Another Reason Not To Trust Much Of Middle East Reporting

On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about an Al Jazeera journalist secretly worked for Hamas.

The article reports:

Adraee (IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee) said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

Adraee said the IDF found the journalist’s laptop inside a Hamas camp in the northern Gaza Strip. “A laptop belonging to someone named Muhammed Samir Muhammed Wishah, born in 1986 from Bureij, was seized,” Adraee said. “It is clear from the documents that Muhammed Wishah is a prominent commander in the anti-tank missile units in the military wing of Hamas.” 

The article concludes:

The IDF, calling out the Qatari state-owned news network, reposted Adraee’s post and wrote, “Hey @AlJazeera, we thought your journalists were supposed to give unbiased reports on situations, not actively participate in creating them on the front lines as Hamas terrorists.”

In January, IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari revealed evidence showing that two Gazan journalists killed by the IDF belonged to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization.

I had not realized that AlJazeera was Qatari owned. This is one more reason to question the role of Qatar as mediators in negotiations about the Israeli hostages. It is amazing what the IDF is discovering as they dismantle Hamas in Gaza.

The Prisoners Exchanged

The news is doing a lot of reporting about the children kidnapped by Hamas and held captive since October 7th. Israel is rejoicing at the return of the hostages. Gaza is also rejoicing, but I suspect it’s for different reasons–they will now have more terrorists to deploy.

On Sunday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported:

A Palestinian woman who disfigured herself in a suspected bomb attack in Jerusalem has been reunited with her family after being released from an Israeli prison.

Israa Jaabis, 38, had been imprisoned since 2015 after being convicted of detonating a gas cylinder that wounded an Israeli police officer. The attack left her with severe burns on her face and hands.

She was released on Saturday as part of the agreement with Hamas that will see Israeli hostages freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Jaabis was given a flower crown and seen embracing her family upon her release. She told the Al Jazeera tv network that she was ‘shy’ to hug her son whom she hadn’t seen in eight years.

Israel freed 39 Palestinians – six women and 33 teenagers – from two prisons on Saturday during the second round of the exchange after an hours-long unexpected delay set nerves on edge. 

Hamas had accused Israel of breaking the terms of the agreement. Israel denied the allegation.

…The deal risked being derailed when Hamas’ armed wing said on Saturday it was delaying releases until Israel met all truce conditions, including committing to let aid trucks into northern Gaza.

Saving the deal took a day of diplomacy mediated by Qatar and Egypt, which President Biden also joined.

Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades also said Israel had failed to respect terms for the release of Palestinian prisoners that factored in their time in detention.

COGAT, the Israeli agency for civilian coordination with the Palestinians, accused Hamas itself of delaying trucks trying to deliver humanitarian aid to northern Gaza at a checkpoint.

‘To Hamas, residents of Gaza are their last priority,’ it said on Sunday.

As much as I rejoice in the return of some of the hostages, this is a sad time for Israel. Because of international pressure, Israel was forced into a deal with Hamas which Hamas will use to manipulate public opinion. We can also expect more hostage-taking in the future since this has unfortunately worked very well for Hamas. Understand the people doing the negotiating are not on Israel’s side–Qatar is the home of the head of Hamas and funds Hamas generously. Even though I rejoice in the release of the hostages, I hope Israel will quickly go back into Gaza and eliminate Hamas.

Rewarding Bad News Reporting

Most of us remember this picture from the summer of 2020:

CNN’s intrepid reporter explained that the protests were ‘mostly peaceful’ as we watched the city burn down behind him.

On Friday, The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

The CNN journalist best known for reporting from the burning scene of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” following the justified non-fatal police shooting of armed sexual-assault suspect Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., has been nominated for an Emmy award.

CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was one of five nominees in the “Outstanding Emerging Journalist” category. A Washington Free Beacon analysis determined that the word “emerging” is a euphemism for “non-white.” Other nominees included Anna Kook of Al Jazeera Plus, the controversial media outlet funded by Qatari oligarchs, and Vice correspondent Paola Ramos, a “Latinx Communications Strategist” who worked on Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign in 2016.

The Kenosha riots in August 2020 lasted nearly a week and caused tens of millions of dollars’ worth of property damage. Rioters took to the streets after a bystander posted a video of Blake’s encounter with police. Mainstream journalists repeatedly spread disinformation by describing Blake as “unarmed.” In fact, he was armed with a knife and was harassing his girlfriend who had previously accused Blake of sexually assaulting her. Blake survived the shooting, which occurred after two officers unsuccessfully attempted to subdue him with a Taser and repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife.

Unbelievable.

On July 28, The Hollywood Reporter reported the following:

”At a time when critical, monumental, and world-changing events are more immediately available and accessible than ever before, the work of the journalists and documentarians that bring us the truth of these stories is under tremendous assault. We honor these individuals’ courage and excellence of craft that allows each of us to be better informed and understanding of the issues of our day,” said Adam Sharp, NATAS (National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) president and CEO.

Just to give you some examples of the nominees:

Outstanding Live News Program

ABC World News Tonight with David Muir ABC

Anderson Cooper 360 CNN

CBS Mornings / CBS This Morning CBS

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt NBC

The Lead with Jake Tapper CNN

Today NBC

Gee, I don’t see anything from Fox News, NewsMax or One America News. Why am I not surprised? How many lies have these news organizations told in recent years. How many stories about the Russian Hoax did they share? How many stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop did they not report? How many lies have they told about January 6th?

There Is Some Irony Here

Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about one aspect of America’s surrender to the Taliban.

The article reports:

The Taliban are “feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday” after discovering that helicopters, left by the United States military after they officially pulled out of Kabul, Afghanistan, do not work and, in some cases, were deliberately rendered inoperable before the military departed, Fox News said.

An Al Jazeera reporter spoke with Taliban fighters after they entered the formerly American side of Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), and posted a video of the event to various social media networks, said that the Taliban fighters expected the U.S. to leave their equipment in full working order, though it is not clear whether the U.S. made any such promises.

It’s okay–the Chinese will reverse engineer them and solve the problem.

The article continued:

“An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hanger on the military side of the airport said in a video that the terrorist group ‘expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use,’” Fox reported.

“When I said to them, ‘why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you’? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us,” the Al Jazeera reporter said in her video.

Photos of the equipment posted to social media, which appear to be of the helicopters and other aircraft left behind after the American withdrawal, show smashed indicators and gauges and destroyed control panels. The photos also seem to show that the U.S. military removed guns and other weapons from helicopters before leaving.

…The Washington Post noted Tuesday that, although initial reports said that the Taliban seized $85 billion in equipment left by American forces, that number accounts for all of the money expended to assist the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) since 2001.

Using a percentage provided by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Post reported that the “equipment provided to Afghan forces amounted to $24 billion over 20 years. The GAO said approximately 70 percent of the equipment went to the Afghan military and the rest went to the national police (part of the Interior Ministry).”

It is not clear how much of that equipment ended up in the hands of the Taliban. “With great fanfare, the Taliban has seized a number of Black Hawk helicopters, including ones that the United States had just shipped this year at the request of former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani,” the Post added, noting that the Taliban does not have many qualified pilots and that they targeted Afghan military pilots for execution before taking Kabul.

Upon leaving, CENTCOM said, “the military ‘demilitarized’ 70 MRAPs, 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft,” likely including those helicopters the Taliban is now reportedly angry about.

I hope CENTCOM is telling the truth. Demilitarizing some of the equipment left behind would have been one of the few sensible things done during the evacuation.

I Guess He Didn’t Read The Memo

The Washington Examiner reported the following today:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims that he hasn’t been shown evidence to justify Israel’s airstrike of the building in Gaza, which housed the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera offices.

“Shortly after the strike we did request additional details regarding the justification for it,” Blinken said at a news conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, choosing not to address specifics, adding that he “will leave it to others to characterize if any information has been shared and our assessment that information,” according to the Associated Press.

“I have not seen any information provided,” he continued.

Why hasn’t he seen the information provided? Is this another example of ‘plausible deniability”?

Meanwhile, Breitbart reported the following yesterday:

Israel reportedly showed U.S. officials “smoking gun” intelligence Sunday indicating that the Palestinian Hamas terrorist organization was using the Jala Tower in Gaza, which also housed the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, and other international news outlets.

On Saturday, Israel destroyed the tower, after warning the occupants to allow them to leave. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted that the building contained “Hamas military intelligence assets” and that the media had been used as “human shields.”

In deciding which story to believe, it’s important to look at the entire event and the history of both sides. Hamas has a history of using ‘human shields’. It places rocket launchers in hospitals and homes. Israel has a history of bending over backwards to avoid civilian casualties–to the point of sending ‘knock-knock’ bombs to warn civilians to evacuate.

The article at Breitbart concludes:

But on Sunday, according to the Jerusalem Post, Israel shared its evidence that the building had been used by Hamas:

Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday.

Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action.

“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.”

Hamas continued firing rockets at Israeli communities on Sunday, even as its officials claimed that they wanted a ceasefire.

If the Secretary of State hasn’t been shown the evidence of Hamas headquarters in the same building as the media, maybe he need to ask why.

Americans Need To Understand Exactly What This Means

Yesterday The Daily Wire reported the following:

A Minneapolis neighborhood, which lies in controversial Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s district, will begin broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer five times a day over outdoor loudspeakers throughout the month of Ramadan, reports say.

The move is “believed to be the first publicly-broadcast call to prayer in a major US city,” al Jazeera English said in a post on Twitter.

Americans need to wake up. This is not your friendly neighborhood church playing hymns on their church bells. The goal of Islam is domination over all other religions. The goal is to remove other religions from the earth. Islam is a religion of conversion by force and taking land by force. This is not only letting the camel’s nose into the tent, it is letting half of the camel into the tent.

America was founded as a Christian nation. Our laws are based on the Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible. We do not discriminate against other religions, but we do not submit to them either. Unfortunately, the goal of Islam is the submission of the population to their rules and their way of life. It’s time for America to wake up. If American women in particular want to maintain the freedoms and independence that they have, they need to speak out strongly against giving ground to Muslim customs.

Blasting the Muslim call to prayer in an American city is not acceptable.

Fighting Back Against Misinformation

On Monday The Center for Security Policy posted an article about the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and their hate group map.

The article reports:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has reportedly removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” from its website after being faced with a lawsuit.

 Attorneys for a leading British Muslim reformer, Maajid Nawaz, threatened legal action over his being included in the list, according to National Review.

 The list also included female genital mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney.

The SPLC report, which still exists in PDF form, was first published in December 2016 and was intended to be a resource for journalists.  It reads, “A shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.”

Maajid Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam Foundation in London, said on a podcast with Joe Rogan that the report was taken down under legal threat in the past few days.

Nawaz said, “We have retained Clare Lock, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it – the Southern Poverty Law Center – and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years.”

The problem with the SPLC’s hate map is that anyone who disagreed with the liberal agenda is listed as a hate group and anything said against the liberal agenda as hate speech. The people who have spoken out honestly against Sharia Law and the attempts to bring it to America have been charged with hate speech. Telling the truth is characterized as hate speech according to the SPLC. This is reminiscent of the purging of the Department of Homeland Security of documents related to terrorism (article here):

In October 2011, elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism. The letter was addressed to John Brennan, who at the time was Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  Days later John Brennan agreed to create a task force to address the problem by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.” This move in effect allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to control the information given to the people charged with stopping the terrorism initiated by groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point, the 9/11 reports and other actual historic documents were altered to make them compliant with the new paradigm. (I thought only the Russians rewrote history.)

The Center for Security Policy article concludes:

Family Research Council Executive Vice President General Jerry Boykin denounced the SPLC as “probably one of the most evil groups in America. They’ve become a money-making machine and they’ve become an absolute Marxist, anarchist organization.”
The SPLC website says “The organizations on our hate group list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity – prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines.”
The SPLC did not respond to a question why they have removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists”.

America’s future security depends on an informed public. Organizations like the SPLC misinform the public about the dangers around them. Meanwhile some forces within our government work to prevent law enforcement from having the information they need to protect us. If Americans do not wake up, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren how we lost their freedom.

Our Current Foreign Policy Toward Egypt Has A Problem

Yes, I know that there was a coup in Egypt. If a coup is defined as a group of unelected people seizing power from an elected group of people, there was a coup in Egypt. However, when the elected group (the Muslim Brotherhood) begins to change the government to end democracy, someone has to act to preserve democracy. That is what happened. in Egypt. The problems that led to the problem begin almost immediately after Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011. To understand exactly what happened, it is important to look at the history of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. It was founded to re-establish the imperial Islamic state. It was established as a reaction to the fact that the government of Turkey was established as a secular government after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The goal of the Muslim Brotherhood is to establish a world-wide caliphate through political and violent means. If you google the exhibits in the Holy Land Foundation Trial and read them, you will discover the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan for America.

Under Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was in jail in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Anwar Sadat after he signed a peace treaty with Israel, and the military put Hosni Mubarak in power. Mubarak put the Brotherhood in jail.  When President Obama spoke in Cairo in 2009, he put the Muslim Brotherhood in the front row–signaling to the Brotherhood that he would support them. Despite vague statements from the Obama Administration to the contrary, that support has not changed.

On Friday, a website called The Middle East Forum posted a story about how the average Egyptian feels about what is going on in his country and the role America is playing in Egypt.

The article in the Middle East Forum reports:

First, most offensive to Egyptians—and helpful to the Brotherhood’s cause—is McCain‘s insistence on calling the June 30 Revolution a “military coup.” In reality, the revolution consisted of perhaps thirty million Egyptians taking to the streets to oust the Brotherhood. McCain is either deliberately misconstruing the event, or believes the story as manufactured by Al Jazeera and promulgated by Ambassador Anne Patterson. In this narrative, at least an equal amount of Egyptians supported Morsi, and the military overthrew him against popular will. Al Jazeera has actually broadcast images of the millions of anti-Morsi protesters and identified them as pro-Morsi protesters, disinformation which was quickly adopted by Western media.

Several Al Jazeera correspondents have resigned due to Al Jazeera acting as the Brotherhood’s international mouthpiece.

Fortunately, some American officials have formally rejected this false narrative. A new congressional resolution states:

Whereas in recent weeks, an estimated 30,000,000 Egyptians in a majority of Egypt’s 27 provinces gathered to protest the widespread failures of former President Mohamed Morsi and the Government of Egypt and its violations of the most basic rights of all Egyptian citizens, including Egyptian women, minorities, and those publicly dissenting from its views and policies; Whereas the participants in the June 30, 2013, popular protests far outnumbered those involved in the protests and demonstrations of January and February 2011 …

Even the Obama administration has been sensible enough not to call the June 30 revolution a “military coup.” Nevertheless, McCain rejected John Kerry’s statement that “the [Egyptian] military did not take over.”

What happened in Egypt was a movement by the people of Egypt to attempt to form a democracy in the face of an elected government trying to undo the concept of democracy. In supporting the idea of even letting the Muslim Brotherhood take part in the Egyptian government, we would be supporting persecution of Christians and other minority religions, the institution of Sharia Law, which takes away the equality of women, and the formation of an Islamic state similar to Iran. I really don’t think that is in the best interest of the Egyptians, the Americans, or peace in the Middle East.

We need to remember that terrorists in the Middle East (and other places) have learned to use the weapon of propaganda very well. The Middle East Forum is one of the few reliable sources for unbiased information on what is going on in the Middle East.

 

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Confirmation Hearing For Chuck Hagel

This story is based on two articles–one posted by Paul Mirengoff at Power Line today and one posted at the Los Angeles Times today. Both articles were reporting on the Senate confirmation hearings of former Senator Chuck Hagel.

The headline on the Los Angeles Times article is “Chuck Hagel, an antiwar secretary of Defense.” That is an interesting statement.

The article at Power Line reports:

First, Cruz (Senator Ted Cruz) played excerpts from a tape of Hagel’s 2009 appearance on al Jazeera, in which a caller suggested that Israel had committed war crimes. In responding to the question, Hagel did not dispute the caller’’s statement. Cruz also pointed to statement by Hagel that Israel had engaged in “the sickening slaughter” of Hezbollah, which sounds a bit like war crimes.

The American friendship with Israel goes back to 1948 when Israel became a nation. To accuse Israel of slaughter when Hezbollah routinely lobs rockets into civilian Israeli population centers is simply not factual. Senator Hagel may represent the President’s views on Israel, but those views are not good for either America or Israel.

The Power Line article further reported:

Next, Cruz played an excerpt from the same interview in which the al Jazeera host read a reader e-mail claiming that the United States has served as the world’’s “bully.” This time Hagel not only failed to take exception and stick up for his country, he said on al Jazeera he found some merit in the claim, calling it “a good observation” (the Washington Post report linked to above fails to report this fact).

To me, this is the problem with the nomination. Traditionally America has acted as a policeman in the world–coming to the aid of people when democracy was in danger. We have not played that role under President Obama–we have supported a revolution in Egypt that has led to a government that is anything but democratic and we refused to help the green revolution in Iran.

I suspect Senator Hagel will be confirmed. Unless there is some major scandal associated with a President’s cabinet nominee, I believe the candidate should be confirmed. Elections have consequences. President Obama was legally elected. Unfortunately, I think the cabinet appointments of Senator Kerry as Secretary of State and Senator Hagel as Secretary of Defense will hurt America in the long run.

Al Gore’s Current TV Has Been Sold to Al Jazeera

There are three sources for this article–an article posted at the Daily Caller today, an article posted at The Blaze yesterday, and an article posted at the New York Times yesterday.

There are a few interesting aspects of this story. One is that Al Gore refused to sell Current TV to Glenn Beck, stating that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.” I am really sorry to hear that Al Jazeera is more in line with Current TV than Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.

The Daily Caller reported that Al Gore had hoped to sell the station before the end of the year to avoid the new 2013 tax rates, but was unable to complete the sale until Wednesday.

The New York Times reports:

Distributors can sometimes wiggle out of their carriage deals when channels change hands. Most consented to the sale, but Time Warner Cable did not, Mr. Hyatt told employees.

Time Warner Cable had previously warned that it might drop Current because of its low ratings. It took advantage of a change-in-ownership clause and said in a terse statement Wednesday night, “We are removing the service as quickly as possible.”

The New York Times also reports:

For Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, the acquisition is a coming of age moment. A decade ago, Al Jazeera’s flagship Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing videotapes from Al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now the news operation is buying an American channel, having convinced Mr. Gore and the other owners of Current that it has the journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

America and the media market in America allow free speech. However, I do not see the attempted mainstreaming of Al Jazeera as a good thing. However, people are free to watch what they choose, and they are responsible for the decisions they make. If Al Jazeera plans to function as an unbiased news source, it will do well. If it is used primarily to dispense propaganda, the pressure of the marketplace will remove it from the market.

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