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Media Outlets Use Daring Israeli Rescue of Hostages to Shield Hamas, Attack Israel

Fernando Simon Marman and Louis Hare, two Israeli hostages who, according to the Israeli military, were freed in a special forces operation in Rafah, Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, reunite with loved ones at the Sheba Medical Center, in Ramat Gan, Israel, February 12, 2024, in this still image obtained from a video. Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY

Early on Monday, February 12, news outlets reported that Israel had rescued two hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.

But instead of sticking to the facts of the daring overnight raid in Rafah — which happen to justify Israel’s claim that the southern Gaza city is a Hamas stronghold — prominent news sites framed the story in a way that minimized the terror group’s role and presented Palestinians as the victims.

The result inverted reality: Positive news was portrayed as negative and good became evil.

Such framing, which subtly cast doubt on the worthiness of the Israeli rescue operation, was achieved by using one or more of the following tactics:

Selectively using the word ‘”freed” instead of “rescued.”
Uncritically emphasizing the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes during the raid.
Adding lengthy paragraphs focusing on the plight of 1.4 million displaced Gazans in Rafah, and their fear of a potentially imminent Israeli invasion.
Ignoring Hamas altogether.

The Guardian, for example, packaged the first two points in a headline that reads: “Two Israeli hostages freed in Rafah, says IDF, as Palestinians report dozens of deaths.”

Who freed the hostages? Hamas? Islamic Jihad? An invisible force? Unclear.

Using the word “freed” rather than the value-laden “rescued” muddies the dramatic nature of the Israeli operation and whitewashes Hamas. That’s because it blurs the lines between the two sides and can also be mistakenly attributed to the terror group, as seen above.

But what’s worse is the added framing of Palestinian casualties — some of whom are undoubtedly terrorists killed in the raid.

And it’s not just in the headline.

The first paragraph of the story leads with the Palestinian death toll, according to “Gaza health officials,” who don’t differentiate between terrorists and civilians:

At least 50 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Rafah, according to Gaza health officials, as the Israeli military said it had freed two hostages during a raid by special forces on the city.

The rest of the story — except for 2.5 paragraphs dedicated to the Israeli hostages — includes 18.5 paragraphs on the suffering of displaced Palestinians in the area, amid global warnings against a looming Israeli invasion of Rafah.

It is not clear why such background paragraphs don’t include any information on Hamas’ entrenchment amid or under the civilian population of the city, particularly in light of the fact that Israeli hostages had been held in an apartment building there.

The Guardian’s story was partly based on a Reuters report, which also used “freed” in its headline and framed the Israeli operation with unverified casualty numbers that serve the Palestinian narrative:

We’ve fixed your headline, @Reuters. The hostages were rescued, not “freed.”

But who are the “67 killed”? Israeli soldiers killed many terrorists and came under heavy fire during the rescue operation.https://t.co/sgHVRC3OPY pic.twitter.com/IlMSdQhXn7

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 12, 2024

Unlike Reuters, the Associated Press and the BBC did use the verb “rescue.”

But they framed their headlines similarly:

And the live coverage page of the BBC still led with the lethal Israeli strikes:

Voice Of America (VOA) went further and did not even mention the Israeli rescue operation in its headline about the Rafah strikes:

It’s been some 9 hours since it was publicly announced that Israel had rescued two hostages from Rafah.

But the headline and story below are still the lead on the @VOANews website.https://t.co/2AkmWqS1GM pic.twitter.com/Fi1u5X643P

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 12, 2024

VOA’s story starts with what seems to be random Israeli air strikes that killed tens of Palestinians sheltering in Rafah. Again, no context is provided, nor is there any critical caveat about the problematic source for Gaza’s casualty figures:

Israeli airstrikes Monday hit the southern city of Rafah, killing at least 67 people according to local health officials in the area of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million civilians have already fled to in order to escape the war.

Residents described heavy bombing, with the Israeli strikes hitting several houses and mosques.

It’s not until the third paragraph that VOA mentions the Israeli rescue operation, although it is almost glossed over as a mere coincidence:

“…the strikes coincided with a mission that rescued two Israeli hostages who were being held by Hamas militants.

NBC News also made the Israeli airstrikes look like an indiscriminate bombing of Rafah, unrelated to the fact that Hamas had been holding the Israeli hostages there:

Some media outlets didn’t just change words or add context.

National Public Radio, for example, completely omitted Hamas from its story about the Israeli rescue operation.

It did not mention Hamas even once, as if the Israeli forces had been fighting an unidentified enemy:

The Israeli military said on Monday that special forces rescued two Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Heavy airstrikes were conducted during the operation and there were initial reports that Palestinians were killed in the strikes.

Disturbingly, NPR relied on a military report that clearly identified Hamas as the group that kidnapped the hostages on October 7, while its terrorists killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted some 240 others.

Why did NPR ignore that?

Whatever the reason, the result is the whitewashing of the murderers responsible for taking the hostages in the first place.

Indeed, it’s possible to sum up by repeating the cliche that framing is everything.

But it shouldn’t be.

Journalists should avoid it and simply report the facts accurately.

They should also be aware of the ramifications of their words, especially when these words are used to minimize evil — the evil of a terror group that holds hostages while using innocent civilians as a human shield.

And when journalists fail to do so, news consumers deserve to know that they are being misled.

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 Outlets Use Daring Israeli Rescue of Hostages to Shield Hamas, Attack Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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