while giving birth. You’re alone in the car, talk about your feelings.”

Here is part of that section, captured in Richard Landes' "Pallywood I: 'According to Palestinian sources...'"

It appears that Ali Smoddi is Ali al-Samoudi:

They both have a prominent widow's peak in their hairline, the same thick eyebrows, the same nose, both Palestinian journalists in Jenin with similar voices. (Arabic does not have vowels so both names are spelled identically in Arabic.)

Assuming they are the same person, the main witness being quoted in every article is known to have zero credibility and to deliberately make up whatever he wants people to hear that he thinks are best for the Palestinian cause.

This isn't proof that he is lying now. But it is a strong indication that Ali al-Samoudi is, quite literally, a professional liar, and any real journalist - no matter how sympathetic they are to the death of a colleague - should treat him as one.

(Notice also in the 2003 video clip that the doctor is an enthusiastic participant in the Pallywood creation, directing the new mother to say what Samoudi wants her to say. Pallywood isn't only from journalists: it is part of Palestinian honor/shame culture to present to the West what makes them look as righteous ss possible. It isn't a conspiracy guided by a small group of people; it is a group of actors who know what their roles are when speaking to any Westerner.)

(h/t Irene)

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For Jews, Fake News Doesn't Go Back To Trump -- It Goes Back To Al Dura (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Everyone knows about fake news.

Some people know it's all Trump's fault, others know that it's all the media's fault.
And now countries are generating it, using bots on social media.

But for anyone who follows how the media reports about Israel, this is kind of old.

How old?

Daniel Rubenstein addresses this question in his first podcast, featuring Prof. Richard Landes.

Daniel Rubenstein is a tour guide and lecturer, who served as an advisor to Naftali Bennett and also as a social media expert to Netanyahu.
Richard Landes is a medieval historian specializing in apocalyptic millennialism and he blogs about lethal journalism (presenting one side's wartime propaganda as news) at Augean Stables.

Daniel Rubenstein and Prof. Richard Landes

One of the topics Prof. Landes explains is tracing the peaking of media opposition to Israel back to Al Dura.

That incident, in brief:

On Sept. 30, 2000, France2 Television ran a story about Muhammad al Durah, a 12-year-old boy who, along with his father, was pinned down in a cross-fire between Israeli and Palestinian forces at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. “The target of fire from the Israeli position, the boy was killed and the father badly wounded,” veteran French journalist Charles Enderlin reported. Enderlin distributed the footage to all his colleagues for free, and this story ran around the world in hours.

Landes, who coined the word Pallywood to describe media manipulation designed to win the public relations war with Israel, has written about discrepancies in Enderlin's video footage:

The actual evidence, however, posed serious problems for the explosive narrative of deliberate child-murder. The footage, closely examined, contradicted every detail of the claim that Israel had killed the boy “in cold blood,” as a France 2 photographer put it, from the alleged “forty minutes of [Israeli] bullets like rain” (rather, there were only a few bullets one could identify in the brief footage, all from the Palestinian side), to the 20-minute-long death from a fatal stomach wound (no sign of blood on the ground), to the murdered ambulance driver (no evidence), to the dead boy (who moves quite deliberately in the final scene, which Enderlin cut for his broadcast).

But it was Enderlin's version of the story which spread everywhere, and not just in the Arab world. Bin Laden, for example, used Al Dura as a justification for his terrorist attack on the US. Landes notes that in the West, the Europeans and progressives saw this incident as a 'Get-Out-of-Holocaust-Guilt-Free Card'.

The tremendous influence of the Al Dura narrative cannot be underestimated. It appeared everywhere and dominated the media. One journalist, Catherine Nay, claimed on Europe 1 that

the death of Mohamed [Al Dura] cancels, erases, that of the Jewish child in the hands in the air, shot by an SS man in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Landes points out the enormity of such an idea:

Here you have a woman saying that a dubious picture of a boy most probably -- if killed -- killed in a crossfire, has erased and replaced an image of a boy who symbolizes the deliberate murder of over a million children.

That journalist was not alone in this view. Landes sees this substitution as being at the core of today's Holocaust inversion, the idea that Israel commits genocide against Palestinian Arabs, making Israelis into the new Nazis and Palestinian Arabs into the new Jews.

And the Al Dura effect persists. The original impact has dissipated over time, but the effects continue.

It's hard to get it more wrong than what happened then and we've been paying the price ever since. This is the first massive and still uncorrected wave of fake news -- not fake news coming from bots in Russia, fake news permeating the legacy mainstream media. Disaster. [emphasis added]

This was during the Second Intifada.
And media mendacity at the time was evident.

Less than 2 weeks later, on October 12, two Israeli reservists took a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah, where a mob of Palestinian reservists lynched them.

Viciously.

In his 2014 book, Israel Since the Six-Day War: Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow, Leslie Stein describes how the mob massacred the 2 men:

The mob did not prevent the story from getting out, but they did stop a photographer from taking pictures. Mark Seager wrote a personal account of what the mob did to the bodies of the 2 Israeli reservists -- and what they almost did to him:

They were just a few feet in front of me and I could see everything. Instinctively, I reached for my camera. I was composing the picture when I was punched in the face by a Palestinian. Another Palestinian pointed right at me shouting "no picture, no picture!", while another guy hit me in the face and said "give me your film!".

I tried to get the film out but they were all grabbing me and one guy just pulled the camera off me and smashed it to the floor. I knew I had lost the chance to take the photograph that would have made me famous and I had lost my favourite lens that I'd used all over the world, but I didn't care. I was scared for my life.

In a Wall Street Journal article in 2001, Alex Safian of CAMERA wrote about just how effective Palestinian intimidation was:

But it is not just British reporters who have joined Mr. Arafat's journalistic brigades. Riccardo Christiano, bureau chief of the Italian state network RAI, put it plainly in a letter to the Palestinian Authority in October. After two Israeli reservists were lynched by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah, most journalists at the scene had their film and cameras confiscated. But one crew from the private Italian network Mediaset got out with the videotape, which was then shown around the world. Mr. Christiano was determined to let the Palestinian Authority know that, contrary to rumors, his network was not involved. So he wrote this letter, which unhappily for him found its way into a Palestinian newspaper:

"My Dear Friends in Palestine: We congratulate you and think it is our duty to explain to you what happened on Oct. 12 in Ramallah. One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us . . . filmed the events . . . Afterwards Israeli television broadcast the pictures as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we took these pictures.

"We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect the journalistic rules of the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine . . . We thank you for your trust and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting, and we would never do such a thing.

"Please accept our dear blessings."

As Safian observes, "in plain terms, respecting these 'rules' means ignoring stories that would anger Mr. Arafat, and reporting on stories that would please him."

The Ramallah lynching was on October 12.

On the very next day, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the PA's Fatwa Council and a former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza gave a Friday sermon at a mosque in Gaza. Among other things, Sheikh Halabiya stressed the importance of killing Jews:

"...None of the Jews refrain from committing any possible evil. If the Labor party commits the evil and the crime, the Likud party stands by it; and if the Likud party commits the evil and the crime, the Labor party stands by it.... The Jews are Jews, whether Labor or Likud... They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They all want to distort truth, but we are in possesion of the truth...They are the terrorists. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers...." (emphasis added)

How did The New York Times report this?

William A. Orme Jr. wrote an article, A Parallel Mideast Battle: Is It News or Incitement? where he dealt with the Israeli claim of Palestinian incitement by helpfully summarizing for his readers what Halabiya had actually said:

Israelis cite as one egregious example [of Palestinian incitement], a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers. ''Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews,'' proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings. [emphasis added]

Incitement?
What incitement?

This partisan self-censorship continues today. As Landes comments:

To this day, readers of The New York Times, listeners of NPR, viewers of the BBC and CNN do not know what kind of unbelievably vicious nazi-like genocidal hatred is aired in the Palestinian public sphere, constantly.

And of course, social media has only made matters worse -- making it easier to spread propaganda without regard for the source (assuming it is even known), let alone viewing it critically. Social media enables the channeling of moral outrage that makes canceling of people as pariahs so effective.

Today we find ourselves in a situation where, as Prof. Landes notes, you cannot defend Zionism -- neither in journalism nor in academia. It has become a taboo subject --

In 2021, when you had the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza, you had hundreds of journalists insisting that the media adopt the Palestinian narrative -- adopt their language, adopt their "Israel occupation army" and stuff and you had academics, including Jewish academics in Jewish studies, coming out with statements in support of the Palestinians in which the role of Hamas and the role of terror is completely expunged from the record. And all sorts of claims are made about what Israel has done that are empirically inaccurate.

We are looking at an anti-intellectual movement that has taken over and literally a collapse of the information professions in terms of their ability to give the public accurate and relevant information.

And to a large degree, this all goes back to 2000, and Al Dura.

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Read all about it here!

Some Pallywood from 2015

Kweansmom asked me to check out this photograph of a man bathing his kids in Gaza.

I dug a little and found this article about the photo and photographer:

In an interview with Independent Journal Review, [Emad] Nassar said he captured the shot on June 26, 2015, while he was taking pictures of the conflict in Gaza.

He was walking around the apartment complex when he suddenly saw the family and snapped the photo. It was not staged.

The only information he knows about the family in the photograph are the names of the people and how they’re related; Salem Saoody, 30, daughter Layan (left), and his niece Shaymaa (right).

OK, there are a few points right off the bat.

The photo was taken in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza, which was a Hamas stronghold during the 2014 war. Hamas purposefully didn't rebuild the area for well over a year as it would show it off to clueless Europeans about how evil Israel was to bomb Hamas targets purposefully placed in a residential area.

As we can see, photographers loved this neighborhood and continued to take staged photos over a year after the war. After all, the destruction was photogenic and served a wonderful propaganda purpose, even as tens of thousands of homes in other sections of Gaza were rebuilt.

Now, how likely is it that this photo was not staged?

Let us take at face value that a loving father would want to give his daughter and niece a bath or have them splash around in the equivalent of a kiddie pool in a clearly dangerous room.

A corner bathtub holds at least 50 gallons/200 liters. This photo was taken at least on the third floor of the building. There is obviously no running water there. This means that according to the photographer, the father carried a great deal of water up and down three flights of dangerous stairs alone, several trips, yet not bothering to clear a path to the tub he was filling up and preferring instead to step over rubble. He then asked his daughter and niece to walk up the same path, on top of the rubble.

Now, what if the father had help - say, the photographer Emad Nassar, helping him carry the water with the intent to stage an award winning photograph? Seems somewhat more likely, although it would still be a lot of work.

What if there was at least a third person there - say, Emad's brother Wissam, whom he doesn't mention but who is also a photographer, and who also won awards for his versions of the same scene at the same time?

Suddenly the idea that Emad was wandering around the neighborhood and stumbled onto this scene on the third floor of a teetering building seems a lot less likely.

The brothers seem to have found other similar scenes of ordinary Gazans just hanging out in ruins a few floors up in very photogenic ruins.

Emad:

Wissam:

Wissam has lots of similar, "spontaneous" scenes from upper floors of destroyed buildings:

And he also finds clean toys in rubble:

And old women sitting photogenically in rubble.

Why would anyone think that these brothers are anything but honest when they say they don't stage photos?

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Pallywood in Middle East Monitor

From Middle East Monitor:

Israel settlers dump sewage on Palestinian school in Qalqiliya

Israeli settlers dumped their sewage on a Palestinian school in the northern occupied West Bank district of Qalqilia yesterday.

The Azzun Beit Amin School playground was flooded with sewage for the second time in two months as a result of the settlers’ actions.

Principal Alaa Marabeh said it would take more than ten days for the sewage water to dry and this has caused a foul smell to spread across the school building and risks damaging the students’ health.

The settlers live in the nearby illegal settlement of Sha’arei Tikva which is home to some 4,000 Jewish settlers.

They even have a picture of the flooded students!

Only one problem.

The photo is of Gaza and it is from 2013.

The sewage comes from Gaza, not Israel.

But when one needs a photo to back up the lies of Israel drowning Palestinians in sewage, one needs to be creative as to the sources of the photos.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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VIDEO: Palestinian father tells IDF soldiers to shoot his toddler son (UPDATES)

I put subtitles on this video that has been going around. I'm not sure when it was originally shot.

It reveals the depths of immorality in parts of Palestinian Arab society as a father urges soldiers to kill his son, whom he is demanding to throw stones.

The father clearly wants his son to be killed on video, with his Palestinian flag. He wants to create another Mohammed Al Dura for his "cause."

This child abuse and desire to use children's lives for cynical public relations purposes is sickness that is simply not reported.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

UPDATE: The subtitles are a bit off in timing, apologies.

UPDATE 2: It was recorded from a different angle and posted top an Arab site on Facebook, where the "high five" that the boy gave the soldier was edited out while the caption says that the boy refused to shake the soldier's hand.

(h/t Bob Knot)

UPDATE 3: IBA asked Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to comment. They didn't.

Palestinian father urged IDF to shoot his child. @amnesty refused to comment. @hrw ignored requests for statement. pic.twitter.com/EaqB9M8Cg0
— Eylon Aslan-Levy (@EylonALevy) July 31, 2016

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UNRWA keeps pushing Pallywood

This is the pinned photo that has been on the top of the Twitter feed of Raquel Marti, UNRWA's executive director in Spain, for months. She captioned it "Bath time in Gaza:"

The original photo was taken by Emad Nassar, with this description:

June 26, 2015 . Salem Saoody, 30, is getting his daughter Layan (L) and his niece Shaymaa 5 (R) in the only remaining piece from their damaged house, which is the bathing tub. They now live in a caravan near the rubble.

One minor question: Where did the water come from?

There is no rain in Gaza in June. The house does not appear to have running water. There is no hose visible in the picture.

What are the chances that Salem Saoody takes his daughters out of their mobile home and they carry over 100 liters of clean water with them to their former home to take a bath?

Emad Nassar saw the chance for a dramatic photo, so he staged it to win awards. And the girls were happy to play in a mini-pool on a summer day. So, it appears, Nassar and Saoody spent a morning carrying water to the old bathtub for the perfect photo.

The idea that the Saoodys are forced to give their girls a bath in their old bathtub does not pass any sanity test.

Last June, when this photo was taken, I noted that Hamas had turned the Shujaiyeh neighborhood into a showpiece to bring foreign reporters to show Israel's evil - even though thousands of Gaza homes were being repaired, Hamas left Shujaiyeh untouched. There were a series of such obviously staged photos published by Hamas-leaning and duped photojournalists. And while the terror group kept the neighborhood as a zoo for gaping Westerners, it was building tunnels underneath the very same area.

UNRWA has something in common with Hamas. Both groups wanted to keep families in Shujaiyeh homeless, and the rubble uncleared, for as long as possible so they could maximize its propaganda value and get more funds from credulous Westerners. UNRWA actually made an entire film of such staged scenes in the neighborhood last year,

Of course, if you want to paint Gazans as eternal victims and implicitly blame Israel at every opportunity, this staged photo and inaccurate caption is perfect for you - and perfect for UNRWA and its lackeys. UNRWA created an entire film of such staged scenes in this neighborhood and told kids there to act in ludicrous scenes such as creating a makeshift see-saw in the middle of rubble.

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Today's Pallywood

From someone named "Immortal Che Guevera" on Facebook:

Palestinian child is bitten by a dog, which is incited, between laughter, by Israeli terrorist. Where's the humanity better yet where is God
Posted by Immortal Che Guevara on Tuesday, December 22, 2015

It was shared over a thousand times.

Reality: it happened in Algeria in April.

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Hamas starts to blame Egypt for dead babies (UPDATE)

The Hamas-oriented Felesteen news site reports on Ahmed Amar Abu Nahale, a three month old boy with an enlarged liver and heart who was supposed to be treated in Turkey, but who died waiting for the Rafah crossing with Egypt to open.

This is, according to the article, the second death during the current closure. Rafah was open for two days this week for pilgrims but possibly not for patients.

There is an interesting dynamic going on. Most so-called "pro-Palestinian" groups, and NGOs, downplay Egypt's closure of Gaza and emphasize Israel's "blockade" on travel and goods. Of course, Hamas and the other terror groups would lend their support for the cause of inciting against Israel.

Now, Hamas - stung by Egypt's treatment of the terror group - has made a decision to treat Egypt the same way it treats Israel, as an antagonist. It is trying to use the same tactics Palestinian Arabs traditionally used against Israel.

The result is that Israel's perceived evil is becoming diluted, as the fact that Arabs treat Palestinians worse that Israel does becomes more common knowledge.

The people caught in the middle are the so called "pro-Palestinian" activists, who reluctant to blame Lebanon and Egypt and Jordan for how badly those countries treat PalArabs. They want to keep Israel as the only bogeyman who is responsible for the deaths of cute innocent babies, because if the truth comes out, the entire house of cards falls - people will start to place the proper blame on Arab leaders as well as Palestinian Arab leaders who have used millions of people as pawns for 65 years.

No child has died waiting to get a permit to cross into Israel, as far as I know, even when Hamas was shooting rockets Two deaths of children in only a few weeks because of Egypt is the sort of story that would hurt the Israel haters' cause.

Which is one reason why even the Arab media will not be publishing these sorts of stories in English anytime soon.

The cracks in the anti-Israel narrative - which always depended on never, ever placing things in context or comparison with any other country - are starting to show, even among the most die-hard Israel haters.

UPDATE: There is actually video of the baby while he is dying, and a professionally made video of the family mourning him.

The episode was planned ahead of time. Not that the baby wasn't dying anyway, but someone in Gaza saw an opportunity to make news with the dying baby and his family as props.

(also corrected baby's age)

A Fauxtography Story (updated)

This morning, in a reprehensible attack, an Arab home near Ramallah was burned down:

A Palestinian home was set on fire Wednesday night in the village of Sinjil, northeast of Ramallah in the West Bank, in a suspected "price tag" attack. Five Palestinians residing there suffered from smoke inhalation.

“Regards from Eden, Revenge” was sprayed on one of the walls of the house, indicating that the act may have been carried out to avenge the murder of Private Eden Attias, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian teen on a bus earlier Wednesday.

Here is one photo of the burned out home from photojournalist Mahmoud Illean on the public news service Demotix:

The focus of the photo is, obviously, the basketball.

The only problem is that the basketball was placed there by a photographer!

Haaretz reporter Chaim Levinson took his own photo of the ball and wrote on his Facebook page, "See the ball in the burnt room? It wasn't really there. A Palestinian photographer brought it in from the outside to improve the photo."

Roy Sharon of Israel's Channel 10 tweeted the same thing. He wrote that if you see any photos of an orange ball in today's news coverage, you should know that it was placed there by the MBC (Saudi) channel photographer.

Now that we know that this photo was staged, we can look with a more critical eye at some of the other photos taken at the time.

Here is the grief-stricken grandfather probably being told where to walk with his cute daughter, the basketball in the background:

The ball is there, but it seems to have moved.

But this photo wasn't quite good enough, so the photographer needed a better one, possibly with the father but keeping the same cute girl:

They are looking at what appears to be a stuffed penguin, that is helpfully standing up in the damage. But the penguin wasn't there in the previous photo, and is not visible (at least not standing) in the other photos of the same room.

Here are the same two people, waiting around while photographers do their thing:

We've suspected the purposeful placement of toys in photos in the past, but we have never had witnesses before.

And if the photographers that took the photos were not the same ones as those who placed the objects, that doesn't make them any less deceptive if they know that the props they are photographing are staged.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv)

UPDATE: Ian forwards an almost unbelievable clip from 1990 British comedy "Drop the Dead Donkey":