Writing in Haaretz (“Netanyahu Fights Fire With Ire“, 28.11), Odeh Bisharat warns readers that “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” The Op-Ed is a warning to Israelis not to hurl premature accusations against Palestinians and Arab-Israelis. Fair enough. However, Bisharat then employs some reductio ad absurdum to psychoanalyze the Israeli public:

“After all, if you don’t steal your neighbor’s land and don’t embitter his life, you have no reason to suspect that he will “rise up against us and annihilate us” – as the extremists here like to repeat day and night.

But if you feel deep down that, despite assuming the identity of the victim, you are harming your neighbor, then even if there’s an earthquake you’ll blame him for deliberately playing with some underground button. And if there’s a deluge from the heavens that will close the country’s highways, you will say he deliberately left the tap in the skies open. Truly, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”

Would Israelis really blame Palestinians for an earthquake or a flood? Doubtful. However, what isn’t in doubt is that the reverse has certainly happened.

A conspiracy theory that Israel might generate an artificial earthquake to harm the Al-Aqsa mosque has been making the rounds for years. For example in 2011:

And again in 2012 by the President of the Supreme Islamic Court and Chairman of the Supreme Council for of Islamic Laws:

There are many more examples on Google.

Earthquakes aside, what about floods? Did the Palestinians ever claim Israel left “the tap in the skies open”? In 2015 AFP and Al-Jazeera ran a story claiming Israel had opened dams in Southern Israel, thereby flooding Gaza. Only after CAMERA pointed out that aside from the Palestinian popular imagination, there were no dams in the area did AFP and Al-Jazeera retract their stories.

Update, 4 p.m. EST: Forward, Voice of America Correct Headlines on Palestinian Attacks

The spate of terror attacks in Israel over the weekend was accompanied by additional examples of the usual bad headlines depicting the assailants as victims. Here is an example from Voice of America:

Similarly, the The Forward headline for the accompanying Reuters article was:

Strikingly, the original Reuters headline was perfectly straightforward, clearly noting that Israel identified the three killed Palestinians as attackers: “Israeli forces say killed three assailants in Jerusalem, West Bank.”

This is not the first time that The Forward changed a perfectly clear Reuters headline about a Palestinian attack to obfuscate the facts.

Based only on the Voice of America and Forward headlines readers would not understand that the Palestinians killed were reportedly assailants, killed while carrying out attacks. In the case of the incident described in the Voice of America article, the moment of the attack was captured by security cameras, leaving no doubt as to the circumstances:

The Voice of America article, like the Reuters article which appears at The Forward, as well as Reuters’ original headline, correctly identifies the Palestinians as suspected assailants.

CAMERA has contacted editors at both media outlets to request corrections. Stay tuned for an update.

The Daily Telegraph (Australia) headline “Israeli Thunderbolt hostage-rescue raid on Entebbe was a drama worthy of Hollywood blockbusters” is certainly true. Despite the promising headline, the seemingly light “historical” article celebrating 40 years since the daring Entebbe rescue gives credence to a bizarre conspiracy theory from the 1970s.

Following an account of the well-known Israeli heroics popularized in various Hollywood movies, Telegraph history writer Marea Donnelly then ventures into less familiar territory. “[I]ntrigue surrounds” the choice of some westerners to join the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists in kidnapping Israelis, the article alleges. “Adding to the confusion,” Donnelly continues, was the fact that the hijackers described themselves as belonging to the “Che Guevara Force and the Gaza Commando of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)”.

Readers then unexpectedly encounter an ostensible cause to doubt the heroic narrative:

Then in 2007 Britian’s National Archives released a file suggesting Israel’s Security Service, the Shin Bet, had helped subversive agents in the PFLP stage the hijack.

First secretary at the British embassy in Paris, David Colvin, told superiors a contact in the Euro-Arab Parliamentary Association suggested the attack was designed to torpedo the rival Palestine Liberation Organisation’s standing in France, and prevent a perceived rapprochement between Americans and the PLO.

The apparent implication is that the aforementioned “confusion” can be attributed to the alleged Israeli engineering of the hijacking in which three Israeli hostages and one commando were killed.

The claim, popular in pro-Palestinian conspiracy sites, is based on a single “report” given to David Colvin, the first secretary at the British embassy in Paris in 1976. Recently released by the British archives, the document begins: “It might be useful to record some of the theories which are circulating about the incident.” In other words, this document recounts various rumors or theories. The report notes the “theories,” but does not assess them. Here is the relevant section:

When the document was first released in 2007, it was widely reported as a curiosity. However, news organizations were careful to note that there was no evidence this “report” was taken seriously. The Telegraph (British) noted: “The message was received without comment.” Haaretz added: “The claim is not known to be backed up by corroborating evidence, and the file does not make it clear whether the British government took the claim seriously.”

To include a baseless conspiracy theory, without clearly noting that it is unfounded, in a short and light historical piece is incredibly misleading. Casting rumors and conspiracy theories as potentially credible is a disservice both to the historical record and to sound journalism.

When a media outlet reports on a fact sheet published by a big international NGO, what is its responsibility to readers? Do journalists have an obligation to flag shortcomings in NGO reports? AFP, apparently, thinks not.

In a widely published article, AFP summarized a UNICEF fact sheet claiming that “25 Palestinian children killed in 3 months.” The UNICEF provides identifying details (date and location) in just two out of the 25 alleged cases. AFP faithfully relays UNICEF’s flawed account of one of the two cases:

UNICEF cited the example on October 25 in Hebron in the West Bank of a 17-year-old girl who was “taken by IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldiers for a search, shot with at least five bullets and killed”.

“Israeli authorities said that she had attempted to stab a policeman, however an eyewitness stated that she was not presenting any threat at the time she was shot, and was shouting that she did not have a knife,” it said.

Relying solely on the UNICEF report, AFP failed to fulfill its duty to independently fact-check. A quick search reveals that Amnesty International, which has no great love for Israel, noted this relevant information concerning the Oct. 25 Hebron incident:

A photo of Ershied’s body shows a knife lying near the body, and the Israeli police spokesperson has stated that she attempted to stab a border policeman.

In other words, there is a photograph that supports the Israeli account of events, a photograph that AFP ignored.

In recent months, following terror attacks, the publication – official or otherwise – of photographs showing the weapons used in the attack have been commonplace. Despite such evidence, Palestinians frequently insist that slain terrorists are innocent. In an attempt to explain the contrary photographic material, a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming Israeli forces plant knives on dead Palestinians thrives in Palestinian social media, and is even embraced by some Palestinian officials.

That UNICEF failed to note the photograph does not exonerate AFP from its responsibility to note the photograph of the knife. Whether or not AFP subscribes to outlandish anti-Israel conspiracy theories, it carries an obligation to its readers to fully present the facts, even when its NGO sources don’t.

In a short hit piece in The Huffington Post (“Israel’s ‘Absurd’ Map Of Jerusalem’s Old City“), Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab spells out in great detail how a Jerusalem tourist map omits some notable Muslim and Christian sites. To Daoud this smacks of a wider trend where “Israel’s apologists” are “working overtime to try and minimize Christian and Islamic cultural connections to the city of Jerusalem.” To add insult to injury, he correctly notes that:

The United Nations Education and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)and the Vatican have yet to publicly denounce this effort to monopolise the city’s multi-religious history.

Shockingly though, Daoud fails to note a separate decision regarding Jerusalem passed by UNESCO’s Executive Board just last week. The Times of Israel notes:

The resolution refers to Israel as the “occupying power” at every mention and uses the Arabic al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif without ever calling it the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews. The text does refer to the Western Wall Plaza but places it in quotation marks, after using the Arabic Al-Buraq Plaza.

Going one step further, the UNESCO decision also accused Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries.”

In other words, the Palestinians are using their membership in UNESCO, to advance the very thing of which they accuse Israel of doing using a tourist map. This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.