Israel Attacks Foreign Media as Biased in Video Mocking Western Journalists

Terrorists don’t exist in the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s tunnels are a prelude to a modern transportation system. And the Islamist group that rules the strip is a force for liberalism. This is how the Israeli Foreign Ministry would have you believe the Western media covers Gaza and Hamas.

In a newly released and somewhat bizarre animated video, Israel’s top diplomats present an archetype of the Western reporter, towheaded and totally gullible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2MdayBMhb4&feature=youtu.be

It’s a piece of propaganda that is willfully misleading about the nature of Western media coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Israel has long argued that the media is hopelessly biased, draws a false equivalence between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants, and is too quick to accept Palestinian claims of Israeli human rights violations and other misdeeds at face value. These charges of widespread bias extend to repeatedly turning a blind eye to acts of terrorism and oppression carried out by Palestinians, especially Hamas. Thus, the foreign ministry’s fictitious television correspondent doesn’t understand that Hamas uses its vast network of underground tunnels to transport weapons and turns a blind eye to rockets launched into Israeli territory.

But these are stories that the Western media has diligently covered in Gaza, assignments that have resulted in several correspondents losing their lives. The Israeli Foreign Press Association has condemned the video, saying it is “alarmed” by what it calls a “misleading” attempt to ridicule journalists.

Indeed, that’s how this particular piece of propaganda functions: by substituting facts for ridicule.

Photo credit: YouTube/Israel’s Foreign Affairs Min.