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AP, Reuters & AFP Recycle Tedious ‘Israel Ruined Christmas’ Narrative
An artwork dubbed “scar of Bethlehem” by street artist Banksy is displayed in the Walled Off hotel in Bethlehem, December 22, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Mussa Qawasma.
As billions of Christians around the globe prepare to celebrate Christmas, the world’s biggest news agencies have been scrabbling around for an angle to cover the Christmas celebrations in the Holy Land.
And they’ve found one.
This year, Reuters tells us in a recent headline, will be the “worst Christmas ever” in Bethlehem.
According to Reuters, the birthplace of Jesus Christ will be deserted because the “war has scared away tourists and pilgrims from the Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.”
Meanwhile, the Associated Press said it would be a “subdued Christmas” in Bethlehem after “officials in Jesus’ traditional birthplace decided to forgo celebrations due to the Israel-Hamas war.”
“The cancellation of Christmas festivities, which typically draw thousands of visitors, is a severe blow to the town’s tourism-dependent economy,” the AP noted.
In a similar vein, Agence France Press (AFP) predicted subdued celebrations, explaining that as the “war between Israel and Hamas rages around 100 km (60 miles) away in Gaza — leaving thousands of Palestinians dead and nearly two million displaced and trapped in a humanitarian catastrophe — Christmas will be a muted affair in the occupied West Bank.”
The issue with these articles is that they all sound far too familiar.
In fact, it seems that scarcely a December passes without the wire agencies warning that Christmas has been spoiled in Israel.
In 2021, for example, Reuters announced that in Bethlehem there would be a “muted Christmas with few pilgrims to bring cheer.”
In 2020 — during the Coronavirus pandemic — the Associated Press lamented how the spread of the virus had “rob[bed] biblical Bethlehem of Christmas cheer.”
And a couple of years before that, the AFP was hand-wringing about a “subdued Christmas Eve in the historic birthplace of Jesus” as “Jerusalem tensions overshadow Christmas in Bethlehem.”
As you can see, a pattern is emerging: every year, the world’s biggest wire agencies, which supply news copy to thousands of organizations around the world, suggest Christmas celebrations in the Holy Land have been ruined.
What’s more, such articles more often than not imply Israel is responsible for wrecking the holiday, with this year’s slew being no different.
For example, AP notes that Israel has restricted access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns following the Hamas attacks on October 7, which it says has resulted in long lines of motorists waiting at checkpoints.
The agency goes on to observe how Bethlehem’s Christmas celebrations have “long been a barometer of Israeli-Palestinian relations,” and references how “celebrations were grim in 2000 at the start of the second intifada… when Israeli forces locked down parts of the West Bank in response to Palestinians carrying out scores of suicide bombings and other attacks that killed Israeli civilians.”
Without being stated directly, the insinuation is clear: Israel is to blame for responding to Palestinian terrorism — and not the Palestinian terrorists whose murderous actions necessitated a response in the first place.
As Israel battles Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip who launched the horrifying terror attack on October 7, the emphasis by the world’s leading news agencies is on how Israel’s prolonging the war has disrupted festive celebrations — and not the fact that Hamas is ultimately responsible having launched the unprovoked attack on innocent civilians in the first place, and that it continues to indiscriminately fire rockets at Israeli towns and cities.
It is lazy and, sadly, predictable journalism: the recycling of the same angle as previous years with the distortion of facts to fit that skewed narrative.
A “humbug” — as popularized by the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol — refers to someone who is deceptive or likely to mislead.
Bah humbug indeed!
The post AP, Reuters & AFP Recycle Tedious ‘Israel Ruined Christmas’ Narrative first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.