Exposed: 'Pallywood' Returns to Gaza

[Teddy Bear]

Honest Reporting exposes the scam in the recent report by the BBC on the Israeli attack in Gaza where they targeted a Hamas terror leader.

Here first is the official IAF footage from the plane that fired on his car, where you can see they wait until his car is out in the open, away from other vehicles before firing.



I'll leave it to Honest Reporting to explain the rest, and how it concerns the BBC

Exposed: Pallywood Returns to Gaza

What happens when the cameras turn up at the scene of an airstrike in Gaza and there simply aren’t enough Palestinian dead and injured to produce dramatic footage that can be used against Israel in the international media? We’ve seen it before. Palestinians who appear to be injured or even dead for the benefit of the TV cameras turn out to be nothing of the sort once they are no longer the focus.

This is all the more so in Gaza, where Palestinian stringers are often filming in the absence of international news crews.

The example below is taken from a BBC interview on the targeted killing of Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari. During the interview (full version here), footage from Gaza is shown. At 2:11 mins in, a Palestinian in a beige jacket and black T-shirt, presumably injured in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike, is picked up and taken away. Yet at 2:44 mins, the same Palestinian has staged a remarkable recovery.

We’ve taken the relevant footage so that you can see for yourself.



Welcome to Pallywood!

Now, bearing that in mind, the BBC is also reporting that the 11month old son of one of their BBC Arabic picture editors based in Gaza was killed in an Israeli air strike. The man brings his child wrapped in a shroud out on to the street where he is surrounded by a crowd, and conveniently, a reporter with cameras and microphone to get his story. His response is dramatically 'What did my son do to die like this?'

The interview can be seen here

Is this what a father does just after his child has been killed?
Where's the mother?
Could he be editing his picture for the effect he wants to produce, much like the previous guy shown?

This wouldn't be the first time the Palestinians manufacture casualties to suit their agenda, and probably not the last.In any case, given that when Israel is going after rocket launch sites, especially put into built up civilian areas by Hamas for the human shield effect, they drop warning leaflets on those areas they will target to let civilians know to leave the area. So what was the picture editor still doing there with his 11 month old son?

[Teddy Bear]

This article from The Commentator focusses on BBC's biased coverage of this conflict in other ways.

And the madness begins: Israel's detractors out in force
In the next few days, Israel will be forced to fight two wars, one against Hamas and one against this ugly torrent of media bile

The damage caused by Hamas's rockets is seldom discussed

So already the madness has started. No, not Israel's self defence operation against the terrorism from Gaza but the onslaught from Israel's detractors. Already the Israeli action is being presented as a reckless 'escalation' of hostilities, a means of sparking a regional conflagration that will drag in other countries.

The BBC's Jeremy Bowen suggested yesterday that the Israeli operations were part of a ploy by Benjamin Netanyahu to get re- elected. "In the past", he declared "military strikes have been used to send messages about the toughness of Israeli leaders.” In other words, Netanyahu's action was designed to feed the Israeli public's insatiable appetite for conflict.

As we know, what the BBC says really matters because it remains the most influential shaper of public opinion in the UK. Much of the public will swallow the BBC's line, not because they are automatically pro-Palestinian or bigoted, but simply because the real context for Israeli actions has been vastly underreported.

In the few days before Israel targeted Ahmed al-Jabari, the head of Hamas' military wing, there had been an unprovoked attack on an Israeli jeep that injured four soldiers, one seriously. What followed was a sustained barrage of rocket attacks (well over 100) across the south of Israel, with some 120 rockets fired since Jabari was killed. Three Israeli civilians have now been killed by a direct hit. Hamas has also been busy importing scores of Fajr missiles from Iran with a range of up to 75 kilometres, making them capable of reaching Tel Aviv.

Yet these latest outrageous attacks are but the tip of the iceberg. Since the start of 2012, 797 rockets have been fired from Gaza, forcing approximately one million Israelis in towns across the south to flee to their nearest bomb shelter, with as little as 15 seconds to react. The number of rockets fired increases to over 5,000 since 2006.

Yet apparently, the low number of casualties (thanks to Israel's advanced technology and interception systems) is a total non-story. It is only when Israel ends its restraint and finally takes decisive action that suddenly the BBC screams of a dangerous escalation. They then have the temerity to suggest that the real reason for the Gaza operation lies hidden beneath a clever Israeli smokescreen. Rockets? What rockets?

As if to restate the obvious, no western government would tolerate even a fraction of the rocket attacks suffered by Israel. Imagine that the citizens of London, Manchester or Birmingham came under fire from missiles fired by terrorists. If they were forced to dive into bomb shelters on a daily basis, if schools in those cities were closed, and if life ground to a halt under a relentless terrorist barrage, our own government would not hesitate to act. And rightly so. Even one missile or rocket would be an intolerable invasion of our sovereignty requiring the most robust response.

The government would have a duty to protect its citizens and would take no lectures from anyone about doing so. It would dismiss calls for restraint or demands to accept a ceasefire until the terrorist threat had been lifted.

And if someone suggested to David Cameron that his response was purely designed to ensure his re-election in 2015, that this was a distraction from his domestic difficulties, we all know what his answer would be. Such a grotesque slur would be dismissed with the contempt it deserved.

Yet these points don't apply to Israel apparently. The Jewish state is not allowed to defend itself against Islamist terrorists because to do so would create tension and inflame the region. Israel's self-defence, rather than the terrorism directed against her, is automatically destabilising to the region.

No, what both Israel and Hamas must do is show 'restraint' in this situation and avoid, as William Hague put it, the “violence in Gaza and southern Israel” leading to a “dangerous escalation”.

But what this suggests is that there is some automatic moral equivalence between the Iranian-backed terrorists and the sovereign state of Israel. Never mind that one is an internationally proscribed terrorist entity firing indiscriminately at Israeli civilians while the other is a member of the community of nations, a sovereign state defending itself under article 51 of the UN Charter. The two are lumped together as if they were bullies in the playground that need to be separated before their fight gets out of control. It is a quite sickening way to characterise the situation, devoid of any fairness, accuracy or morality. Yet it passes for progressive thinking.

So in the next few days, Israel will be forced to fight two wars, one against Hamas and one against this ugly torrent of media bile. The madness looks set to continue.

[Teddy Bear]

Another fine article in The Commentator

BBC gets in a muddle on Gaza reporting
Ah, the BBC. If it's not one thing, it's another...

by Media Hawk

Yesterday’s news that Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, a leading Hamas terrorist, had been killed by an Israeli airstrike was met with the usual ham-fisted BBC coverage.

To most commonsensical, free-thinking people, Hamas's rocket attacks - which have recently killed three Israeli civilians - were asking for trouble. You might say al-Jabari had it coming.

But, lo and behold, the BBC’s report this morning reduced the significance of the recent Hamas rocket attacks on Israel, prefering to lead back-to-front.

The publicly-funded broadcaster reported (09:52am):

“Eleven Palestinians – mainly militants but also children - have been killed in the ensuing Israeli operation. Since then, more than 130 rockets have been fired into Israel, police say”.

I suppose if we weren't such enlightened individuals, we may fall into the trap of believing that rocket attacks only came after Israel's strike. Not that the BBC would hope us to make such a faux pas, I'm sure...

That said, if there is anyone reading this who isn't appalled at the sight of civilian casualties, let alone children, may I suggest you re-assess your outlook on life. Each and every civilian death is a genuine tragedy of war, including the 11-month-old son of BBC cameraman Jihad Masharawi, killed yesterday.

My heartfelt condolences are with Mr. Masharawi and his family; but a difficult question needs to be asked. Can we expect impartiality -- which, let us not forget is a crucial aspect of news reporting -- when personal relationships are involved?

Paul Danahar
✔
@pdanahar
Just spent heart braking few hours with my BBC colleague Jihad whose 11 month old son Omar was killed by an Israel shell in #Gaza

Nobody would seek to deny Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar his time to grieve in a personal capacity -- after all, he used his personal Twitter account -- but we must also ensure the BBC's impartiality, and so the question is valid. In a court of law, a judge would have stepped aside for the duration of the case to make way for someone whose personal feelings could not interfere with an objective appraisal of events.

No-one would describe this sort of practice as inappropriate. On the contrary, we would see it as a reflection of human nature.

Meanwhile, a host of usual suspects were all too quick to jump onboard the anti-Israel bandwagon, Wyre Davies (BBC Middle East correspondent) being a case in point. Probably chomping at the bit, and employing vigorous amounts of self-restraint, Davies just about managed to keep his opinion as to where the blame lies hidden (albeit thinly veiled):

Wyre Davies@WyreDavies
In this "limited operation" at least 13 #Palestinians and 3 #Israelis have been killed - nearly all civilians. #Gaza

BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen joined in by donning his cynic cap: "Israel says it killed the Hamas military leader because he had a lot of blood on his hands - and as an answer to Palestinian rocket fire. But there will be questions about the timing of Israel's action. The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called an election in January. In the past, military strikes have been used to send messages about the toughness of Israeli leaders" -- a view that Gaza correspondant Jon Donnison echoed.

So, in sum, according to the BBC, we have a power-thirsty Israeli PM at large, presiding over a random attack on Hamas "militants" which then provoked rocket fire in response.

Only we know better.

It is obvious from the scarce number of BBC correspondents on the ground that any news coming out of the region will be unbalanced, and potentially unverified. The fact that the BBC coverage is coming from Gaza alone and not Israel is further evidence that the BBC is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

But let's at least try, eh Auntie?

[Teddy Bear]

Another facet of this 11 month old child killed.
Here's the father holding the body in one picture



and in another



Spot the difference?

[Teddy Bear]

Melanie Phillips also has an article on the subject:

Pallywood, and the stench of an ancient score being settled

Hamas and its acolytes are committing crimes against humanity twice over. They are deliberately targeting Israeli civilians with their rockets and missiles, trying to kill as many of them as possible including women and children. They are also using their own people as human shields, having deliberately hidden their rocket launchers among Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, thus deliberately exposing ordinary Gazans to the severe risk of being killed. In addition, the Hamas are committed not just to the destruction of Israel but also, by their own religious authority, to the genocide of the Jews, and indoctrinate their children accordingly into deranged, Nazi-style Jew-hatred.

Yet despite these Palestinian crimes against humanity and genocidal incitement British journalists have been outdoing themselves to blame Israel for what has happened. They have been making ever more grotesque claims that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu provoked this war to win the upcoming Israel general election, for example, or to scupper the Middle East peace process (which the Palestinians terminated, but what does a little fact like that matter when there’s an Israeli character to assassinate?)

The idea that just like any other country in the world in such a situation Israel can no longer live under siege from thousands of rocket attacks (which as we saw today, backed by Iran can now reach Tel Aviv) is not even given house room. Instead these journalists seek to make the Israeli Prime Minister into a figure of quite cosmic evil, accused in effect of deliberately exposing his people to even more attacks, in addition to killing Palestinians, all for his own self interest. Truly there is a deep moral sickness in the British media (and also in the uniquely treasonous Israeli left-wing media, where some of these same claims are echoed).

Meanwhile, the Palestinians appear to be up to their old tricks in staging patently absurd theatrics to dupe credulous and lazy broadcasters into thinking they are transmitting pictures of Palestinians injured or killed by the wicked Israelis. They did it years ago with the infamous hoax over Mohammed al Dura -- the iconic Palestinian boy whose televised supposed killing in a barrage of Israeli gunfire incited terrorist atrocities across the world, but who not only miraculously showed no sign of injury whatever but after he was pronounced dead was filmed peeping through his fingers.

Now the BBC have fallen for a similar example of ‘Pallywood’. Honest Reporting captures here the relevant footage. At 2:11 minutes in, a Palestinian in a beige jacket and black T-shirt, presumably injured in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike, is picked up and taken away. Yet at 2:44 minutes, the same Palestinian has staged a remarkable recovery and walks insouciantly away.

The BBC has now said this sequence was part of a Reuter’s report it transmitted in good faith. Guido Fawkes provides the BBC statement:

‘To the best of our knowledge the pictures do not show any kind of ‘staged’ event – and were run in good faith. The footage shown by BBC News was edited from a longer sequence provided by the Reuters news agency in which the man in question is shown being lifted from the ground. He is then given attention at the roadside, before appearing later having recovered. We ran a shorter edit of those pictures, and would point out that some re-uses of our output by others online have compressed the sequence further. Steps have been taken to ensure any re-broadcast reflects the full sequence so that it is absolutely clear to our audiences.’

The fact is that broadcasters including the BBC have been falling for Pallywood scams for years, for two reasons. First, a number of the freelances involved in the news agencies supplying these materials are themselves Arab or Muslim partisans or Palestinians under the thumb of, or even supporters of, Hamas; and second, such is the western animus against Israel that western broadcasters simply don’t see what is right there under their noses, that the Palestinian ‘victims’ in these staged tableaux are quite obviously play-acting.

One further thought about the malevolently warped reporting of this latest phase in the Arab and Islamic war against Israel. Among British reporters and commentators, there is a pronounced obsession with the numbers killed on either side. The three Israelis killed this morning were all but brushed aside by reporters hastening to tell us that (at that stage) eleven Palestinians had been killed.

The implication is of course as odious as it is irrational -- that Israel cannot be considered the victim of aggression unless more of its citizens die. It is also odious to suggest some kind of moral equivalence between those killed by acts of aggression in the cause of exterminating a country, and those who are killed by that country in its own self defence.

The implication of the numbers game is that there is no moral difference between aggression and defence. That’s why so much of the reporting seeks to suggest a ‘cycle of violence’ or ‘tit-for-tat’ attacks. But there is no tit-for-tat cycle. There is aggression, and there is defence against aggression; there is attempted mass murder, and there is the attempt to prevent mass murder. Those who claim a ‘tit-for-tat’ cycle are effectively sanitising, and thus helping promote, mass murder.

But there’s something even worse than this which I believe runs like a poisonous sewer beneath this bizarre numbers game. After all, this preoccupation with numerical imbalance in the casualty figures occurs in the reporting of no other conflict in the world. So what explains this obsession when it comes to Israel’s military actions?

The sustained dismissal of Israeli victimhood by the British media surely represents a desire at some level of the British mind to stamp out once and for all the idea that Jews are victims. For over and over again, and expressed in a myriad different ways, you hear in British educated discourse an unmistakeable and savage fury: that these wailing Jews are always waving the shroud of the Holocaust in our faces; that they seem to think they have some kind of monopoly on suffering, for heaven’s sake, as if the rest of us have no right to claim any suffering for ourselves; that they make themselves untouchable because of their wretched history; if only they would just shut up and go away and end these interminable accusations; and so of course we cannot allow them to be victims in Israel -- because unless we successfully recast them as latter-day Nazis, they will always be on our own conscience as the victims of us.

When you look in horror and astonishment at the British media’s coverage of the onslaught upon Israel from Gaza and Israel's actions in self-defence – and from the messages I am receiving, there are still many, many decent Brits who are indeed appalled beyond measure by the eye-watering bias of the coverage from the BBC, Sky and much of the press – you might well conclude that more, much more, is actually going on here than standard knee-jerk prejudice or ignorance. This is the ugly sound of a very old score indeed that is being settled.

[Teddy Bear]

Reinforcing my suspicion that this BBC picture editor is part of a Pallywood script, a sharp eyed blogger has found an image of a dead child being held by his father, presented by Hamas as a victim of an Israeli strike.

The only problem is that it's a picture that was taken a month ago in Syria.

Interesting that there's a striking resemblance to this BBC picture editor. Maybe that's what gave him the inspiration to do what he did.

(hat-tip Alan)

Hamas Recycles Pictures of Syrian Dead
And claims them as Palestinian dead
By Adam Chandler


A Picture from Syrian Uprising Used by Hamas(Akamaihd)

We’ll have more on the PR war being waged on both Twitter and Facebook later, but for now, a disturbing update about Hamas, which is using pictures of children that have been injured or killed in Syria and sending them out through social media to show them as Palestinian dead.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and their ilk have long used images of children as a cudgel to portray Israelis as a wanton murderers of children, even as the IDF remains the only force that doesn’t target civilians. I doubt this is the last we’ll see of it.

[Teddy Bear]

Though the Alqassam website that posted the Syrian picture as their own after being alerted to that fact, have now removed the picture, there is a cached copy available which I'm posting here.

[Teddy Bear]

Any honest media outlet would recognise and report on the fact that by Hamas using built up civilian areas as a human shield to launch their rockets, knowing full well that Israel will have no choice but to retaliate with the inevitable casualties, that these casualties are a part of the Hamas strategy.

If the media did this, then the average person around the world would condemn Hamas for perpetrating this strategy, who would then be less likely to continue, with fewer casualties on both sides.

Which is how very easily we can recognise the agenda of the BBC in perpetrating the Hamas strategy by pushing the amount of civilian casualties resulting from Israeli air strikes, without providing the necessary context or perspective.

In this and other threads we've shown that when not enough casualties are being generated, that the Palestinians will fake, or manufacture them for the media appeal. The term for this by the Palestinians is called Pallywood.

Now another example of Pallywood has come to light.
Last Friday the Egyptian Prime Minister visited Gaza to give solidarity to them. While visiting a hospital in Gaza a 20 year old man and a 4 year old child were brought in dead, and reported to have been killed by an Israeli air-strike. The Egyptian and Hamas leaders used this as a photo opportunity to hold the dead child while decrying Israel's actions.

Except it now turns out they didn't die as a result of Israel's actions, but by a home made Gazan rocket that unexpectedly blew up.

Again, any ethical journalist would refer to this story, and the implications surrounding it, which is why I would bet the BBC will ignore that, and continue to report the original story as fact.

Though they didn't show the picture associated with the scene, they did comment on it in the article here:
Egypt PM Hisham Qandil decries Gaza 'disaster'
They tell us While Mr Qandil was at the hospital in Gaza, medical workers brought in the bodies of a man and a boy who officials said had been killed in an Israeli air strike moments earlier.

It's actually worth comparing the whole article above by the BBC, who really believe they are a first class news outlet, with this one from AP, just to see what they avoid dealing with, and how they present the issues involved.

Gaza Child Killed… By Hamas
November 18, 2012 9:01 by Simon Plosker

This iconic image made its way around the world. Fighting back tears at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, Egyptian Prime Minister held 4-year old Mahmoud Sadallah in his arms and called on Israel to end its military operations.

A PR gift for Hamas, eager to portray the IDF as vicious child killers.



While the boy was allegedly killed by an IDF airstrike, it occurred during the time that a ceasefire was in effect for the visit of the Egyptian PM. A ceasefire that Hamas broke, firing more rockets while even Israel refrained from launching airstrikes.

The truth has now emerged. Credit to some journalists for admitting, for once, that Israel was not the responsible party. The Sunday Telegraph reports (emphasis added):

But there were signs on Saturday that not all the Palestinian casualties have been the result of Israeli air strikes. The highly publicised death of four-year-old Mohammed Sadallah appeared to have been the result of a misfiring home-made rocket, not a bomb dropped by Israel.

The child’s death on Friday figured prominently in media coverage after Hisham Kandil, the Egyptian prime minister, was filmed lifting his dead body out of an ambulance. “The boy, the martyr, whose blood is still on my hands and clothes, is something that we cannot keep silent about,” he said, before promising to defend the Palestinian people.

But experts from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who visited the site on Saturday said they believed that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian rocket.

[Teddy Bear]

Melanie Phillips has more on the topic:

Here is the (real) news

Here is some information about the war between Gaza and Israel that for some unaccountable reason you may have missed today in Britain’s mainstream media.

The casualty rate in Gaza from Israeli strikes is astoundingly low

Since the beginning of Israel’s operation Pillar of Defence last Wednesday against Hamas rocket attacks, there have been more than 1000 Israeli air strikes. At time of writing, the Palestinian death toll is 69. That is a staggeringly small number of fatalities for more than 1000 bombing raids.

It shows beyond doubt that the Israelis are not only doing everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, but have achieved a degree of precision in doing so which no other army can match. For sure, every civilian casualty is regrettable, and the deaths of children are always tragic -- today’s apparently heavy toll particularly so, including at what appears to have been a mistaken target. Such mistakes inevitably happen in war.

But consider this: the very low casualty rate among Israelis from the thousands of rockets that have rained down on them from Gaza is largely due to the fact that Israel has provided its citizens with shelters to save their lives. In Gaza, by horrific contrast, the Hamas leadership has deliberately exposed its citizens to attack by siting its rocket arsenals among them in order to maximise the number of civilian men, women and children who will be killed.

A number of Gazan civilians may have been killed by their own rockets

Israel says that no fewer than 60 of the 703 rockets that Hamas fired at Israel between last Wednesday and Saturday fell inside Gaza on Palestinian civilians. The question therefore is how many of the 69 dead Palestinians were killed by their own rockets?

Here’s one: Hamas lies that a child killed by its own rocket was killed by Israel

Last Friday, a number of papers along with outlets such as CNN in the US published prominent footage of the Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kanil weeping over the body cradled in his arms of a dead child, Mahmoud Sadallah, who Hamas claimed had been killed in an Israeli air strike. Blogger Elder of Zyon smelled a rat and, piecing together convincing circumstantial evidence, had concluded by this morning that the child was almost certainly not killed by an Israeli strike – not least because on Friday morning when the child died the Israelis had paused their bombing missions to allow for cease-fire talks in Gaza to proceed -- but by a Hamas missile that was fired at Israel but had fallen short in Gaza. Now experts from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights who visited the site on Saturday have said they believe that the explosion that killed Mahmoud Sadallah was indeed caused by a Palestinian rocket.

Just how prominent do you reckon the apologies on CNN and in the British media for this sloppy and incompetent reporting/malicious war libel of Israel will be?

Hamas admits to using human shields

In 2008 , Gaza MP Fathi Muhammad boasted that Hamas used Gaza’s civilian population as human shields. He screamed:

‘For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy, “We desire death like you desire life”.’

Remember this next time you hear or read of claims by Palestinians or their useful western media idiots of ‘massacres’ of civilians in Gaza.

Hamas is now using journalists as human shields

Hamas is preventing at least 22 foreign journalists from leaving Gaza for Israel. According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, among those being detained are nine Italian citizens, one Canadian, one South Korean, a French national and six journalists from Japan. In addition, two Turkish Red Crescent members have been refused exit.

Hamas tells lies as a matter of routine

Hamas has claimed, inter alia, that Israel’s Ben Gurion airport has been closed (false), that it had succeeded in shooting down an Israeli F16 plane (false), that it had hit Tel Aviv and had cut off electricity there (false). When will the western media stop assuming that they can believe any claim that Hamas ever makes?

Hamas is now threatening human bomb attacks

Hamas is now threatening to use human bombs against both Israeli civilians in buses and cafes, and against Israeli soldiers in any ground offensive in Gaza. This is what almost certainly faces the Israel Defence Forces if they go in, because as Fathi Muhammad said (above), the Palestinians are a death cult; they are committed to death and to killing, while the Israelis are committed to life and to saving life.

Israel is feeding the hand that bites it

Unprecedentedly for a country at war, Israel continues to supply food, gas and medical supplies to its enemies in Gaza for humanitarian reasons. Would any other country in the world keep the supply route open to people who are firing thousands of rockets to murder its people and are threatening to turn themselves into human bombs to kill its soldiers and civilians, so that they can continue to do so?

And now for some news from civilised Britain

On BBC Radio’s Any Questions on Friday evening, audience questioner Stephen Bedford asked:

‘Despite all the foreign aid and support, Israel has spectacularly failed to get on with its neighbours. Does Israel deserve a future?’

So with Israel having faced existential attack from the Arab and Muslim world for the six decades of its existence, and having been under intensive rocket, missile and human bomb attack from them for more than a decade, the BBC Any Questions production team selected as the audience question to launch its discussion of the Gaza war whether Israel actually deserved to exist at all.

Vile.

[Teddy Bear]

For anybody wondering whether BBC promotion of Pallywood is intentional or not, from what I can see, they certainly don't care if it happens, and if they can avoid making it public they will.

They are certainly aware it has been happening recently on a regular basis, and should be a little more cautious if they want to keep any kind of credence in their reporting, that is, if reputation was more important than agenda.

This from BBC Watch

[thehighlandrebel]

Good stuff Teddy.
I don't know what it is with Pally's as they always seem to be able to spring back to life after being brutally murdered by 'Israeli aggressors'

[Teddy Bear]

Great as ever to see you back THR, I trust you had a good voyage.

As you say, not only are they able to be resurrected, but to be killed again in a variety of conflicts.
Seems they can emulate Jesus. They're certainly in the right part of the world for it, even if the 'wrong' religion.

The very fact that the media continues to accept their statistics and claims as bona fide, knowing how questionable they've often been shown to be, displays a clear agenda by them. They will happily sacrifice Israel in the hope that the Islamists won't be going after them.

How stupid is that?

[Teddy Bear]

As I noted above, I thought at the time there was something fishy about this BBC picture editor and the loss of his child.

It appears now that the UN Human Rights Council, not usually a friend to Israel, has determined that the missile that hit and killed this child was not fired by Israel. It was actually a Hamas missile that fell way short of its intended target in Israel.

BBC Watch notes that even after 3 days the BBC has still to amend its report which remains active on its website.

Still no BBC accountability on Masharawi story

The BBC is still promoting its story about Omar Masharawi on its website four days after the publication of a UN HRC report which determines that the infant died as a result of the shortfall of a missile fired by terrorists in the Gaza Strip rather than due to an IDF attack in the vicinity as the BBC claimed.



This failure by the BBC to acknowledge the problematic nature of that report even in light of the findings of the UN is particularly significant Editorial meetingin light of the fact that in other circumstances, the BBC frequently relates to UN statements as something akin to semi-sacred.

The BBC’s dragging of heels on this issue and its failure to admit to the funding public that it published and widely promoted a story without having solid evidence for the main claim upon which it was based of course casts very serious doubts upon the sincerity of the corporation’s claims of commitment to accuracy and impartiality.

[Teddy Bear]

More on this omission to amend their original reports based on the UN Human Rights findings from Honest Reporting.

(links available on website)

UN Exonerates Israel in Gaza Child Death, Media Ignores
March 10, 2013 17:37 by Simon Plosker



Referring to the impact of Israeli air strikes on Gaza during November 2012′s Operation Pillar of Defense the BBC’s Wyre Davis wrote:

In the BBC Gaza office, that feeling was most tangibly felt on the first day of this conflict when Omar, the 11-month-old son of our cameraman Jihad Misharawi, was killed when a missile hit his home. It was a pointless, terrible tragedy that deeply affected Jihad’s colleagues who live and work here in these testing conditions.

Indeed, the BBC in its coverage, claimed Omar almost as one of its own, making sure to mention him in dispatches as the victim of an Israeli attack without even considering any other possibility:

Many of the Palestinians killed in Gaza during the last two days by the Israeli aerial and naval bombardment were members of militant groups, but civilians – including at least four children – were also among the dead. They included 11-month-old Omar, the son of Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic picture editor.

And thanks to his links to the BBC, Misharawi’s tragedy became one of the highest profile incidents of civilian casualties during the conflict, appearing in many other media outlets including the Washington Post, where it made the front page and a behind the scenes feature which stated:

An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar.

Similar charges against Israel appeared in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Huffington Post and others.

In an interview with BBC Arabic, Jihad Misharawi stated that his 11-month old son, his sister-in-law and his brother were killed by shrapnel that hit his family home in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood.

Now an advanced version of a UN Human Rights Council report on the conflict states:

On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.

This information was released on March 6. As yet, no mainstream media outlet has covered the UN report let alone revisited the story of Omar Misharawi.

The media, so quick to judge Israel as the brutal killer of Palestinian children, have not bothered to correct an error when it turns out that Hamas is responsible for the killing.

Perhaps as well, the media has not seen fit to even bother with the UN report itself, because it not only criticizes Israel but also reaches a conclusion that is only surprising in that it appears in a UN authored report:

Palestinian armed groups continuously violated international humanitarian law, by launching indiscriminate attacks on Israel and by attacking civilians, thereby disregarding the principle of distinction. The armed groups failed to take all feasible precautions in attacks, in particular by launching rockets from populated areas, which put the population at grave risk. Furthermore, several Palestinians were killed by rockets launched by the armed groups that fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip.

But Omar Misharawi certainly wasn’t the only victim of Hamas’s reckless disregard for its own people. One of fastest spreading images of the conflict showed a dead girl in the arms of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The only problem was that the girl wasn’t killed by Israel, but rather by an errant rocket fired by Haniyeh’s own organization.

Clearly, confirmation that Hamas is responsible for the deaths of its own people, including children, isn’t news for the mainstream media and that includes correcting those errors where Israel has wrongly taken the blame.

HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams adds:

Yet again the reflexive anti-Israel attitude of the foreign media has led to false accusations against Israel. That the media is unwilling to correct the error or to hold Hamas publicly responsible is not only a slap in the face for Israel but also to the readers and viewers who are entitled to proper standards of accuracy from the media. Those media that published a falsehood should hold up their hands and print a retraction immediately.

[Teddy Bear]

Finally, 5 days after the UN report the BBC produce an article on it:
UN disputes Gaza strike on BBC man’s house

I notice they now spell the name of the BBC Palestinian picture editor as Jehad, and not as previously – Jihad.

3 guesses why they might have done that. What’s next – Geehad?

Now, though, the United Nations says the house may have been hit by a Palestinian rocket that fell short. This is despite the fact that the Israeli military had reported no rockets being fired out of Gaza so soon after the start of the conflict.

It hasn’t dawned on the BBC yet that this rocket was also one that wasn’t fired ‘out of Gaza’ either.

But just in case the reader might be tempted not to vilify Israel they make sure they include:
The UN report concluded that at least 169 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks during the offensive.

It said more than 100 were civilians, including 33 children and 13 women. The report said six Israelis were killed by Palestinians attacks, including four civilians.

Remember the scene (posted above) in the Gaza hospital during the conflict, of the dead child held by the Egyptian minister and the Gaza head of Hamas, where that child too was later found to have died by another short fall Hamas rocket?

Strange that the similarity to the Mashrawi child incident didn’t cause Donnison to remind readers of it in the article.

Strange that is, for anybody not familiar with the BBC.

[Teddy Bear]

BBC Watch produces an excellent observation on how the BBC has hitherto used this story, contrary to their mandate:

(most links available on website)

A reminder of the chronology of the BBC’s Omar Masharawi story

As media outlets return to work after the weekend, the news (reported here last week) that a recent UN HRC report determined that the BBC’s much promoted version of the tragic death of Omar Masharawi on November 14th 2012 was the result of a missile fired by Palestinian terrorists rather than an Israeli air-strike – as claimed by the BBC – is gaining traction.

The Washington Free Beacon has had it confirmed by a UN official that the incident described in the report indeed referred to that in which Omar Masharawi – son of the BBC employee Jihad Masharawi – was killed.

For clarity’s sake, it is worth revisiting the chronology of the spread of the story.

On the evening of November 14th 2012, soon after the incident had happened, BBC Arabic in Gaza broke the story when it interviewed Jihad Masharawi as he held his son’s body. That film footage was used the next day in a report by Jon Donnison which appeared on BBC television news and can be seen here.

On the same evening, BBC employees began Tweeting about the event, including for example the BBC’s correspondent in Washington who sent the following Tweet – retweeted by others 3,441 times:

Paul Adams twitter Masharawi

On the day after the incident – November 15th – the head of the BBC Jerusalem Bureau and chair of the Foreign Press Association, Paul Danahar, arrived in the Gaza Strip and visited the Masharawi house from where he began sending a series of Tweets which – less than 24 hours after the event and with no credible professional investigation having been carried out – unequivocally determined that the incident had been the result of an Israeli attack.

Danahar tweets Masharawi

As BBC Watch documented last November, Danahar gave permission for the photographs he had Tweeted to be used by Max Fisher at the Washington Post. Other media outlets which ran with the story on the same day – some directly citing the BBC as their source and all unquestioningly giving an Israeli attack as the cause of the infant’s death – included the Guardian, the Huffington Post , the Daily Mail, the Sun and many more. The story was of course also picked up by a plethora of anti-Israel blogs and websites.

On November 24th 2012, the BBC ran Jon Donnison’s now infamous version of the story on its ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ programme on Radio 4, and also later on the World Service. A written version of that same report was placed on the BBC News website and at the time of writing is still there.

Within less than two weeks, the BBC had ensured that an unverified story based purely upon evidence-free speculations by its own journalists had made its way round the entire world.

The fact that a story which in no way met the standards of accuracy laid down in the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines managed to get past the BBC’s entire system of checks and balances including the Jerusalem Bureau editor, the Middle East Editor, the Head of News, the website Editor- together with no small number of producers along the way – indicates the existence of an organisational culture which clearly renders the BBC incapable of self-regulation.

[steevo]

It is as capable an incapable, as their most optimistic wish. They have succeeded, the bottom line.

[Teddy Bear]

That's a very Rumsfeldian way of putting it Steevo

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC and much of the media have been reviling Israel for its bombing of a school, killing many innocents.
But did they really?

Not for the first time, and seemingly just another Pallywood episode as this excellent blogger has evidenced.
So just how many real Gazan casualties are there?

(hat-tip David Jones)

Two Pallywood duds in one day!
August 3, 2014 by Thomas Wictor
Another day, another Palestinian hoax. Actually, August 3, 2014, brought us two Pallywood duds. The first production I’ll discuss is the bombing of the al-Ghoul house in Rafah, which is said to have killed ten people. The second is the “air strike” on the Rafah Preparatory “A” Boys School, which I will PROVE to you did not happen.

The Israelis did, in fact, bomb the al-Ghoul family house in Rafah. There are photos of dead children. We’re told that ten people were killed, including three adult men.

Asmaa al-Ghoul, a journalist from the family based in Gaza City, said in a post on Facebook that her uncle Ismail and his sons Muhammad and Wael were killed this morning along with Wael’s three children Malak, Mustafa, and Ismail.

Who is Asmaa al-Ghoul, you ask? She’s a Palestinian journalist. In 2007 she wrote an open letter to her uncle, a high-ranking Hamas commander. In August of 2010, Human Rights Watch awarded her a Hellman/Hammet Grant for the persecution she faced at the hands of Hamas and her uncle.


The Israelis bombed the al-Ghoul house because it was a Hamas target.

Hamas operatives and area commanders, as well as their rocket cell members, keep one part of their home for normal family life. A second part of the home is the command center, or the start of a tunnel. Daily life and military infrastructure are totally interwoven.

Not a single story out there will tell you that a top Hamas commander lived there, putting his entire family at risk. Hamas started this war and conducted it in the most depraved way possible. Every death on both sides is the fault of Hamas. Children don’t deserve to be bombed, but more importantly, they don’t deserve to be used first as human shields and then as props.


Every man in that photo is glad that the baby is dead, because now they can feature him in their hideous propaganda. These are some of the most degenerate people in the world.

The UN school at Rafah was not bombed

Now for the other Pallywood dud of the day. As expected, the usual suspects began shrieking at the tops of the lungs, based on complete lies. The press said the school was bombed, missiled, and hit with artillery strikes. Ban Ki-Moon uttered something in his incomprehensible English, and the stenographers of the press interpreted it.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called for those responsible for the “gross violation of international humanitarian law” to be held accountable, while the United States described the attack as “disgraceful.”

It was the second strike on a school in less than a week.
The Israeli military said it had “targeted three Islamic Jihad terrorists on board a motorcycle in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah” and added it was “reviewing the consequences of this strike”.

Islamic Jihad did not report any of its militants killed or injured in the incident. A Palestinian health official said all those wounded or killed were from inside the school.

“The Israeli Defence Forces have been repeatedly informed of the location of these sites,” Mr Ban’s spokesman said in a statement.
“This attack, along with other breaches of international law, must be swiftly investigated and those responsible held accountable. It is a moral outrage and a criminal act.

The Guardian posted what it says is video showing the immediate aftermath of the strike.


We’ll come back to the video later.

There was a strike, but even the Guardian admits that it happened outside the school.

Therefore it wasn’t a strike on the school, and therefore it wasn’t a war crime. Ban Ki-Moon is so incompetent that he needs to immediately resign. He’s making the entire situation worse.

Here’s where the strike actually took place.


The green arrow marks the school gates. On the ground are the two targets of the strike. One has a beard and holds his index finger up in the Wahabbist symbol of there being one God for whom this chunkster will kill and die. The Man in Black with the latex gloves is supposed to be some kind of paramedic, but he’s just an actor, as you’ll see. Note the scaffolding marked by the red arrow.

Now, suddenly the two men who were targeted on the street are on the school grounds!

They’ve also changed places. The Wahabbist was on the other wounded man’s right side; now he’s on his left. And the man in the red shirt, lying behind both wounded men? The last time we saw him, he was in the street.

He’s unhurt. Like almost everybody else, he’s pretending. At some point a little girl appears. Don’t worry; she’s not injured.

The Man in Black roars for help, and Red Shirt is still proned out, but the brown-shirted man who was lying next to him is now gone. Here’s another photo of the little girl.

Though we’re told she’s dead, her mouth is now open, and Brown Shirt has definitely dematerialized. Like my ghost cat. A man wearing a baseball cap stoops to help the little girl.

He picks her up. But wait! Brown shirt is back! I’ve marked him with a green arrow.

He’s sitting up, next to his hale and hearty friend Red Shirt.

The man who picked up the little girl is getting ready to take her to the ambulance.


Behind him, Brown Shirt has gotten to his knees. He’s going to be fine. The Wahabbist on the right is now pointing to where he thinks he’s headed. A graybeard in a purple shirt helpfully screams like a maniac. Behind him to the right, a bored girls stands with her arms folded.
Hey, guess what? I fooled you, because I was fooled. The man with the baseball cap didn’t actually pick up the little girl. He put her on the ground next to the wounded terrorist.


This placing of props has never before been caught on film. Pallywood is definitely losing its touch. Though it’s a poor quality video, you can see Brown Shirt getting up and walking away. There’s nothing wrong with him. The little girl is also unhurt, as you can see in the photos above. Her mouth opens and closes, and her left hand clenches and unclenches.

Here’s more evidence that she’s all right. Here’s a still from the video that show the little girl and the two wounded terrorists.

The man who picked up the “wounded” little girl now sprints through the gates, carrying her to safety.


Hold on: It’s a completely different man. Did he steal the little girl from the other guy? Or did this man take her because he’s younger and fitter, so he can run faster? Yes, that’s what happened. His plan is to just keep on running. Forever.


Look how far he is from the school gate. Where the hell is he going?

The answer is “Nowhere.” The little girl isn’t hurt. They smeared her with fake blood, and she’s obediently playing her part. The young man is running aimlessly because there’s no urgency. Here’s a closeup of the “wound” on her hand.

It’s glued-on rubber. That’s why it isn’t bleeding.


And he’s just shouting, with his eyes blank. Crappy acting, my boy. Crap-PEE.

The bloodstains on her sweatpants are shaped differently because they did multiple takes of this movie. Also note that her left hand is clenched in one photo, clawing in another, and her index finger is straightened in the large photo.


Too many directors made for mass confusion, which is why Brown Shirt appeared-disappeared-appeared, and one guy scooped up the little girl but a different guy ran out of the school with her. In the film industry, these are known as “continuity errors.” You need good production assistants (PAs) to keep mistakes like this from happening.

Other people picked up unhurt children and ran with them. Note the crone in the shawl, waddling and screeching.


There are no visible injuries on that child. I know he’s unhurt, because his “rescuer” grabbed him on the school grounds. The Guardian already reported that the explosion took place on the street, and we saw the two wounded men lying where they were originally hit, before the Pallywood directors ordered them dragged onto the school grounds.

Here’s the same man chasing after the crappy actor with the unhurt little girl. He’s left the waddling, screeching crone in the dust.


“Come back!” she howls. “You’ve got the wrong kid! He was just taking a nap!”

See the blood on the ground? That’s where the two suspects met their fate. They were not hit in the school. And now more proof that this whole thing is a ridiculous farce. See the light-green arrow in the picture above? It marks a cartoon figure. You can see the same cartoon on the wall in the photo below, identified with another light-green arrow.


What happened to the metal scaffolding, the tables, and the cardboard boxes? Why did they remove all of that?

Because the scaffolding was blocking the sign that says “Rafah Preparatory ‘A’ Boys School.” Even though they totally rearranged the set, for some reason they DIDN’T WASH AWAY THE BLOODY DRAG MARKS that show how they moved the two terrorists from the street.

They finally hauled away Pointing Fatso, his finger still held high. This photo was taken after they pulled down the scaffolding but before they got rid of the cardboard boxes.

Palestinians carry a wounded man following what witnesses said was an Israeli air strike at a U.N.-run school in Rafah

What kind of munition was used?
The Israelis are secretive—as they should be—about their capabilities. I’ve known for a long time that they were interested in miniature guided missiles. They work hand-in-hand with the US on missiles. The US Navy recently developed the world’s smallest guided missile.


It’s only 25 inches (63.5 cm) long and weighs about 5.5 lb (2.5 kg). Here’s the crater that today’s munition made ON THE STREET IN FRONT OF Rafah Preparatory “A” Boys School.


That kind of road is “asphalt concrete.” It’s a mixture of asphalt and small rocks called “aggregate.” The Palestinians use coarse aggregate because finer aggregate is much more expensive.

This is the road in front of my house.


The aggregate is very fine. Here’s coarse aggregate similar to what the Palestinians use.


See the American quarter in the upper left side of the photo? It’s about one inch (2.2 cm) in diameter. Using the aggregate and the quarter, we can determine the rough size of the crater.



It’s about eight inches (17.6 cm) in diameter. That means the Israelis have a miniaturized guided missile. This one was probably fitted with a high-explosive antitank (HEAT) warhead, maybe with a fragmentation sleeve. A jet of molten metal cut through the motorcycle and made the hole in the asphalt, while the blast effect and fragments wounded the men.

The amount of shrapnel was negligible; you can see for yourself that the two terrorists had only a few injuries. Israel already manufactures an extremely small guided missile called the Spike, which is used on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

This attack, however, proves that all the jibber-jabber I heard was true: Israel has a tiny guided missile. A missile that could take out one person in a crowd. Just like the US Navy…Spike. Interesting name to give it, considering that the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division denies that their little fella has anything to do with the Israelis.

I’ve read that the majority of Israeli UAV operators are women, because they have faster reflexes. In this case there’s no doubt that Israel used a precision strike to take out terrorists, and then Pallywood, the UN, and the world’s press again became victims of their imprinted response mechanism. The Guardian even used a photo from the last fake school bombing.


That’s fine. Faker.

Faker.

Doctor fakers, patient fakers, and journalist fakers.


Think of all the money they waste, putting on these hysterical shows of carting around completely unhurt people. And forget about the UN’s spluttering outrage. They already admitted what happened.


In the street outside the school. NOT A WAR CRIME.

I’ll end with the dumbest “eyewitness” account I found. This man got totally carried away, like a five-year-old embellishing a nightmare he had.



“And then the Jews ate all the body parts! They made lasagne with them! MAY GOD STRIKE ME DEAD IF I’M LYING!”


Sorry, Pallywood. This mess was even more amateurish than the fake sniper video.

Update
Caught in the act. The little girl was filmed being placed next to the wounded terrorist for the benefit of photographers.


Other images show western photographers at the scene. The press is utterly without value when it comes to reporting on Israel. No Israeli should ever believe a single accusation that western journalists level at the IDF.

We’re witnessing immorality, corruption, and insanity on a global scale.

[Teddy Bear]

The blogger Thomas Wictor, who revealed the Pallywood scam in the post above, is making quite a name for himself.
I'm pleased to see that Breitbart London has picked up on this and another one that he made a few days ago.

The first was this one by James Delingpole

Exposed: The Self-Inflicted Hamas 'Massacre' Blamed By the Media on Israel
by James Delingpole 1 Aug 2014 331 post a comment
An enterprising blogger's diligent spadework has revealed the truth behind an Israeli 'massacre' that never was. (H/T Jonathan Foreman)

According to the Hamas version of events - widely promulgated in the media by ITN, the Telegraph and the Belfast Telegraph - an Israeli airstrike on a crowded market place during a partial ceasefire in the Shijaiyah neighbourhood of Gaza City on July 30th, 2014 was responsible for the deaths of 17 people, including blue-helmeted photojournalist Rani Rayan.

However as Thomas Wictor has incontrovertibly demonstrated using close analysis of film footage of the incident, the deaths were not caused by Israeli shrapnel but by secondary explosions from a vast cache of Hamas rockets.

Oh, and the market wasn't 'crowded' either: it had been closed for the day.

The second one is by Nick Hallet today

CLAIM: LATEST ISRAEL 'WAR CRIME' VIDEO IS ANOTHER PALESTINIAN HOAX

by NICK HALLETT 4 Aug 2014

The bombing of a UN school in Rafah by Israeli forces may not have actually happened, according to an analysis of footage of the aftermath by blogger Thomas Wictor.

According to many press reports, Rafah Preparatory ‘A’ Boys School was hit by Israeli fire, killing 10 people, when Israel targeted three militants from the Islamic Jihad group who were riding past on motorcycles.

World leaders have condemned the strike, with UN Secertary General Ban Ki-moon calling it a “gross violation of international law”, while U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said America was appalled by the “disgraceful” attack.

Most press sources admit that the attack happened outside the school, with some saying it happened on the street while others claim it was at the entrance, yet video and photo footage shows injured people inside the school.

Wictor notes that there are several inconsistencies in the footage. The two dead men are first of all photographed outside the school, yet in subsequent images are shown inside school grounds, suggesting their bodies have been moved.

A little girl then appears apparently lying dead and covered in blood, however in some pictures she has her mouth open and in others she has it closed. A man then picks her up and gets ready to take her to an ambulance, however a few seconds later a different man is shown carrying her. He then runs away from the school with her in his arms, but we never see where he takes her.

A video has now also appeared (below) showing the little girl actually being placed next to the two dead men for the benefit of photographers.

The girl also has an open wound on her hand, but there is no blood pouring from it, leading Wictor to conclude that it is in fact fake. Her hand is also clenched in one photo, clawing in another and her index finger is straightened in another.

In a final photo, taken outside the school again, various things have changed since the first picture. Scaffolding has been removed that was obscuring the name of the school, cardboard boxes have also gone, and there are trails of blood on the ground that suggest the two dead men were dragged from the place they were killed to inside the school.

Wictor concludes:

The press is utterly without value when it comes to reporting on Israel. No Israeli should ever believe a single accusation that western journalists level at the IDF.
We’re witnessing immorality, corruption, and insanity on a global scale.

Unfortunately the mainstream media has yet to show Hamas in its true light by revealing these truths, and one can guarantee that the BBC will never do it unless forced to do so. The one good thing about the cover up of this scam is it has at least got rid of Baroness Warsi from government.

[steevo]

I've also noticed there is never Hamas fighters shown dead, yet hundreds have been killed. Most of what I've watched is children and woman.

[Teddy Bear]

As some ethical journalists have reported once they were out of Gaza and free from Hamas control, if they would have photographed these fighters, human shields, missile launch areas, or anything that would have exposed the Hamas agenda for what it is, they would be shot.

Clearly the scum at the BBC are happy to go along with the Hamas spin and promote their agenda.
There is no question that the guilty are truly guilty of war crimes, ensuring by their willing propaganda that many more innocents will be killed and injured.

[Teddy Bear]

On the 13th August the BBC ran an article: Gaza conflict - Allegations of war crimes. A video is shown with a commentary by Orla Guerin. The beginning of the video shows a man apparently 'shot by an Israeli sniper', according to Guerin, after which she has an English woman from one of the aid agencies vilifying Israel for this dastardly act.

The video footage looks suspicious to anybody watching it, even if they had never heard of Pallywood.
Now it's been proven to be a complete hoax, by the same blogger, Thomas Wictor, who has exposed quite a few others, some of which we've posted here.
The only thing is he showed it was a hoax on July 21st, over 3 weeks BEFORE the BBC ran their article.

BBC Watch also has more on the commentary given by Guerin in this article