Most years around this time, the British media resurrects some variation of the desired Palestinian narrative on Israel’s putative role ruining Christmas in Bethlehem, and this year is no different, with the opening salvo coming from Raf Sanchez at the Telegraph.
UK Media Watch prompted two corrections recently. At the Indy, we convinced editors to revise a sentence which misleadingly framed an accusation that settlers killed a Palestinian woman as if it were a fact, rather than just a claim. At the Telegraph, we prompted a correction to a sentence which claimed that the US was the only country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, neglecting to note that Guatemala also recently moved its embassy to the Israeli capital.
The journalistic axiom ‘if it bleeds it leads’ isn’t entirely true when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where selective concern for the suffering of one side is the norm – indicative of a broader pattern of double standards which continues to compromise British media coverage of the region.
The Telegraph’s promotion of the Lebanese PR event in defence of Hezbollah is another example of the media’s frequent failure to subject the accusations of Israel’s enemies to the same degree of journalistic skepticism and critical scrutiny that Israeli claims are almost always subjected to.
Though the quote is still highly problematic, we’re glad that we were again successful in convincing editors that such propaganda about ‘racist roads’, which of course serve to amplify dishonest ‘Apartheid Israel’ smears, are completely counter-factual.
The claim that it’s “totally forbidden” to carry or display a Palestinian flag in Jerusalem is simply false. We confirmed this during a conversation with Israeli Police Foreign Press Spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld. Further, as we tweeted yesterday, the photographer himself has published photos depicting Palestinians with Palestinian flags.
The original Telegraph language, alleging that proposed Knesset legislation would allow the government to expropriate “church land”, was changed to note that the proposal relates to land sold by the church, and now owned by private (Jewish) investors.
The low lights of a diatribe against the world in Ramallah last night by the Palestinian “president”, who today celebrated the 12th year of a 4 year term, included his characterisation of Israel as a European “colonialist project, which has nothing to do with the Jews”. Thus far, among UK media outlets, only The Telegraph covered Abbas’s speech. However, their article ignored his antisemitic smear.
Palestinian leaders demanded that Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital be framed as (another) “death knell” to the peace process, one that shatters the decades long two-state dreams of Palestinians, and that’s exactly what Rafi Sanchez at The Telegraph delivered.
CST’s 2016 Antisemitic Discourse report included an example of antisemitism in the mainstream British media. The article in question, published in February 2016 in the Daily Telegraph, characterised a well-known Jew who’s the founder of Elliott Management Hedge Fund as a ‘latter day Shylock’ – a reference to the antisemitic caricature from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
To be fair, the Telegraph is far from the worst UK news outlet when it comes to such media double standards. However, their omission of Palestinian car rammings within the context of the London Bridge attack seems indicative of a wider phenomenon by which Israelis are placed in a different category of victims – men, women and children whose suffering often seems to occupy a space beyond the sympathetic imagination of many journalists and editors.
Following communication with Telegraph editors, the erroneous claim was removed.
In addition to the false suggestion that there’s a concrete wall surrounding Gaza, the claim that “with few exceptions, no one has been allowed in or out since…2007” is absurd, as data from UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory (OCHA oPt) demonstrates.
The Guardian’s Tareq Baconi wishes us “to talk to Hamas” urging that now is the time due to Hamas’ new Document of General Principles which, he writes, “supports the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders”. As we argued, this document is a sham meant to trick the gullible and aid those desperate to push the Palestinian cause.
Yesterday, we posted and tweeted about the following egregious error in a report at The Telegraph on the scandal surrounding comments by a low-level Israeli employee, Shai Masot, uncovered by an Al […]
Al Jazeera on Sunday published “bombshell footage” covertly filmed in a West London restaurant involving Shai Masot, a political officer at the Israeli embassy, and Maria Strizzola, a civil servant and former aide […]
Yesterday, most major UK news outlets were quick to report on the guilty verdict of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, convicted in a military court for shooting to death a wounded Palestinian attacker, Abdel […]
Unlike the EU, the US does not characterize the settlements as “illegal”. Rather, since the early 80s, they’ve been characterizing them as “illegitimate”, but not “illegal” – a fact noted at the Telegraph in previous reports.
So, the number 463 includes only 50 new homes, 234 units in one new nursing home building and the legalization of 179 already existing homes.
We recently posted about an attack, during the summer 2014 war, on a Gaza home which killed nearly a dozen members of the Siyyam family in light of a new IDF Military Attorney General (MAG) report which concluded that the family was NOT in fact killed by an IDF aerial attack. The MAG report concluded that an errant Hamas rocket was likely to blame.
UK Media Watch, a CAMERA affiliate
BBC Watch, a sister site of UK Media Watch
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