Andrew Fox on the hostage rescue - International media embarrasses itself daily over Gaza:
Hamas followed their usual media tactics after any prominent Israeli Defence Force (IDF) tactical success. They claimed an atrocity, supported by faked casualty videos, exaggerated casualty numbers and a call for retribution. The IDF were much quicker to the counterpunch this time than they have been for previous events, but once again, too slowly. As I wrote in my piece “A lesson from Gaza”, media operations need to be as concurrent as possible to kinetic operations, with the obvious proviso of the need to maintain operational security. A media cell needs to ask itself “What is the worst thing the enemy can accuse us of?”, be embedded in operations centres, and have prebuttal rounds in the air the moment friendly forces are regrouping.
The information battle went the same way as every other information engagement in this conflict. Hamas got their message out first and international media ran, unquestioningly, with that version of events. Initially it was funny: “How dare they kill us whilst rescuing the hostages we took?” And yet, as ever, international media took the bait and ran Hamas’ story with a straight face.
This time should have been different.
This time, Hamas’ claims were so demonstrably false that it should have been the moment international news media sat up and took notice of the extent to which they have been duped on a weekly basis since 7th October. Hamas were claiming 200 dead before even the last IDF helicopter was wheels up from the mission. Any credible war correspondent should have known that this level of body counting is impossible in such a short time. Yet seemingly, they did not.
The videos of injured Gazans in a hospital were clearly rushed by the Hamas PR teams: one “injured” boy’s head wound is plainly hastily-applied make up. In another video, an “injured” man lifts his head from a pool of “blood”, grins, and rolls away to drier ground. In a third video, a woman’s IV line sits quite obviously on her knuckle and not in a vein in her hand. Crass and patently fake, even by Pallywood’s standards. Any credible war journalist, or an analyst with the slightest medical knowledge, should have spotted this immediately. Yet seemingly, they did not.
Images and video from the scene of the alleged massacre also do not match Hamas’ story. If, as they allege, 200 people were killed and 400 wounded, one would expect the scene of the massacre to still show the signs of war the next day. It does not. Not a blood stain, not a scar of war of any magnitude: an ordinary street in Gaza with life carrying on as normal. Any decent journalist should know that the immediate aftermath of massacre sites comes with evidence of the massacre that took place there. Yet seemingly, they did not.
International media are duped, and duped, and duped again to the point where benefit of the doubt must be suspended and one must consider seriously whether this is malice over incompetence. From reporting unquestioningly Hamas’ 37,000+ dead statistics, which stand up to not the slightest of scrutiny; to sharing faked casualty videos; to quoting seriously the histrionic “genocide” claims that bear no reality in what is actually happening in Gaza: international media are now Hamas’ accomplices.
As I have written here, Hamas’ entire strategy is to degrade Israel’s international standing through media operations, to provoke international pressure to force the IDF to stop their operations in Gaza. There is now such a comprehensive and overwhelming body of evidence that Hamas lies, and lies, and lies, that even the most anti-Israel journalist ought to question their stance.
There is no other genocidal terror group in history who have commanded such credibility from the international media with such flimsy evidence to back up their position. There is only one conclusion: these journalists parroting Hamas’ lines to take are either grossly incompetent or actively malign.
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