Juno News - May 14, 2021


The mainstream media is getting the Israel-Hamas conflict wrong


Episode Stats

Length

14 minutes

Words per Minute

167.17393

Word Count

2,490

Sentence Count

163


Summary


Transcript

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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
00:09:31.900 That's welcoming Israel's destruction.
00:09:34.520 And, you know,
00:09:35.480 naturally Israel is doing everything
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.
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
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
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
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
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,
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
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,
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.