Wednesday, January 30, 2013

It begins: HuffPost depicts Israeli strike on suspected Syrian WMD truck convoy as targeting civilians

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1/31 UPDATE: HuffPost has now doubled-down on its malicious, distorted headline propaganda against Israel.  See "Update" at end.
Note: HuffPost is now the world's #1 most-read online "newspaper."  For four years, it has been deliberately, maliciously inciting and tolerating hate against Israel and Jews, based on false, unprovable or grossly decontextualized allegations, and biased story choices and positioning (archives here, here).  It also attracts nearly 15,000 unique visitors per day from the three incubators of Islamist terror: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (details here).

Fresh on the heels of HuffPost setting the stage, a few days ago for its latest round of incitement and bias against Israel, by presenting an inflammatory, completely decontextualized headline claiming that the Jewish state "issued a warning" to Syria...

...along comes this, from the top of its World page:


 


What's the problem, you may ask?

Well, here's how HuffPost's own story, sourced from Reuters, described the event:
LONDON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Israeli forces attacked a convoy on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight, a Western diplomat and regional security sources said on Wednesday, as concern has grown in the Jewish state over the fate of Syrian chemical and advanced conventional weapons. [...]

In the run-up to the raid, Israeli officials have been warning very publicly of a threat of high-tech anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles reaching Israel's enemies in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from Syria. They have also echoed U.S. concerns about Syria's presumed chemical weapons arsenal.




Does the picture that HuffPost chose to run with this story depict a "convoy" of presumably military or industrial-type trucks, capable of carrying WMDs, or missiles? 


No.  It depicts poor, humble Middle Eastern civilians in poor, ramshackle vehicles, presumably just trying to survive.  Here's the caption under the photo, on HuffPost's own story page (position your mouse over the photo):

Residents drive motorcycles and cars to flee during fighting between rebels and regime forces in the village of Kurnaz, close to the western city of Hama, on January 27, 2013. More than a dozen rebel fighters took up defensive positions in Kurnaz with light weapons against Syrian army tanks roughly four kilometres distant which were firing shells around them. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP/Getty Images)

So HuffPost knew this was not a photo from the Syria-Lebanon border, which is where the attack took place, and knew that it was taken three days ago --- of civilians trying to flee internal Syrian fighting.  It had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel.  

Further, this picture was taken well away from the between Syria and Lebanon, which is where the Israeli air strike is said to have occurred --- as the photo caption says, these civilians were photographed near Hama(h); see for yourself:



But facts like those never matter to HuffPost; in fact, they are an impediment to Arianna Huffington doing what she claims makes HuffPost different, and better than its rivals:
 “We are aiming to go beyond just facts, to create a narrative... [W]e think bringing journalism to a new level is exactly what people are looking for.”
Arianna and her army of minions know full well the power of images, and that there's nothing like matching a picture of poor civilians whom it implicitly or explicitly claims --- falsely --- are victims of Israel's marauding, careless, malevolent military.

By choosing this picture to match with the headline, and the story, HuffPost has once again does what it specializes in: whipping up hatred against Israel by claiming, explicitly or implicitly, that it is deliberately attacking poor, innocent civilians.  Exactly as it has been doing for four years.

Further, as we and our friends at HuffPostMonitor have documented repeatedly over the past four years, when Israel retaliates against the terrorists who are deliberately targeting and murdering Jewish civilians, HuffPost invariably engages in "bloody-shirt-waving," featuring gory pictures of Palestinian civilians and children who are accidentally injured or killed.  But as HuffPostMonitor has been particularly effective in documenting, when Islamist terrorists murder Jewish civilians in the most savage ways imaginable, well, on those rare occasions when HuffPost even chooses to cover the story, it matches those headlines with pictures of jeeps, of walls, and inanimate objects.



And so it begins again:
Israel is now facing a potential sum of all its fears: Assad giving his stockpile of WMDs --- suspected to be the largest in the world --- to Hezbollah, which has sworn to wipe out the Jewish state.
And HuffPost, once again, is willfully, voluntarily publishing "news" stories that whip up hatred --- not against the monsters who target and murder civilians, and are threatening to wipe an entire nation off the map --- but against those who are victimized by them, and who are, in a very real sense, now fighting for their lives.

And the punch-line is, your tax dollars are going to enable all this.




UPDATE 1/31: HuffPost doubles down on its inflammatory, decontextualized headlines against Israel

As if what HuffPost did yesterday wasn't quite enough, along comes this new headline, which it published early in the morning on January 31: 


If you only got your "news" from HuffPost, what would that headline lead you to conclude? Perhaps that some bored IAF pilots out on a training mission just decided to go do some target practice on Syrian civilians, perhaps?  

Note that the headline contains not a single mention of the substance of the actual (AP) story --- on HuffPost's own story page:
(AP) BEIRUT — Israel launched a rare airstrike inside Syria, U.S. officials said Wednesday, targeting a convoy believed to contain anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Now take a look at the picture HuffPost chose to match with that headline.  What do those civilians have to do with a military attack on a military convoy at the Lebanon border?  Nothing, of course --- just as the picture HuffPost used on Jan. 30 had nothing to do with the incident, either.

So how did other, actual "news" sources carry the story?  Take a look --- this is what we found doing a quick search of the opening copy (above):



But leave it to Arianna, who claims she's "the future of news," to twist this story, once again, to completely leave out the context of the headline, and to falsely imply, pictorially, that Israel is mercilessly attacking civilians --- just as her "newspaper" has been doing for more than three years.
[Huffington] is offended and bewildered by the suggestion that other news outlets think she's getting a free ride. She sees herself as the future of journalism, not the end of it.
- Arianna Huffington: The Web's New Oracle
Belinda Luscombe, Time, March 19, 2009
Right.





ACTION ITEMS

If you believe HuffPost should stop doing PR for Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamist terror groups, and inciting hatred against Israel and Jews, we urge you to do these things:

(1) Make your voice known to HuffPost's senior management here.

(2) Consider writing or calling one or more of HuffPost's top advertisers, to let them know your thoughts on what their ad dollars are enabling.
An easy way to approach this is to scan our easy-to-use directory and find one or two corporations that you are a customer of, or have stock in. Your concerns will automatically be given considerably more weight. Also, request a follow-up after they've had a chance to review the evidence; don't let them off the hook, or sweep this under the rug. 
(3) Forward the link to this story along to others who support Jews and Israel --- particularly journalists!!!

(4) Email this article to your Congressional representatives --- along with the following "NO HUFFPOST" graphic, and tell them to post it in the windows of their offices,
to show that that they will no longer enable or legitimize the West's #1 facilitator of the cyber-jihad against Israel, Jews and the U.S. military




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