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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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Rabbinical Council of America Slams Canada’s Trudeau for Agreeing to Comply With ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Blair Gable
The Rabbinical Council of America, one of the world’s largest organizations of Orthodox rabbis, has penned a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, slamming the leader over his promise to comply with the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief, Yoav Gallant.
In the letter dated Monday, the council expressed “profound outrage and disappointment regarding your recent statement that Canada will comply with the ICC indictment of democratically elected leaders of Israel, who stand accused of crimes against humanity.”
“This decision reflects a deeply troubling moral inversion, legitimizing a politicized institution increasingly marked by bias rather than a commitment to impartial justice,” the letter continued.
The council added that Trudeau’s backing of the ICC decision “tarnishes [Canada’s] reputation as a nation committed to human rights and democracy,” stating that support for the “antisemitic” ruling represents a “betrayal” to Jews within Canada and across the world.
The Hague-based ICC issued arrest warrants last week for Netanyahu, Gallant, and a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri (better known as Mohammad Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Israeli leaders have lambasted the ICC’s decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as “antisemitic” and politically motivated, calling the allegations false and absurd. US lawmakers have said they intend to push legislation to sanction the ICC over its move.
This week’s letter from the rabbinical council said that its members were “deeply alarmed” by recent anti-Israel protests in Montreal, which included an “effigy” of Netanyahu” being set on fire. Though Trudeau condemned the demonstration, the council claimed that the Canadian government has exhibited a pattern of “selective enforcement” regarding hate speech laws. The group also urged the Canadian leader to take decisive action against Iran, citing the Iranian regime’s recent attempted assassination of former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler.
Following the ICC ruling, Trudeau confirmed that Canada would comply with the decision and arrest Netanyahu if he arrived on Canadian soil.
“We stand up for international law, and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts,” Trudeau said during a press conference last week. “This is just who we are as Canadians.”
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Canada has been rocked with protests condemning the Jewish state. Last Thursday, for example, more than 85,000 Quebec students participated in a “strike for Gaza” to demand their universities divest from Israel. The demonstration quickly escalated into violence, with students engaging in vandalism. Trudeau issued a statement condemning the protests as “acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence.”
Though Trudeau has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself, he has also implemented arms restrictions on the Jewish state. Earlier this year, Canada canceled 30 arms exports permits for Israel.
Meanwhile, over the past year, Jews have endured a rising tide of antisemitism and targeted violence in Canada. In 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto, according to police-reported data.Overall in Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most frequently targeted group for hate crimes, with a 71 percent increase from the prior year.
The post Rabbinical Council of America Slams Canada’s Trudeau for Agreeing to Comply With ICC Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Foreign Minister Looks to Washington to Punish the ICC
An exterior view of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, March 31, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday he believed the United States would punish the International Criminal Court for having issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister.
Israel has said it will appeal the ICC decision to move against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
But during a visit to the Czech Republic, Saar said other countries were also dismayed by the decision, including the United States.
“I tend to believe that in Washington, legislation is going to take place very shortly against the ICC and whoever cooperates with it,” Saar told a joint press conference with Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky.
Saar added that Israel would finish the 14-month-old war in Gaza when it “achieves its objectives” of returning hostages being held by Hamas and ensuring the Islamist terror group no longer controls the Palestinian enclave.
Saar said Israel did not intend to control civilian life in Gaza, adding that peace was “inevitable,” but couldn’t be based on “illusions.”
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US Enovy Hochstein: Delinking Lebanon, Gaza Conflicts ‘Key’ to Securing Ceasefire Deal
A man walks past rubble of destroyed buildings which was previously a market area, in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatieh, on the second day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
JNS.org — US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who played a pivotal role in brokering this week’s ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, on Wednesday emphasized the importance of delinking Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah from the war against Hamas in Gaza.
In an interview with Channel 12 News, Hochstein said that “the real issue was the linkage that Hezbollah had made between Lebanon and Gaza, and being able to break that linkage, delinking the two conflicts, was the key to solving this one.”
However, in a Wednesday briefing for the American Jewish community, Hochstein said that the Lebanon deal could pave the way to a deal to release the hostages still being held by Hamas.
“The Lebanese deal here opens an opportunity on the hostage deal,” he said. “They [Hamas] wake up this morning at 4 am with Hezbollah, that used to be actively supportive of Hamas in the northern front, cutting a deal and ending that conflict.”
Hochstein in the Channel 12 interview also addressed reports that he had told Jerusalem and Beirut that it was “now or never” to get the deal done, denying that he used that language.
“I did say that there is a window of opportunity to do this now and either we did it — and I thought that all the conditions were there — and that if they did not want to do it now, they would have to wait for a new president to come in, which probably meant March or April, as a new administration doesn’t do things right away and that could come as an opportunity loss. So it was a moment of opportunity here,” he said.
He also addressed concerns about the agreement’s implementation, given the failures of UN Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War and was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and force it north of the Litani River.
“I’ve been openly critical of Resolution 1701 […] because I thought it was very nice words but there was nothing that was set in place to enforce it, frankly, on either side […] so we were determined to be able to bring about a change in that, and created a mechanism here that will be chaired by the United States together with France and others, and bring in other allies who will support the LAF [Lebanese Armed Forces],” he said.
While the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) will be “part of” the enforcement mechanism, complaints of violations will not be going to UNIFIL for review, he said.
“The United States will have, one, the ability to share information quite immediately [regarding] a suspected violation on either side with the other party, being able to work with the LAF […] and other security services in Lebanon to investigate it, monitor it, dismantle it if necessary, discontinue it, and those are all things that we are now putting together, literally in these hours and day, to put this effort together,” he said.
“And we’re not going to stop; it’s not a temporary effort. It’s an enduring mechanism that will look at these violations and address them immediately,” he added.
He addressed former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett’s criticism that the agreement doesn’t go far enough in terms of establishing a buffer zone to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its terrorist infrastructure and forces along the border, and also concerns that the Iranian terror proxy has not been weakened enough.
“Hezbollah is weakened. It is degraded. And at some point, you have to say, what’s the point of degrading it [more],” he said.
He went on to say that a buffer zone and a ceasefire agreement were mutually exclusive.
“There are fantasy deals, that are utopia, where you get a ceasefire agreement with a security zone, etc…. but those won’t ever happen,” he said. “There will never be an agreement that also has Israel as an occupying force in another country. That country will not sign that deal. You have to choose. If you choose to have a dead zone or a demilitarized zone, then you’re there as an occupier and you are not there in agreement, which means that while you may have two, three kilometers inside Lebanon, or maybe even four or five, there is no agreement to stop shooting at Israel from longer ranges,” he added.
The US envoy also denied reports that the Biden administration had threatened not to veto a UN Security Council resolution if the deal wasn’t signed.
He said he had briefed President-elect Donald Trump’s senior national security advisers about the details of the ceasefire deal “because it’s very important for them to understand and support it, because they are going to have to carry it going forward and implement it as they take office in just a few weeks.”
The post US Enovy Hochstein: Delinking Lebanon, Gaza Conflicts ‘Key’ to Securing Ceasefire Deal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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