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Hamas By Any Other Name: The Media’s Masterclass on Biased Sources
People hold Hamas flags as Palestinians gather after performing the last Friday of Ramadan, May 7, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
News consumers don’t often get a free masterclass in how not to tell a story. But that’s precisely what The Independent did when it failed to mention Hamas even once in its report on Gaza.
The story — published without a Gaza dateline by the paper’s senior Asia correspondent — relied on multiple sources that sound neutral but are in fact affiliated with Hamas, and made it seem like Israel wages a war against Gaza, not against the terrorists.
Not a single mention of Hamas in a story that cites multiple sources to back up its claims against Israel.
So let’s see who @Independent‘s senior reporter @Maroosha_M relies on for her information.
pic.twitter.com/PeS3Mqznrb
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) January 2, 2025
Biased Sources
When it’s impossible to get professional reporters on the ground in Gaza, journalists should be extra careful with the sources they use.
But Maroosha Muzaffar, The Independent’s Senior Reporter in Asia, did the exact opposite — either out of bias or ignorance.
Here are the sources she relied upon to report on casualties of overnight Israeli airstrikes, as well as the current situation in the enclave:
- Shehab News Agency and the Palestinian Information Center — both affiliated with Hamas. The former was blocked by Facebook in 2021 for promoting violence.
- Al Jazeera — The Qatari mouthpiece, which even the Palestinian Authority banned recently over its support for terrorists.
- The Gaza Health Ministry — A Hamas-run body.
- The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics — A Ramallah-based institute that receives its data from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
None of these affiliations are clarified in The Independent’s report. And a short Israeli response about evacuation notices to civilians before the strikes is mentioned only in the sixth paragraph.
So readers are bombarded by what appears to be damning information against Israel from various independent and neutral sources, all associated with Hamas, which isn’t mentioned at all.
Biased Terminology
The omission of Hamas is also amplified by the story’s biased terminology. Twice, readers encounter the term “Israel’s war on Gaza,” as if Israel’s aim is to wipe out innocent Palestinians in the enclave.
In contrast, the term “Palestinians” or “Gazans” is mentioned only in the context of displacement or tragic death.
Israel is even subtly blamed for the suffering of Gazans due to bad weather conditions; the paragraph which describes their plight is juxtaposed to the paragraph about “Israel’s war on Gaza.”
And the final two paragraphs — which should usually be dedicated to providing necessary background such as Hamas’ October 7 attack that ignited the war — parrot unverified statistical claims about population decline in Gaza, which (as mentioned above) give a platform to Hamas’ narrative against Israel.
Why did the paper erase Hamas from the story? Did the reporter or her editors know that their sources are nothing but Hamas fronts? And why was Israel’s response buried, with no mention of its stated goal to eliminate the genocidal terror group?
Whether it’s ignorance or bias — the result is the same: A story about unprovoked Israeli aggression against helpless Gazans.
A masterclass in bad journalism, at best, or deliberate distortion, at worst.
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 Hamas By Any Other Name: The Media’s Masterclass on Biased Sources first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.