D.O.A ‘Journos’ from the Hamas Newsroom

Can the anti-Israel demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney get any more bizarre? The keffiyeh-wearing agitators now protest against the Israel-hating ABC and Age journos for not being pro-Hamas enough. The mobs sprayed white graffiti on ABC walls and windows, reading “Tell the truth about Palestine”. Watch them here. And in a pre-dawn action, as Iran’s Tasmin news service put it, “40 portraits of slain Palestinian journalists were displayed at ABC offices, shedding light on the silence around their deaths, but security swiftly removed the posters.”

The silent “die-in” of 50-60 protesters blocking The Age foyer was by a group called No More Bodies in Gaza . Watch the demo here with bonus musical moaning. The ersatz corpses were clad in the blue vests of Palestine journos and bike-helmets covered in blue cloths to serve for helmets, all liberally slapped with “Press” signage. “Media silence upholds violence” read one placard while another sported this laboured pun, “Where is the Outr(AGE)?” Matt Hrkac, one of the activists, highlighted that despite building management urging police to disperse the crowd, they permitted the demonstration to continue. Age management messaged staff to work from home on the Monday due to fears of “potential activist activity”.

Part Two: Blood not Ink

One news agency found the die-in so impressive that it syndicated the news globally. That’s Tasnim again, official mouthpiece of Iran’s women-whipping (74 lashes) regime. Another entity outraged about the deaths of real and professed journalists is Qatar’s Al Jazeera. Qatar, by accommodating Hamas leaders in safety, assisted the October 7 massacres of 1200 Israeli civilians. The ABC, rattled by the protests, responded:

The Israel-Gaza conflict is a complex and difficulty story to cover and we understand and care about the particular personal and professional challenges it involves for journalists. The ABC is committed to accuracy, impartiality and fairness in our Israel-Gaza coverage, as in all our reporting.

The ABC’s track record on “impartiality and fairness” can be judged by its reporting of the murders at a Jerusalem synagogue a year ago, when a Palestinian gunned down seven worshippers at close range, including a 70-year-old woman, and wounded three more, including a 15-year-old boy. Police shot the terrorist dead.

A disgusting ABC account of the episode, with wire service input, merely said the Israelis called it a “terror attack”, reserving its own judgement on whether the slayings were a good or bad thing. Its report continued censoriously that the synagogue was in a precinct of Jerusalem which “Palestinians and most of the international community consider … occupied land illegally annexed after a 1967 Middle East war.” Just for good measure, the report continued that the attack “occurred a day after an Israeli police raid killed nine” in the “occupied West Bank”. Only later in the report did the ABC mention that the police action followed a wave of Palestinian violence.

But wait, there was more. The national broadcaster next used the synagogue killings to note that Israel’s then-new government “is dominated by ultranationalists” including “hardline nationalist parties”. No wonder all those worshippers got shot [my sarcasm]. The article went on to quote a spokesman for “the Islamist movement Hamas” (just a “movement”, not terrorists) while all but stating outright that the Israelis are criminal occupiers who reap what the ABC thinks they have sown. Put it down as another a fine example of ABC’s anything but fair-and-balanced reporting.

That bland report contrasted with Western governments’ responses , such as that of France: “…all the more despicable as it was committed on this day of international remembrance of the Holocaust”. The US: “heinous, absolutely horrific”; UK: “appalling/horrific”. Even UN Secretary-General Guterres called it “abhorrent”. Foreign minister Penny Wong put out a statement on January 28 saying, “That such a cowardly and callous attack occurred on a day where we remember the atrocities of the Holocaust is utterly reprehensible.” My search finds no ABC reporting of Wong’s statement. It didn’t  fit the national broadcaster’s pro-Palestine narrative, I guess..

Meanwhile the Israel-kills-journos meme is building in popularity. It angles for media sympathy plus the incitement of indignation against the Israel Defence Force (IDF). The IDF does this alleged journo-killing, one might easily conclude from ABC coverage, to suppress and silence news about its own alleged atrocities in Gaza. The number of dead journos balloons daily. As of January 13, it ranged from 82 to 100-plus. My take is that these tallies from just three months are unmitigated nonsense.

Don’t get me wrong, any deaths of genuine journos doing objective reporting in Gaza is tragic and I have every sympathy for their families. Among the latest deaths, for example, are said to be a car-full of journalists flying a drone to document an Israeli air strike for the international media. Unwilling to trust the drone-flyers, the IDF blew up their car as they left. Was that justified or not?

THE MAIN and much-cited list of killed journalists comes from the Committee for Protecting Journalists, a purportedly objective NGO in New York. Its CEO is Jodie Ginsberg (right), who calls herself both journalist and “campaigner”. It emphasises its conservative methods, like verifying a death from at least two independent sources, and cancelling the listing of any Kalashnikov-toting militant sneaked in as a purported journalist. Yet Mohammad Khair al-Din, for example, alleged by CPJ to be a slain journalist, was actually a blacksmith/decorator “with hundreds of images at the site are related to his trade.”

I checked the CPJ list a month ago, incidental to another essay about the ABC anti-Israel bias in this war. I  concluded that a large proportion of the slain so-called journalists were operatives for Hamas and Hezbollah, the latter which even the Arab League has labelled a terrorist organisation. My masterpiece of investigatory journalism took five minutes’ research.

A London-based expert and thorough investigative journalist, David Collier, who has specialised for a decade in exposing anti-Semitic tracts, also noticed such anomalies and has exhaustively checked CPJ’s entire list of slain alleged journalists, at the time totalling 77. He meticulously references each of his counter-facts in his report’s 150 pages, titled The “Journalists” of Gaza – a modern-day antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted by mainstream media. He summarises:

The CPJ list and methodology appears to be amateur beyond all comprehension. The CPJ continually break their own guidelines. They rely almost completely on data provided by proscribed terrorist groups. Independent analysis of social media posts does not seem to have been undertaken at all … Their list is all smoke and mirrors.

Where does the CPJ source its list? From Hamas, of course, which via its affiliated Palestine Journalists Syndicate (PJS) had 107 names on its list. But CPJ going with that would be too crude. CPJ needed to make its list look like professional work, not cut-and-pasted from those who on October 7 broke women’s pelvises while raping them, burnt couples alive and cooked babies in kitchen ovens. So CPJ chucked out the most implausible of the Hamas fictions and dressed up the remaining names with the patina of its own perfunctory research. The upshot: 70 names from Hamas and PJS, plus only seven from elsewhere.

How good is the CPJ/Hamas homework? Well, Hamas listed one dead supposed journalist, Mustafa Al Naqib, as Number 9, and a Rajab Naqib as Number 19. Surprise! They were the same person. Ditto for Listees 71 and 98: the same person, Huthaifa Lulu, as Collier documents. He did his list-busting via an open-source tool: the listees’ own social media, family or third-party social media, in English and Arabic (via Google translate – with sometimes awkward English). Barely a handful had no identifiable social media feeds to explore. Collier’s summary:

♦ On the CPJ list, 35 of the 70 named journalists (50 per cent) are openly associated with proscribed terror groups and are therefore active parts of terror organisations at war with Israel. If living in the West, many would be arrested for supporting radical Islamic terrorism.

♦ At least 79 per cent on the list promoted and celebrated terrorism and the death of innocent Israeli civilians. Their glee at Hamas atrocities disqualifies them from the profession of “journalist”, notwithstanding Western media calling them so. Conversely, if Western outlets have been accepting its “news” from those people, they  have been actively or unwittingly parroting Hamas propaganda.

♦ Although CPJ claims the listed deaths came during reporting work, two-thirds were killed at home, some in strikes on Hamas leadership or on hide-outs of Hamas fighters: “For example, an employee of an Islamic Jihad channel is included even though he died in the house of his father – a top Islamic Jihad commander.”

Before judging a listed name as that of a terrorism supporter, Collier sought for at least two of their social media posts glorifying terrorist hits, such as running down Israeli civilians at a bus-stop. He ignored celebrations of terrorism on their spouse’s social media. In addition, some listees would have been banned by platforms like X and hence don’t show up as Hamas backers. All these factors make Collier’s estimates conservative.

CPJ provides at least two sources for its entries — but Collier detects that the sources often self-reference (two sources merging into only one) or are not confirmation anyway. The CPJ cites Palestine Journalists Syndicate (PJS) in over 40 listings. It cites others, such as the International Federation of Journalists (eight times) which also rely heavily on the PJS.

♦ Nineteen names (27 per cent) on the CPJ list do not seem to be journalists. They include family members of the IDF’s top Hamas targets, a freelance graphic designer who worked for a PR company, a builder, the unemployed, someone whose father runs a sports club, and administrative employees of media companies. “Anyone who has ever worked in PR, advertising or has ever held a camera, has been added to the list,” Collier writes.

♦ The sloppy CPJ research does not support its claims. The CPJ appears to work backwards, assuming a person named by Hamas is a journalist unless proven otherwise. It has not bothered to look at publicly available social media accounts before making increasingly outrageous statements against Israel, Collier says.

BEFORE I get into the nitty-gritty of named “journalists” (Part 2, coming tomorrow), I’ll profile David Collier and his target, CPJ. Collier says he’s entirely independent of any political or NGO group. Operating as a lone wolf, his sole remuneration is from his website’s tip jar. He has received awards from both New York’s Algemeiner Journal (in 2017 as one of their annual 100 people who have positively influenced Jewish life) and in 2022 from the media watchdog CAMERA (‘Portrait in Courage’). Among his specialties is exposing BBC bias against Israel.

CPJ has an annual budget of $US13 million, runs about 70 staff globally, enjoys net assets of $US32 million drawn from large and small donors, and gets cited over 1000 times a week. It recently moved into splendid offices in midtown Manhattan, notwithstanding that staff were allowed to work three days a week remotely. (Donors please note). Its board and funders are heavy with the Democrat-pumping establishment, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Columbia Journalism School, Reuters, AP, AFP, and Chicago Tribune. Among CPJ’s “senior advisers” is ex-pundit Dan Rather, the long-time CBS anchor who in 2004 touted forged documents claiming George W Bush dodged military service.[1] After CBS “let go” Rather, he blustered for years that the forgeries were real but failed in his $US70m lawsuit against CBS.

Also among CPJ board’s senior advisors is CNN’s anchor Christiane Amanpour. When two British sisters and their mother were cut down in their car in an ambush by Al Qassam Brigade terrorists on May 7, 2022, Amanpour said the women had died “in a shootout”. After complaints, including from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, she subsequently made an apology which the father of the slain women, Rabbi Leo Dee, rejected out of hand.

While CPJ does good work supporting and rescuing journalists in hell-holes like Cameroon, Togo and Ecuador, its efforts in the US itself “to protect journalists and journalism wherever it is under attack” have been ludicrous. It made no mention in its 2021 annual report of the massive Deep State and Big Tech suppression of the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop scoop and scandal in the weeks before the 2020 election. But it had no hesitation bleating about “a hostility toward journalists in the United States today, stoked by former President Trump, who constantly attacked and demeaned the press”. (And with good reason)[2].

CPJ was campaigning against Israel long before October 7, putting out a keynote report titled “Deadly Pattern” last year on how the IDF had killed 20 Palestinian journalists in the past 22 years in that hugely confused and contested zone of conflict. The IDF apologised for inadvertently shooting Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022 during a conflict in Jenin, but CPJ wants a prosecution. Israel’s democratic press, including Haaretz, Maariv, and The Jerusalem Post, covered Deadly Pattern extensively. CPJ has yet to ask Hamas to apologise for and prosecute its members who killed four Israeli journalists during the October 7 massacres.

Our own ABC reveres CPJ’s president Jodie Ginsberg. On November 30, ABC TV News Breakfast gave her four minutes of softball questions aimed at setting up Israel as a killer of innocent, objective Palestinian journalists. The interview was accompanied by emotionally charged visuals of Gaza damage

ABC: Are you concerned journalists have been deliberately targeted?…Journalists are the eyes and ears of what we are seeing [in Gaza]. So many journalists are using social media to put forward the truth of what they are seeing on the ground. How important is what they are bearing witness to right now?

Ginsberg: We are entirely reliant on those local Palestinian journalists documenting what they are seeing. They are just ordinary journalists to whom war has come, documenting attacks on family members, loved ones, that is extremely challenging. (emphasis added)

On January 8, ABC TV had Ginsberg back for an encore  to field more of the same softballs, still minus any ABC homework on CPJ’s dubious data. Ginsberg opened with a double dose of fake news from “health officials in Gaza” (aka Hamas) claiming 22,800 civilian casualties (Hamas actually includes some 8000+ dead Hamas fighters in that tally).

ABC: Are these (Gaza journalist) deaths [that] you are able to verify?

Ginsberg: Yes. We are not always able to verify the precise circumstances. This is war, getting information is incredibly difficult. Our organisation ensures we understand whether the individual is a journalist, we always have at least two sources so that we can understand the circumstances of the killing. We continue to work to investigate that.

ABC: Were they deliberately targeted?

Ginsberg: If so it would be war crimes. Journalists are civilians and must not be targeted in a war situation.

ABC: So they should be investigated as such…

Paul Barry of ABC Media Watch was also sucked in by CPJ. His October 23 broadcast was an otherwise good expose of the destruction at Al Ahli Hospital by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, an incident immediately attributed byin the international press a deliberate, targeted Israeli strike. But he then touted CPJ’s amateurish list as gospel.

Media Watch is supposed to do research. Then again, so are all the other media outlets gulled by CPJ.

US media such as PBS at least ask Gisberg some challenging questions.

PBS: Jodie, I have to ask you about a recent allegation made by a pro-Israel advocacy group, claiming that The New York Times and Associated Press were working with freelance journalists they say are aligned with Hamas. The New York Times and AP both deny that. But we now have Israeli outlets too labelling some journalists as Hamas propagandists. And we have to be clear, Hamas does run Gaza. So, how can viewers make sure that what they’re seeing is the full picture and not just what Hamas wants to get out?

Ginsberg: Well, there are a variety of media outlets operating in Gaza, and that’s been the case for many years, journalists reporting for, as you say, Reuters, AP, AFP, international news outlets, as well as for local news outlets [all under Hamas censorship, TT]. And what’s really important is that we have that plurality of voices who can help us build a comprehensive picture of what’s happening in Gaza. There are no international news crews who are able to get into Gaza, to operate in Gaza. So, we’re absolutely reliant on those local Palestinian journalists to be our eyes and ears on the ground to tell us what’s happening.

PBS then did a “reverse hostages montage” and screened for Ginsberg 39 portraits of slain Gazan alleged journalists:

PBS: What does that mean for our visibility into what is happening on the ground?

Ginsberg: And as this rolls on, what this increasing number of deaths means is that our ability to understand what’s happening in Gaza … diminishes day by day. We need journalists to be able to understand what’s happening in Gaza…

There was much indignation in Australia last November with the news that the Albanese government had granted visas to 860 Palestinians after no credible security checking. Critics’ incorrect belief was that security checks needed staff on the ground there. David Collier in London checked 100 Gazan individuals via their social media accounts and online activity, pinpointing high numbers of Hamas affiliates and supporters. As noted above, Collier is a lone investigator, unsalaried and with no resources other than the internet, Google Translate for the Arabic, and his forensic brain. Half a dozen volunteers like him could have checked most of the entire 860 visa applicants in a fortnight, a job ostensibly too great for the Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister’s and Immigration departments.

Tomorrow: The specific names and loyalties of Gazan “journalists”

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] The forgeries were outed by the Power Line blog, where posters immediately noted the US Army was still using typewriters incapable of producing superscripts at the time CBS alleged Bush was pulling strings to avoid active service. As subsequent — and genuine — documents proved, Bush, a Texas Air National Guard pilot, repeatedly sought a posting to Vietnam.

[2] The NYT took $US100,000 a month from the Communist Party of China, via the CCP’s China Daily mouthpiece, for the decade to early 2020 to run pages of advertorials like “China Watch: Diaoyu Islands Belong to China.”[6]