By Elliott Broidy
It is absolutely maddening to see over and over again how the worldwide media falls for Hamas’s PR war against Israel. They repeat the lies spread by Hamas, Iran, and its allies, and then must retract them when the truth is proven. But the retractions are not on the front page, they are small and hidden. Even if they were promoted as prominently as the original story, the world ignores the new information and the damage to Israel’s reputation is done.
There comes a point when one must conclude that this isn’t a situation of media gullibility; it’s active participation in Hamas’s campaign. Indeed, every single “mistake” blackens Israel’s name.
First it was the al-Ahli Hospital canard, when the international media – immediately, before the dust settled – blamed Israel for bombing the hospital and killing 500 people. It turned out that Palestinian Islamic Jihad had fired a rocket that mistakenly hit the parking lot of the hospital, and that the death toll was orders of magnitude lower. But the white-hot fury with which it was initially reported dictated the tempo, not the later, sotto voce retractions. The lie about the hospital attack is cited by Israel’s detractors to this day.
Then came the Gaza “famine.” Per the international media and public figures like Samantha Power, Gaza has been on the brink of famine for over a year, but no matter. First the UN said 48,000 children were on the brink of famine only to retract that lie a day later. Then they reported that Israel was responsible for the famine only to later report quietly that 86% of the UN’s food trucks were hijacked by militants or hungry mobs. Recently the UN reported that there was a famine in Gaza but The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – the august body whose declaration of famine in late July kicked off a media frenzy – used different metrics of what constitutes a famine in Gaza so that it could declare that one was happening there. This included lowering the “threshold for the proportion of children who must be considered malnourished for the IPC to declare a famine, down to 15 percent from 30 percent.”
There is a suspicious convergence to the accusations of famine now, especially given that Hamas is now on the ropes. Before the famine accusations, Hamas seemingly was about to agree to a ceasefire deal that would release the hostages still in their captivity. The accusations and damnations put the entire onus on Israel and let Hamas off the hook, incentivizing the group to dig in and refuse to negotiate about the hostages or anything else. Similarly, the announcements from France, the UK, Canada, and Australia that they will recognize “Palestine” next month only encourage Hamas fanaticism.
Ammunition in the PR war against Israel has included a photograph of an emaciated child on the front page of the The New York Times which was seen by millions. It was later revealed that the child had cerebral palsy and had been taken into Israel for treatment. The original picture included his brother who had no indication of malnourishment. The New York Times responded by announcing the correction on its PR social media account which has 89,000 subscribers. Other pictures showed children who really had spinal muscular atrophy or genetic diseases that harm the lung and digestive systems. Repeatedly during the current war, photos on social media have purported to show dead or starving Gazan children, only later to be revealed as Syrian victims of Bashar al-Assad. Those sharing these photos did not care about the actual Syrian children who suffered and were murdered; they only cared to the extent that they could use them to deviously manipulate opinion and demonize Israel.
But the journalists and others who shared these photos pointedly ignored these underlying diseases, because they didn’t fit the narrative of evil Israel. Further, instead of praising Israel for helping start an organization that is extensively feeding the Gaza population (unheard of by an enemy in the middle of a war) because Hamas is hoarding the food for its militants or charging the people exorbitant prices for it, the international media outlets have their marching orders to make Israel the villain, about which Matti Friedman has written extensively. Obsessive attention is paid to Israel, out of all proportion to and without regard to anything it is or is not doing. Conversely, Hamas is either ignored or deemed entirely reactive to Israeli actions. Stripped of this context, Israel is made to look like a warlike bully.
Meanwhile, the same media that has reported breathlessly and uncritically about famine in Gaza were silent when Hamas released videos showing starved Israeli hostages, one of whom was digging his own grave! Of course, they are ridiculously quiet about the famine affecting 500,000 people that is happening in the Sudan.
There is now global outcry about the killing of an Al Jazeera “journalist”, Anas al-Sharif, which predictably ignores or justifies the fact that that he was a Hamas operative – there’s even a photo of Yahya Sinwar, the late Hamas leader and mastermind of the October 7 attacks, putting his arm around al-Sharif’s shoulder in a friendly embrace.
The New York Times published a puff piece about a mass murderer who was released in exchange for innocent hostages.
This reminds me of when Ireland urged the International Court of Justice to change its definition of genocide so that it could justifiably accuse Israel of perpetrating one. Genocide currently is defined as an attempt to kill an entire people, not a small portion of a people in the middle of a war. If Israel, a world military power, was trying to commit genocide in Gaza, a population of over 2,000,000 people, and has succeeded in killing only 60,000 (per Hamas figures, which do not differentiate between civilians and militants), then they’re doing a really poor job of it – to the point of laughable when it comes to an accusation of genocide.
The point is that Israel is guilty until proven innocent (and is guilty even then).
We’ll see what tomorrow or next week brings, because there is always something.
Hamas is jubilant about this state of affairs. It gets to start a war with the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust – the number killed was 15 times the size of 9/11 in relative terms based upon the populations of Israel and the U.S. – gets to stubbornly continue that war, hold men, women and children hostage in excruciating conditions, retrieve thousands of murderers and other militants for the innocent hostages, stonewall negotiations, immiserate its people, fire rockets at civilians in Israel (a war crime) from civilian locations in Gaza such as schools, hospitals and residences (another war crime), and start a global war of antisemitism against Jews the likes of which has not been seen since the Second World War. Extraordinarily, it is Israel – and Israel alone – that faces the slings and arrows of global outrage. It’s time for the world to realize that it is being gaslighted and for the war against Israel and the Jews to end.
About Elliott Broidy
Elliott Broidy is an entrepreneur who has used his extensive experience and talent to found, invest in, and in some cases, manage as CEO, more than 160 companies over his four-decade career. He has given extensively to support the Jewish community and other causes during his career. He currently is the Co-Chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate which supports The Auschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER at House 88), an initiative of The Counter Extremism Project.