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A U.S.-based media watchdog group issued a report last week exposing a half-dozen Arab photo-journalists who accompanied Hamas terrorists in the early hours of October 7 on their killing spree in Israel, documenting their atrocities.
All six of the photo-journalists whose work Honest Reporting examined were employed by major media organizations, including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press. Reuters heralded one photo, showing a lynch mob brutalizing an Israeli soldier they had dragged out of a tank, as its “image of the day.”
An AP photographer took a video of himself in front of the burning Israeli tank, glorifying that he was seeing it with “my own eyes.” He was wearing nothing to identify himself as a member of the press, and appeared to be part of a celebratory crowd.
Another AP reporter snapped close-ups of Hamas terrorists dragging a terrified and bleeding Israeli civilian to a vehicle for transport as a hostage to Gaza.
Others captured the initial breaching of the Israeli border fence, the torching of Israeli homes, and the capture of female hostages.
The report earned cringing excuses from all four news organizations, ranging from the expected “just doing their job,” to embarrassed denials that they had embedded their reporters with Hamas.
Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, demanding that the Department of Justice open a national security investigation into the four media outlets “to determine whether they or their leadership committed federal crimes by supporting Hamas terrorists.”
The six photo-journalists “almost certainly knew about the attack in advance, and even participated by accompanying Hamas terrorists during the attack and filming the heinous acts,” he wrote.
As someone who has reported frequently from Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan, and with Palestinian guerrilla fighters in the Bekaa Valley, I can tell you: the Palestinians control information tightly, just like any other totalitarian. They want to control the “narrative.”
I write about several instances where I succeeded in evading Palestinian attempts at control in my latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies. It was always a challenge; often, it was dangerous. The Palestinians a long history of punishing journalists who do not comply with their demands.
But these six “photo-journalists” were not seeking to get around the Hamas narrative to report independently. They sought to glorify Hamas and its atrocities.
And there is no way they just happened upon the scenes they filmed. They were led there by Hamas.
Their actions show that they were not journalists, but Hamas operatives. They should be treated as such by Israel. I will shed no tears when that happens.
On Senator Cotton’s question of culpability of The NY Times, AP, Reuters, CNN: their pathetic efforts to escape responsibility demonstrate that “ethics” and corporate journalism are incompatible.
They published those photographs because they were sensational, and because there was virtually no news (and certainly no images) coming from the Israeli side in the early hours of the attack.
Remember Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes fame) who said proudly during the Vietnam war he would report from the Vietcong side even if it meant watching the killing of American soldiers — and that he would not warn the Americans?
I have always found such journalistic “ethics” despicable. That’s one of many reasons I never felt I had “betrayed” my profession when I become an Israeli “spy” briefly in the late 1980s, in an effort to free downed Israeli aviator Ron Arad, held hostage at the time by Lebanese militiamen. Or when I helped my country during the first Gulf War to better understand the sophisticated weapons Saddam Hussein had acquired from the French, which I had seen with my own eyes in Baghdad not long before the war. (For both mercantile and political reasons, the French were refusing to provide that information to the Americans.)
Sen. Tom Cotton is right to threaten media owners and editors that employed these terrorists with legal action. If nothing else, when they filed those photos, a vigorous discussion with editors should have ensued, as in “Mohammad, how the *** did you get that photo? Where is your Press brassard?”
Hamas obviously alerted them to the upcoming action and brought them along, including them in its genocidal rampage. They were willing participants, not observers. That is the line that they crossed.
Kenneth Timmerman’s latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, details his work as a war correspondent in the Middle East. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 by the former deputy premier of Sweden, for his work on Iran.
Dox those “photo journalist” Hamas operatives. Print their names and addresses. Let them face justice.
They are as complicated as those civilians that not only celebrated the genocide but also act as human shields for the terrorists. They know where the tunnels are and they know where the hostages are being held. By aiding and abetting the terrorists they have declared themselves as combatants
Those sorry excuses for “journalists” should be snatched & asked hard (cutting off important parts) for every ounce of information they have.
I think you meant “they are complicit, not complicated, right?
Yes – I hate the autocorrect mode. And missed the change until after
I hit post. Wish there was an edit mode
I’m not even a little surprised at this. These outlets mentioned have, as Trump said, have often been enemies of the people. I remember Wallace’s comments while in uniform. As you might have imagined, It didn’t go over well with us. If I were an IDF officer I’d make sure to get these Hamas photojournalists into the right place at the wrong time. For them. I admire Senator Cotton, but have nothing but disdain for The DOJ.
One of the Soviet KGB’s Active Measures was to takeover The Media to promote disinformation and propaganda. Recall that Obama, a KGB recruit, (Google Obama Sundial 1983 which proves, he not only sought out Communist Professors, but was also a member of the most radical anti-American/pro-Soviet student front groups directed by the CPUSA and funded by the KGB!) invited leading media hosts to the White House. WHY? These meetings were to coordinate the message and their message only which they did and have always done.
THIS STARTS AT COLLEGE JOURNALISM CLASSES. A prof gives an assignment to cover a protest or speaker. The ones that agree with the agenda, good grades, and then recommended to be a writer for the college newspaper. The graduate and most to local, state, and national news, again hired only due to their agenda, always radical far-left propagandists. The more outrageous comments they make, the higher the ladder they go. The View hags make comments to make headlines and to get viewers for ratings. They wake up thinking of a headline and sure enough, their media comrades, play it up.
THEY COORDINATE the message with tweets and texts. Ten minutes after the breach of the Capitol fences, “INSURRECTION” was the message. Who was the source of the tweet and text and was the message sent before the event? Maybe a FISA warrant to get all their devices would reveal that. Pelosi and Democrats as a way to get Trump, now with indictments and trials while the Biden Crime Family get no coverage much less, indictments no matter the mountain of evidence.
THE SOVIET KGB’S TWELVE ACTIVE MEASURES IS THEIR MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Obama is smiling!
The average “journalist” for The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, NPR or The Washington Post is about as much an objective observer of the conflict between Israel and Hamas as Lord Haw Haw and Axis Sally were impartial reporters of WW II.
It should be noted that Mike Wallace may never have reported in Vietnam along side the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese while they killed Americans, he did report from Arab countries in a thoroughly obsequious way. He reached his nadir when he portrayed Syria under Hafez Assad as a “tolerant” paradise for Jews (interviewing a Syrian Jew while an agent of the Syrian secret police was present). His assertion that Jews were treated well in Syria (how many remained after they were allowed to leave?) carries as much weight as Hanoi Jane’s assertion that the North Vietnamese treatment of POWs was “enlightened and humane” and former POWs who disputed her were “liars and cowards”.
These photo stringers were not acting as journalists; they were active participants in Hamas atrocities. When a “news” service knowingly buys their photos and prints them they themselves become accomplices in that terror.
We have been told many times that no Constitutional right is absolute. The right to keep and bear arms doesn’t include the right to nuclear arms. So why should the right to a free press include the “right” to complicity in crimes against humanity? This is what the New York Times, Reuters, AP, and CNN have become; they have become terrorists themselves.
Can anyone explain to me why these institutions should not be seized and shut down?
The NYT’s has been covering up for the enemy since 1932 and Stalin/Duranty
This is considered betrayal to our allies and to America. How these journalists sleep at night knowing they are enabling the enemy. Hamas, do not want freedom of the press. Fools will be for ever ignorant even if they mess up and they come for their family. How sad.
The Left is despicable in all that they do, and I mean also AP, Reuters, NYT, and CNN specifically in this instance. They knew that thousands were just about to be murdered, babies, women, children, and they gleefully (look at their happy faces) went along on the killing spree, celebrating each and every death it seems.
“Hamas obviously alerted them to the upcoming action and brought them along, including them in its genocidal rampage.”
This is not proven. The attack was all over social media from its first moments as Israeli civilians posted their fear and suffering. Any good journalist would have been following their postings and immeditely attempted to document them.
However, the Washington Post, just yesterday attempted to explain how Hamas was able to breach Israeli defenses by analyzing all relevant social media posts for several months prior to Oct. 7. They correctly decided that Israel knew about Hamas’ intentions but decided that it could not act without the necessary knowledge and weapons. Only Hamas knew that it had both….but maybe not…
….Maybe an analysis of the same info used by the Post would enable clever people to prove that the news media knew about Hamas’ abilities BEFORE the attack. It’s certainly worth making the effort.
Musk is currently being grilled for allowing truth on his platform. MSM freely conspiring with terrorist’s and being left unchecked.
This ends with the deaths of billions, the bastards.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/20/israel-hospital-goalposts/
The author thinks the Times (and others) is being manipulated….but I think they are complicit and fighting for their lives to avoid being revealed. Literally. If they were to be found guilty they would be treasonous in the United States and subject to assassination by Israel.