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When UPI and the Hamas Press Office Are Indistinguishable
Hamas leader and Oct. 7 pogrom mastermind Yahya Sinwar addressing a rally in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/braheem Abu Mustafa
It’s not often that a mainstream media outlet publishes a piece so full of disinformation that it ridicules itself as a credible news source.
But that’s exactly what UPI did in a piece whose blatant anti-Israeli, pro-terror stance puts the American news agency on a par with the worst propaganda platforms distributing fake news against the Jewish state.
What should have been a short reportage on comments made by Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar, has been turned by UPI’s Adam Schrader into a glorifying bio of the Gaza terrorist.
It starts with the terminology.
According to UPI, Sinwar — a mass murderer and the mastermind behind the October 7 massacre in southern Israel — is a “Palestinian militia” leader who had been arrested in Israel “for supporting a free Palestine.”
We’ve seen a lot of poor journalism but this from @UPI‘s Adam Schrader is truly an embarrassment.
Let’s start with how Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was previously arrested for merely “supporting a free Palestine” rather than actual terror activities.
And there’s more. https://t.co/gKPTFOsr7i pic.twitter.com/xXpDxAzav8
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 19, 2024
While he may support a Palestine free of Jews, Sinwar is most definitely not a militia leader. Hamas is a proscribed terror organization that has ruled all aspects of life in Gaza for almost two decades.
It may be a militia only in Schrader’s romantic imagination, perhaps, picturing Sinwar as some rebel leader in Latin America.
But then comes the disinformation: Israel, according to UPI, was born out of Palestinian bloodshed in a land that has been colonized by “Jewish settlers.”
The militia leader was born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, then under Egyptian rule, to parents who were forced out of their homes by Jewish settlers during the 1948 war when Israel declared its independence.
The expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes came in a campaign known as the Nakba, in which at least a dozen women were raped by Israeli forces and 15,000 other people were killed during a series of massacres.
The “Nakba” was not a deliberate Israeli “campaign” of expulsion as UPI contends. The Palestinian refugee problem was the result of five Arab armies attacking Israel in 1948, while advising Palestinians to leave their homes temporarily until the land was, indeed, free of Jews. The displacement of Palestinians was the direct result of the war.
UPI omits that detail, while accusing Israel of rape in 1948, presumably as a way of excusing or diminishing the very real and systematic Hamas sexual violence against Israeli women on October 7.
Likewise, UPI claims that Hamas has been fighting multiple wars against Israeli “occupation” for the sake of “Palestinian sovereignty.”
Over the years, Hamas has fought multiple wars against Israeli forces occupying Gaza where it remains popular for its stances of Palestinian sovereignty. Hamas has been condemned over the years as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.
Did Adam Schrader forget that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and fought all its wars with Hamas afterwards? Did he not read Hamas’ charter calling for a holy war against the Jews? Has he never listened to the group’s leaders urging an ethnic cleansing of Israel?
Hamas’ priority is not Palestinian sovereignty, but the destruction of the Jewish state.
Finally, Schrader outdoes himself with an appalling attempt to justify Hamas’ October 7 atrocities:
Israel has accused Sinwar of organizing the attack on October 7, which many have characterized as a terror attack. Hamas has blamed the attack on the killing of hundreds of Palestinians and arrest of many more by Israel in the months before the war broke out. Israel had also raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites.
Does UPI think that October 7 can be characterized as anything other than a genocidal terror attack? And why does it repeat Hamas’ excuses?
Could it be that Schrader is parroting Hamas’ very own English PR document released to the media to justify their massacre? Either way, UPI is effectively using Hamas’ own talking points.
Replete with errors, blatant anti-Israel bias, and some appalling Hamas-inspired justification for the events of October 7, it’s hard to believe a supposedly respectable news agency would publish such a piece.
We have filed a complaint to UPI with the demand that Adam Schrader’s story be reviewed and appropriate measures taken. Unfortunately, such is the state of the piece, its removal may be the only course of action that would rectify the problem.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post When UPI and the Hamas Press Office Are Indistinguishable first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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