The Guardian’s Chris McGreal is at it again, expressing his malign obsession with Israel by leveling false accusations against the state. His piece is replete with a headline accusing Israel of intentionally “murdering” journalists.
He begins by praising Wael Dahdouh, who he describes as the “face of Al Jazeera’s reporting throughout Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza”. He then notes that “last month, Dahdouh himself was wounded and his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, killed in the Israeli bombing of a UN-run school used as a shelter.” What McGreal doesn’t tell readers is that, in 2021, Dahdouh’s work for Al-jazeera was awarded a certificate of appreciation from Hamas, on behalf of the Qatari regime mouthpiece, for “demonstrat[ing] its affiliation with the cause of the oppressed Palestinian people”
McGreal later writes:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) calculates that Israel has killed more than 70 media workers in the latest war in Gaza, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades. Others put the toll at more than 100.
The CPJ says that the scale and circumstances of the killings, including direct threats to reporters and their families by Israeli officials, is evidence that Palestinian reporters in Gaza are being targeted. Murdered, in other words.
First, those “others” McGreal refers to who place the toll at more than 100 is Hamas. Regarding the CPJ list of “70 media workers”, CAMERA documented in November that CPJ’s list at the time included some who “were actually the exact opposite of journalists – they were propagandists working on behalf of authoritarian regimes who sought to cover up the truth rather than expose it, while several were in fact direct employees of Hamas”.
Moreover, a new detailed report by researcher David Collier on the “70 media workers” killed in Gaza reveals that “half of the people that the CPJ list as journalists work for Hamas or Islamic Jihad channels”. His 150 page report also showed that 19 (27%) of the others on the CPJ list don’t seem to be ‘’journalists’ at all. “A freelance graphic designer”, Collier writes, “who works for a PR company, a builder, the unemployed, someone whose father runs a sports club, and administrative employees of media companies, are examples of people listed as journalists by the CPJ.”
The report also shows that “many of those listed died at home (68%), some visibly in strikes on Hamas leadership settings – not in the field. This is of vital importance as, for example, one employee of an Islamic Jihad channel is included even though he died in the house of his father – a top Islamic Jihad commander.
Collier’s rips to shreds McGreal’s libel that Israel’s military is engaged in the mass killing journalists for merely doing their jobs.
Later, McGreal adds to his litany of libels, going back 20 years to note the IDF’s killing of a British documentary cameraman James Miller in Gaza, before employing a narrative redolent of classic antisemitism by contextualising the cameraman’s killing as “part of a pattern of ill-disciplined Israeli soldiers shooting whoever they felt like, including Palestinian children. McGreal links to a piece he wrote in 2005 that included a headline that seemed ripped out of Electronic Intifada.
In that piece, McGreal posited not only that Israeli soldiers inadvertently kill Palestinians children, but that IDF “snipers” intentionally fire at Palestinian children who are playing football or while they sit at their school desks.
Christ McGreal – as we’ve demonstrated continually – doesn’t just dislike Israel, or disagree with Israeli government policy regarding the Palestinians. The Guardian reporter seems to agree with the most unhinged extremists – those Hamas-adjacent propagandists who believe as an article of faith that Israelis are simply monsters. The fact that he continues to spew such toxic rhetoric towards the Jewish state is yet another example of the outlet’s institutional hostility to Israel – extreme bias which the overwhelming majority of British Jews believe fuels antisemitism in the country.
Given that antisemitic incidents in the UK since Oct. 7 have been at record levels, which CST notes includes “hateful comments, threats to life and physical attacks [that] are laced with the rhetoric and iconography of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel politics”, the Guardian’s editorial decisions since the Hamas massacre literally puts Jews at risk.
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McGreal just put out another article criticizing cnn for its pro-Israel coverage. This article needs debunking.