Mediocrates
02-05-2009, 05:29 AM
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/The_Gaza_War_in_Review.asp
One of the most serious and damaging episodes for Israel during the Gaza conflict centered around charges, amplified by UN spokespeople, that Israel had deliberately targeted a UN school compound, killing 43 civilians sheltering there.
HonestReporting highlighted (http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/Did_Israel_Shell_a_UN_School_The_Truth_Exposed.asp ) the Canadian Globe and Mail's investigation that concluded that the school itself was not shelled.
Following the publicity generated by the Globe and Mail report, the UN has been forced to admit that its initial claims were false. According to Ha'aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061189.html):
It seems that the UN has been under pressure to put the record straight after doubts arose that the school had actually been targeted. Maxwell Gaylord, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, said Monday that the IDF mortar shells fell in the street near the compound, and not on the compound itself.
Gaylord said that the UN "would like to clarify that the shelling and all of the fatalities took place outside and not inside the school."
Portrayed as the epitome of courage under fire, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert appeared on television screens around the world and in the pages of many newspapers, including the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7823410.stm), CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/05/world/main4697948.shtml), CNN, ABC, AFP, Independent, Sky News, and New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/world/middleeast/05gaza.html?fta=y).
Working at Gaza's Shifa Hospital, Gilbert tells news organizations of the "horrors" inflicted by Israel, including unproven accusations (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090112/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazanorwayweapons_newsmlmmd;_ylt=An dQkhCYj5Li7jxld.kdDiOaOrgF) that "Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons."
But was Gilbert a neutral and objective observer? What the media didn't tell you was his involvement in solidarity work with Palestinians since the 1970s and his membership of the hard-left Norwegian communist party Rød Valgallianse, which disbanded in 2007. He has criticized international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts. Dr Gilbert is employed by NORWAC, whose partner organisations include Hezbollah's Martyr Foundation.
Asked by the Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, if he supported the 9/11 attacks, he said: "Terror is a bad weapon but the answer is yes."
Gilbert wasn't the only less than objective source being used by the media. As Melanie Phillips (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3281751/the-telegraph-becomes-an-ism-mouthpiece.thtml) wrote:
the [Daily] Telegraph carried this story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4015727/Father-mourns-loss-of-five-children-in-Gaza-strike.html) on its foreign news pages by Ewa Jasiewicz, reporting from Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. It was exclusively about the suffering of civilians and children under bombardment by Israeli air strikes. It made no reference to any Hamas terrorists in the camp. Readers were given no indication that Ewa Jasiewicz was anything other than an objective reporter.
Yet the very next day, she appeared again (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4032280/Witnesses-describe-horror-of-Gaza-attacks-as-Israeli-air-strike-kills-children.html) in the Telegraph's foreign news pages -- but this time being interviewed by Tim Butcher as an 'activist originally from Kingston, Surrey' and the principal source of his story about two children being killed by a bomb from an Israeli warplane, an event which she claimed to have witnessed.
Indeed, Ms Jasiewicz is not a regular reporter at all. She is a highly partisan, deeply committed, experienced anti-Israeli International Solidarity Movement activist. She is an active player on the side of the Palestinians who are committing acts of terror against the Israelis -- which she would describe as legitimate and justified 'resistance'. Nor was this something she had hidden. Indeed, the web is heaving with examples of her hatred of Israel. Here she is in the Guardian (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ewa_jasiewicz/) spraying around claims that Israel was racist, that its democracy was a myth and that it deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and activists for slaughter. Here (http://www.labournet.net/world/0408/ewa2.html) is the statement she made after she was detained at Ben Gurion airport on 31 August 2004 by the Israeli authorities and told that she could not speak to the media, in which she justified Palestinian terrorism as a liberation struggle – and a struggle of an occupied people that is thus justified under international law.
Mads Gilbert also appeared in a CNN report (http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2009/01/07/holmes.gaza.boy.cnn), whose authenticity a number of bloggers questioned. Was the CPR being performed on a child staged for the cameras? Little Green Footballs (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32393_A_Staged_Scene_in_a_Gaza_Hospital_-_Update-_CNN_Yanks_Video) and other blogs thought so with one LGF reader commenting:
I'm no military expert, but I am a doctor, and this video is bullsh-t. The chest compressions that were being performed at the beginning of this video were absolutely, positively fake. The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child's sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can't make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you're not also ventilating the patient somehow. In this video, I can't tell for sure if the patient has an endotracheal tube in place, but you can see that there is nobody bag-ventilating him (a bag is actually hanging by the head of the bed), and there is no ventilator attached to the patient. In a hospital, during a code on a ventilated patient, somebody would probably be bagging the patient during the chest compressions. And they also would have moved the bed away from the wall, so that somebody could get back there to intubate the patient and/or bag him. In short, the "resuscitation scene" at the beginning is fake, and it's a pretty lame fake at that.
Such was the concern at CNN that the video was removed (although it currently exists on the archive).
and on and on and on and on......
One of the most serious and damaging episodes for Israel during the Gaza conflict centered around charges, amplified by UN spokespeople, that Israel had deliberately targeted a UN school compound, killing 43 civilians sheltering there.
HonestReporting highlighted (http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/new/Did_Israel_Shell_a_UN_School_The_Truth_Exposed.asp ) the Canadian Globe and Mail's investigation that concluded that the school itself was not shelled.
Following the publicity generated by the Globe and Mail report, the UN has been forced to admit that its initial claims were false. According to Ha'aretz (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061189.html):
It seems that the UN has been under pressure to put the record straight after doubts arose that the school had actually been targeted. Maxwell Gaylord, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Jerusalem, said Monday that the IDF mortar shells fell in the street near the compound, and not on the compound itself.
Gaylord said that the UN "would like to clarify that the shelling and all of the fatalities took place outside and not inside the school."
Portrayed as the epitome of courage under fire, Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert appeared on television screens around the world and in the pages of many newspapers, including the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7823410.stm), CBS (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/05/world/main4697948.shtml), CNN, ABC, AFP, Independent, Sky News, and New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/world/middleeast/05gaza.html?fta=y).
Working at Gaza's Shifa Hospital, Gilbert tells news organizations of the "horrors" inflicted by Israel, including unproven accusations (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090112/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazanorwayweapons_newsmlmmd;_ylt=An dQkhCYj5Li7jxld.kdDiOaOrgF) that "Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons."
But was Gilbert a neutral and objective observer? What the media didn't tell you was his involvement in solidarity work with Palestinians since the 1970s and his membership of the hard-left Norwegian communist party Rød Valgallianse, which disbanded in 2007. He has criticized international aid organization Doctors Without Borders for refusing to take sides in conflicts. Dr Gilbert is employed by NORWAC, whose partner organisations include Hezbollah's Martyr Foundation.
Asked by the Norwegian daily, Dagbladet, if he supported the 9/11 attacks, he said: "Terror is a bad weapon but the answer is yes."
Gilbert wasn't the only less than objective source being used by the media. As Melanie Phillips (http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3281751/the-telegraph-becomes-an-ism-mouthpiece.thtml) wrote:
the [Daily] Telegraph carried this story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4015727/Father-mourns-loss-of-five-children-in-Gaza-strike.html) on its foreign news pages by Ewa Jasiewicz, reporting from Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza. It was exclusively about the suffering of civilians and children under bombardment by Israeli air strikes. It made no reference to any Hamas terrorists in the camp. Readers were given no indication that Ewa Jasiewicz was anything other than an objective reporter.
Yet the very next day, she appeared again (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/4032280/Witnesses-describe-horror-of-Gaza-attacks-as-Israeli-air-strike-kills-children.html) in the Telegraph's foreign news pages -- but this time being interviewed by Tim Butcher as an 'activist originally from Kingston, Surrey' and the principal source of his story about two children being killed by a bomb from an Israeli warplane, an event which she claimed to have witnessed.
Indeed, Ms Jasiewicz is not a regular reporter at all. She is a highly partisan, deeply committed, experienced anti-Israeli International Solidarity Movement activist. She is an active player on the side of the Palestinians who are committing acts of terror against the Israelis -- which she would describe as legitimate and justified 'resistance'. Nor was this something she had hidden. Indeed, the web is heaving with examples of her hatred of Israel. Here she is in the Guardian (http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ewa_jasiewicz/) spraying around claims that Israel was racist, that its democracy was a myth and that it deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and activists for slaughter. Here (http://www.labournet.net/world/0408/ewa2.html) is the statement she made after she was detained at Ben Gurion airport on 31 August 2004 by the Israeli authorities and told that she could not speak to the media, in which she justified Palestinian terrorism as a liberation struggle – and a struggle of an occupied people that is thus justified under international law.
Mads Gilbert also appeared in a CNN report (http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2009/01/07/holmes.gaza.boy.cnn), whose authenticity a number of bloggers questioned. Was the CPR being performed on a child staged for the cameras? Little Green Footballs (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/32393_A_Staged_Scene_in_a_Gaza_Hospital_-_Update-_CNN_Yanks_Video) and other blogs thought so with one LGF reader commenting:
I'm no military expert, but I am a doctor, and this video is bullsh-t. The chest compressions that were being performed at the beginning of this video were absolutely, positively fake. The large man in the white coat was NOT performing CPR on that child. He was just sort of tapping on the child's sternum a little bit with his fingers. You can't make blood flow like that. Furthermore, there’s no point in doing chest compressions if you're not also ventilating the patient somehow. In this video, I can't tell for sure if the patient has an endotracheal tube in place, but you can see that there is nobody bag-ventilating him (a bag is actually hanging by the head of the bed), and there is no ventilator attached to the patient. In a hospital, during a code on a ventilated patient, somebody would probably be bagging the patient during the chest compressions. And they also would have moved the bed away from the wall, so that somebody could get back there to intubate the patient and/or bag him. In short, the "resuscitation scene" at the beginning is fake, and it's a pretty lame fake at that.
Such was the concern at CNN that the video was removed (although it currently exists on the archive).
and on and on and on and on......