RUTHFULLY YOURS

An Allegedly Armless Lebanese Child, Wounded by Israeli Bomb, Actually Has Both Arms Intact August 23, 1982

The difference today is that President Donald Trump has Israel’s back and is fighting antisemitism while Ronald Reagan turned away and abstained in the vicious UN response to Israel’s bombing  of  the Osirak nuclear research reactor being built near Baghdad. rsk

https://www.jta.org/archive/an-allegedly-armless-lebanese-child-wounded-by-israeli-bomb-actually-has-both-arms-intact

An allegedly armless child, whose picture is reportedly displayed on President Reagan’s desk as a symbol of suffering in Lebanon, turns out to be a boy, not a girl as alleged, with both arms intact. The child, identified as four-month-old Eli Massou, whose mother is 16 years old, was discharged from the hospital a few days after the picture was taken.

According to the caption accompanying the United Press International photo distributed throughout the world, it was a picture of a baby girl swathed in bandages after both arms had been blown off by a misdirected Israeli bomb. The child was seen held in the arms of a nurse.

After a news report that Reagan had publicized the picture as a symbol of suffering in the Lebanon war, the Israel medical corps started to track down the infant and the nurse holding him.

The nurse and the doctor who treated the baby were found, and sworn depositions were taken from them. The child was tracked down along with his mother in a Lebanese village where they had taken refuge after they were both released from the hospital.

According to the medical report, one of the infant’s arms was broken in a bombing raid. The arm and his face were also slightly burned. His mother was also slightly injured in the raid and his father was killed. Doctors said the child was completely swathed, as shown in the UPI photo, because that is the standard procedure of dealing with an infant whose arm has been broken to prevent unnecessary movement during medical treatment.

Photographs of the apparently now healthy baby were published in Israeli papers today. Copies have been sent to the Israel Embassy in Washington, which presumably sent a copy to the White House to replace the incorrectly-captioned picture on the President’s desk.

http://melaniephillips.substack.com

In the Gaza war, journalism has become a veritable Ponzi scheme of lies. It uses terrorists posing as journalists to tell lies, it lies about the evidence that they were terrorists and it lies about those lying about the lies.

Israel said it had conducted a targeted killing of the al Jazeera ‘‘journalist” Anas al Sharif because he was also a Hamas commander. It produced screen shots identifying al Sharif as a leader in a Hamas rocket-launching squad and member of the Nukhba force, the stormtroopers who led the depraved attack on Israelis on October 7 2023. It showed that he had joined Hamas in 2013 and even revealed his military ID number.

It further emerged that al Sharif was named in a lawsuit by American victims of October 7 against al Jazeera for providing “substantial assistance” to Hamas. The lawsuit quotes messages al Sharif posted on Telegram on October 7 as the massacre of 1200 Israelis developed. He wrote in one message:

Nine hours later and the heroes are still roaming the country, killing and capturing… God, God, how great you are.

He wrote in another:

It is a jihad, a jihad of victory and martyrdom. Allahu akbar and thank God.

Before the attack, Sharif posted photos of himself smiling alongside Hamas leaders, including the eliminated October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar.

None of that cut any ice with Western media outlets that vilified Israel for targeting a journalist. Instead, the media dismissed all this evidence with declarations that Israel’s claims couldn’t be verified and that it had provided “no proof”.

In other words there is simply no evidence, however overwhelming, that is allowed to challenge the foundational lie pumped out by the media echo-chamber that the Israelis are brutal killers mowing down the innocent for daring to resist.

So the media went into mourning for their slain champion of “truth”, presenting that view of al Sharif as unchallengeably correct while ignoring or rubbishing as an Israeli cover-up the evidence that he was a senior Hamas operative.

https://www.thefp.com/p/why-is-reuters-carrying-water-for-hamas?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

When it comes to the war in Gaza, how is it that the legacy media always defers to the narrative that benefits Hamas? A recent Reuters story illuminates the problem.

Last month, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) produced an internal analysis tracking reports of waste, fraud, and abuse of humanitarian aid in Gaza. 

According to that report, between October 2023 and May 2025, USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance received 156 notifications of “fraud, waste, and abuse notifications” from its NGO partners in Gaza, amounting to a loss of more than $4.6 million. The key finding was that “for all 156 incidents, partners did not provide any information in their incident reports alleging SG [sanctioned group] or FTO [foreign terrorist organization] involvement,” according to a slideshow of the findings obtained by The Free Press.

But when the analysis was leaked to legacy news organizations, they reported something completely different. 

In late July, first Reuters and then CNN reported that the analysis “found no evidence of systematic theft by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.” ABC later reported that USAID “failed to find any evidence” that Hamas “engaged in widespread diversion of assistance.” Those news organizations didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

There is a world of difference between “notifications” of aid misuse and actual misuse.

Two sources familiar with USAID and its analysis confirmed that the partners’ failure to report terrorist involvement does not mean there is “no evidence” of theft by Hamas. “The report appears to be wholly reliant on self-reporting by UN agencies and NGOs who are extremely reticent to report Hamas interference out of fear of violent retribution by Hamas,” a senior U.S. official familiar with the USAID report told The Free Press.

When the Reuters story was published, “nobody at the highest levels of the USAID administration had seen the report,” said a senior official at the State Department, which oversees USAID. “It was deliberately and intentionally manufactured. . . and distributed to plant a deliberate false narrative.”

Worse yet, Hamas used Reuters’ framing to fuel accusations of starvation and genocide against the U.S. and Israel. Allegations of theft “were recently refuted by an internal investigation by the United States Agency for International Development, which confirmed the absence of any reports or data indicating the theft of aid by Hamas,” said Izzat al-Rishq, a founding member of Hamas’s politburo, on August 1. “We strongly condemn U.S. President Trump’s reiteration of Israeli allegations and lies accusing Hamas of stealing and selling humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ny-times-erroneous-cover-photo-100031670.html

The New York Times recently attempted to downplay a significant error that was plastered on its front page. But when it comes to the legacy media’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, the Gray Lady is in good company.

Last month, the Times ran the somber headline, “Young, Old and Sick Starve to Death in Gaza: ‘There Is Nothing.’” Accompanying it was a grim image of a malnourished infant and his mother. The caption read, “Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition. A doctor said the number of children dying of malnutrition in Gaza had risen sharply.”

Critics quickly called out the Times for prominently featuring Mohammed, whose image was featured by numerous other media outlets, without mentioning that he has a genetic disorder.

The Times finally addressed the major omission on Tuesday with an editors’ note buried underneath the lengthy story that had already circulated for more than four days.

“This article has been updated to include information about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza suffering from severe malnutrition. After publication of the article, the Times learned from his doctor that Mohammed also had pre-existing health problems,” the editors’ note stated.

A spokesperson for the Times released a statement saying, “Children in Gaza are malnourished and starving, as New York Times reporters and others have documented. We recently ran a story about Gaza’s most vulnerable civilians, including Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, who is about 18 months old and suffers from severe malnutrition. We have since learned new information, including from the hospital that treated him and his medical records, and have updated our story to add context about his pre-existing health problems. This additional detail gives readers a greater understanding of his situation.”

“Our reporters and photographers continue to report from Gaza, bravely, sensitively, and at personal risk, so that readers can see firsthand the consequences of the war,” the statement added.

Notably, that statement was shared by the Times’ communications account, which has less than 90,000 followers on X, and not the Times’ main account, which has more than 55 million followers.

https://honestreporting.com/starved-of-morals-how-the-media-looked-away-from-israeli-hostage-horror/

The footage is horrific.

In two separate videos released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Israeli hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David appear gaunt, broken, and visibly emaciated. In the first, Braslavski – barely able to speak –says: “I’ve run out of food and water. If before they gave me a little bit, now there’s nothing. Today I ate three falafel crumbs – three crumbs.” In the second, David, also starved, is seen digging what appears to be his own grave in a Hamas tunnel.

These are the kinds of scenes that should have dominated headlines. The images are not only harrowing, but evidence of months-long torture, war crimes, and psychological warfare. Yet, the international press mostly averted its gaze.

Where were the front-page splashes? The expert panels? The outrage?

These men have been held hostage for over 660 days. Their skeletal forms should have shocked the world. Instead, the media largely ignored the videos, or buried them in the coverage.

And here’s where the double standard becomes impossible to ignore.

News organizations that eagerly ran unverified images of starving Palestinian children – some later revealed to be suffering from congenital illness – offered only cautious, passing mention of the Israeli hostages. NBC News, for example, published the now-debunked photos by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim al-Arini, describing the child as “severely malnourished,” without confirming their authenticity. Yet when it came to footage of Evyatar David, whose voice and body clearly indicate his suffering, NBC noted it could not “independently verify” the video.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-truth-gets-its-shoes-on/

Dozens of marginally curious media outlets and institutions had caught onto the lie promulgated by the New York Times long before the New York Times got around to acknowledging it.

Late Tuesday, the Times finally got around to clearing the caked and dried egg off its face.

NYTimes Communications@NYTimesPR

We have appended an Editors’ Note to a story about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza who was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. After publication, The Times learned that he also had pre-existing health problems. Read more below.

This was no minor error — a modest amendment to a fleeting aside in paragraph 25 of an otherwise airtight story. No, al-Mutawaq’s image was the feature art designed to illustrate the plight endured by all of Gaza’s 2 million people. It ran on the front page, stretching almost to the fold. And the Times wasn’t alone. This stricken child’s skeletal frame was picked up by the Times of London, The Guardian, the Daily Express, and more — all to morally blackmail Israel for pursuing its security priorities in Gaza, but not to pressure Hamas into surrendering in the war it launched and lost for the betterment of the people it supposedly serves.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-covenant-of-blood-between-druze-and-israel/

Just when you think the New York Times couldn’t sink any lower, after favorably showcasing and quoting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, along with his “warning” that “Israeli attacks threaten ‘chaos’ in Syria,” the Times went on to serve as al-Sharaa’s mouthpiece by reporting that his attacks on the Druze were based on the paranoia of the Druze community. The Times stated that the Druze “deeply distrust Syria’s new authorities” and “thought that the government forces were coming to attack the Druze. The militias then mobilized to repel the incoming government forces.”

The Druze community in Syria is anything but naïve or jumpy. They are astute, know their enemy, and are of vital importance to Israel for strategic and historical reasons. The predominantly Druze city of Sweida is not far from the Israeli border. The Arab Weekly explains why the Druze are so critically important to Israel as allies, stating, “Beneath the moral justification lies a layer of realpolitik. Southern Syria has long been a zone of strategic anxiety for Israel”:

Unlike Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze men are conscripted into the military. They serve in elite combat units, rise to high ranks in the IDF, and have long been held up as a model of Arab integration. Several senior military officers, intelligence officials and Knesset members are Druze.

The Middle East Institute points out that Druze political and military forces “wield a great deal of influence” in Sweida province, where they have “established checkpoints,” “enacted community policing,” and clashed with jihad terror groups whenever they “made incursions into the province.” Some of these clashes have been with Hizballah.

Newsweek points out a deep history of loyalty that binds Israel and the Druze together:

Druze in Israel have forged what is often referred to as “a covenant of blood” with the Jewish state. Jethro—the biblical prophet Moses’ father-in-law—is the most important prophet in the Druze religion and the ancestor of all Druze. Alongside the Jewish majority, the Druze in Israel are the only religious community that is required by law to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (at the request of Druze religious and communal leaders).

The Hill notes the immediate source of the Sunni government of al-Sharaa’s desire to persecute the Druze: the “Druze are Arabs but not Muslims,” even though the Druze religion is an offshoot of Islam that originated a millennium ago.