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Media Hides Truth After International Group Says No ‘Famine’ in Gaza
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
It’s embarrassing to admit a mistake. But it’s worse to try and hide it.
Sadly, media outlets opted for the latter in their coverage of a revised report that contradicted their narrative on a Gaza “famine.”
The June 25 report, by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), included two main points:
Contrary to the IPC’s widely-covered estimates from March 18, the report stated that “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring” in northern Gaza.
A “high risk” of famine persists across the whole of the Gaza Strip, as long as conflict continues.
Any journalist reading the report should have immediately noticed that its authors have buried the first point — which is new and proves that they were wrong — while leading with the second point, which is repetitive and speculative.
But instead of critically calling out their source and reporting what’s new in the report, media outlets were happy to copy-paste it, effectively burying, distorting, or altogether omitting the news that would have embarrassed them and the IPC alike for spreading false information.
Omission and Distortion
In March, media headlines were quick to parrot the IPC’s “famine” forecast, and in early June, they ignored the monitor’s admission of several flaws in its original data-gathering.
Ideally, these journalistic sins should have been corrected by now, with headlines about the revised report that look like this:
Global monitor announces no evidence of Gaza famine
Global monitor lowers estimate of Gazans facing “catastrophic” hunger from 1.1 million to 495,000
IPC admits March report on Gaza famine was faulty
Aid deliveries alleviated hunger conditions in Gaza – report
Instead, media outlets buried this information, as well as omitted or distorted it, to hide the truth from their audience.
CNN buried the no-famine point in the 10th paragraph of its text story. On Instagram, it’s been completely omitted with a reframed headline:
The report stated its previous assumptions were wrong on the amount of food entering Gaza and said, “In this context, the available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring.”
But that would’ve ruined @CNN‘s narrative… pic.twitter.com/8sNznK2Rkx
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 26, 2024
The Guardian went further, not only burying the news (in the 3rd paragraph), but distorting it with an agenda-driven headline:
The British paper also had no qualms about publishing an op-ed that falsely claims Israel is deliberately starving Gazans the same way the Nazis starved Jews in the Holocaust.
“The idea that we can somehow put what is happening in Gaza at a distant remove from the history of the Warsaw ghetto is grotesque.”
No, @guardian, what’s grotesque is publishing an op-ed that falsely claims Israel is deliberately starving Gazans the same way the Nazis starved… pic.twitter.com/MCEqTKnYp4
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 26, 2024
Distortion also plagued The New York Times’ report, which framed the entire story with comments from aid groups, and avoided mentioning the no-famine point by stating (in the 3rd paragraph) that the IPC has “stopped short of saying that a famine had begun.”
The BBC, the Telegraph, and The Independent almost copy-pasted the IPC report verbatim, with headlines about the risk of famine:
These three outlets also uncritically parroted the report’s assessment that almost half a million Gazans now face “catastrophic” hunger — without mentioning that it’s down from the original estimate of 1.1 million, and that no actual famine was found.
Media Cop Out
Admittedly, news outlets must cover what bodies like the IPC report. And it’s true that the report sneakily started with the words: “A high risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip.”
But journalists should read between the lines, understand the background, and not just take the IPC’s word as gospel, especially if its previous reports have been proven wrong.
Unfortunately, media outlets avoided this inconvenience and chose to perpetuate the false famine narrative.
After all, it’s an easy cop-out that hides their own faults of parroting unreliable sources.
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 Media Hides Truth After International Group Says No ‘Famine’ in Gaza 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.