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.
This is our latest compilation of British media errors, omissions, distortions and propaganda in their coverage of the war:
The Times corrects article which misled on violations of international law
An article in The Times (“Gaza before and after: How a tenth of the strip was turned to rubble”, Oct. 29) included 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 may lose their protection when used by combatants for military/terrorist purposes.
We contacted Times editors, who quickly upheld our correction and removed the sentence with the erroneous claim:
Guardian replaces photo which included fake news.
We tweeted the Guardian’s picture editor to ask that a photo – illustrating a Oct. 29 letter to the editor piece at their site – depicting a pro-Palestinian protester holding a sign falsely blaming Israel for the hospital explosion in Gaza last week be replaced. Shortly thereafter, the photo was indeed removed from the piece and replaced with one that isn’t problematic.
We complained to the appropriate Guardian editor, who replaced the photo pic.twitter.com/2giUVjo6jA
— CAMERA UK (Formerly UK Media Watch and BBC Watch) (@CAMERAorgUK) October 30, 2023
Since the Hamas antisemitic massacre on Oct. 7, a large number of pro-Palestinian protesters – on the streets of major cities (including in the US and UK) and on college campuses – have been implicitly or explicitly justifying the terror group’s barbarism. Further, reaction to the war has fueled a huge spike in antisemitic incidents, particularly targeting Jewish university students.
Yet, Chris McGreal – the Guardian journalist most viscerally hostile to Israel and its Jewish supporters – published a story that, as we noted on Twitter, can accurately be described as Soviet-style propaganda, turning the victim into the perpetrator and the perpetrator into the victim, mirroring the moral inversion in reporting on Hamas’s war against Israeli civilians at the outlet more broadly.
The main pro-Palestinian US campus group puts out toolkit praising Hamas's massacre
Due to death threats, Cornell advises Jewish students to avoid the kosher dining hall
Jewish students at Cooper Union locked in library as pro-Palestinian mob banged on the door
ADL reports… pic.twitter.com/UDeDBGFp3X
— CAMERA UK (Formerly UK Media Watch and BBC Watch) (@CAMERAorgUK) October 30, 2023
This comes after a hateful op-ed published at the Guardian titled “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust” which was widely condemned by the British Jewish community.
Since Oct. 7, we wrote last week, the Guardian, upon being confronted with a modern-day pogrom where Jewish babies were murdered in their cribs, children tortured and killed in front of their parents, the young and old burned alive by antisemitic death squads, some of whom boasted of how many Jews they killed, and who then decapitated and mutilated corpses, has reacted by doubling down on their hatred of Israel, publishing content inciting which, as Shany Mor wrote, incites “even greater revulsion at the victim”.
