Media "death count" encourages Hamas to use human shields. Hamas is a global Islamic terror group with focus far beyond Israel. Media considers it normal to withhold deadly news as CNN did in Iraq for many years.
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7/29/14, "Media cover-up of Hamas crimes starting to unravel," Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson
"Italian journalist leaves Gaza, tells truth once free from Hamas retaliation."
"Yesterday one of the stories thrust into the mainstream media was nearly simultaneous explosions in a Palestinian neighborhood and at al-Shifa hospital.
The media immediately took the Hamas line that it was Israeli missiles. Later, the IDF stated that it had not fired on those locations, and that the explosions were misfired Hamas or Islamic Jihad missiles.
The media played it as he said, he said.
But an Italian journalist has just left Gaza and is telling the truth about what happened now that he needs not fear Hamas retaliation — Israel was right....
How many more of the civilian casualties have been caused by Hamas and Islamic rockets that fell short or misfired? Like Israel says happened at a U.N. school and shelter. We likely never will know because Hamas is so fast to cover up the scene and intimidates reporters:
"The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away."
CAMERA discovered a Wall Street Journal reporter coming to the same conclusion as the Italian reporters, but then deleting the tweet....
The reporter later claimed he deleted it because it was speculative.
This is part of a pattern of western media being intimidated into not reporting all the civilian deaths caused by Hamas, and how Hamas uses locations like al-Shifa hospital.
This tweet showing Hamas using al-Shifa hospital for media interviews was deleted by a Wall Street Journal reporter....
Coincidentally after threats were made on Twitter against that reporter and other reporters....
The reporter did not respond to my email seeking an explanation.
The French Liberation newspaper ran an article by a French-Palestinian journalist about how he was summoned to al-Shira Hospital for interrogation by Hamas— just yards from the operating room....
Here is part of it (Google translation from French):
"“ARE YOU A CORRESPONDENT FOR ISRAEL?”
A few meters from the emergency room where the injured bombing tributary constantly, it is received in the outpatient department, “a small section of the hospital used as administration” by a band of young fighters. “They were all well dressed, is surprised Radjaa. In civilian with a gun under his shirt and some had walkie talkies ”. He was ordered to empty his pockets, removing his shoes and his belt then it is called in a hospital room “which served that day office of command to three people.”
A man prim begins his interrogation: “Who are you? How do you call? What are you doing? ” “I was very surprised by the procedure,” admits Radjaa, who shows him his press card in response. Questions come. Then asked if he speaks Hebrew, he has relations with Ramallah. Young Hamas supporters insist the question: “Are you a correspondent for Israel?” Radjaa repeat that only works for French media and a chain of Algerian radio.
It was then that the three men he delivers this message: “This is yours to choose. We are an executive administration. We will carry the message of Qassams. You have to stay at home and give your papers. “Stunned to be covered by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, Radjaa tries to defend himself and especially to understand why such a decision was taken against him. In vain. “It is impossible to communicate with these people,” laments the journalist. It is not the first to undergo this kind of pressure and combatants in front of him did not hide. “They are enraged against the presidency and accused me of collaborating with Mahmoud Abbas,” he says. Reporters Without Borders confirms that this is not an isolated case. The organization has indeed been alerted by the threats of Hamas against Palestinian and foreign journalists for their professional activities threats."
Now the article has been taken down at the author’s request....
Tablet Magazine has more on the cover up of the use of al-Shifa hospital as a Hamas command center.
Remember how many photos of Hamas fighters and scoops about Hamas tactics we’ve seen from reporters, just like we see with regard to the IDF? Neither do I, it’s as if Hamas doesn’t exist to reporters and all the dead are civilians....
More to follow."...via Mark Levin twitter
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Reported in 2012, former Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote of Hamas' longtime tactic of making it appear that Israel caused civilian deaths. Media "death count" reporting encourages Hamas to use human shields:
11/19/12, "It is important to understand Hamas's tactic and how the international community and the media are encouraging it. Hamas's tactic is as simple as it is criminal and brutal. Its leaders know that by repeatedly firing rockets at Israeli civilian areas, they will give Israel no choice but to respond. Israel's response will target the rockets and those sending them. In order to maximize their own civilian casualties, and thereby earn the sympathy of the international community and media, Hamas leaders deliberately fire their rockets from densely populated civilian areas. The Hamas fighters hide in underground bunkers but Hamas refuses to provide any shelter for its own civilians, who they use as "human shields.""...
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7/29/14, "Hamas Co-Founder's Son: Israel 'Fighting on Behalf of the Free World'," Breitbart TV [clips here]
"Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder and leader Hassan Yousef spoke about his break with Hamas and the organization’s ultimate goals of a worldwide Islamic caliphate on Tuesday’s (7/29/14) broadcast of the “Mark Levin Show.”
Yousef said he left Hamas after he saw the viciousness of an organization that tortures and kills its own members that are suspected of collaborating with the Israelis, and couldn’t morally justify the fact that Hamas suicide bombers intentionally targeted “buses, schools, hospitals, [and] universities.”
He later added that Hamas has “global, religious, ideological agendas” that are dangerous, not just to Israel, but the entire world.
“Their goal is to conquer the globe and build an Islamic state on every inch of the globe” Yousef said. He also said that Hamas “is willing to sacrifice as many Palestinians as it takes” to achieve its goals, and they “don’t care about Palestine...all they care about [is] to conquer.” He reported that America itself “is a target for the Hamas movement.” And “Israel in the Middle East is fighting on behalf of the free world.”"
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Mark Levin show podcast, 7/29/14, Yousef interview in the first hour. Interview clips are here. For those interested, Yousef said he "loves President Obama"
7/29/14, "AWESOME: Mark Levin interviews Son of Hamas founder Mosab Hassan Yousef who says Israel is fighting for the world," therightscoop.com
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Even the Washington Post Editorial Board tells the truth about Hamas:
7/15/14, "Hamas is playing a dangerous game with Gazan lives," Washington Post Editorial Board
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Media considers it normal to withhold deadly news. CNN Chief News Executive Eason Jordan explained how they withheld news about Iraq for many years:
4/11/2003, "The News We Kept to Ourselves," NY Times op-ed, Eason Jordan, CNN Chief News Executive
"Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.
For example, in the
mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was
beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret
police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's
ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq
station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling
the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost
certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at
grave risk.
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways.
Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would ''suffer the severest possible consequences.'' CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.
Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for ''crimes,'' one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment.
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways.
Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).
Still, I felt I had a moral obligation to warn Jordan's monarch, and I did so the next day. King Hussein dismissed the threat as a madman's rant. A few months later Uday lured the brothers-in-law back to Baghdad; they were soon killed.
I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.
Last December, when I told Information Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf that we intended to send reporters to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, he warned me they would ''suffer the severest possible consequences.'' CNN went ahead, and in March, Kurdish officials presented us with evidence that they had thwarted an armed attack on our quarters in Erbil. This included videotaped confessions of two men identifying themselves as Iraqi intelligence agents who said their bosses in Baghdad told them the hotel actually housed C.I.A. and Israeli agents. The Kurds offered to let us interview the suspects on camera, but we refused, for fear of endangering our staff in Baghdad.
Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for ''crimes,'' one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment.
At last, these stories can be told freely."
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