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Hard facts on mis­in­for­ma­tion and con­tro­ver­sies in the Israel-Pales­tine con­flict

1. Debunked claim about ‘plau­si­ble geno­cide’

There con­tin­ue to be reports in the media uncrit­i­cal­ly repeat­ing the false claim that in its inter­im rul­ing on 26 Jan­u­ary 2024 in the South Africa v. Israel case, the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) found that Israel had com­mit­ted ‘plau­si­ble geno­cide’.

This false­hood was recent­ly debunked by Judge Joan Donoghue who, as ICJ Pres­i­dent at the time, deliv­ered the Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures rul­ing in this case. Judge Donoghue said in a recent BBC inter­view “I’m cor­rect­ing what’s often said in the media – it [the ICJ] didn’t decide that the claim of geno­cide was plau­si­ble”.  Instead, she explained, the ICJ held that it was plau­si­ble to claim that Pales­tini­ans in the Gaza Strip, like all nation­al, eth­nic, racial or reli­gious groups, have the right to be pro­tect­ed from acts of geno­cide.

Source: For­mer head of ICJ explains rul­ing on geno­cide case against Israel brought by S Africa (bbc.com), dat­ed 26 April 2024.

She con­firmed that the ICJ had made it clear that it was not pre­judg­ing, even on an inter­im basis, whether such acts have in fact been com­mit­ted, and will only con­sid­er this ques­tion in the tri­al phase. Until the full tri­al takes place and a deter­mi­na­tion is reached, any alle­ga­tion that the ICJ has made even a pre­lim­i­nary find­ing that geno­cide has occurred is com­plete­ly false.

Source:  “The Court is not called upon, for the pur­pos­es of its deci­sion on the request for the indi­ca­tion of pro­vi­sion­al mea­sures, to estab­lish the exis­tence of breach­es of oblig­a­tions under the Geno­cide Con­ven­tion”, see para­graph 62, page 19, Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice Pro­vi­sion­al Mea­sures Order, avail­able at: Order of 26 Jan­u­ary 2024 (icj-cij.org), dat­ed 26 Jan­u­ary 2024; and Doc­tor KC, Bri­an, Unherd, The flaws in the geno­cide case against Israel – UnHerd, dat­ed 1 March 2024.

2. Con­tro­ver­sy over civil­ian casu­al­ty fig­ures in Gaza

The Unit­ed Nations has revised down the fig­ure it pub­lish­es for the pro­por­tion of women and chil­dren killed in Gaza, lead­ing to claims few­er Pales­tin­ian civil­ians have been killed since Israel launched its offen­sive fol­low­ing the Hamas attack of 7 Octo­ber.  On 6 May 2024, the UN said that 69% of report­ed fatal­i­ties were women and chil­dren. Two days lat­er, it said this fig­ure was 52%.  The UN said it is now rely­ing on fig­ures from the Hamas-run health min­istry in Gaza, rather than from the Hamas-run Gov­ern­ment Media Office (GMO).

Source:  ‘Gaza war: Why is the UN cit­ing low­er death toll for women and chil­dren?’, BBC News, 16 May 2024

On 9 May 2024 the UN’s Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs (OCHA) said that it was now dis­tin­guish­ing between “report­ed” deaths, totalling 34,904, and those which have actu­al­ly been “iden­ti­fied”, totalling 24,686.  It had pre­vi­ous­ly “report­ed” more than 14,500 child deaths and 9,500 deaths of women, but now spec­i­fied that only a lit­tle more than half that num­ber (7,797 chil­dren and 4,959 women) had been “iden­ti­fied”. The OCHA report con­clud­ed that 52% of casu­al­ties in Gaza were women and chil­dren, 40% were men, and 8% were “elder­ly”. It did not explain what age the report con­sid­ers to be “elder­ly” and how it cat­e­goris­es chil­dren, or what per­cent­age are com­bat­ants.

Source: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217

OCHA has also pub­lished a dis­claimer about its use of casu­al­ty fig­ures, which is almost nev­er cit­ed by media out­lets.  It states: “Dis­claimer: The UN has so far not been able to pro­duce inde­pen­dent, com­pre­hen­sive, and ver­i­fied casu­al­ty fig­ures; the cur­rent num­bers have been pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Health or the Gov­ern­ment Media Office in Gaza and the Israeli author­i­ties and await fur­ther ver­i­fi­ca­tion.”

Source: https://www.ochaopt.org/content/hostilities-gaza-strip-and-israel-reported-impact-day-217

As not­ed, the UN fig­ures do not dis­tin­guish between com­bat­ants and non-com­bat­ants. (Sad­ly, Hamas uses even boys aged under 18 as com­bat­ants).   The fig­ures also fail to spec­i­fy casu­al­ties in Gaza caused by Pales­tin­ian fire, includ­ing errant rock­ets and direct fire on Pales­tin­ian civil­ians. These and many oth­er defi­cien­cies have been high­light­ed in sev­er­al recent stud­ies which have con­clud­ed that the Hamas-run Gaza Health Min­istry fig­ures are like­ly to have been fab­ri­cat­ed, both in over­all totals and in the break­down of men, women and chil­dren.

Sources:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers; https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable; https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-hamas-manipulates-gaza-fatality-numbers-examining-male-undercount-and-other; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/unrwa-staff-death-toll-gaza-israel-hamas-war-data/

Based on the new UN fig­ures and Israeli reports that at least 14,000 Hamas and oth­er com­bat­ants have been killed, Israel has stat­ed that just over 1 civil­ian has been killed in Gaza for every com­bat­ant.

Source:  ‘Israel’s Netanyahu says mil­i­tants make up about half of Gaza deaths’, CBS News, 14 May 2024.

By com­par­i­son, a report by the UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al found that in pre­vi­ous con­flicts in urban areas, 89% of casu­al­ties were civil­ians, mean­ing 8 civil­ian casu­al­ties for every com­bat­ant.

Source: ‘Nine­ty Per Cent of War-Time Casu­al­ties Are Civil­ians’, UN Doc­u­ment SC/14904, 25 May 2022.

While the loss of civil­ian lives and the scale of human suf­fer­ing on both sides of the con­flict has indeed been appalling, Gazan casu­al­ties are the direct result of Hamas open­ly tar­get­ing Israeli civil­ians while shield­ing them­selves behind and under Gazan civil­ians and civil­ian infra­struc­ture.

3. Why Al-Jazeera is a taint­ed news out­let

Al Jazeera is a media organ­i­sa­tion owned by the gov­ern­ment of Qatar, but unlike media organ­i­sa­tions that are owned by west­ern gov­ern­ments, such as the BBC, the ABC and SBS, it does not oper­ate inde­pen­dent­ly of the gov­ern­ment that owns and funds it.

The gov­ern­ment of Qatar is a hered­i­tary monar­chy in which the monarch (the Emir) exer­cis­es full exec­u­tive pow­er.  The Qatari monar­chy is a key finan­cial backer and ally of Hamas. The cur­rent head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, has resided in the Qatari cap­i­tal, Doha, since 2016.  In 2021 it was report­ed that Qatar had trans­ferred more than $US 1.8 bil­lion to Hamas.

Source: David Ehl, ‘What is Hamas and who sup­ports it?’, Deutsche Welle, 15 May 2021.

More recent­ly, the French Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al and Strate­gic Affairs val­ued Qatari finan­cial sup­port for Hamas at $US 30 mil­lion per month.

Source:  ‘Qatar, Iran, Turkey and beyond: Hamas’s net­work of allies’, France 24, 14 Octo­ber 2023.

The con­trol exer­cised by the Qatari gov­ern­ment over Al Jazeera has also been exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed.

Source: Shawn Pow­ers, ‘The Geopol­i­tics of the News: The Case of the Al Jazeera Net­work’, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Decem­ber 2009.

It fol­lows that Al Jazeera has an egre­gious con­flict of inter­est when it comes to its report­ing of any issue in which the Qatari gov­ern­ment has an inter­est, such as the Israel-Hamas con­flict. This con­flict of inter­est is not mere­ly the­o­ret­i­cal. Dur­ing the cur­rent Israel-Hamas war, Al Jazeera’s inher­ent bias in favour of Hamas and against Israel has become stark­ly evi­dent.  In Novem­ber 2023, Arab jour­nal­ists and intel­lec­tu­als on social media called Al-Jazeera a mouth­piece for ter­ror orga­ni­za­tions that serves them by spread­ing lies and incit­ing ter­ror, and accused it of jeop­ar­diz­ing Arab nation­al secu­ri­ty. Source: ‘Arab Jour­nal­ists: Al-Jazeera Is A Mouth­piece Of The Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tions’, Mid­dle East Media Research Insti­tute, Novem­ber 22, 2023.

The fol­low­ing exam­ples of biased cov­er­age of the war by Al-Jazeera, or the out­right com­plic­i­ty of its jour­nal­ists with Hamas, are by no means exhaus­tive.

• On 15 Novem­ber 2023, Al Jazeera was con­duct­ing an inter­view with a wound­ed Gazan res­i­dent, who blamed Hamas hid­ing amongst civil­ians for his wounds; Al Jazeera prompt­ly end­ed the inter­view. The video can be viewed at ‘Gaza res­i­dent crit­i­cizes Hamas on Al Jazeera, reporter turns away and ignores him’, Viseg­rad 24:

Al-Jazeera reporter inter­views a wound­ed elder­ly man at a Gaza hos­pi­tal about how he got hurt.

His answer?

“Why is Hamas hid­ing among us civil­ians? Why don’t they go to hell and hide there instead?”

The reporters quick­ly ends the inter­view…. pic.twitter.com/nB1EOOxY8l

— Viseg­rád 24 (@visegrad24) Novem­ber 14, 2023

• Al Jazeera has been accused of push­ing Hamas pro­pa­gan­da, repeat­ed­ly broad­cast­ing state­ments by Hamas’ mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal lead­ers call­ing for a broad­er upris­ing and align­ing them­selves close­ly with Hamas’ pre­ferred lan­guage for the con­flict. One of Al Jazeera’s most promi­nent jour­nal­ists, Majed Abdul­ha­di, cel­e­brat­ed Hamas’s attack as it hap­pened by recit­ing a kind of prose poem and rhap­sodiz­ing at length about the attack. (David D. Kirk­patrick and Adam Ras­gon, ‘The Hamas pro­pa­gan­da war’, The New York­er, 30 Octo­ber 2023: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-hamas-propaganda-war)

• Sev­er­al jour­nal­ists of Al Jazeera have been accused of assist­ing or com­mand­ing Hamas units in their fight against Israel. One of Al Jazeer­a’s jour­nal­ists in the Gaza Strip was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a Hamas com­man­der accord­ing to the mate­ri­als pub­lished by the IDF. The jour­nal­ist, Ismail Abu Omar, was shown in a pho­to­graph in Kib­butz Nir Oz dur­ing the Octo­ber 7 attack. (Emanuel Fabi­an, ‘IDF says Al Jazeera reporter wound­ed yes­ter­day is also a Hamas deputy com­man­der’, Times of Israel, 14 Feb­ru­ary 2024: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-says-al-jazeera-reporter-wounded-yesterday-is-also-a-hamas-deputy-commander/

• Dur­ing the cur­rent war, IDF forces found a lap­top belong­ing to Muham­mad Samir Muham­mad Washah in a Hamas base in the north­ern Gaza Strip. Washah was born in al-Bureij in 1986 and was a cor­re­spon­dent for Al Jazeera Mubash­er TV and the Al Jazeera net­work in the Gaza Strip. The con­tents of his com­put­er revealed he was also a com­man­der in the anti-tank mis­sile unit of Hamas’ mil­i­tary wing. At the end of 2022, he trans­ferred to R&D in the Hamas anti-air­craft force. Pho­tos were also found on the com­put­er link­ing him to activ­i­ties in Hamas’ mil­i­tary wing (Avichay Adraee’s X account, Feb­ru­ary 11, 2024). Fol­low­ing the IDF spokesman’s announce­ment, a web surfer pub­lished a pho­to of Washah with Yahya al-Sin­war from his Insta­gram account. The pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence is repro­duced in a report pub­lished by The Meir Amit Intel­li­gence and Ter­ror­ism Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter on 27 Feb­ru­ary 2024: https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/more-than-half-of-the-palestinian-journalists-killed-in-the-gaza-strip-during-operation-iron-swords-were-affiliated-with-terrorist-organizations/

Giv­en this his­to­ry, the integri­ty of news cov­er­age of the cur­rent war between Hamas and Israel by any media out­let which rou­tine­ly uses reports by Al Jazeera has been com­pro­mised.  Al Jazeera reports are sub­ject to the pol­i­cy dic­tates of the Qatari gov­ern­ment, and thus lack the qual­i­ties of edi­to­r­i­al inde­pen­dence and integri­ty, accu­ra­cy, and diver­si­ty of views and per­spec­tives which are the hall­marks of rep­utable jour­nal­ism.