When Pinocchio lied, his nose grew longer. His falsehoods were too obvious to be ignored.

But media outlets barely raised an eyebrow after a Big Lie was exposed last week, perhaps because it also exposed them as wooden marionettes.

On Monday, April 8, it was revealed that Gaza terror organizations have been deliberately spreading false narratives on the Israel-Hamas war, and that international media outlets have been playing an unwitting, or even willing, role in enabling this mass manipulation.

Unsurprisingly, the foreign press ignored the exposure, even though everyone received the announcement distributed by the IDF.

Israel released a video that showed the interrogation of Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesperson, Tariq Salami Otha Abu Shlouf, who had been captured during the IDF’s recent raid on Gaza’s Shifa hospital.

During his conversation with the interrogator, which amounts to an incriminating account concerning news coverage of Gaza, Abu Shlouf reveals how the well-oiled media manipulation machine of Islamic Jihad and Hamas operates:

Top figures in the group decide on a beneficial narrative, such as focusing on the humanitarian angle rather than the military one.
The message is circulated to news outlets.
Reporters uncritically echo what the terror group says, to avoid harming ties with sources.

The chilling testimony of an Islamic Jihad spox revealed how terrorist orgs manipulated the media to blame Israel for acts it did not do in this war.

It’s a day after the IDF released the testimony & neither @AP nor @Reuters have mentioned him at all. pic.twitter.com/eKT3IXeR5b

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 9, 2024

Abu Shlouf references the Al-Ahli hospital incident as an example: he admits his group decided to falsely blame Israel for the deadly strike, in order to erase the fact it had been caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket — a fact known to local reporters.

He also tells the interrogator how the “humanitarian angle” is being pushed to pliant reporters, with specific messages fed to international news outlets:

Abu Shlouf: The international media differs from the Arab ones, they focus on humanitarian issues, we don’t speak to them in the language of violence, destruction, and revenge. They come and say “let’s talk for a minute or two, but only talk to me about the humanitarian side, meaning, for instance, you’d say “it’s our right to live,” “we want the situation to return to normal, and our children to live like other children in the world,” “we have the right to receive capabilities and institutions.” This is the humanitarian side. And the other side, some of the international media organizations automatically address events like al-Ahli, when an event happens, they turn to us.

He adds that terrorist officials even vet news stories before publication. And he describes how “interviews” are conducted with international media reporters:

Abu Shlouf: They like to do interviews with figures from the political bureau, senior figures, like Khaled al-Batsh. There were a few international media outlets that conducted interviews with him. He sits with someone, then the journalist starts asking him questions, because it’s under the table, the humanitarian situation doesn’t interest the journalist. Only three things interest him: was the fallen rocket yours? Khaled al-Batsh, of course, answers him “No, it’s from the occupation.” Of course, the journalist knows that the rocket is indeed ours and not yours.

Interrogator: Even though the journalist knows, does he still echo what is said by the organization [Islamic Jihad]?

Abu Shlouf: Yes, because they ask him to review the article before publication, telling him to send it to us before he can publish it so we can review it.

Interrogator: And if it’s not to your liking, it doesn’t get published?

Abu Shlouf: No, of course not, because he [the journalist] needs us for more interviews.

Media outlets might argue that Abu Shlouf’s account as an IDF prisoner had been given under duress. But it seems — even with the video cuts — that rather than giving short answers, he willingly provided elaborate details and names. And that also suggests it’s true.

The foreign press can also argue that what he said about al-Ahli and terrorists’ use of hospitals and ambulances isn’t new. But that’s why it may be even more incriminating, as further proof that Gaza reporters have most likely known about it all along and kept silent.

The unavoidable conclusion from Abu Shlouf’s account is this: People in his position are constantly contacted by foreign press reporters to quote data, request interviews, and get reactions. So the editorial line on Gaza news is not being decided by the local reporter or his/her editors in Jerusalem or London. It first passes through the terrorists’ filter.

Is this not worth reporting? Don’t news consumers deserve to know the truth?

These questions are important because media outlets have published many stories focused on their Gaza reporters throughout the war — from their personal safety concerns to their electricity challenges. But when it now comes to focusing on the actual work they do, the media silence is deafening.

This is also defining the foreign press’ inability to carry out any self-reflection. If they care so much about the truth they purport to pursue, these media outlets ought to be the first to acknowledge that a huge shadow of doubt has just been cast on the professionalism of every reporter in the Hamas-run Strip. And it also hovers over their vetting procedures of new hires in Gaza.

HonestReporting has questioned the journalistic ethics of Gazan reporters since the beginning of the war. We exposed how some of them infiltrated into Israel with Hamas on October 7, as hundreds of Israelis were slaughtered.

Now, when it’s become even clearer that everything we see and read from Gaza is being manipulated by terrorist propagandists, it’s time for a media reckoning.

Pinocchio managed to transform into a responsible human being.

Why can’t journalists covering Gaza see who is pulling their strings, and do the same?

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 Gaza Terrorist Spokesperson Reveals How Media Falls for Terror Group’s Lies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Peter Maass, a journalist and former senior editor at left-wing publication The Intercept, admits that his “Jewish identity was always a bit vague.” He is also not an expert on international law, military tactics, or even the Middle East in general.

However, none of this has stopped Maass from using his Jewish heritage and past experience covering the war in Bosnia in the 1990s as a platform to not only falsely accuse Israel of war crimes in the present day, but also to re-invent history in a recent op-ed for The Washington Post.

Titled “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them,” Maass’s op-ed is rife with inappropriate analogies, context-free claims, and a heavy reliance on his “vague” Jewish identity — all in an effort to harm the image of Israel and to besmirch the Zionist movement in general.

Neither his Jewish identity nor experiences covering the Balkans & other conflicts qualify @maassp to pass judgment on Israel & accuse it of war crimes.

But that won’t stop @washingtonpost from blending “As a Jew” tokenism & superficial military analysis.

Full analysis https://t.co/Udc6oHeu1A pic.twitter.com/z52FdtJeI8

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 10, 2024

Peter Maass’ Crooked Line Between Bosnia & Gaza

In 1992 and 1993, Peter Maass served as an on-the-ground journalist during the war in Bosnia, reporting on the war crimes and ethnic cleansing that had become central features of that conflict.

Over 30 years later, and 1,000 miles away, Maass appears certain that his experiences in Bosnia are relevant to an analysis of the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

However, while his reporting from Bosnia might have been laudable, his understanding of Gaza is superficial and amateurish.

Take, for example, his claim that Israel’s “grind through Gaza” — when it “bombs and shoots civilians, blocks food aid, attacks hospitals and cuts off water supplies” — reminds him of the war crimes that he witnessed in Bosnia.

Despite what Maass might have observed in Bosnia, this is not at all what is occurring in Gaza.

Israel is currently trying to uproot a terrorist infrastructure that has spent years embedding itself within the civilian areas of Gaza, turning schools, hospitals, mosques, and even private homes into rocket launching pads and other military installations.

Civilian deaths in Gaza are due to Hamas’ cynical manipulation of civilian areas for their terrorist purposes, not because Israel is indiscriminately targeting civilians on a whim.

Similarly, when Israeli forces enter hospitals, it is due to the use of those facilities by Hamas gunmen and leaders, not out of abject cruelty or spite. The recent extensive IDF operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, in which hundreds of Hamas gunmen were killed, and hundreds more were arrested, attests to this reality.

As for his claim that Israel is blocking food aid or cutting off water supplies, this is simply an inversion of reality.

Further in the piece, Maass alleges that, based on his understanding of international law, Israel is committing war crimes and that its conduct is tantamount to genocide.

How does he come to such conclusions?

For the war crimes allegations, Maass asserts that Israel is undertaking a revenge operation in Gaza, where it is purposefully targeting civilians and is violating the rule of proportionality by harming a large number of civilians “for a minor battlefield gain.”

Despite his lack of access to Israeli military intelligence, his unfamiliarity with modern urban warfare, and his observing the war from thousands of miles away, Maass seems perfectly confident in his understanding of Israel’s war conduct that he is able to make such a bold assertion.

With regards to his claim of genocide, Maass alleges that “sufficient evidence for indictments” against Israel “appears to exist” as, according to its legal definition, the crime of genocide includes the intent to destroy a group “in whole or in part.”

For Maass, Israel can be credibly accused of genocide as it is seeking to destroy the Palestinian population of Gaza “in part.”

However, the “part” of the Palestinian population in Gaza that Israel is seeking to destroy is the Hamas terror group. According to Maass’s twisted logic, every army bent on destroying a terror group or enemy military force could, in theory, be accused of committing genocide.

No, the key words are “intent to destroy…a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

Israel is not trying to eradicate the Palestinians. It’s addressing the rampant culture of terrorism that led to 10/7.

Targeting terrorists does not a genocide make. https://t.co/9lst462LfP pic.twitter.com/G22aahMjIT

— Jacki Alexander (@JackiAlexander_) April 10, 2024

Perhaps the most perfect example of how Maass’ experiences in Bosnia cannot correlate to the current war in Gaza cannot be found in this op-ed, but in a tweet he posted on October 18, 2023, the day after the Al-Ahli Hospital explosion.

Although Israel was initially blamed for the damage wrought outside the hospital, by the time Maass tweeted, it was becoming clear that the explosion had actually been caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket directed at Israel.

Nevertheless, Maass felt it appropriate to tweet about how, during the conflict in the Balkans, the Bosnians were falsely accused of bombing themselves. For Maass, since it was inaccurate in Bosnia, it must also be inaccurate in Gaza.

Ironically, in the same week that a video was released where an Islamic Jihad leader admitted that it was a rocket that caused the explosion, Maass is still peddling his “expertise” in war crimes and false analogies between Bosnia and Gaza in order to tarnish Israel’s reputation and to harm its fight against terrorism.

From my book “Love Thy Neighbor,” on claims the Bosnians bombed themselves:

“Thankfully, we have not always been so circumspect, and did not demand, during World War II, that Winston Churchill provide proof that the bombs exploding in London were German rather than British.”

— Peter Maass (@maassp) October 18, 2023

A Simplistic Understanding of Zionist History

Coupled with Peter Maass’ poor understanding of the current war in Gaza is his simplistic view of Zionist history and the idealization of “non-Zionism.”

Maass draws on his own family history, pointing out how, despite financially supporting the immigration of Jews to the British Mandate of Palestine, his ancestors were opposed to a Jewish state in the land, as it would lead to “bloody heads and misfortune.”

For Maass, this non-Zionism appears to be the ideal: Jews living in the land but holding no sovereignty, amicably sharing control with local Arabs.

Peter Maass sees a continuation of this ideal in the likes of Jews protesting the Israeli “occupation” (which he deems to be the “underlying problem” in the conflict) and Jewish groups protesting against Israel’s war against Hamas.

However, the fly in the ointment for Maass’ idealized non-Zionism is the fact that it has already been tried and failed.

Prior to Israeli independence, a group called Brit Shalom was founded, which advocated for the non-Zionism that Maass holds dear. However, by 1948, the group had practically ceased to exist as the British Mandate’s Jewish community was forced to come to terms with three decades of Arab violence and intransigence.

In both his “analysis” of the war in Gaza and his view of Zionist history, Peter Maass seems to place the onus for all the violence and carnage on Israel and Zionism, either ignoring or diminishing the role of Palestinian Arabs, including Hamas.

This view of the war in Gaza, and Israeli history in general, is not only superficial and immature but it also creates a skewed paradigm through which one party to a conflict is absolved of any responsibility while the other must shoulder all the blame.

A skewed paradigm can ultimately lead to a deadly and dangerous reality.

It shouldn’t matter that Peter Maass is Jewish. It shouldn’t matter that he reported on ethnic cleansing 30 years ago.

What should matter is that The Washington Post has platformed an amateurish analysis that is based on false assertions, misleading statements, and a superficial understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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 ‘Washington Post’ Platforms Superficial ‘As a Jew’ Op-Ed on Israel & Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A trailer was released on Wednesday for a play opening in New York next month that is comprised entirely of eyewitness accounts of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel using only the actual words of survivors and families of victims.

The play, titled October 7, was produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, two Irish documentary filmmakers, screenwriters, New York Times best-selling authors, and veteran investigative journalists. The married couple traveled to Israel in November to interview those affected by the deadly massacre in southern Israel, in which roughly 1,200 people were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists who also took more than 200 others as hostages back to the Gaza Strip. McAleer and McElhinney traveled throughout Israel for roughly three weeks, speaking to survivors and also families of victims about how they went about their day on Oct. 6 and how their lives changed the following morning.

“We’ve covered many shocking stories but nothing comes close to what the men, women, and children of Israel faced [on Oct. 7],” McElhinney said in the trailer for the play, which provides first-hand witness accounts of what happened in their own words, without editing. “The world wants you to forget about what happened that day. The day that everything changed. We refuse to let that happen.”

McAleer added: “We’ll bring you the truth they don’t want you to hear.”

The filmmakers debuted the trailer for October 7 during the Wednesday episode of their podcast, The Ann and Phelim Scoop. McAleer also explained their desire for wanting to make the play.

“When we were in Ireland and in Europe — and even since [Oct. 7] — we’ve noticed that everyone wants to talk about Gaza, even on Oct. 8,” he said. “They didn’t want to talk about Oct. 7. They don’t want to talk about Oct. 7. Which is the exact reason why we say, ‘You should talk about Oct. 7.’ Because there was a ceasefire on Oct. 6, do you remember that? There would be no need for a ceasefire [now] if it wasn’t for Oct. 7 [and] if the hostages were released. There would be no need for a ceasefire if Hamas surrendered. But, they’re not going to do that. So we want people to remember, as they say in Hollywood, the ‘origin story’ for the war in Gaza.”

Rehearsals have began for the play, and the production is almost fully cast. McAleer said that during a recent table read with actors in New York, “most of the actors were crying at the end.”

“They were laughing too,” he added. ‘There’s a lot of humor. I know everyone finds humor in the darkest places, but I tell you, the Jewish people, they’ve had a lot of dark places but, boy, do they find humor. So there’s even jokes in [the play]. And I didn’t write the jokes. The play is 100 percent verbatim. It’s the voices of people who lived through Israel’s darkest day.”

When they first announced October 7 on their podcast in late March, McElhinney said the play will be filmed and available to those who cannot attend the show in-person. The play will additionally travel in the fall to “every Ivy League college that needs to know the truth about Oct. 7,” McAleer said, such as Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Ultimately this play is very uplifting,” McElhinney explained. “These people are extraordinary. All these different people, Israelis, who had survived, are heroes from every kind of walk of life.”

October 7 will run from May 2 – June 16 at the Actors Temple Theatre in New York City.

The post New Play Opening in NY Recounts Verbatim Testimonies From Oct. 7 Survivors, Families of Victims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.