SCHEERPOST, By Alan MaCleod / MintPress News
After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, IDF forces responded with airstrikes, leveling Gazan buildings. The violence so far has claimed the lives of more than 2,500 people. Western media, however, show far more interest and have much greater sympathy with Israeli dead than Palestinian ones and have played their usual role as unofficial spokespersons for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS, ZERO EVIDENCE
One case in point is the claim that, during their incursion into southern Israel, Hamas fighters stopped to round up, kill and mutilate 40 Israeli babies, beheading them and leaving their bodies behind.
The extraordinary assertion was originally reported by the Israeli channel i24 News, which based it on anonymous Israeli military sources. Despite offering no proof whatsoever, this highly inflammatory claim about an enemy made by an active participant in a conflict was picked up and repeated across the world by a host of media (e.g., in the United States by Fox News, CNN, MSN, Business Insider, and The New York Post).
Meanwhile, the front pages of the United Kingdom's largest newspapers were festooned with the story, the press outraged at the atrocity and inviting their readers to feel the same way.
Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence, and a story like this should have been met with serious skepticism, given who was making the claim. The first question any reporter should have asked was, "Where is the evidence?" Given multiple opportunities to stand by it, the IDF continually distanced itself from the claims. Nevertheless, the story was simply too useful not to publish.
The decapitated baby narrative was so popular that even President Biden referenced it, claiming to have seen "confirmed" images of Hamas killing children. This claim, however, was hastily retracted by his handlers at the White House, who noted that Biden was simply referencing the i24 News report.
The story looked even more like a piece of cheap propaganda after it was revealed that the key source for the claim was Israeli soldier David Ben Zion, an extremist settler who had incited race riots against Palestinians earlier this year, describing them as "animals" with no heart who needs to be "wiped out."........................................................... more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/14/propaganda-blitz-how-mainstream-media-is-pushing-fake-palestine-stories/ #Israel #Palestine
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