Earlier today we posted about a Guardian video which purported to show Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians, following the murder of 32-year-old Evyatar Borovsky by a Fatah affiliated terrorist at a bus stop in the West Bank on Tuesday, but which didn’t in fact include any clips of Jewish violence.
As we noted, there were indeed multiple reports elsewhere of retaliatory attacks (including rock throwing) by Jews against Palestinians in the area near where the terrorist attack occurred, but the Guardian video on May 1 – though titled ‘Jewish settlers attack Palestinians in the West Bank‘ – simply included short clips of Israeli soldiers using crowd control measures against Palestinians near the village of Orif.
However, upon looking at the film again, we noticed something else – an opening still shot of what appears to be an Israeli rock thrower which doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the actual video.
Here’s how the video is presented on the side of the Guardian’s Israel page. Notice the rock-thrower wearing a blue shirt.
When you open the link you also briefly see the rock thrower:
After a few seconds however, the image above disappears and the full video begins.
Here’s the video again.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGw56F0bTx4]
Nowhere in the video does the (presumably Israeli) rock thrower in the blue shirt appear. And, whilst we were unable to find the video corresponding to this particular still shot, if you Google the title you can find other uploads of the video which appear on YouTube without the mysterious rock-thrower.
It seems that the image in question was spliced from a completely different video and added by Guardian editors to the May 1 video report to buttress the narrative.
In fairness, this technique is used in other Guardian videos (and on other news sites). Nonetheless, in this particular case it seems highly misleading – especially in light of the fact that, as we noted, the video itself contains no footage whatsoever of Israelis throwing rocks or otherwise attacking Palestinians, despite its quite explicit title to that effect.
I guess the more accurate title for the video which editors could have used, ‘Various clips and still shots which, when spliced together, still only suggest Israeli settler violence to the trained Guardian reader’, wasn’t quite as catchy.
Related articles
- Pallywood Light: Guardian video claiming to show ‘Jews attacking Palestinians’ fails to deliver (cifwatch.com)
- BBC guest champions Hass’ advocacy of violence against Israelis (bbcwatch.org)
- Buried by the Guardian: Disturbing data on Palestinian support for suicide bombing (cifwatch.com)
- The Guardian: Where Jews are “hardline”, while Hamas tries to ‘rein in extremists’. (cifwatch.com)
- What the Guardian didn’t tell you about Palestinian youths arrested in Hebron (cifwatch.com)
- A Jew, a jihadist and the Guardian: A brief illustration of photographic sympathy (cifwatch.com)
