A Guardian video report, (‘Little Gaza’: The fight for the West Bank, Aug. 8), by Bethan McKernan, focusing on IDF counter-terror ops in the territory since Oct. 7, devoted a large part of the segment to the death of a 15 year old named Taha Mahmeed (Taha Ibrahim Mohammad Mahmeed) during a gun battle in Tulkarm on Oct. 19th.
In her focus on the teen’s killing, who viewers are told was unarmed, McKernan failed provide even the minimum context regarding the IDF’s campaign that day, nor note that one Israeli was killed and nine injured during the incident.
Times of Israel reported the following:
An Israeli officer was killed and nine others were injured in intense clashes with Palestinian gunmen in a refugee camp near the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Israeli authorities said.
Israel carried out a rare drone strike during the fighting in the Nur Shams camp, killing several Palestinians amid wide unrest in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority said.
Master Sgt. Maxim Razinkov was fatally wounded by an improvised explosive device that was hurled at Border Police forces carrying out an arrest raid in the camp. Another nine officers were lightly wounded, police said.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that 12 Palestinians were killed in the drone strike and in other clashes on Thursday, with another one killed in overnight fighting. Two more Palestinians were killed in clashes elsewhere in the West Bank.
Israeli security forces arrested at least 10 wanted Palestinians, according to the Israel Defense Forces and police.
Police said officers battled Palestinian gunmen in the area, and demolished several explosive devices that were intended to have been used against the forces.
Moreover, viewers aren’t told that Taha was a child soldier, a terrorist affiliated with Hamas, the group which announced his death and acknowledged it took place ‘during confrontations’ with the IDF.
McKernan says is that his family denied that he was involved in politics or fighting, after his death, before adding that ‘local factions’ adopted him as a “martyr”, what she describes as a “common practice in Palestine”. But, her dismissal of ‘claims’ Taha was affiliated with a terror group is inconsistent with the text of a Hamas commemoration of him:
Here’s the full translation, via our colleagues at CAMERA Arabic:
“[The top is a Quranic verse about martyrs]
To the masses of our mighty Palestinian people and the free persons of our Islamic and Arab nation, the Islamic resistance movement Hamas mourns its martyred hero Tah Mahameed who ascended on Thursday, 19/10/2023 at dawn by the fire of the occupation in the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarm during the confrontations of the al-Aqsa Flood campaign.”
As our CAMERA Arabic colleague explained previously, while terror organisations do tend to mourn all Palestinians killed by Israeli fire, their Arabic public announcements differ between “the martyred hero” when the deceased was not a member, and “its” martyred hero” when he was, e.g. Hamas here (not members) vs here and here (members).
The fact that Hamas’s announcement claims him as their martyr undermines the Guardian’s attempt to whitewash his terror affiliation.
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