Fact Checking Reuters On Palestine And The Attempt To Censor Palestinian Identity

A recent series of events in Palestine-Israel have gone underreported in Western corporate media, while the same big-tech that virtue signals about being opposed to bigotry takes racist steps to erase Palestinian identity. Reuters, one of the most trusted media sources on the planet did not fact-check its reporting on the murder of a Palestinian civilian, despite the incident being on film.

On May 18, last week, Israel held its Jewish supremacist “flag march” to celebrate the date when the Israeli military illegally occupied the city of Jerusalem in 1967. For decades there have been marches annually on this date, however, in recent years the marches have changed in nature. Extremist groups of settlers have decided, since 2021, to parade through the Arab Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem; assaulting store owners, attacking Palestinians and their property, all while chanting “death to Arabs”. As many as 50,000 Israeli settlers participated in the march, which was specifically aimed at insulting Palestinians, with screams of “we are going to kill you all, one by one” from one extremist, while others chanted against the Prophet of Islam and called for another ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, singing “let your village burn”.

“I wanna kill you all. All, all. One by one, F**king Muslims … trash of Israel.

An Israeli settler curses at Palestinians at a Flag Day march in occupied Al-Quds. pic.twitter.com/UOvJptixAZ

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) May 19, 2023

A female Israeli settler verbally assaults Palestinians during Israel’s provocative ‘Flag March’ in the old city of occupied Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/G6VWBxrlXf

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) May 18, 2023

Acting on an order that was given back in January by Israeli security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, Israeli occupation police forces arrested and attacked Jerusalemites holding up the Palestinian flag. Ben Gvir has banned people displaying the flag of Palestine, which he called on Twitter the “PLO flag”. Israel’s security minister said that the Palestinian flag “shows identification with a terrorist organization”, however, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, or PLO, is not actively considered to be a terrorist organisation by Tel Aviv, as the Israeli government signed a declaration with the PLO back in 1993. The agreement signed between Israel and the PLO created the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is currently based in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The PA works in collaboration with the Israeli military to fight against Palestinian resistance groups and protect Israelis, but even this isn’t enough for the extremist security minister.

Israeli Knesset members, from the ruling Likud Party, also decided to storm al-Aqsa mosque along with thousands of fanatical settlers that flew Israeli flags inside the Mosque’s courtyard. These events were not condemned at all by the Israeli government, in fact they approved the march and carried out an arrest campaign in the weeks before the riots to prevent Palestinians from organizing any counter-demonstrations, while introducing some of the strictest security measures in order to allow the racist settlers to chant in favor of genocide and assault random Palestinians. Israel’s security minister, along with the minister of finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and even Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, all spoke at, and supported, the Israeli far-right lynch mob riots. The extremists even raised flags showing the Jewish Third Temple on a banner, with clear indications written in Arabic that suggest they are going to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque and build a synagogue there.

How did the so-called “anti-racist” virtue signalling CNN cover this racist march? They ran a headline that read “Contentious Flag March attracts thousands of Israelis to Jerusalem’s Old City”. What about Reuters? “Israel’s ‘Flag March’ in Jerusalem rattles Palestinians”. But the BBC must have been objective, they do have a special “verify” team now to tackle misinformation after all, however they ran the explosive headline stating “Jerusalem: Journalists attacked as Israeli nationalists march in Old City”. Just imagine for a moment that anyone was to march in a Western nation chanting about killing all Jews, demolishing their holy sites, ethnically cleansing them, and attacking random Jewish bystanders. Then add the support of a government to those actions.

These people are parodies of themselves & I’m not sure if they as pretend journalists even realize it. This is pathetically ridiculous & I think nearly everyone feels this way. Yet many still use garbage like this (those in the #TwoPartyIllusion) for playing team sport politics. https://t.co/6m3WoH0o1N pic.twitter.com/l0bIh3LNfR

— LastAmericanVagabond (@TLAVagabond) May 22, 2023

For a real world comparison, when the Unite the Right white supremacy groups chanted in 2017, “Jews will not replace us” and then President Donald Trump said that there was “blame on both sides”, the Western corporate media went insane — they still reference this event to this day. Imagine for a moment that these white nationalist groups stormed synagogues with confederate flags, attacked businesses and random ethnic minorities, all while the police protected them and arrested anyone who dared shout back at them. Then imagine that Donald Trump and other members of his government had spoken at and participated in organizing this. Would we see similar headlines from CNN, the BBC and Reuters, with other outlets refusing to even cover it at all? No, because it would not be difficult to tell what just happened, and yet this obvious double standard is often on full display in western corporate media. 

A day later, Itamar Ben Gvir decided he would again storm al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a move which provoked an urgent United Nations Security Council meeting back in January, also complicating the Israeli-Jordanian relationship. Despite condemnations, from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan, against the provocations inside the Old City of Jerusalem, the Israeli government are continuing to permit settler incursions into the area. The next extremist settler march is planned for this Friday and again risks an armed confrontation with the Palestinian resistance groups that are based inside the besieged Gaza Strip.

On top of this, big-tech has just participated in a racist attack on Palestinian identity and culture. Spotify, Apple Play, and Deezer, among others, all removed a Palestinian song by one of the most famous singers in the Arab World, named Mohammed Assaf. This occurred after anti-Palestinian racists signed onto a protest letter that declared the song to be “anti-Semitic”. The song, called Dammi Falasteeni, or in English “my blood is Palestinian”, makes no reference to Jewish people, Zionism, or Israel, but is a popular dance song that speaks about being proud of Palestinian identity. Again, these platforms have all adopted the fake stance that they will not engage in racism, however, they have agreed to remove a song on the basis of it celebrating an ethnic minority group. This proves that these big tech giants are not anti-racist and have no position to be lecturing the public on discrimination, because they are themselves complicit in backing an Apartheid regime and its attempts to erase the existence of an entire people.

One of the most trusted Western media outlets, Reuters, also recently ran a story on May 22, in which they published misinformation on a potential war crime committed by Israeli forces against an unarmed Palestinian in the West Bank. During the early hours of Monday morning, Israeli occupation forces committed a large-scale raid on the Balata refugee camp, near Nablus. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers participated in the raid, which had resulted in the demolition of three civilian homes, after the occupation forces failed to arrest a number of Palestinian fighters. In addition to blowing up three homes, they also gunned down an unarmed man named Mohammad Bilal Zeitoun, which was recorded on camera.

The Reuters piece is entitled “Three Palestinian militants killed in Israeli raid in West Bank”, however, only two of those killed were actually involved with any Palestinian armed group. Considering the reputation of Reuters as a network, with it even running a page on its website that is completely dedicated to “fact checking”, there can be no excuse for this error that is yet to be corrected.

Reuters writes: “The Palestinian health ministry confirmed three deaths. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group associated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, claimed the three men as members. A statement from Fatah named them as Fathi Jihad Rizq, 30, Abdullah Yousef Abu Hamdan, 24, and Mohammad Bilal Zeitoun, 32.”

The problem with this is that Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades did not claim all three men as militants belonging to their armed groups. While Fathi Jihad Rizq and Abdullah Yousef Abu Hamdan were both active members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Mohammad Bilal Zeitoun was only a member of the Fatah political party and was a non-armed activist. There was a well circulated video that shows the 32 year old walking down a street, before being surprised by the sight of a group of armed Israeli soldiers, causing him to run away. He was shot as he was fleeing the scene, unarmed, and died as a result of his gunshot wounds. This was a clear-cut case of Israeli soldiers shooting dead an unarmed civilian who was fleeing with his back turned to the soldiers — he was not “shot as he approached a soldier”, as the Reuters article dishonestly describes it. Anyone can see the video for themselves, which is why the wording in the article is puzzling, it attempts to make it seem like the victim was at fault and suggests he approached a single soldier, which was not at all what happened.

At best, Reuters may have been lazy and just looked at a few telegram posts. Yet the problem is that they never went back to correct the story, despite being well aware of the video. Reuters astonishingly claimed the video could not be verified, despite having countless ways for this to be verified locally. The video is authentic, and it has been verified on the ground by a number of Palestinian journalists and media outlets. It is this sort of willfully lazy journalism (assuming this was not deliberate misinformation) that completely discredits the idea of the corporate media holding any position of authority. What this also does, is remove the context and attempt to paint this as a “clash”, when  in reality this was an invasion of the largest refugee camp in the West Bank, located in a Palestinian controlled area under illegal occupation, during which Israeli forces killed an unarmed man, arbitrarily blew up three homes, according to residents, and were confronted by local resistance fighters.