Juno News - The mainstream media is getting the Israel-Hamas conflict wrong

00:00:00.000 I want to turn to what's been happening over in the Middle East,

00:00:13.900 an inflammation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,

00:00:19.080 particularly between Israel and Hamas,

00:00:22.180 which is the de facto governing authority, if you can call it that, of Gaza.

00:00:27.380 And the interesting dynamic that's taking place here has been so woefully misrepresented by the media.

00:00:33.360 Yes, you've got rockets and missiles that are going back and forth between Gaza and Israel,

00:00:37.780 between Hamas and Israel,

00:00:39.740 but the effect it's having on civilians has been misrepresented,

00:00:44.620 the chronology has been misrepresented,

00:00:47.100 and even the tension that actually triggered this has been misrepresented,

00:00:52.060 a dispute that goes back to a specific area of Jerusalem

00:00:57.320 and Palestinian families being evicted.

00:01:00.500 But I want to talk about this in great detail because, again,

00:01:03.120 the facts are important and are not being told in the mainstream media coverage,

00:01:07.460 which is why Mike Fegelman of Honest Reporting Canada does what he does.

00:01:11.760 He goes through, and if you look at his website,

00:01:13.460 you can see point by point anytime the media passes off a falsehood as truth

00:01:18.420 or makes even an honest mistake that has significant implications,

00:01:21.820 he's there to record it and to actually get it corrected

00:01:25.820 and has a fair bit of success with this in the past as well.

00:01:29.700 Mike Fegelman, good to talk to you.

00:01:31.040 Thanks for coming on today.

00:01:32.380 My pleasure.

00:01:33.040 Good to be with you, Andrew.

00:01:33.960 So I want to start with, because this is so complicated

00:01:37.000 and people like you who immerse yourself in this have a background knowledge

00:01:42.520 that a lot of Canadians might not have looking at this.

00:01:45.760 If we bring this most recent bout of tension and conflict back,

00:01:50.940 it seems to be something that most people are triggering back to

00:01:54.120 what has itself been misrepresented,

00:01:56.720 which is this eviction of Palestinian families from their home.

00:02:00.140 And I want to play a brief clip here, if I may,

00:02:02.760 of a radio report that aired on CBC Radio.

00:02:06.380 A spokesman for Hamas in Beirut, Osama Hamdan,

00:02:10.040 isn't making any promises about how long they will continue.

00:02:14.200 But he sounded just as defiant,

00:02:16.500 blaming Israel for weeks of clashes in Jerusalem,

00:02:19.680 where Israelis are trying to evict Palestinian homeowners

00:02:22.980 and where Palestinians and Israeli police have clashed

00:02:26.600 at the city's holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa.

00:02:30.020 So that reporter, Sasha Petrikic,

00:02:32.600 says that there are Israelis trying to evict Palestinian homeowners.

00:02:38.980 This is not, though, as you point out, accurate.

00:02:42.400 Well, it's not.

00:02:43.180 And quite frankly, what the Palestinians are doing, 1.00

00:02:47.320 Hamas and Palestinian Authority,

00:02:48.940 they're exploiting what is traditionally a real estate dispute,

00:02:51.920 something between tenants and landowners,

00:02:54.120 into a nationalistic claim with a fervor to incite the masses to convict violence.

00:03:02.480 The issue is simply that the Palestinians who are living in these homes 1.00

00:03:06.420 are living there rent-free and are squatting

00:03:09.340 and not paying rent to the Jewish owners.

00:03:12.320 And, you know, Israel, it's a democracy,

00:03:14.740 and it's an issue that's being dealt with

00:03:17.160 and adjudicated in the Israeli courts,

00:03:19.360 Supreme Court, mind you.

00:03:20.760 The Israeli government's not taking a position.

00:03:22.620 This is for the judiciary.

00:03:25.160 And yet this issue is being used as a pretext,

00:03:29.820 a whipping tool, really,

00:03:31.660 to foment a discord between Israelis and Palestinians

00:03:34.820 of the likes that we're seeing play out in the streets of Jerusalem.

00:03:37.920 And as you see with, you know,

00:03:40.380 2,000 rockets that have been fired on Israeli cities

00:03:42.800 like Ashkelon and Sderot.

00:03:44.740 Yeah, and the shameful part of this

00:03:47.220 is that you are very correct to point out

00:03:49.440 that there are people that want to turn this

00:03:51.600 into something different than what it is,

00:03:53.780 who want to misrepresent the facts

00:03:55.600 and who want to stoke this.

00:03:56.980 But a lot of people in the media are buying into it.

00:04:00.260 And I have to ask,

00:04:01.240 is this just because of ignorance in a lot of ways?

00:04:03.900 They don't know this.

00:04:04.720 Or is it because there is a more,

00:04:08.000 if I can use the word,

00:04:09.060 a more insidious bias that's taking place

00:04:11.120 where they just want to view

00:04:12.320 that Israeli dynamic through that lens?

00:04:16.460 Yeah, so I think it's a combination.

00:04:18.080 I'll draw back to the report by Sasav Petrasek.

00:04:21.320 You know, do I think that he has an axe

00:04:22.740 to grind against Israel?

00:04:23.980 Not necessarily.

00:04:25.280 But I do think that he got the facts wrong

00:04:26.860 because the Palestinians were not homeowners.

00:04:29.600 They were just living in a rental establishment.

00:04:32.180 You know, Andrew, if you rent your apartment

00:04:35.280 and you don't pay it,

00:04:36.780 you're going to have to deal with the legal process.

00:04:39.000 You know, the next step is not to,

00:04:41.520 you know, throw rocks and shoot people

00:04:44.860 and lob rockets at Israelis. 0.57

00:04:48.140 But there are, you know, it's a case-by-case basis,

00:04:50.800 but there certainly are journalists

00:04:51.960 who have inclinations

00:04:55.120 where they have certain partisan favoritism

00:04:59.560 of certain issues

00:05:00.980 and their opinion sometimes gets disguised as news.

00:05:04.340 It can be subtle

00:05:05.160 and other times it can be really quite obvious.

00:05:07.800 I mean, a report that we flagged this morning,

00:05:09.980 a CBC journalist, a freelancer,

00:05:12.360 had claimed that Gaza is an open-air prison.

00:05:15.020 That's highly inflammatory language

00:05:17.120 for a supposed neutral and objective journalist to use.

00:05:20.860 But therein, you see, you know,

00:05:22.840 representatives from Canada's public broadcast

00:05:25.580 or our tax dollars

00:05:26.500 who are using that kind of incendiary language.

00:05:30.480 And it's just not objective.

00:05:32.760 And essentially what we do at Honest Reporting,

00:05:35.240 we're not trying to impart

00:05:36.440 and tell the media

00:05:38.580 that they have to report in a certain way.

00:05:40.300 We just want them to get the facts straight

00:05:42.060 and to give Israel a fair shake.

00:05:44.620 But we're not seeing it.

00:05:46.400 Yeah, and open-air prison.

00:05:47.880 I mean, I've heard that term before.

00:05:49.480 It's frequently used by people

00:05:51.080 who are quite anti-Israel,

00:05:52.640 whatever the motivation

00:05:53.440 of this particular journalist

00:05:55.700 that CBC tapped for this segment was.

00:05:58.860 But it's a values judgment.

00:06:00.340 There's no way about it.

00:06:01.500 It is a value judgment.

00:06:02.860 It is an argumentation point

00:06:05.280 that people could debate,

00:06:06.540 but it's not a neutral point.

00:06:08.260 It's not a fact-based point.

00:06:09.440 I saw another news report,

00:06:11.480 not from Canada,

00:06:12.320 that kind of nonchalantly referred to Israel

00:06:14.700 as occupying Gaza,

00:06:16.260 which as well is not true.

00:06:18.020 Someone would hear that though,

00:06:19.380 and that inherently frames

00:06:20.700 the way they listen to and consume coverage.

00:06:24.020 And for a region that has so much history,

00:06:26.000 I mean, I've been to Israel twice.

00:06:27.500 I've studied this extensively.

00:06:28.900 It's a part of the world

00:06:29.860 that I'm very passionate about.

00:06:31.180 And even I wouldn't proclaim to be an expert

00:06:33.300 on all of these details and nuances.

00:06:35.540 And whenever I've written about Israel,

00:06:36.920 I'm very nervous of accidentally using the wrong word

00:06:40.420 or stumbling into some sort of a landmine.

00:06:43.540 And people are going to make mistakes.

00:06:45.460 I get it.

00:06:46.160 They need to be corrected.

00:06:47.720 You've been flagging these.

00:06:49.000 Has there been, in this particular case,

00:06:51.260 any response from CBC that's saying,

00:06:53.980 yeah, you know what?

00:06:54.600 You raise a good point there, Mike.

00:06:55.860 So what I'm happy to say

00:06:58.860 is we have a very good dialogue with the CBC.

00:07:01.260 We speak to their teams, various teams,

00:07:04.040 different leverage points in the CBC very regularly.

00:07:07.420 In some media, there's a feeling

00:07:09.360 that they're immune to criticism.

00:07:10.760 In some levels of the CBC, that exists.

00:07:13.160 But I think that the CBC is cognizant

00:07:16.400 that mistakes are being made.

00:07:18.380 I'd like to think that they are taking remedial action.

00:07:21.660 It doesn't always happen.

00:07:22.680 You're right to point out that covering

00:07:25.040 the Arab-Israeli conflict is probably

00:07:27.040 the most complicated, difficult assignment

00:07:29.940 for a journalist to do.

00:07:32.040 You know, the lexicon of the Middle East

00:07:33.460 is a ticking time bomb.

00:07:34.500 You refer to people making claims

00:07:36.620 that Israel's occupying Gaza,

00:07:38.380 though it doesn't.

00:07:39.660 And it disengaged in 2005

00:07:41.700 and Israel pulled out its armed forces,

00:07:44.500 just, you know, removed all 21 settlements,

00:07:47.180 8,500 settlers.

00:07:48.640 And what did it get?

00:07:49.280 It got a forward launching base

00:07:50.620 by an Iran proxy shooting 2,000 rockets at it.

00:07:53.960 And it's, it's, the issue mostly

00:07:55.940 is that kind of context is stripped.

00:07:58.720 You know, when we talk about the rocket fire,

00:08:01.100 we don't really consider how, you know,

00:08:03.420 you hear the media say,

00:08:04.940 these are homemade rockets.

00:08:06.260 Well, the reality is,

00:08:07.560 these things are really going great distance.

00:08:10.020 They're lethal.

00:08:11.100 And the real concern is not just

00:08:14.340 with these, these kind of rockets that exist now,

00:08:16.520 but what could happen in the future

00:08:18.060 if Palestinian terrorists

00:08:19.780 or Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon

00:08:21.300 or elsewhere could get ICBMs,

00:08:23.580 intercontinental ballistic missiles,

00:08:25.220 which could really put Israel in paralysis.

00:08:29.060 We saw last night,

00:08:30.540 there's incredible footage

00:08:32.240 of planes trying to land

00:08:34.320 at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv,

00:08:35.880 where you see the rockets being fired in

00:08:38.760 and Israel's missile interceptor,

00:08:40.260 the Iron Dome,

00:08:40.880 trying to repel them back.

00:08:42.940 And that's what these terrorists

00:08:44.180 are really trying to do.

00:08:45.360 On top of, you know,

00:08:46.440 ultimately committing the genocide of Jews

00:08:48.320 and wiping Israel off the map,

00:08:50.160 they're trying to paralyze Israel. 0.81

00:08:51.700 Because what ends up happening is,

00:08:53.220 and we had, I think,

00:08:54.160 three or four different major airlines

00:08:56.400 canceling flights to Israel,

00:08:59.800 perhaps indefinitely,

00:09:00.680 until the hostilities stop.

00:09:01.900 And that's what they're trying to do.

00:09:04.880 It's another effort

00:09:06.080 to put a stranglehold on Israel. 0.50

00:09:07.860 So when you have different people

00:09:09.200 who are, you know,

00:09:10.300 cavalierly advocating

00:09:11.300 for weapons sales

00:09:13.620 to be cancelled on Israel,

00:09:14.980 whether it's Canadian politicians

00:09:16.200 or elsewhere,

00:09:17.140 what they're actually doing

00:09:18.160 is saying,

00:09:18.900 is putting out a welcome mat

00:09:20.100 for Israel to be 0.82

00:09:21.300 on the continued receiving end of rockets.

00:09:24.260 And I should add,

00:09:25.700 if that kind of a policy took hold

00:09:27.500 and other governments worldwide said,

00:09:29.840 you know what?

00:09:30.520 We shouldn't sell arms to Israel. 0.89

00:09:31.900 That's welcoming Israel's destruction. 0.98

00:09:34.520 And, you know,

00:09:35.480 naturally Israel is doing everything 1.00

00:09:37.320 in its power

00:09:38.820 to safeguard its citizenry.

00:09:42.480 And it has that responsibility.

00:09:44.400 And it goes without saying,

00:09:45.520 but any civilian life

00:09:46.800 that is lost is tragic.

00:09:49.160 But the reality is,

00:09:50.400 Hamas is committing double war crimes. 0.86

00:09:52.320 It's firing on civilians

00:09:53.760 while hiding behind civilians.

00:09:55.280 And that's the issue

00:09:56.560 that the media are really missing out.

00:09:58.380 Well, that is so tremendously important, Mike,

00:10:00.780 because we see the footage of,

00:10:03.100 in the last few days,

00:10:04.460 apartment buildings, for example,

00:10:05.820 that have become very ravaged

00:10:08.000 by Israeli responses

00:10:10.180 to Hamas rockets.

00:10:13.160 And what people don't realize

00:10:15.120 is that Hamas literally uses civilians

00:10:18.840 as human shields in this case.

00:10:20.640 But in the media,

00:10:21.900 these stories tend to get told

00:10:23.380 as examples of just rampant

00:10:25.380 and indiscriminate Israeli aggression.

00:10:27.320 And one story that you flag as well,

00:10:29.600 CBC National claiming

00:10:30.820 that Palestinian rocket fire 0.91

00:10:32.440 was, quote,

00:10:33.500 in return, unquote,

00:10:35.720 of Israeli airstrikes.

00:10:37.000 Again, two words

00:10:37.800 that very fundamentally changed

00:10:39.660 the dynamic of how people view the news.

00:10:43.080 Yeah.

00:10:43.540 And what they actually did

00:10:44.740 is they reversed the chronology

00:10:46.580 of how these hostilities began.

00:10:49.600 And, you know,

00:10:50.400 in the CBC's mind,

00:10:52.160 and mind you,

00:10:52.680 it was on CBC The National,

00:10:54.100 which is its flagship program,

00:10:56.820 you know,

00:10:57.160 and largely the source

00:10:58.840 where a lot of people

00:10:59.680 get information.

00:11:01.520 The story and the narrative

00:11:02.860 that was told

00:11:03.500 was that Israel initiated 0.86

00:11:05.220 the violence

00:11:06.360 by shooting rockets

00:11:07.800 and the Palestinian terrorists

00:11:09.520 like Hamas 0.98

00:11:09.980 and Islamic Jihad

00:11:10.860 merely responded.

00:11:13.080 And that's just,

00:11:14.080 it's morally obtuse,

00:11:15.440 it's morally repugnant,

00:11:16.720 and it's just flat out wrong.

00:11:18.740 And it's my job

00:11:20.760 to make sure

00:11:21.940 that the media

00:11:22.560 gets out the narrative correctly

00:11:23.920 as it actually happened.

00:11:25.460 And we encourage our members,

00:11:26.580 we have about 50,000 subscribers,

00:11:28.380 to complain directly

00:11:29.660 to the media

00:11:30.740 to voice their concerns.

00:11:33.380 Yeah, and I'm glad you do that

00:11:34.920 because I do think

00:11:35.880 there is a,

00:11:36.640 the way you said about,

00:11:37.620 you know,

00:11:38.100 two war crimes

00:11:39.160 basically taking place

00:11:40.340 is incredibly valid.

00:11:41.540 Israel does what it can

00:11:42.620 to minimize collateral damage,

00:11:44.800 civilian casualties,

00:11:45.860 where Hamas does what it can 0.82

00:11:47.140 to increase them

00:11:48.420 on both sides.

00:11:49.460 And that's the particular evil here

00:11:51.300 is that,

00:11:52.060 yes, they want to kill Jewish lives, 0.51

00:11:53.920 but they also are completely fine

00:11:56.080 killing their own citizens

00:11:57.300 if it helps them

00:11:58.360 in their PR battle against Israel.

00:11:59.980 And I think it's incumbent

00:12:00.960 on Western media

00:12:02.300 to not go along with that.

00:12:04.640 Oh, absolutely.

00:12:05.680 And I'll give you

00:12:06.220 a particular example.

00:12:07.480 Even a Palestinian 0.99

00:12:08.620 human rights group

00:12:09.600 reported,

00:12:10.920 I believe yesterday

00:12:11.560 or the day before,

00:12:12.780 that eight Palestinians,

00:12:14.340 two children,

00:12:15.360 were killed

00:12:15.900 by errant Palestinian rockets.

00:12:18.340 And what's interesting

00:12:19.020 to note is that

00:12:20.060 that Israel speculates

00:12:21.920 that about a third

00:12:24.440 of the 2,000 rockets

00:12:26.100 that have been fired

00:12:26.760 at Israeli cities

00:12:27.860 prematurely exploded

00:12:29.980 or landed errantly

00:12:31.280 within Gaza.

00:12:32.380 So when you hear

00:12:33.280 about the casualties

00:12:34.540 within the Palestinian territories,

00:12:37.580 within Gaza,

00:12:38.400 which, mind you,

00:12:39.340 are told by the

00:12:40.560 Gaza Ministry of Health,

00:12:42.260 which is an arm

00:12:42.940 of the Hamas terror group.

00:12:44.420 So you got to question

00:12:45.100 the combatant

00:12:46.380 and civilian casualty

00:12:47.600 counts right there.

00:12:49.860 You're not really hearing

00:12:51.340 that, well,

00:12:52.340 how many of these people

00:12:53.240 were killed

00:12:53.700 by Palestinian munitions?

00:12:55.820 And, you know,

00:12:56.760 Israel suspects

00:12:57.440 that about 30 of,

00:12:58.840 I think,

00:12:59.340 at this point,

00:13:00.260 given, you know,

00:13:00.960 where we are right now,

00:13:01.920 about 60-some-odd

00:13:02.800 Palestinians who've died, 0.97

00:13:04.380 are actually terrorists.

00:13:06.460 But you don't hear

00:13:07.500 those numbers.

00:13:07.960 You just hear

00:13:08.440 the total number.

00:13:09.320 And that really paints

00:13:11.900 a misleading picture

00:13:12.840 that what's depicted

00:13:13.860 is that Israel is,

00:13:14.880 you know,

00:13:15.660 de facto and implicitly

00:13:16.840 targeting innocents.

00:13:18.320 And that's just not the case.

00:13:19.440 They're,

00:13:19.620 they're with pinpoint precision

00:13:21.560 targeting terrorists.

00:13:23.360 And they're doing it

00:13:24.120 in a way

00:13:24.560 that minimizes

00:13:25.360 civilian casualties,

00:13:26.920 doing things like,

00:13:28.160 that are really untold,

00:13:29.480 to warn your combatant

00:13:30.960 of even,

00:13:31.740 that you're even going

00:13:32.640 to carry out an attack.

00:13:33.620 So they'll,

00:13:34.600 you mentioned the,

00:13:35.440 the buildings

00:13:36.320 that were destroyed,

00:13:37.200 which, mind you,

00:13:37.740 were Hamas,

00:13:38.580 this terror infrastructure

00:13:40.560 they were using.

00:13:42.020 They,

00:13:42.520 they warn them

00:13:43.120 with,

00:13:43.340 with cell phone calls,

00:13:44.820 with text messages,

00:13:47.240 leaflets,

00:13:47.900 thousands of leaflets

00:13:48.760 that are,

00:13:49.320 that are dropped.

00:13:50.200 And then they use

00:13:50.740 a technique called

00:13:51.700 the roof knocking technique

00:13:52.680 where they,

00:13:53.140 they drop miniature munitions

00:13:56.440 with non,

00:13:57.120 non-lethal munitions

00:13:57.980 on the top of the roof

00:13:58.880 to tell people

00:13:59.920 if they,

00:14:00.540 if they didn't heed

00:14:01.240 their warnings

00:14:01.700 to get out of the area.

00:14:02.860 There's no other army

00:14:03.960 in,

00:14:04.440 in the history

00:14:05.240 of modern warfare

00:14:06.120 who would ever do this.

00:14:07.580 And,

00:14:08.000 and that's why,

00:14:08.580 Israel can proudly say

00:14:09.760 it's the most moral military

00:14:10.800 in the world.

00:14:12.340 Very well said.

00:14:13.580 And I appreciate

00:14:14.120 all your work

00:14:14.900 having to keep glued

00:14:16.160 to the mainstream media

00:14:17.080 day in,

00:14:17.560 day out

00:14:17.940 to call these things out.

00:14:19.600 But it is important

00:14:20.300 because when facts are gone,

00:14:21.880 you lose a whole bunch

00:14:23.220 in the way

00:14:23.560 of any ability

00:14:24.420 of having an honest discussion.

00:14:26.020 Mike Vagelman,

00:14:26.960 Executive Director

00:14:27.760 of Honest Reporting Canada.

00:14:29.600 His great work

00:14:30.220 is updated

00:14:31.100 pretty much in real time

00:14:32.480 these days

00:14:32.960 and that's at

00:14:33.440 honestreporting.ca.

00:14:35.000 Mike,

00:14:35.300 always a pleasure.

00:14:36.180 Thanks for coming on.

00:14:37.940 My pleasure.

00:14:38.820 Andrew,

00:14:39.040 thank you.

00:14:39.680 Thanks for listening

00:14:40.280 to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:41.820 Support the program

00:14:42.540 by donating to True North

00:14:43.780 at www.tnc.news.

00:14:46.960 www.tnc.news.co.nc.

00:14:49.820 www.tnc.news.co.nc.

00:14:50.280 www.tnc.news.co.nc.

00:14:50.820 www.tnc.news.co.nc.

Juno News - May 14, 2021

The mainstream media is getting the Israel-Hamas conflict wrong

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