Sky News presenter Samantha Washington failed to challenge a guest who hurled the libel that there was one day last week in which 162 Palestinian infants were killed by the IDF.
The presenter didn’t flinch as Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, a fringe, radical voice completely unrepresentative of Israeli society, peddled this unevidenced, toxic charge during a Dec. 30 Sky interview (3:20 into this clip), and which appears to be based on his own column published two days earlier.
Here’s the relevant sentence from the Dec. 28 Haaretz column in question.
The horrifying October 7 events have not been forgotten by anyone, but they cannot justify the spectacles in Gaza. The propagandist who could explain killing 162 infants in one day – a figure reported by social media this week – is yet to be born, not to mention killing some 10,000 children in two months
So, save a random claim on social media which he doesn’t even bother to link to, there’s zero evidence to back up his sensational allegation. Indeed, we were unable to find any other outlet or social media account that made this charge. Not only did Washington fail to challenge a word Levy said during the interview, but, at one point, she even praised him for his valuable “nuance” about the conflict which, she claimed, Israeli spokespeople never provide.
Levy’s ‘nuance’ includes his bizarre suggestion that in Israel you can be arrested and taken to court for merely showing sympathy for the civilians in Gaza (seen in this clip).
Gideon Levy says that most people in Israel have not been shown the scenes in Gaza so they "cannot understand what Israel is doing to Gaza", he adds it is 'almost criminal' to have empathy with Gaza in Israel.https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3 pic.twitter.com/2vRWYn8SMx
— Sky News (@SkyNews) December 30, 2023
Though in Israel, like in the UK, it’s illegal to express support for a proscribed terror group such as Hamas, it’s certainly not illegal to show support for Palestinian civilians.
Washington’s professional abdication during the interview with Levy should also be seen in the larger context of Sky’s pattern of egregious anti-Israel bias since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre.
We’ll be complaining to Sky about the unchallenged ‘162 murdered infants’ charge.
(This post was amended to note that the Sky News presenter who conducted the interview is Samantha Washington, not Anna Botting.)
