Mainstream liberal media outlets have consistently gotten stories wrong about Israel and Gaza, trusting the word of Hamas terrorists and their United Nations supporters. As the war has gone on, though, these outlets are choosing to debase themselves more and more, even going as far as to knowingly peddle false narratives and write sob stories for terrorists.
The New York Times has served as an unofficial propaganda organ for Hamas for decades. In 2014, Noah Pollak detailed for the Washington Examiner how the Times only published pictures of civilians in Gaza, never of Palestinian terrorists or militants. The outlet was one of many to run with the false hospital bombing story in the aftermath of Oct. 7, where “500 Palestinians” (a few dozen) were killed when a “hospital” (parking lot) was struck by an Israeli (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) missile.
That leads us to the most recent journalistic malpractice to come from “The Gray Lady.” The outlet published on its front page an image of Mohammad al Motawaq, an 18-month-old child who is clearly in bad health. Many of his bones are visible. The child was the face of the outlet’s coverage of starvation in Gaza, making the message to readers clear: Israel is starving children like Mohammad to death.
The problem with this photo and message is that Mohammad al Motawaq does not look like that because Israel is starving to death. The boy has cerebral palsy and other genetic disorders, and the Times editors knew that fact when they chose to use the photo, even reporting a quote from his mother stating that he was “born a healthy child.” In fact, other photos of the boy and his mother also show his brother who appears healthy. The outlet’s editors wanted to use a photo of another child for this story, but it turned out that he, too, was born with cerebral palsy.
One editor said, “there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are.” If there are, the Times couldn’t be bothered to find those images, instead sticking with its misleading narrative (some may even call it an outright lie) about Mohammed in order to whip up the latest round of international outrage toward Israel.
Whether or not that rivals the story the Associated Press decided to publish is up for debate. The outlet reached out to Hezbollah to connect it with “victims” of the pager attack that Israel launched against the terrorist organization. The background information of the attack is as follows: Hezbollah uses pagers for its terrorist communications to avoid being easily tracked, as they would be if they used cell phones. When it came time for the terrorist group to buy a new collection of pagers, it unwittingly purchased them from shell companies in a campaign orchestrated by Israel.
You could reasonably describe this as one of the most targeted military operations at all times. These pagers, rigged with explosives by Israel, were sold directly to Hezbollah, which distributed them to Hezbollah members. The pagers could not be purchased by ordinary civilians at the Lebanese equivalent of Walmart. The only people injured by this Israeli operation were members of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization that has murdered Americans, and family members of Hezbollah.
The Associated Press decided that those people are precisely who they wanted to humanize and build sympathy for, parroting the United Nations’ asinine claim that the attack was “indiscriminate.” You are supposed to feel bad because one Hezbollah member can no longer play football, and another allowed his children to play with his terrorist communication device like it was a toy (he was the one blown up by the pager, not them, making that attempt at emotional manipulation amusingly irrelevant). The purpose of the piece? “A rare glimpse into the attack’s human toll.”
Again, it must be reiterated that the only people injured in this attack were Hezbollah terrorists or family members of Hezbollah terrorists who heard the pager beep and followed the pager prompt that triggered the explosives. Those family members were put in danger by their Hezbollah terrorist relatives, who allowed them access to their terrorist communication device. The Associated Press, which infamously shared an office building with Hamas in Gaza, wants you to blame Israel for that.
The examples continue, and they are neither few nor far between. Hamas has a long history of inflating its civilian casualty numbers, including Hamas terrorists and Gazans killed by Hamas itself in that number, and fabricating numbers entirely in the immediate aftermath of Israeli strikes. Liberal media outlets cite those numbers religiously, whitewashing their source by describing the Hamas officials delivering those numbers as the “Gaza Health Ministry.” When President Joe Biden dared to say that those numbers are not reliable (because they are provided by terrorists with an incentive to lie), the Washington Post offered a “fact check” that said that not having confidence in the numbers provided by Hamas was “remarkably uninformed by history and precedent.”
You also have these outlets hiring antisemites to inform their coverage of Gaza. The Associated Press employed Issam Adwan as a reporter until his social media posts comparing Israel to Nazi Germany were revealed. The Times topped that with its employment of Soliman Hijjy, a reporter whom the outlet rehired after it was revealed that he had multiple social media posts praising Adolf Hitler. The Times, which tried to mislead the world and smear Israel as starving children to death, assured the public that it made sure Hijjy could “adhere to our standards.”
Perhaps neither may compare to the freelance photojournalist employed by CNN, Abdel Qader Sabbah, who passed the outlet’s background checks despite having social media posts that included a selfie with a Hamas leader and praise for a suicide bomber who killed 16 people at a restaurant in Jerusalem. The Associated Press also used pictures taken by Sabbah in October and November of 2023, right after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
THE DEPRAVED SUCCESS OF HAMAS PROPAGANDA
In fact, CNN partially justified using Sabbah for its coverage because “our own journalists have been barred from entering Gaza independently.” Once again, Israel is to blame, as the country does not want terrorists using American journalists as human shields. That is what happened when the Associated Press threw a tantrum over its Gaza office building, which also housed Hamas, being struck by Israel (after Israel issued evacuation warnings). It is supposed to be Israel’s fault that outlets such as CNN must either risk being struck in legitimate military operations or rely on terrorist supporters for their coverage of Gaza.
The issue here is not just the unrelenting bias, designed to prop up the narrative that Israel is a near-genocidal power bombing Palestinians (and Hezbollah) for the fun of it. The issue is that these outlets have sacrificed their journalistic souls to perpetuate this narrative, choosing to ignore basic journalistic standards and undeniable facts in service of their anti-Israel (and, perhaps, antisemitic) biases. These outlets are not just getting these stories wrong; they are deliberately misleading and manipulating readers.