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

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 0.74

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 0.95

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, 0.73

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 1.00

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 0.53

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 0.53

00:08:16.940 Palestinian stringer who was also well known in Pallywood industry of making fake news, but he had 0.93

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, 0.76

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, 0.98

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 0.85

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 1.00

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.

Juno News - January 14, 2024

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

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