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The Financial Times Distorts Reality to Paint Israel as Aggressor in Lebanon
Israeli tanks are being moved, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in the Golan Heights, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
Three elements of distorted reporting plague a recent Financial Times piece about the Israel-Hezbollah conflict: Deceitful writing, selective choice of interviews, and emotional framing. The result is that the average reader of the piece, titled “The demolitions clearing Israel’s ‘first belt’ in Lebanon,” can’t help but view the Jewish State as a rogue nation arbitrarily carrying out mass destruction of Lebanese villages.
The piece includes 34 lengthy paragraphs, intermingled with maps, videos, images, and infographics, showing controlled demolitions conducted by the IDF in Lebanese villages along the border.
But Israel’s stated reason for these demolitions — destroying Hezbollah’s tunnel network that has threatened Israel’s north — appears only in the 24th paragraph.
In today’s fast-paced news consumption environment, few bother reading below the digital “fold” of the first two paragraphs.
It’s also a journalistic sin to bury the very reaction that provides an answer to one of the most fundamental 5 W’s of reporting: the “Why?” — Why does Israel do what the story reports on?
Instead of including such information high at the top, the Financial Times speculates that Israel wants to create a 3-kilometer buffer zone along the border. Why? No answer.
The article does not even mention Hezbollah’s mega-plan to invade Israel’s northern communities and duplicate the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023.
But not only is the writing deceitful — the use of “experts” interviewed for the piece, as well as the use of demolition videos, is agenda-driven.
The piece quotes two “analysts” who make Israel look like the aggressor: A legal expert with a clear anti-Israeli stance and a retired Lebanese army general who is interviewed as an authority on the strategy of the Israeli army.
But despite using videos that clearly show the demolition of underground tunnel infrastructure — as any munitions expert can verify — no such expert has been interviewed by the Financial Times.
This is especially alarming considering the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit has distributed such videos as proof of the existence of Hezbollah’s tunnels underneath Lebanese villages — which makes those villages legitimate military targets under international law.
With eight journalists working on the piece, not to mention editors, the omission of this information suggests ignorance, at best, or bias, at worst.
So HonestReporting has done what the Financial Times should have done and contacted Israeli military expert Sarit Zehavi, the President of the Alma Research Center. Here’s what she said after reading the article:
The overwhelming majority of the videos in this article clearly show the explosion of tunnel structures. Some of them were filmed by journalists that the IDF allowed into the area before they were detonated. Hezbollah has turned every house in southern Lebanon into a military site. According to international law, it is permissible to attack military sites. The amount of munitions that the IDF is removing from there, the explosion patterns in the videos of IDF strikes, and the secondary explosions in the munitions storage facilities — all of these are clear evidence supporting this claim.
Emotional Framing
But all of this is lost on the readers. Because the entire piece is framed with the emotional story of a Lebanese family whose ancestral village was demolished by the Israeli army.
In fact, five paragraphs at the top of the article and four at the bottom detail the emotional pain of one of the family’s sons, who currently lives in Beirut. It seems like none of his relatives was physically hurt.
Indeed, in journalism, it’s always a good idea to bring the voice of the people, but here it’s done explicitly to frame the narrative.
It seems that the reporters didn’t even bother asking the family member whether his village was indeed near/above terror infrastructure — like the IDF has repeatedly shown regarding many “civilian” houses in the area.
But asking questions may ruin the imaginary narratives of biased reporters.
So they deceive, omit and frame reality instead.
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 The Financial Times Distorts Reality to Paint Israel as Aggressor in Lebanon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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France to File Case Against Iran Over Citizens’ Detention
A woman walks past posters with the portraits of Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two French citizens held in Iran, on the day of support rallies to mark their three-year detention and to demand their release, in front of the National Assembly in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. The slogan reads “Freedom for Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris.” Photo: REUTERS/Abdul Saboor
France will file a case at the World Court on Friday against Iran for violating the right to consular protection, foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said on Thursday, a bid to pressure Iran over the detention of two French citizens.
Paris has toughened its language towards Iran in recent months, notably over the advancement of Tehran’s nuclear program and its military support for Russia, but also over the detention of European citizens in the country.
Cecile Kohler and her partner Jacques Paris have been held in Iran for more than three years. France has repeatedly accused Iran of holding them arbitrarily, keeping them in conditions akin to torture in Tehran’s Evin prison and not allowing proper consular protection.
Iranian officials deny these accusations.
“France will maintain pressure on the Iranian authorities until our two compatriots are freed. Their liberation is a national priority,” Lemoine told a news conference.
He said French officials would file the case on Friday at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is based in The Hague, for violating the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
Like France, Iran is party to the convention, which defines the framework for consular relations between states, including guaranteeing their right to provide proper consular protection to their citizens.
Cases at the ICJ, also known as the World Court, take years to come to a final ruling. Parties can request the court to order emergency measures to ensure that the dispute not deteriorate while the case is making its way through the United Nations’ top court.
In recent years, Iran‘s elite Revolutionary Guards have arrested dozens of dual nationals and foreigners, mostly on charges related to espionage and security.
Rights groups have accused Iran of trying to extract concessions from other countries through such arrests.
Iran denies taking prisoners to gain diplomatic leverage.
The post France to File Case Against Iran Over Citizens’ Detention first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Would Make Gaza a ‘Freedom Zone,’ Trump Says in Qatar
US President Donald Trump walks to board Air Force One as he departs Al Udeid Air Base, en-route to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, in Doha, Qatar, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
President Donald Trump on Thursday reiterated his desire to take over the Gaza Strip, telling a business roundtable in Qatar that the US would “make it a freedom zone” and arguing there was nothing left to save in the Palestinian territory.
Trump first pitched his Gaza idea in February, saying the US would redevelop it and relocate Palestinian residents. The plan drew condemnation from Palestinians, Arab nations, and the UN saying it would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Most of Gaza‘s 2.3 million population is internally displaced as Israel continues its military campaign against the Hamas terrorist group, which has ruled the enclave for nearly two decades. Israel began its campaign after the October 2023 Hamas attack.
Speaking to a group of officials and business leaders in Qatar, which has hosted Hamas’s political office in Doha for years, Trump said he has “concepts for Gaza that I think are very good: Make it a freedom zone, let the United States get involved.”
Trump said he had seen “aerial shots where, I mean, there’s practically no building standing. It’s not like you’re trying to save something. There’s no buildings. People are living under the rubble of buildings that collapsed, which is not acceptable.”
“I want to see that [Gaza’ be a freedom zone. And if it’s necessary, I think I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone. Let some good things happen.”
Trump has previously said he wants to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Many Palestinians reject any plan involving them leaving Gaza.
Commenting on Trump‘s remarks in Qatar, Hamas official Basem Naim said the president “possesses the necessary influence” to end the Gaza war and help establish a Palestinian state.
But Naim added: “Gaza is an integral part of Palestinian land — it is not real estate for sale on the open market.”
Direct US involvement in Gaza would draw Washington deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and potentially mark its biggest Middle East intervention since its 2003 Iraq invasion. Many Americans view foreign entanglements with skepticism.
Israel began its campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken as hostages to Gaza.
Earlier this month, Israel approved expanded offensive plans against Hamas that might include seizing the Strip and controlling aid.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described Trump‘s idea as “a bold vision,” and has said that he and the US president have discussed which countries might be willing to take Palestinians who leave Gaza.
The post US Would Make Gaza a ‘Freedom Zone,’ Trump Says in Qatar first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany Lays to Rest Margot Friedlaender, Holocaust Survivor Key to Remembrance Culture
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz bows in front of the coffin before the funeral ceremony of Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlaender at the cemetery of the Jewish community in Berlin Weissensee, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: Kay Nietfeld/Pool via REUTERS
Margot Friedlaender, a Holocaust survivor who played an important role in Germany‘s remembrance culture ensuring the country’s Nazi past is not played down with the passage of time, was laid to rest on Thursday after dying last week aged 103.
A funeral ceremony took place at a Jewish cemetery and Holocaust memorial site in Weissensee, Berlin, the city where Friedlaender was born and to which she eventually returned.
Among the mourners were President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who bowed to her coffin which was covered in pink and white flowers.
Friedlaender died on May 9, almost exactly 80 years after the Soviet Red Army liberated the Theresienstadt concentration camp where she was imprisoned.
For Steinmeier, she embodied the “miracle of reconciliation” between Germany and Jews around the world, while Merz called her “one of the strongest voices of our time: for peaceful coexistence, against antisemitism and forgetting.”
Friedlaender was born in Berlin in 1921 to Auguste and Arthur Bendheim, a businessman. Her parents split in 1937, and Auguste tried in vain to emigrate with Margot and her younger brother, Ralph, in the face of intensifying persecution of Jews.
Her father was deported in August 1942 to the Auschwitz death camp where he was murdered. In early 1943, on the day Margot, Ralph and Auguste were set to make a final attempt to leave Germany, Ralph was arrested by the Gestapo secret police.
Auguste was not with her son at the time but turned herself in to accompany him in deportation to Auschwitz where both later died. Margot went underground and managed to elude the Gestapo by dying her hair red and having her nose operated on.
But she was finally apprehended in April 1944 by Jewish “catchers” — Jews recruited to track down others in hiding in exchange for security — and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is the Czech Republic today.
She survived Theresienstadt and met her future husband, Adolf Friedlaender, there in early 1945, shortly before the liberation of all Nazi camps at the end of World War II, and they emigrated to New York in 1946.
In New York, Margot worked as a dressmaker and travel agent, while her husband held senior posts in Jewish organizations. Both vowed never to return to Germany.
After her husband’s death Margot revisited Berlin in 2003, among a number of Holocaust survivors invited back by the German capital’s governing Senate. She moved back for good in 2010, at age 88, regaining her German citizenship and giving talks about her Holocaust experiences, particularly in German schools.
“Not only did she extend a hand to us Germans — she came back; she gave us the gift of her tremendously generous heart and her unfailing humanity,” Steinmeier said this week.
Friedlaender‘s autobiography, Try to Make Your Life — a Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin, was published in 2008, titled after the final message that her mother managed to pass on to Margot.
She was awarded Germany‘s Federal Cross of Merit in 2011 and in 2014, the Margot Friedlaender Prize was created to support students in Holocaust remembrance and encourage young people to show moral courage.
In a 2021 interview with Die Zeit magazine marking her centenary, Friedlaender reflected on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s rise since 2015 on the back of anti-immigrant sentiment, saying it made her uncomfortable.
“I remember how excited the 10-year-old boys were back then [in Nazi era] when they were allowed to march. When you saw how people absorbed that – you don’t forget that,” she said.
“I always say: I love people, and I think there is something good in everyone, but equally I think there is something bad in everyone.”
The post Germany Lays to Rest Margot Friedlaender, Holocaust Survivor Key to Remembrance Culture first appeared on Algemeiner.com.