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New York Times Falls for Hamas Propaganda at a Third Hospital, Where Terrorists Hid Weapons in Incubators
Ahmad Kahalot, a senior Hamas member and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, speaking to Israeli interrogators. Photo: Screenshot
Of all the many egregious embarrassments of the New York Times in its flawed coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, hospitals consistently have been at the forefront.
First the Times fell for a Hamas propaganda stunt blaming Israel for killing hundreds at Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. It subsequently emerged that the damage was from a misfired terrorist missile aimed at Israel. The Times had to publish an editors’ note confessing that editors “should have taken more care.”
Then the Times spent weeks obsessing again and again on the front page about another Gaza City hospital, Shifa Hospital, ritualistically including lines about how “Hamas denies operating within the hospital or under it, as does the hospital director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya.” With that hospital, too, the Times put itself to shame. It never really explained to readers why it passed along the Hamas denials or those of the hospital officials, even though everyone knew they were lying.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it found that one of the hostages, 19-year-old Noa Marciano, had been murdered by Hamas terrorists inside the Shifa hospital. It published video of armed terrorists hustling Nepalese and Thai civilian hostages into the hospital. It found a terrorist tunnel with a blast-proof door and a firing hole. It found a booby-trapped vehicle full of weapons. It found Hamas weapons and uniforms hidden inside the hospital’s MRI area, where security cameras had been covered up.
Now the Times has egg on its face for coverage of a third Gaza hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital. Yet again, the Times gullibly, or complicitly, has advanced the false Hamas narrative about cruel Israel targeting innocent doctors and patients.
Under the headline, “Israeli forces raid another hospital and detail doctors, Gaza’s health ministry says,” the Times reported, “Israeli forces rounded up civilians and medical staff in the hospital’s courtyard, and five people were injured by gunfire, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. They also interrogated medical personnel under duress, taking some to an unknown location, it said.”
The Times dispatch, by a reporter named Anushka Patil who was not in Gaza, went on as basically a press release accusing Israel of various atrocities. “Twelve children at the hospital were on life support equipment, raising fears about their survival, the Gaza health ministry said … Like many medical facilities in the enclave, it was struggling to function under severe shortages of medicine, water, food, and fuel even before it was surrounded by Israeli forces in recent days,” the Times reported. “Surgeries at the hospital were already being performed by cellphone flashlight and without anesthesia, the director of the pediatric ward, Dr. Hussam Abu Safyia, told the New York Times last month.”
As it did with coverage of the other hospitals, the Times piled on with more coverage the next day, this time from Matthew Mpoke Bigg, another Times reporter who was not in Gaza. He recycled UN attacks on Israel: “Kamal Adwan Hospital had been under siege by Israeli forces for several days, according to the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said earlier this week that he was ‘extremely worried’ about Israeli operations there,” the second Times article said. “The United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report on Thursday that Israeli forces, accompanied by tanks, had raided the hospital for a second successive day ‘with reports of mass arrests and ill treatment of people who they have detained,’ including beatings.”
None of the Times articles said, by the way, who Kamal Adwan was. He was a PLO terrorist who was involved in plotting the kidnapping and murder of the 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It seems like a strange person to name a hospital after.
The Times piled on some more with yet a third story about Kamal Adwan Hospital, this one headlined, “Israeli forces withdraw after besieging Gaza hospital, leaving behind bodies and destruction.” Hamas claims were passed along by the Times at face value: “The Palestinian health ministry said that during the Israeli siege, 12 premature babies had been trapped inside the incubators without access to milk or life support.” Israeli claims, in contrast, were given super-skeptical treatment by the Times, including “scare quotes”: “a statement by the Israel military … that hospital workers ‘confessed’ that incubators for premature babies were being used to store weapons. The Israeli military’s claims could not be independently verified.”
A video released by the Israeli government this week showed the director of the hospital, Ahmad al-Kahlout, or Abu Hassan, acknowledging that he’s the equivalent of a brigadier general in Hamas and that 16 hospital officials — doctors, nurses, clerks — have Hamas military roles. Hamas used the hospital and an ambulance as a hiding place for a kidnapped Israeli soldier, according to the video. The Israeli military also issued a video showing that Hamas used incubators in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital to hide weapons. The New York Times so far does not appear to have shared news of either video with its readers.
An honest newspaper would make that the headline — “Hamas Terrorists Used Hospital as Hiding Place.” Too much of the New York Times coverage of this war is not honest, however. It is Hamas hype. So instead of honest headlines, Times readers get headlines about “Israeli forces … besieging Gaza hospital, leaving behind bodies and destruction.” The ones destroying Gaza are the Hamas terrorists using hospitals as hiding places. The New York Times is serving as the terrorists’ propagandists.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post New York Times Falls for Hamas Propaganda at a Third Hospital, Where Terrorists Hid Weapons in Incubators first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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