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MEDIA

Journalists for Genocide The media constitutes the eighth front in the war to exterminate IsraelMelanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

Next month, the London freelance branch of Britain’s National Union of Journalists is to hold a meeting to discuss ”the ethics and realities of reporting genocide when the only journalists on the scene are being slaughtered.”

The meeting is being sponsored by the hard-left Labour MP and former Corbyn apparatchik John McDonnell, who has accused Israel of murder and called for its economic and military isolation.

So a fair, balanced and objective discussion, then.

Accusing Israel of “genocide,” when it’s fighting a just war against genocidal attack, when it’s allowed into Gaza tens of thousands of tons of food and other aid, when it’s repeatedly moved Gaza’s civilians out of harm’s way and has killed a far lower proportion of civilians to combatants than any other military in war, denotes either illiteracy, imbecilism or malice.

As for “the only journalists on the scene being slaughtered,” a number of those individuals have been exposed as terrorists masquerading as journalists.

Yesterday, the Israel Defence Forces said it had killed two Islamic jihadi terrorists who had posed as journalists and who had operated from a command centre in the courtyard of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. So not only were these individuals not journalists but they were terrorists engaged in the war crime of using a hospital as cover for terrorism.

Will the NUJ meeting discuss the “ethics and realities” of that?

Taking Sides: Wikipedia Advances Anti-Israel Narratives By Aaron Bandler

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/06/06/taking_sides_wikipedia_advances_anti-israel_narratives_1115040.html

Wikipedia, the world’s go-to site for information that professes to take a neutral point of view, is coming under fire for alleged anti-Israel bias in the sources it favors and content it delivers to millions of readers. 

The criticism is coming from several quarters, including a bipartisan group of 23 members of Congress who, in an April letter, expressed “deep concern regarding antisemitism” found in the online encyclopedia. The entries routinely highlight the work of anti-Zionist scholars and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), according to a review by RealClearInvestigations, while dismissing the views of Israel’s defenders. Amnesty International, which casts Israel as genocidal, is considered a reliable source for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while the Anti-Defamation League, which rejects that view, is not. 

A vigil for victims of antisemitic violence, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Pilgrim, gunned down last month in Washington, D.C.
AP

The controversy has emerged during a sharp rise in antisemitism around the world, including the recent murders of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., and the firebombing in Boulder of protesters demanding the release of hostages taken by Hamas. Critics argue that the online encyclopedia is fueling this hatred by publishing biased entries that are presented as objective statements of fact. 

Wikipedia is produced by volunteer editors who are instructed to follow a set of rules as they summarize the work of authoritative sources, which can include those that appear to be biased. Its consensus model encourages editors to work out their differences collegially and reach a compromise that balances the different viewpoints of sources to ensure neutrality. But critics say that so many academics and NGOs hold left-leaning views that cast Israel as the oppressor and Palestinians as the oppressed that it is hard for editors to avoid publishing biased statements as neutral ones. 

Consider Wiki’s entry for “Gaza genocide” – a title that, critics argue, takes sides. It begins with this statement: “According to a United Nations Special Committee, Amnesty International, and other experts and human rights organizations, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people during its ongoing invasion and bombing of the Gaza Strip as part of the Gaza war.” The entry then lists several paragraphs of evidence, including large-scale deaths of Palestinians, the forced displacement of most of the population, and starvation. 

Where’s the other side of the story to establish neutrality? Not until the seventh paragraph do readers learn that Hamas’ attack in Israel, killing 1,139 people, sparked the invasion of Gaza. But rather than calling Hamas a terrorist group – a classification used by the U.S., EU, U.K., Canada, and other democratic nations – whose avowed goal is the destruction of Israel, the entry describes the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas as a response to Israel’s historic treatment of Palestinians. 

Leading With Bias 

Statement on Media Misinformation on Gaza Ambassador Mike Huckabee

https://il.usembassy.gov/statement-on-media-misinformation-on-gaza/

Reckless and irresponsible reporting by major U.S. news outlets are contributing to the antisemitic climate that has resulted in the murder of two young people at an Israeli Embassy event in Washington last month and the attempted murder and terror attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado on Sunday.

Without verification of any source other than Hamas and its collaborators, the New York Times, CNN, and Associated Press reported that a number of people seeking to receive humanitarian food boxes from the Gaza Humanitarian Fund were shot or killed by the Israeli Defense Forces.  These reports were FALSE.  Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.  It is Hamas that continues to terrorize and intimidate those who seek food aid.  The only source for these misleading, exaggerated, and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of antisemitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States.  Media sources who willingly parrot these libelous allegations should recant their fake news stories, apologize, and pledge to practice actual reporting of fact instead of engaging in dangerous propaganda that assists the terror group Hamas as they continue to hold innocent hostages for over 600 days after butchering over 1,200 people on October 7th.

The efforts of GHF have resulted in over 5 million meals to civilians without incident.  For the New York Times, AP, and CNN to be part of a Hamas-fed false narrative is reprehensible.  It represents more than mere sloppy journalism.  It’s feeding and inciting violence against innocent people in the United States.

We are demanding an immediate retraction of the lies and are appealing to all media sources to act with objective professionalism to cover actual events instead of being a partner of terrorism by blindly following Hamas news releases.

Where Are the Dot Connectors? Noah Rothman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/where-are-the-dot-connectors/

You never have to wait long before an act of right-wing political terrorism or even vandalism stirs a cottage industry devoted to “connecting the dots.” Whether the connections are valid or spurious, sleuths emerge from the woodwork to eagerly draw crisscrossing threads across the paranoiac’s corkboard, linking the violence to the figures they imagine might benefit from violence. White supremacy and white nationalism, limited-government conservatism, support for the right to life, or even just taking a special interest in your child’s education — these are ideals with the capacity to radicalize. Only the keenest of observers with the requisite educational background and insight can see it.

Given this reliable tic, the degree to which the professional dot-connectors have abdicated their role in the last several weeks is quite conspicuous.

The FBI is treating the deployment of Molotov cocktails against a variety of elderly and middle-aged supporters of Israel, one of them reportedly a Holocaust refugee, as a “targeted terror attack.” As they should. The attacker came armed not just with firebombs but with the shibboleths that so often accompany pro-Palestinian violence.

It’s the third act of terroristic violence in service to this cause in as many months. The arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home by an anti-Israel activist in April and the gunning down of two young people outside an Israeli embassy event in Washington, D.C., in May establish the trend. But the trendsetters are rarely treated to the tortured effort to establish nefarious associations that so often follows acts of right-wing violence.

It’s not like that exercise would be difficult. It wouldn’t take much enterprise to establish a through-line between the murderous violence targeting Jews and their supporters to the antisocial behavior that has typified this movement for decades — a condition that the 10/7 massacre only kicked into overdrive. Intrepid researchers might see the unheeded warning signs in the glorification of terrorism apparent among the college students who brandish Hamas and Hezbollah flags and headbands. They might identify ominous portents in the demonstrators’ efforts to block highways, bridges, and airport tarmacs — activities designed to endanger their neighbors.

The violent pro-Palestinian attack on the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters from which lawmakers were forced to flee in terror might have been treated as a sign of things to come. The menacing rhetoric accompanying this sort of activism should also have been a wake-up call. “There is only one solution: Intifada. Revolution.” “Death to America.” “Globalize the intifada.” “By any means necessary.” The network of activists who chant these and other slogans could not be more explicit about the actions they prescribe. “The slave who murders the slave master, who torches the master’s house and perhaps kills the ‘civilian’ slavers’ family and servants is wholly justified in their act,” the Australian far-left website Solidarity observes. “We do not condemn the Indigenous resistance against the violence of colonization.” That sort of candor is hardly uncommon on the fringes of society from which violent activists are drawn.

The media’s dangerous lies about Israel The world was told the IDF massacred starving Palestinians. Now the BBC admits it was ‘incorrect’. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/03/the-medias-dangerous-lies-about-israel/

1 June 2025. Make a note of that date. For there is a good chance it will be recorded as a day of infamy. As a day when the Jews were once again libelled as the slayers of innocents. As a day when the intellectual classes mimicked their benighted forebears of the medieval era and falsely accused the Jewish nation of spilling blood for sport. For many it was just an ordinary Sunday – but for those who will come to write the history of our times, it will stand out as a day of frenzied hearsay in which Jews were once again branded demons and bloodlusters.

Reports of a massacre in Gaza came early that day. It took place in Rafah, we were told, at one of the distribution centres overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israel group that’s providing aid to Gaza’s needy. With depthless cruelty, IDF troops opened fire on the half-starved Palestinians queuing for meals. Thirty-one souls were slaughtered in the ‘aid-centre attack’, as the BBC swiftly called it. A venomous fury spread through the internet. No one can deny it now, people cried: Israel is ‘replicating’ Nazi tactics. Just as the Nazis told Jews they were being put on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.

There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’.

If what the BBC is now saying is correct, then we have just witnessed something truly horrifying. We have watched as an untruth spread with uncommon speed to every corner of the Earth. We have seen a serious calumny be taken as good coin by newsmakers and influencers. Worse, we’ve witnessed an eruption of bigotry. Reports of an ‘aid-centre massacre’ unleashed untold Jew hatred. Across social media, the cry went up: they’re demons, they’re Nazis, they claim to be the ‘Chosen People’ and yet they use food to tempt innocents into the path of murder. All were in agreement: the Jewish nation is the most evil nation.

CNN’s Sick Reaction to the Boulder Terror Attack Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/06/01/cnns-sick-reaction-to-the-boulder-terror-attack-n4940354

You’d think an elderly woman getting burned alive at a pro-Israel event by a man hurling Molotov cocktails while screaming “This will end when Palestine is free” would be universally condemned as terrorism. But this is 2025, with the media’s moral compass still spinning wildly and antisemitism extremely fashionable on the political left. So, instead of acknowledging the obvious, CNN went into full denial mode the moment the FBI under Director Kash Patel called the Boulder firebombing exactly what it was: a targeted terror attack.

Despite the local police chief declining to confirm whether the Boulder attack was targeted, the FBI has classified it as such. The victims were part of the “Run for Their Lives” global walk—an event calling for Hamas to release hostages—and children were among those present. While the exact number of injuries isn’t clear yet, multiple people were hospitalized following the attack.

The suspect, Mohamad Soliman, didn’t quietly sneak in through the back door. He crashed the pro-Israel gathering in Boulder, Colorado, shouting anti-Israel slogans. He then launched into a violent assault—chucking incendiary devices at innocent people.

This isn’t hard to decipher. 

Tapper’s Book Condemns Journalists In More Ways Than One

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/27/tappers-book-condemns-journalists-in-more-ways-than-one/

The reaction to Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s book about how the White House “hid” Joe Biden’s mental decline has been brutal – and fittingly so. But their book inadvertently reveals something even worse about today’s corporate journalists.

Tapper and Thompson would have us believe that they were shocked! shocked! to discover that Biden was suffering serious and worsening mental infirmities while president, because the White House had so expertly hidden them. And that it was only through their intrepid reporting that the truth can now be told.

This is laughable on its face.

The stories the authors recount were all known by journalists all along. How else could they have churned out a book in a matter of months after Biden left office? Every story in that book, every one, was known to White House reporters who diligently refused to report them at the time. That includes “revelations” in the book such as that:

A small, tight-knit group in former President Joe Biden’s inner circle was running the White House like a ‘politburo,’ and they were the ‘ultimate decision-makers’ as Biden’s health and cognitive function continued to decline.

Tapper himself was one of the worst offenders. Just watch any of the long and damning collection of clips circulating on social media, like the one below, showing Tapper parroting White House talking points.

THE FUTURE OF FRONTPAGE AFTER DAVID HOROWITZ

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-future-of-the-david-horowitz-freedom-center/

When David first told me that he meant me to be his intellectual heir, I thought it was an honor I was not worthy of. I still think that way because no one could possibly replace David. And it’s not my job to replace him, but to take his principles, to build on them, to introduce them to a new generation of readers, writers and activists, and to make them relevant every single day.

That’s what I already do in my writing. It’s what I intend to do as the Freedom Center’s CEO.

After his passing, the David Horowitz Freedom Center board appointed me to head the organization. What that really means is that the incredible team that David built, Michael Finch, our president, Todd Snider, Mark Tapson, whose writings you already know and podcasts you listen to, Jamie Glazov, the editor of Front Page Magazine who wrote the definitive article on David’s life and work, Lonny Leitner, whose Go for the Heart training has changed politics, the Shillman fellows Bruce Thornton, Bruce Bawer and Jason Hill, who represent some of the finest intellectual talent we have to draw on, Robert Spencer, another Shillman fellow (an honor I also share with him), whose determination to tell the truth about Islam is in the finest traditions of David’s life, John Perazzo of Discover the Networks, Sara Dogan on the campus beat and the other valued warriors are still fighting to defeat the enemies of our country and our culture.

They’re carrying on David’s fight.

Gary Lineker: how virtue-signalling rots the soul His embrace of Israelophobia reveals the useful idiocy of the centrist dads. Tom Slater

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/19/gary-lineker-how-virtue-signalling-rots-the-soul/

We’ve seen the most mediocre minds of a generation destroyed by virtue-signalling. Gary Lineker – now out of the BBC, after he ‘accidentally’ shared an anti-Semitic Instagram post – is a grimly instructive example of a moralising centrist dad whose thirst for retweets led him down a deranged and dark path. A man who has swanned effortlessly from raging against Brexit to comparing the Tories to the Nazis to reposting an ‘anti-Zionist’ video that included an image of a rat, a quintessential piece of Nazi-era, Jew-hating propaganda. Apparently, Gary’s famed ability to detect resonances of the 1930s – he once accused Suella Braverman’s immigration rhetoric of being positively Goebbels-esque – failed him on this occasion.

A formal statement is expected today, announcing Lineker’s departure from the BBC’s football coverage. He had already agreed to leave Match of the Day at the end of the football season – the show he has helmed since 1999, shortly after his dazzling playing career had ended – but he was due to stay on for the 2026 World Cup. Since Lineker shared that despicable post, by a group called Palestine Lobby, things have finally hit breaking point. Even an ‘unreserved’ apology – claiming his amplification of an age-old anti-Semitic trope was an ‘accident’ for which he takes ‘full responsibility’ – wasn’t enough to keep his already acrimonious relationship with the Beeb intact.

There are those who are trying to present this as a free-speech issue – largely people who have hitherto expressed no interest in the subject and have actually led high-profile cancellation crusades in the past. Woke leftist Owen Jones – who led the charge to get Toby Young pushed out of a government appointment – has declared his solidarity with Lineker, claiming ‘the BBC has driven out one of their most popular stars for opposing genocide’. Even though Israel’s war against Hamas is not a genocide and Lineker has actually been kicked out for reposting material straight out of Der Stürmer. By OJ’s wonky standards that doesn’t render you unfit for taxpayer-funded work, but jokes about tits on Twitter 10 years ago absolutely does.

Qatar & Influence Operations and Saudi Arabia & Influence Operations Let’s refresh. Diana West

https://dianawest.substack.com/p/qatar-and-influence-operations-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2175125&post_id=163628450&utm

Before there was Qatar & influence operations, there was Saudi Arabia & influence operations. If it is Qatar is in the headlines for buying politicians, media, universities, and for its terrorist connections, Saudi Arabia was making the same headlines and more (anyone remember 9/11?) a few years ago. Don’t look now, but Saudi’s Alwaleed bin Talal is a constant player. For starters, he was Fox’s No. 2 owner then, and he is Twitter’s No 2 owner today. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, Qatar threw a few hundred million dollars into Elon’s Twitter purchase as well. Who knows?

Maybe, we are all Qataris now.

How did this happen? Some rather important part of it starts with Alwaleed’s buy into the leading American conservative media network, Fox News, over twenty years ago. The Saudi stake would grow to 7 percent, second only to holdings of the Murdoch family. I am posting a syndicated newspaper column I wrote on the subject in 2010. The whole thing bothered me then as it all bothers me, and greatly in this week of Trump’s Arabian Processional, about which I will have more to say. For now, the 2010 column, posted below, will serve as a refresher course — and for me, as well.

I will note that this column and hundreds more are collected in my 2013 book, No Fear.

Should Fox News register with the State Department as a foreign agent — an agent of Saudi Arabia? by Diana West, February 7, 2010

First off, is that a farfetched question? Not when a leading member of the ruling family of the Sharia-totalitarian “kingdom” of Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has made himself the second-largest shareholder of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Fox News’ parent company.

Just as Steven Emerson believes that American universities using Saudi mega-millions (many from Alwaleed) to set up Islamic studies departments should register as Saudi agents, I believe an American news channel part-owned and part-influenced by the Saudi prince should, too.