Video of Alan Johnston in suicide belt

[steevo]

It does look real to me

www.liveleak.com/view?i=b2c_1182727196

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070624/wl_nm/palestinians_bbc_dc

GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said on Sunday that the kidnappers of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston have made a new video of the abducted journalist wearing what appeared to be explosives around his waist.

Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led government sacked by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, disclosed the video of Johnston in his first major speech since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip just over a week ago.

“In the past they showed him in an orange uniform. Today they showed him with an explosives belt round his waist,” Haniyeh said.

A Palestinian source close to the negotiations confirmed the existence of a new tape showing Johnston wearing an explosives belt. The tape has not been aired publicly but the contents were shared with Haniyeh.

[Teddy Bear]

What's fishy is that this group claims that Hamas and the British government have been calling for a military resolve to this abduction, and that even the BBC were doing the same. Publicly, neither of the latter have been doing so, although Hamas has threatened to, so one has to wonder why the need for this video.

I still have the feeling that Hamas are somewhere behind it, especially as this video comes at the same time as an audio recording of an abducted Israeli soldier is made public by Hamas.

[steevo]

Interesting Teddy.

[Teddy Bear]

Here's something that shows just how much Hamas is concerned and aware about publicity.

Congratulations Hamas: Getting an opinion piece into the NY Times and Washington Post on the same day is unprecedented [Tom Gross]

While Hamas was still executing people in Gaza last week, including civilians, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the NY Times-owned International Herald Tribune all rushed to promote the propaganda of one of the world's most murderous terrorist groups.

Getting an opinion piece into the Times and the Post on the same day is unprecedented. Congratulations Hamas!

Even Reuters acknowledges the achievement.

Hamas scores publicity coup in U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Shunned by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, the Islamist group Hamas scored a publicity coup this week by defending its policies in Gaza with opinion pieces in two of the country's most influential newspapers on the same day.

The New York Times and The Washington Post gave space to Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas figure, on Wednesday to argue that the United States should not interfere in Gaza, where Hamas took control after six days of bloody fighting against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah fighters.

Yousef is senior political adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, who became Palestinian prime minister after elections last year. He is now contesting his dismissal by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who formed a new government in the West Bank after Hamas took over Gaza.

Hamas leaders rarely have access to major U.S. media to express their views unfiltered, and getting an opinion piece into the Times and the Post on the same day appeared unprecedented.

Here is what the New York Times and the Washington Post didn’t put on their editorial page. This is what Ha'aretz reports this weekend:

Hamas was not using a random hit list. Every Hamas patrol carried with it a laptop containing a list of Fatah operatives in Gaza, and an identity number and a star appeared next to each name. A red star meant the operative was to be executed and a blue one meant he was to be shot in the legs - a special, cruel tactic developed by Hamas, in which the shot is fired from the back of the knee so that the kneecap is shattered when the bullet exits the other side. A black star signaled arrest, and no star meant that the Fatah member was to be beaten and released. Hamas patrols took the list with them to hospitals, where they searched for wounded Fatah officials, some of whom they beat up and some of whom they abducted.

Aside from assassinating Fatah officials, Hamas also killed innocent Palestinians, with the intention of deterring the large clans from confronting the organization. Thus it was that 10 days ago, after an hours-long gun battle that ended with Hamas overpowering the Bakr clan from the Shati refugee camp - known as a large, well-armed and dangerous family that supports Fatah - the Hamas military wing removed all the family members from their compound and lined them up against a wall. Militants selected a 14-year-old girl, two women aged 19 and 75, and two elderly men, and shot them to death in cold blood to send a message to all the armed clans of Gaza.

06/24 11:46 AM

[steevo]

Yes, i know.

And you're so correct about Hamma's concern over their international image. They would be reduced dramatically if it wasn't for Leftist media giants.

These American media, especially the NY Times are a complete disgrace. They're traitors. They've proven themselves direct enablers of evil time and again.

[Teddy Bear]

Similar in coverage to the BBC, the only difference is the NY Times is not publicly funded to be fair and impartial giving the output a mask of integrity, whereby they do far more damage.

[steevo]

I just found this linked from another site. Hamas has just released a recording of Gilad Schalit, the Israeli soldier abducted about a year ago here

"Mother and father, my sister and brother, my friends in the Israel Defense Forces. I greet you from prison and miss you all," he said.

"I have spent a full year in prison, and my health is still deteriorating, and I need a prolonged hospitalization. I regret the lack of interest on the part of the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces in my case and their refusal to meet the demands of the al-Kassam brigades," he added.

[snip]

Schalit's father, Noam, listened to the tape on Channel 2 television, asking the station to play it a second time for the soldier's mother to hear. He said it appeared that the statement was coerced.

"I imagine that it's the same as the letter they dictated to him and doesn't reflect his real state," he said. "We want somebody independent to see him, to examine him and the conditions under which he is held, his medical condition of course and his mental (state)."

Defense Minister Ehud Barak also offered a quick response to the tape, saying that its contents demonstrate that the organization which is responsible for the fate of Schalit is Hamas.

[Teddy Bear]

Honest Reporting today also comments on how important the media is to the terrorist agenda.

I think this topic deserves its own heading so I will also be posting this and other related articles separately.

MASS MEDIA AS A TERRORIST WEAPON

The above is a prime example, along with the broadcasts of kidnap victims Alan Johnston and Gilad Shalit, of how, as a Jerusalem Post analysis explains, modern terrorists have adopted the mass media as their weapon of choice:

"The better the show is, the higher the ratings are. The higher the ratings, the more people receive the terrorists' message," said Eviathar Ben-Zedeff, a research fellow at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, on Monday.

"Terror is a political act of psychological warfare. The terrorists' purpose is to influence the viewers and to motivate them into political action. That is achieved by creating fear among the viewers who, as a result, are ready to put pressure on their politicians to change policy, for example, to give back occupied territories or to free many prisoners," Ben-Zedeff explained.

According to Ben-Zedeff, this is part of a propaganda mechanism aimed at leveraging the terror organization's ideas.

Read the full article here and remember to ask why the New York Times and Washington Post have allowed themselves to be party to exactly this sort of manipulation.