Round-up of media errors in coverage of the war – Oct. 29

The unprecedented multi-front attacks on Israelis carried out by the terror group Hamas on October 7th included thousands of missile attacks, the indiscriminate murder of over 1,400 Israelis (mostly civilians) and the wounding of thousands more. It also included rape, mutilation and torture – including against children.  The October 7 attack was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. (See this dedicated site documenting the horrific crimes committed by Hamas terrorists.)

This is our latest compilation of British media errors, omissions, distortions and propaganda in their coverage of the war:

The Times lets Hamas off the hook for violating international law

An article in The Times (“Gaza before and after: How a tenth of the strip was turned to rubble”, Oct. 29) includes the following:

Al-Shifa [hospital in Gaza] is now treating about 5,000 patients, seven times its normal figure, the UN said. It is estimated that thousands of displaced people are sheltering there.

On Friday, the IDF released an animated video allegedly showing how a network of tunnels underneath al-Shifa were being used as a Hamas centre.

The Israeli military has said that Hamas is using the hospital as a shield. It also accused Hamas of organising missile strikes from the hospital, suggesting it would be a legitimate target for Israel.

Under international law, attacking hospitals is a war crime.

However, the article failed to note that Hamas’s use of hospitals to conduct military activity is, of course, itself a violation of international law.  Further, their claim that attacking a hospital is a war crime is grossly misleading, as international law is clear that medical facilities lose their protection when used by combatants for military/terrorist purposes. We contacted Times editors seeking a correction.

In the war between a genocidal antisemitic terror group and the Jewish state, Alan Rusbridger counsels neutrality

Former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger penned an op-ed at the Independent warning that we shouldn’t fall ‘into the trap’ of choosing sides, suggesting that Hamas’s ISIS-style barbarism in murdering, burning alive, torturing and mutilation of over a thousand Jews is not morally different that the unintentional killing of civilians in Gaza by IDF strikes on Hamas targets.

Financial Times op-ed peddles propaganda that Israel is engaging in ethnic cleansing

An op-ed (“A shared humanity is the only way forward”, Oct. 26) in the print and online editions of the Financial Times by Ahdaf Soueif echoes the unhinged propaganda frequently used by Hamas apologists – including over a dozen Guardian contributors – that Israel is plotting to engage in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  Such agitprop is typically peddled in order to obfuscate the ISIS-style barbarism on Oct. 7, an attack representing the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.

Further, we scrolled through Soueif’s Twitter timeline, which shows that on the morning of Oct. 7, when Jewish men, women, children and even babies were being savagely murdered, tortured and mutilated, she retweeted a message making it clear that she doesn’t consider Jews to be part of our ‘shared humanity’.

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