Juno News - January 14, 2024


Why the media keeps getting it wrong about Israel (ft. Barbara Kay)


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

157.56754

Word Count

2,712

Sentence Count

148

Hate Speech Sentences

11


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I wanted to talk about the scourge of anti-semitism, which I am very ashamed to say as a Canadian
00:00:14.700 has become the norm and the rule rather than the exception. We've had some little bits of
00:00:21.660 change on this front. Toronto police have decided now that no, people shouldn't be
00:00:26.460 shutting down a bridge in a Jewish neighborhood to protest against Israel because, you know,
00:00:31.900 let's be real, they're just protesting against Jews. But at the same time, we also see an
00:00:36.800 increasing normalization of this. All of the people who were tremendous supporters of Israel
00:00:42.060 and the Jewish people on October 7th, 8th and 9th and 10th have become less and less so as time has
00:00:48.180 gone on. And the media has become a very key player in this. Barbara Kay had a fantastic piece in the
00:00:54.720 Epoch Times. She said to uphold the preferred narrative, the media will go to any lengths to
00:01:00.140 demonize Israel. Barbara Kay joins us now and it's always good to see her. Barbara, thanks for joining
00:01:05.260 me today. Pleasure to be here, Andrew. So, I mean, the media's role in this cannot be at all overstated.
00:01:12.740 The media, I mean, when you're talking about something happening in the Middle East, the media
00:01:16.160 is to some extent our only glimpse at what's happening there. And we've seen the framing on
00:01:22.640 Israel issues to just be absolutely disastrous. And, you know, CBC not calling Hamas a terror
00:01:29.720 organization, which is a statement of fact. It's a statement of law in Canada. It's not even an
00:01:34.340 arguable point. And, you know, media that does false equivalency. At one point, they referred to the
00:01:40.260 agreement by Israel to release prisoners in exchange for hostages as a hostage exchange,
00:01:46.380 which is just, again, an absurd thing here. But you've talked about the media really being
00:01:52.120 particularly brazen on this. They're very brazen. We just saw, I don't know if you saw it on X,
00:02:01.020 Honest Reporting had done an expose of some Reuters and Associated Press journalists in Gaza laughing
00:02:14.000 about, you know, looking at some of the atrocities of October 7th and laughing. Gaza is filled with
00:02:20.400 so-called journalists. We know that some of the journalists that the New York Times employed
00:02:25.940 actually accompanied Hamas on the rampage, the pogrom of October 7th. In other words,
00:02:32.160 they knew about it in advance. They wanted to capture it as it happens. And it was clear that
00:02:38.240 from their, the way, the familiar way in which they were palling around with the Hamas fighters,
00:02:46.240 that they are actually supporters of Hamas or likely supporters of Hamas. And as I've said many times
00:02:55.520 on social media, you know, and in my column that you cited, the very words from sources in Gaza
00:03:04.220 should send alarm bells ringing in any mainstream news outlet because there is no such thing as a Gaza,
00:03:13.200 a report, a report out of Gaza that is inherently trustworthy. Not that they always give false
00:03:20.540 news, but you can never be sure that they're not giving false news because no reporter is allowed
00:03:25.700 to report from Gaza without censorship by Hamas. And so no reporter is free to publish what they want
00:03:37.440 from Gaza unless it goes through Hamas, you know, censorship. And as well, many of the journalists,
00:03:46.440 the so-called journalists in Gaza are actually not journalists. They are simply working for Hamas
00:03:53.380 in the capacity of stringers for other, you know, bigger companies, but they are in fact agents for Hamas.
00:04:00.900 I only speak about, you know, four or five lines of Arabic. So I have to rely on other translations
00:04:07.320 when I see Arabic footage. But I have seen at least three or four clips from within the last few months,
00:04:13.100 which are presented as some of one of those journalists that you were just describing,
00:04:18.700 interviewing people. And when they start to criticize Hamas, the interview gets quickly and abruptly ended.
00:04:24.440 So when the people in Gaza are saying, well, hang on, Hamas is using us as shields, the interview ends.
00:04:30.420 So you're right. There is no, you know, unbiased commitment to truth there, which is, I think,
00:04:35.760 a big part of it. A lot of these are activists wearing press vests.
00:04:39.320 Yeah. And of course, you know, you expect biased reporting from Al Jazeera, you know, that's their job.
00:04:45.800 But when it comes to New York Times, BBC, CNN, we just saw a story out of CNN.
00:04:54.220 Some of their Middle Eastern stringers were posting disgustingly anti-Israel stuff on social media.
00:05:04.300 They've lost control of the journalistic situation over there, it seems to me,
00:05:08.920 since they have decided to accept stuff coming out of Gaza without verifying.
00:05:15.020 And when you see the BBC doing that and the CBC, you really, you really, it's really sickening
00:05:20.940 because there's a long history of this. They know very well that a lot of reports are doctored
00:05:26.620 or they're, they're complete fiction, complete fiction. And as we've seen in the whole Palestinian
00:05:33.000 movement in the last several decades, you know, truth in journalism is not a value. It's not a,
00:05:39.980 it's not a Middle Eastern value in regimes that are not democratic and none of them are except
00:05:45.900 Israel. I mean, you'll get honest reporting out of Egypt and some of the bigger, the more stable
00:05:52.620 entities there. But from the West Bank or Gaza, you really have to verify anything you hear out of
00:06:01.820 there. And in fact, I remember in a column I wrote some time ago, I remember there was a report from
00:06:09.020 Matty Friedman, one of the top journalists on this scene, who recounted the anecdote of a West Bank
00:06:17.180 politician checking with an Israeli journalist to see if what he was being told by his own journalists in
00:06:24.700 the West Bank was true or not. He just, a rumor that, that there was an assassination plot. He
00:06:30.220 didn't know whether to believe it or not. So he checked with Israeli journalists. That's how bad it is.
00:06:34.700 You talk about this phenomenon, which I've heard before, and it sounds silly, but it's actually a
00:06:40.300 very serious thing, which is Pallywood. And I'm wondering if you could explain that for, for people
00:06:44.860 that haven't come across this term. I guess not. I guess she can't explain that. Hopefully we'll go.
00:06:51.900 Oh, there we go. We got Barbara back. I'm so sorry. This has happened before, Andrew.
00:06:55.900 I'm having flashbacks now, like literal flashes. And now you're freezing up again a little bit too.
00:07:01.660 I don't know. I'm on Chrome. I'm hearing you now. Can you hear me?
00:07:06.940 I hear you very well now. Okay. Perfect. So tell me what Pallywood is for people that aren't familiar.
00:07:12.860 Pallywood is an actual news producing industry in the West Bank and Gaza.
00:07:20.860 And it's like Bollywood in the sense that it's fake stuff, but it's an actual industry. There are
00:07:28.620 producers and directors and actors and extras, all kinds of industry norms going on that actually
00:07:37.340 are producing fake news. So if they want to show that an Israeli struck, say a site, then they will
00:07:49.340 then they will produce it. They will actually create a scene and produce it with fake dead people on
00:07:55.100 stretchers. And suddenly an ambulance comes screeching up, you know, somebody hails an ambulance to come
00:08:00.460 screeching up four seconds later. So it's, it's, um, it's, it's, and then they produce it as news.
00:08:09.180 Uh, the famous Mohammed al Dura affair in 2000, um, that was highly contested. It was shot by a
00:08:16.940 Palestinian stringer who was also well known in Pallywood industry of making fake news, but he had
00:08:24.300 sent a 59 second clip that purported to show that, uh, during the intifada, uh, that Israeli snipers had
00:08:31.900 actually targeted and killed a 12 year old boy by the name of Mohammed al Dura. Um, when the 23 minutes
00:08:39.420 of raw footage was seen by other journalists and skeptics, uh, presented a very different picture.
00:08:46.860 Uh, and eventually there were lawsuits over this and eventually the IDF concluded and reported there
00:08:53.260 was no way that child could have been hit by an Israeli bullet because of the angle of the bullet
00:08:57.980 and all that. But that was one of the bigger stories, but they're very consequential. These stories
00:09:02.700 like the Janine massacre, the Janine massacre, you may remember in 2002, uh, when they were trying to get to
00:09:09.260 the source of the, all the suicide bombers, uh, they had a ground operation into Janine. The first reports
00:09:15.260 out of the West Bank were a massacre of 500 civilians and that story stuck. In the end, after many reports
00:09:23.180 and many actual, um, investigations, uh, it was concluded that 53 civilians were killed and 23 IDF soldiers
00:09:33.180 who had done a ground invasion in order not to kill civilians. And as a result,
00:09:39.180 were ambushed, their own soldiers got killed, but they were trying to prevent civilian deaths.
00:09:43.580 But these stories are used as propaganda again and again and again. Um, and the images are extremely
00:09:50.460 emotive. So, um, this industry, uh, is extremely harmful. Uh, it's called lethal journalism. It is lethal,
00:10:00.380 uh, because people die over it. Osama bin Laden used the Mohammed al Dura story, uh, in his own propaganda,
00:10:07.740 because he could see that the picture of this boy huddling behind his father, apparently being
00:10:14.140 targeted by Israeli bullets, which was not the case. They are made into martyrs. They are,
00:10:20.620 remember that little boy, uh, the Syrian boy lying in the sand, that little two-year-old boy. And
00:10:26.460 these images have an incredible effect. Well, and I recall, I seem to recall that there, there was
00:10:32.380 evidence that emerged later that that boy had been moved. I mean, it was still a tragedy, but the photo
00:10:37.020 had been to some extent staged to make a bigger point from that. It's not hard to see that, uh,
00:10:46.300 this whole Palestinian issue, this whole Israel is, is a very much, um, an emotional thing. And a lot of
00:10:55.580 the people that are active in it, uh, when you corner them and you ask them, you know, to state
00:11:01.260 why they don't even know why they're part of a herd. Uh, in fact, the Toronto sun just had a piece out
00:11:07.020 today saying some of these protesters are being paid, um, to be part of these protests. But anyways,
00:11:12.140 there's a lot of hysteria involved, uh, in these protests because this issue has, uh, you know,
00:11:20.780 Palestinian activists, uh, on campuses, for example, they're there for years and years. Not,
00:11:26.460 they're not very good at studying, but they're very good at propaganda. This is, this is, they're paid
00:11:31.340 for this. Uh, you know, there are a lot of foreign funding of these movements in the West. Uh, it's a
00:11:38.620 very deep rabbit hole, Andrew. And, you know, we could spend hours on this, but in terms of the journalist,
00:11:43.900 um, the irresponsible journalism that is attached to this subject, it's, uh, just remarkable how far
00:11:53.180 these media outlets will go to push a narrative that is harmful to Israel. They are lock, stock,
00:12:01.020 and barrel committed advocacy journalists rather than, um, objectives. It's just not journalism
00:12:08.860 simply is not what you, it's not what it should be. It's not what True North does. Uh, it is, it is, uh,
00:12:17.020 pure, it is getting to be pure propaganda, uh, in too many of formerly respectable, uh, outlets. So it's,
00:12:25.740 yeah, we're lucky to have a few, um, outlets in Canada, like the National Post, True North, uh, the Epoch
00:12:32.620 Times that, uh, that is, I, what I consider to be journalism that verifies sources, actually fact
00:12:41.100 checks, you know, does basic stuff. Well, yeah, what should be, uh, you know, used to be basic and
00:12:47.820 second nature anyway. And the only area where you could say, uh, that can rival the Israel hatred in
00:12:54.940 much of the media is in academia, uh, as we've seen in the last few months. And I just very briefly
00:12:59.980 wanted to ask you about this story because I understand you're writing about it this week in
00:13:02.940 another piece. Uh, there is now a class action lawsuit against, uh, so far six major Canadian
00:13:08.620 universities, Queens, York, uh, Concordia and Montreal, uh, TMU, which used to be Ryerson before
00:13:14.780 Ryerson's name became a hate crime and, uh, the university of British Columbia, uh, facing claims that
00:13:20.220 Jewish students are unsafe on their campuses. And I, I mean, look, that that's a difficult thing to
00:13:26.540 refute with just raw footage we've seen of what's happened on these campuses, isn't it?
00:13:31.420 Yeah. I always felt that, uh, lawsuits were the way to go. I, I was, I was promoting the idea
00:13:37.420 years and years and years ago. I said, the only way these universities are going to change if it hits
00:13:41.820 them in the pocketbook, uh, the, um, uh, the, this, this particular, uh, these particular class actions
00:13:48.700 are by, uh, a law firm, but they are in partnership with the Lawfare Project, which is a pro bono, uh, legal,
00:13:56.540 fund for, um, fighting anti-Semitism around the world. They do phenomenal work and, uh, they just,
00:14:04.380 uh, they just had a very big success, uh, uh, against a restaurant in Toronto, an owner of a restaurant,
00:14:10.860 uh, for defaming and defamation suit against a Canadian, uh, media personality who was also a
00:14:18.220 Zionist and she was targeted on social media. So unless, unless, uh, lawsuits make these institutions
00:14:25.900 pay out big time and the one against McMaster is what? $77 million. Um, and the more that are
00:14:33.100 targeted, the better because just a couple have to win and you'll see the whole culture of university
00:14:41.420 will be forced to change. Uh, and that's the only way this is going to be happening just as in the
00:14:46.060 States, uh, that president was not going to say, Claudine gave from Harvard. She was not prepared to step
00:14:53.260 down. Um, but donor, you know, uh, when you lose a billion dollars in funding from your donor class,
00:15:02.300 um, that, that talks louder than ideology. And, uh, I can only pray that these lawsuits succeed
00:15:09.900 because I think that's going to have a very abrupt, if they do, it'll have a very abrupt
00:15:15.340 and very, um, cleansing effect on, on, uh, campuses in terms of antisemitism.
00:15:22.700 I know you're, you're Jewish yourself and you live in Montreal, which has always had a very vibrant
00:15:27.500 Jewish community. How have you, what's your sense been? I mean, I know you are, are not recognizably
00:15:33.500 Jewish like some Orthodox people in Montreal are. So I don't know if you personally feel unsafe
00:15:38.060 walking around, but what's the mood been in the last few months there?
00:15:41.260 Well, I mean, certainly there have been incidents that are quite harrowing, you know, bullets in a
00:15:46.700 door of, uh, of in school, in, in areas that are intensely Jewish. I live in a very mixed and very
00:15:53.420 diverse neighborhood. Uh, I am known to be Jewish because I, from my writings, I'm a pub, you know,
00:15:58.860 publicly identified as Jewish. Uh, but I don't feel physically unsafe. No, my neighbor, not in my
00:16:04.780 neighborhood, but I know that there are areas, uh, where yes, uh, people do feel unsafe and, and for
00:16:13.740 reason. Uh, so far, nothing cataclysmic has happened, but there've been threats and, and, you know,
00:16:21.820 there've been incidents in malls and just like there have been in Toronto, there, there've been a lot of
00:16:25.980 very unsettling, uh, incidents. And I know on campus, uh, Concordia is known to be a hotbed of, um,
00:16:33.260 pro-Palestinianism, uh, UQOM and, uh, McGill to a certain extent, but Concordia has had a long
00:16:41.180 time reputation of, uh, that's where Laith Maroof got his start in, uh, anti-Semitic.
00:16:48.780 Yeah. Anyone who said hate doesn't pay certainly didn't, uh, look at this model there. So, uh,
00:16:57.660 Barbara Kay, uh, fantastic work in the Epoch Times and in the National Post as always. Thank you so
00:17:02.220 much for coming on today. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton
00:17:06.380 Show. Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.