The west’s fifth columnists

Oct 20, 2023 by Jill

by Melanie Phillips:

Media outlets are enabling anti-Jewish evil in a time of war.

For several hours this week, the BBC, The New York Times, The Financial Times and other prominent mainstream media outlets claimed that Israel had bombed and destroyed Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital, killing hundreds of patients and staff.

This was a lie. A Palestinian rocket fired at northern Israel intended to murder Israeli civilians had misfired and fallen into the hospital’s parking lot, causing an explosion and killing an as yet unknown number of people.

The lie, however, immediately ignited the Arab tinderbox. Mobs attacked American and Israeli embassies across the region.

In Berlin, a synagogue was attacked by assailants shouting “revenge for the hospital”. In Rome, a Jewish school was evacuated following bomb threats. In Tunisia, mobs filmed themselves setting fire to a historic synagogue.

Immediately after the hospital explosion, the obvious question was whether it had been caused by an Israeli missile or a Hamas rocket that went astray.

But media outlets didn’t wait to discover the answer. Instead, they uncritically repeated and amplified to millions of viewers and readers the claim by Palestinian sources that it was an Israeli missile.

“Israeli strike kills hundreds in hospital, Palestinians say,” said The New York Times. “Hundreds killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital — Palestinian officials,” said the BBC.

These outlets and others suspended not just objectivity but also their powers of reason as they leapt to the wrong conclusion in order to hold Israel responsible.

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Read also: Fake news media incites riots after Gaza hospital blast by Kurt Mahlburg, Mercator