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No Due Diligence: Media Silent on Terror-Supporting Ministers of New PA Cabinet
FILE PHOTO: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas appoints Mohammad Mustafa as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), in Ramallah, in the West Bank March 14, 2024 in this handout image. Photo: Palestinian president office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Media outlets should always report the facts — but also questions about them. Last week, however, the media reported on the formation of a new Palestinian Authority (PA) cabinet, but hadn’t researched the background of its ministers, two of whom have been exposed as avid terror supporters.
Instead, the media painted a flawed picture of the potential reform of the Palestinian Authority by either being uncritical of the new cabinet, or by mentioning challenges it faces that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Background Checks
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) published damning evidence about two new Palestinian ministers on March 31, two days after media had reported on the formation of the new cabinet.
PMW discovered that:
The new Palestinian Minister for Religious Affairs, Muhammad Mustafa Najem, has said that “Allah turned [the Jews] into apes and pigs,” and called to “afflict the Jews with the worst torment.” He did so in a 2002 sermon aired on official Palestinian Authority television during the Second Intifada, a bloody period during which Palestinians murdered hundreds of Israelis.
The new Palestinian Minister of Women’s Affairs, Muna Al-Khalili, called one of the deadliest attacks in Israel’s history — the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 civilians were killed, including 12 children — a “quality resistance operation.” Her praise was quoted in an official Palestinian Authority daily in 2018.
Merely three weeks after the deadly Hamas October 7 massacre in southern Israel, Al-Khalili spoke at a conference about emphasizing “the Palestinian people’s right to resist the occupation (i.e., Israel) that has continued for the past 75 years.” She also participated in a demonstration calling for the release of terrorist prisoners.
Muhammad Mustafa Najem called Jews “apes and pigs.”
Muna Al-Khalili participates in activities praising terrorism.
None of this has been mentioned by mainstream media, which means one of two things:
Palestinian reporters working for international media outlets have knowingly withheld information they most probably have been aware of; or
Reporters and editors alike didn’t bother to run in-depth background checks on the new cabinet members.
In any case, it’s bad journalism.
But what’s doubly disturbing is the approach taken by some media reports about the PA.
At worst, these stories have been uncritical of the new cabinet that is meant to lead to a “reformed” PA. At best, they were selectively skeptical about the issues it faces — from corruption to non-democracy — ignoring the PA’s decades-old support for terrorism.
CNN, AFP, and Reuters simply echoed the report of Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, announcing the new cabinet.
CNN didn’t provide any context, except for quoting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ call to reform the PA, and adding one line at the bottom saying, “it has long been seen as corrupt by US politicians and Palestinians themselves.”
AFP went a bit deeper, mentioning the US message about the potential for a “revitalized” PA. It even counted how many female ministers are included in the new cabinet, and mentioned some members’ hometowns: “the new government is made up of 23 ministers, including three women and six Palestinians from Gaza.”
Reuters declared that Abbas had “appointed the new government in a demonstration of willingness to meet international demands for change in the administration.” The agency did provide five paragraphs of background, but focused on the strained internal Palestinian divisions and the financial woes of the PA.
Nowhere did they mention the PA’s policy of “Pay-for-Slay” — where terrorists and their families are given salaries for life for slaying innocent Israeli women, children, and men — or the anti-Israeli incitement in the PA’s schools.
Selective Skepticism
Some outlets have been more skeptical, but selectively.
The AP’s headline and first few paragraphs — which are what most people bother reading — are in the context of the expected reform of the PA. The wire service even details some background on certain members of the new cabinet, but not on Najem or Al-Khalili.
The AP’s skepticism, which kicks in only in the seventh paragraph, only focuses on issues like the PA’s corruption, non-democracy, and inner divisions.
Again, there is no mention of the PA’s support for terrorism, which is the first thing any reasonable reporter should wonder about in light of October 7 and any talk of its future rule in Gaza.
The same issues plague the reports of NPR, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Terror-supporting ministers and terror-supporting policies aren’t mentioned.
Had it been a new Israeli government, media would have scrutinized every minister with a fine-tooth comb. Reporters would have asked critical questions.
Why is it any different when it comes to reporting on the Palestinian Authority?
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 No Due Diligence: Media Silent on Terror-Supporting Ministers of New PA Cabinet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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