Who is behind the Eilat terror attack?

972MAG
Joeseph Dana

The horrific terror attacks in Oslo some weeks ago provided a valuable lesson for journalists. Almost as soon as the attacks took place, journalists throughout the world rushed to place blame on Al Qaeda.

Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger at the Washington Post known for her extreme views on Israeli politics, wrote that the attacks were committed by Al-Qaeda terrorists and used them to attack President Barak Obama’s foreign policy objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her piece was left unchanged on the Washington Post website for a full 24 hours despite evidence that the perpetrator of the attack was, in fact, a right wing Christian fanatic not connected to Al-Qaeda.

Yesterday morning, Israel was rocked by a triple terror attack which left eight people dead and moved the country to a state of high alert. Within hours of the attack, Israel began a series of aggressive airstrikes on targets in the Gaza Strip, claiming that they were reprisal attacks against the Palestinian leadership who gave the order for the Eilat operations. However, Israeli officials and their spokespeople in the media failed to provide factual evidence clearly proving responsibility. The airstrikes killed a number of senior operatives in the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a terror group with weak links to Hamas, as well as civilians including at least one child. The speed at which Israel began airstrikes in Gaza without providing factual evidence of PRC’s involvement raises questions concerning the existence of a premeditated Israeli plan to launch a summer offensive against the population of Gaza. For the record, Hamas has publicly stated numerous times in the past 24 hours that it had nothing to do with the terror attacks in Eilat.

Despite uncertainty over those responsible for the attacks yesterday, Israeli journalists were quick to pass on government hearsay as fact. Barak Ravid, diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, rushed to place responsibility on the PRC for the terror attacks on his Twitter feed. When I asked him to provide factual proof for his claim other than citing anonymous sources, he responded, “This is what I know from my sources. You can choose to believe or not to, like every article I publish in Haaretz.”

Shouldn’t one evaluate Ravid’s reports and claims based on the factual material which he presents? Since when does “belief” play a central role in a reporter’s credibility on specific military issues? Without knowing Ravid’s sources, it is difficult to ‘believe’ and judge them on their credibility. Ravid was not alone in placing blame on PRC as most of the international media outlets adopted the Israeli government line.

In recent months, Ravid has relied on unsubstantiated Israeli government sources for pieces which amount to glorified hearsay without basis in reality. Earlier this summer Ravid wrote a piece propagating Israeli government rumors that activists on board this year’s flotilla “may be bringing chemical substances on the ships to use against Israeli soldiers to prevent them from boarding the ships.”

Oslo should be a warning that rushing to place blame on a group for a horrific terror act without factual proof reflects poor journalistic ethics. In the Israeli context, placing blame on the PRC effectively legitimatizes Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. At the time of this writing there has been no claim of responsibility and the only proof that PRC is behind these terror attacks comes from Israeli government officials who do not cite any specific or verifiable source.  The PRC very well might be behind these attacks but the “shoot first, ask questions later” principle, accepted as mantra in Israel, often results in the loss of innocent life and should not be a fixture of Israeli journalistic ethics.

UPDATE 18:16–

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that the PRC has praised the Eilat terror attack but denied responsibility in carrying it out. Speaking with the AFP, a PRC spokesman in Gaza said, “”The occupation wants to pin this operation on us in order to escape its own internal problems.” Israel maintains that the PRC is responsible for the attacks but has yet to release any verifiable proof connecting the Gaza based group to the attack which has so far claimed eight lives.

Dubious Evidence Israeli Bus Attackers Based in Gaza

Intifada-Palistine

Following deadly terror attacks on Israel, Israeli Air Force attacks kill 9 in Gaza despite lack of evidence connecting attackers to the Strip

Two terror attacks shook Israel on Thursday and Friday. The attackers fired on an Israeli bus, set of a suicide bombing and roadside bombs, fired on civilian vehicles, and engaged in a fire battle with the Israeli army. The day after, 20 Grad rockets hit the Southern Israeli city of Ashdod, damaging a synagogue. By the weekend, eight Israelis were killed and nearly forty injured. Immediately after the attack, the Israeli air force bombed many locations in Gaza. Nine were killed and nearly thirty injured. In an interview with The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky, Lt. Col. Avital Liebovitz admits the army does not connect the attack to the Popular Resistance Committee, whom the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blames. Tarachansky also spoke with Yossi Gurvitz, a contributing editor to +972 Magazine and Mohammed Fares Al Majdalawi, a Journalist and social worker based in Gaza City.

Busted! Haaretz scrubs story about IDF impersonating Hamas

Under the Radar Media
by Maasanova

“By Way Of Deception Thou Shalt Do War.” – the official motto of Mossad 

The story of Israeli Defense Force troops impersonating Hamas militants somehow made it onto the Haaretz news wire. Blacklisted News was able to snag a screen capture before Haaretz purged the story from the site. For proof that the story was in fact memory-holed a la “1984″ click here.

What I find most interesting is why Haaretz printed this story in the first place, and then obviously, why it was removed and replaced by this story: “Obama: Gaza war underscores need for immediate Mideast solution.”

You’ll notice that the first sixteen or so comments are in response to the article of the IDF troops posing as Hamas, and then the remaining comments are in response to the Obama article.

IDF Description of Suspicious Photo It Distributed Is Retracted

uruknet.info

June 8, 2010

On May 31, the IDF Spokesman’s Office distributed a photo of a bearded Muslim man with a knife surrounded by reporters. Daylight was pouring in from a window or door behind the reporters. Offered without context or explanation, the photo played up a classic Orientalist stereotype of violent, fanatical, and even suicidal Muslims determined to kill Jews. It was included in an article based on testimony from anonymous commandos with the following title: "Israeli Navy Commandos: Gaza flotilla activists tried to lynch us."

The IDF apparently told Haaretz that the photo was taken immediately after its Naval commandos raided the Mavi Marmara and other flotilla ships — at least, that’s how Haaretz described the photo based on an IDF source. Yet the raid was conducted under the cover of darkness. How could a photo obviously taken during daytime have portrayed an event that took place during the late evening? Do Muslims have magical powers that allow them to turn night into day? And why were reporters standing around, casually taking photos when commandos were supposedly getting "lynched?" Once again, the IDF’s story was highly suspect.

The original IDF-sourced caption — "holding a knife after" commandos boarded — is below:

The original Haaretz caption claims the photo was taken after the Navy commandos raided the Marmara

I called the IDF Spokesman’s Office to inquire about the photo. Why did the IDF claim the photo depicted an event that took place after the commandos raided the flotilla when it was clearly taken during the daytime? I asked.

After I questioned the IDF's claim of the photo's timing, Haaretz quietly changed the caption, removing language about the photo being taken after the raid

Spokesman Sgt. Chen Arad told me he did not know whether the photo was taken before or after the commandos landed on the Mavi Marmara. "It could be that the claim was made by commandos in the interview," he maintained. I reminded him that Haaretz’s source for the photo was not the commandos, but the IDF Spokesman’s Office. After confirming that his office released the photo, Arad said, "It is reasonable that it was before the actual takeover but I’m not sure what was claimed with Haaretz."

Soon after I spoke with Arad on June 8, Haaretz scrubbed its caption of the suspicious photo, removing the phrase, "holding a knife after Israeli commandos boarded their ship." However, Haaretz did not mention the retraction, probably assuming no one would notice. The retraction raises disturbing questions about the level of coordination between the IDF and the Israeli media. Did the IDF Spokesman’s Office tip Haaretz off after I called them? And why does Haaretz accept the IDF’s version of events on the Marmara at face value? Besides casting a shadow over Haaretz’s coverage of the flotilla raid, this episode once again proves that nothing the IDF says can be trusted.