OPINION:
The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher charged the media with providing the “oxygen of publicity” for terrorist groups. But the latest Israel-Hamas War shows that many press outlets are providing more than just air for terrorists. Rather, they are actively serving on their behalf.
Hamas has always been PR-conscious. The terrorist organization maintains its own media arm, including social media, TV, and radio accounts, that it uses to broadcast propaganda. Yet, Hamas relies on other methods to get its message across.
Hamas tightly controls access to manipulate the media. Only certain journalists are allowed into Gaza to report, and they are often set up with Hamas-approved “fixers” who introduce them to approved sources for approved stories.
Those who fail to comply know what they can expect. The tactic of intimidation, also employed by al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), among others, is ever-present. In 2014, a France24 reporter dared to note that Hamas was firing rockets from a kindergarten. Hamas operatives later showed up at his hotel room and imprisoned him in the basement of Shifa Hospital, one of their primary headquarters. More on Shifa later.
But in the latest war, Hamas has had to do very little. The press has willingly come to them, slavishly serving the terrorists’ purposes.
Hamas counts on “journalists” who seem to conflate their jobs as reporters with serving as mouthpieces for a terrorist group whose charter quotes Hitler and which recently perpetrated the largest slaughter of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
The terror group’s strategy is one of human sacrifice: they want to kill as many Palestinians as possible, hoping to use their deaths as leverage against the Jewish state in the court of public opinion. Accordingly, Hamas uses mosques, hospitals, schools, and private residences to store weapons and launch attacks.
As Luke Baker, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for Reuters, noted, Hamas has a “clear propaganda incentive to inflate civilian casualties as much as possible.” The numbers that Hamas gives, Baker warned, are “almost entirely uncheckable.”
In an October 20 press conference, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters: “I would not take anything that Hamas says at face value. I’m not sure anyone in this room would take at face value or report something that ISIS had said [and] the same applies to Hamas.”
It should stand to reason that the press has good reason to be skeptical of any statistics supplied by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which is controlled by Hamas. Yet, leading news outlets like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, among others, frequently uncritically regurgitate stats from the Ministry or nameless “Gaza Health officials.”
Predictably, the media’s tendency to trust Hamas has led to poor reporting. For example, on Oct. 17 several news outlets immediately repeated the “Health Ministry’s” claims that Israel struck Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, killing 500. In fact, U.S. intelligence later concluded that it was almost certainly an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short, struck the hospital parking lot, and likely killed anywhere from 10-50 people.
One would think that a mistake of this size and nature would leave networks chastened. But some, such as the Washington Post, doubled down. The news outlet not only continued to parrot Hamas casualty claims, but it also subsequently published an “analysis” and a “fact check” column stating that Hamas should be taken at its word. Curiously, the Post doesn’t parrot casualty claims provided by ISIS or al-Qaeda—only those by terrorist groups like Hamas whose preeminent target is the Jewish state.
Contravening basic journalistic standards, the Post even published a graphic on casualties in Gaza that relied on Hamas but was merely sourced to “Gaza reports.”
The press has even helped hide Hamas—literally. Outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times cast doubt that Hamas was using Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a main base. Yet, evidence of Hamas’s use of Shifa has long been in the public domain. In 2014, the Washington Post itself noted that the hospital “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” As far back as 2006, PBS aired a documentary showing “how gunmen roam the hospital, intimidate the staff, and deny them access to protected locations within the building.” Evidence of the hospital’s dual use was helpfully compiled in a 2014 Tablet magazine essay entitled “Top Secret Hamas Command Bunker in Gaza Revealed: And Why Reporters Won’t Talk About It.” Additional evidence has emerged throughout the years, and U.S. intelligence has confirmed that Hamas uses Shifa as a primary staging ground.
It took the IDF several days, delayed in part due to gun battles with Hamas operatives, to seize the hospital. Weapons and tunnels have been found, and so too have dead hostages. Indeed, footage has emerged showing that some of the hostages taken by Hamas were brought to Shifa in full view of hospital staff. And even then, networks like CNN tried to cast doubt on IDF claims by noting that some of the weapons and explosives found had been rearranged. It is common in police and military raids to clear weapons and make them “safe,” but it’s only suspicious when the Jewish state does so. There’s a word for that.
Elsewhere, the press has helped Hamas by playing into its narrative. Post columnists like Ishaan Tharoor and Karen Attiah, among others, have implied that Israel is committing a “genocide” and engaging in “indiscriminate” attacks. In fact, the IDF established humanitarian corridors to allow Gazans to flee. The IDF protected them from Hamas, which set up roadblocks and shot those attempting to escape.
Hamas wants their human shields. And too many in the press want to shield Hamas.
• Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
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