On June 22, The Times published an article about a recent IDF operation targeting Hamas leaders at military sites located in two Gaza City locations, (“Dozens dead’ after Israel airstrikes target Hamas leaders”), written by Anshel Pfeffer. The outlet also published a short YouTube video on June 23 about the same incident, titled “Israel’s twin attack kill at least 42 Palestinians in Gaza”.
The video has no narrator, consists almost entirely of scenes of rubble in the aftermath of the strike, as well as images of a few injured Palestinians, and includes a total of 25 words of text. Also, as you can see by this screen capture 17 seconds into the video, the footage was courtesy of the Turkish state media outlet, Anadolu Agency.
Whilst the piece by Pfeffer is generally fair, the YouTube video, available to the Times’ 614,000 subscribers, is indistinguishable from the context-free, Palestinian propaganda films that are ubiquitous on the platform.
For instance, Pfeffer’s news article informed readers that “Israel carried out a series of massive airstrikes in Gaza City on Saturday, aiming to kill a pair of senior Hamas commanders.“, and that “one of the targets that Israeli security officials believe they succeeded in killing was Ra’ad Saed, considered to be number four in the leadership hierarchy of Hamas“.
The video, on the other hand, doesn’t mention the Hamas and military targets, instead misleadingly informing viewers that the targets were a “house” and a “refugee camp”.
Further, Unlike the Times article, which attributes the casualty count from the incident to “Palestinian and hospital officials”, as did Reuters and other outlets, the Times video states, as fact, that “42 Palestinians were killed”, without noting the source for those figures.
It’s sad to again see the Times, which is currently investigating our complaint against a shameful piece they published casting doubt about Hamas’s weaponisation of rape on Oct. 7, again purveying Guardian-style anti-Israel propaganda and disinformation under the guise of journalism.
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