A great deal has been written about Gazans' resourcefulness in face of incredibly challenging circumstances. But no one has ever put their finger on this particular stroke of Gazan ingenuity: The coastal territory appears to be the only place in the world with a collapsing fishing industry that nevertheless manages to more than double its catch. Even The New York Times' Nov. 27 article ("Amid Israeli Blockade on Gaza, a Fishing Fleet Limps Along"), in which Raja Abdulrahim describes the Gaza fishing industry like a fish out of water gasping for air, collapsing under Israel's suffocating blockade, fails to detect this unprecedented ingenuity at play.

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"Not far from the edge of the port in the Gaza Strip lies its boat cemetery: Two rows of beached fishing vessels that even Gazan ingenuity cannot salvage," Abdulrahim laments about the ailing sector which is said to be in or near its death throes. "This is a war on our livelihoods," she quotes a local fisherman saying, who is "standing on the bow of one of his family's boats, which has been in the cemetery for years." The graphically described emotive story that she wants readers to buy hook, like and sinker is exactly as her tweet says: "For Gaza's fishermen, Israel's blockade has prevented import of materials needed to repair boats and maintain a functioning fishing fleet. It has damaged a vital but shrinking part of the economy in the coastal enclave."

Introducing readers to the forlorn boat cemetery, she explains, "The boats began piling up in Gaza 15 years ago after Israel, aided by Egypt, imposed a land, air and sea blockade on the small Palestinian coastal enclave in 2007." The blockade, she says, means that fishermen can't obtain critical supplies like motors, propellers, fiberglass and more needed for their trade, leading boat owners to abandon their broken, useless vessels in the ship cemetery. "Gazan and industry officials warn that if Israeli restrictions are not eased, the Strip's fishing sector could completely collapse in the next few years as more and more boats are removed from service," Abdulrahim claims.

"The fishing sector now works at 50% capacity and every day it is decreasing," The New York Times reporter quotes Jehad Salah, head of the fisheries directorate in Gaza, saying. "When they ban the equipment needed for maintenance, then they are forcing people to leave this industry."

But happily, as it turns out, Gazan ingenuity is alive and well. Even as the fishing sector is "decreasing" every day, it catches more and more fish. Indeed, according to figures published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, by all counts Gaza's fishing industry over the last 15 years has thrived during its alleged "collapse." In 2005, two years before the blockade was imposed, 707 fishing boats were in Gaza. By 2019, a dozen years into the blockade, that figure more than doubled to 1,739 boats. Some skeptics might argue that official Palestinian statistics on Gaza fishing boats or fishermen are not a fair measure of the actual situation. Perhaps, they say, desperate, dirt-poor fishermen continue registering additional broken-down boats that they cannot use due to lack of parts.

What about other indicators of the sector's health, despite its reported collapse? The amount of fish caught, for example, is surely an accurate reflection of the industry's actual vitality or lack thereof. And here too the figures show remarkable growth, despite the industry's purported demise. In 2009 (see Table 3), Gaza fishermen caught 1,524,913 fish. After another decade of a supposedly suffocating Israeli blockade, that figure climbed to 3,943,369 in 2019.

Among readers hooked by Abdulrahim's account on the destruction of the Gaza fishing industry was Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth, who tweeted, "Israel's punitive blockade of Gaza is far far broader than needed to combat violent attacks. It is a form of collective punishment against the people of Gaza (not just Hamas) that, for example, is destroying Gaza's vital fishing industry." CAMERA has appealed to The New York Times to cover this unique form of Gaza ingenuity in which a collapsing fishing industry has managed to more than double its catch despite a "devastating" Israeli blockade. Stay tuned for any updates.

Featured on JNS.org, the article was originally published by CAMERA.

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CNN is highly diligent when it comes to tracking the Palestinians' most deadly days. Last month's headline was "At least 4 Palestinians killed, dozens wounded in one of year's deadliest Israeli West Bank raids." On Wednesday, CNN conscientiously kept up the count, with the headline "Six killed by Israeli forces in the deadliest day for Palestinians this year."

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It's dramatic and newsworthy information. And it's also highly misleading if certain contextual information – such as the fact that those killed were terrorists – is ignored or downplayed.

Indeed, when it comes to the identity of the Palestinian casualties, the news network's reporting is suddenly not so fastidious. To the contrary, the same journalists who so carefully report the numbers of Palestinian casualties also bury their violent activity. By highlighting the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire while obscuring the fact that all were engaged in terrorist activity or actually attacking Israeli forces when they were killed, CNN provides great cheer and sustenance to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who falsely charges Israel with "war crimes."

Thus, at no point does yesterday's article by Abeer Salman and Hadas Gold make clear that the five Palestinians killed in Nablus were all members of the Lion's Den terror organization. Here's how the story begins:

"At least six Palestinians were killed by the Israeli military on Tuesday, making it the deadliest day of violence in the occupied West Bank this year, CNN analysis of official Palestinian data showed."Five were killed in the old city of Nablus during an Israeli raid there, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. A sixth person was killed in Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah, by Israeli live fire, the Ministry added, when Palestinian protestors took to the streets in response to the Nablus military operation.

"The raid in Nablus also left some 20 people injured, the ministry said.

"Israel said it was targeting Lion's Den, a new militant group which emerged in Nablus this year and has targeted Israeli soldiers, killing at least two."

Notably, the CNN reporters don't even mention Lion's Den until the fourth paragraph, and only touch on the identity of the casualties in the sixth, saying that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid "added that the head of the Lion's Den militant group and other militants were assassinated in the raid."

CNN likewise buries the fact that the Israeli military targeted the organization's bomb factory. Also in the lowly sixth paragraph, CNN's Salman and Gold quote Lapid: the "terrorist laboratory of Lion's Den was severely damaged."

A comparison to coverage at other media outlets exposes the gravity of CNN's strenuous efforts to bury the Lion's Den, and the resulting false suggestion that raging Israeli soldiers are killing off peaceful Palestinian civilians.

Unlike CNN, The New York Times places the Lions' Dean front and center in its story headlined "Deadly Israeli Raid Targets New Palestinian Militia." The Times' Isabel Kershner begins:

"Israeli forces carried out a major raid against a Palestinian militia in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Tuesday, killing a leader of the group and four other men, according to members of the militia and Palestinian officials.

"The predawn raid targeted the Nablus-based militia known as the Lion's Den, which emerged this year and does not answer to any of the established Palestinian factions. Many Palestinians have championed the group's fighters as popular heroes, in part because Israel's occupation of the territory has dragged on for more than a half-century and become increasingly entrenched.

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"Israel has blamed the Lion's Den for a rise in shootings that it says are aimed at its troops and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including one that killed a soldier this month. It said that it had killed the group's leader, Wadie al-Houh, in an exchange of gunfire, adding that he was the main target of the raid and was responsible for producing bombs and obtaining weapons for the group."

Like The New York Times, the Associated Press also carries a headline tipping readers off to the basic fact that the Palestinian casualties were not innocent victims: "Israeli troops raid gunmen's hideout; 5 Palestinians killed." Indeed, AP's straightforward first sentence reports: "Israeli forces raided a stronghold of an armed group in the occupied West Bank's second-largest city, blowing up a bomb lab and engaging in a firefight, the military said Tuesday. Five Palestinians were killed and 20 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry."

The Times and AP reasonably carried out their journalistic responsibilities in covering the Lion's Den, the lead player in yesterday's story. CNN, for its part, lent a protective hand to the Lion's Den, as diligently as a vigilant lioness watching over her charges.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by CAMERA.

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Like the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) rockets that careened off course during Operation Breaking Dawn and tragically snuffed out the lives of hapless Gaza residents, ABC's coverage of those casualties was a colossal failure.

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"The [Palestinian terror] attack [in Jerusalem] comes just a week after a ceasefire ended some of the worst fighting in the region in a year. Israeli air strikes killing 49 Palestinians, including 17 children, and the Islamic Jihad militant group firing more than 1,000 rockets at Israel," ABC correspondent Ines de la Cuetara falsely reported, blaming Israel for all Palestinian deaths in Gaza, ignoring the fact that a substantial number were killed by errant Palestinian rockets (emphasis added).

While some media outlets like NBC and Reuters labored to either obscure or cast doubt on the fact that misfired PIJ rockets were responsible for a significant number of the fatalities, ABC's coverage goes one step further with its egregious error of commission.

As the Associated Press recently reported: "Close to one-third of the Palestinians who died in the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza militants may have been killed by errant rockets fired by the Palestinian side, according to an Israeli military assessment that appears consistent with independent reporting by the Associated Press."

Other sources give different figures for the percentage of the 49 Gazans killed by PIJ rockets. For instance, Haaretz's Amira Hass, a veteran critic of Israel, reported Sunday, "Botched launches of Palestinian rockets killed 19 non-combatants, including 12 children." She provides a detailed account of each fatality: their name and the date, place and circumstances of death. A subsequent Haaretz report then said Israeli defense officials speaking off the record acknowledged an Israeli strike was responsible for five deaths on Aug. 7 in Jabaliya, thereby revising Haaretz's figure to 14 Palestinians killed by errant rockets.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center identifies 11 Gazans killed by Palestinian rockets. The Israeli military believes 12 Gaza children were killed by such rockets, according to The Times of Israel.

Thus, while there is uncertainty about the precise number of Palestinians killed by misfired PIJ rockets, there is no uncertainty that the failed attacks against Israel ended up taking numerous Palestinian lives.

CAMERA's Israel office communicated this information to ABC early on Aug. 15. Nevertheless, a second ABC journalist, Reena Roy, repeated the same falsehood later that day using wording identical to de la Cuetara's, though she reduced the number of Palestinians allegedly killed by Israeli airstrikes (48 instead of 49):

The attack comes just a week after a ceasefire ended some of the worst fighting in the region in the year, Israeli airstrikes killing 48 Palestinians, including 17 children and the Islamic militant group firing more than 1,000 rockets at Israel.

CAMERA continues to urge ABC to broadcast on-air corrections on the programs in which the false charge was reported and make clear that a significant portion of the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza were killed by PIJ rockets aimed at Israel that veered off course, and that Israel is not responsible for all 49 (or 48) deaths.

Originally published by CAMERA, this article was reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The Los Angeles Times has outflanked CNN by adopting the most fantastical, journalistically-challenged narrative of the unsolved fatal shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in a firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists.

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Facing a shortage of objective evidence, CNN's farcical "investigation" relied on the feelings of biased eyewitnesses. On that basis, it concluded that Israeli troops deliberately killed Abu Akleh.

Relying on nothing at all, The Los Angeles Times has decided to publish the even more unhinged libel that the Israeli government played a role in Abu Akleh's killing, akin to the Saudi monarchy's involvement in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a report about US President Joe Biden's appearance at the Summit of the Americas, Times reporters Tracy Wilkinson and Courtney Subramanian wrote, "Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, completing a round of speeches, addressed a symposium for student journalists to defend press freedoms. But he quickly found himself battling back difficult questions, like why the US deals with governments that allegedly kill journalists while condemning others."

Seven paragraphs later, the reporters pointed to "Israel and Saudi Arabia, two governments involved in recent killings of journalists."

"In one case, a well-known Palestinian journalist was shot and killed during an Israeli raid on a West Bank city; the case has not been resolved, but some Palestinians blame Israel for the killing," they wrote.

"In the other case, a prominent Saudi journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey, and US intelligence officials believe Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the killing," the reporters added.

It should be superfluous to point out that while "some Palestinians blame Israel for the killing," as the article accurately notes, this does not amount to proof of Israeli government involvement. Indeed, so long as the Palestinian Authority continues to refuse to relinquish the bullet that killed Abu Akleh for ballistic analysis, it cannot even be established whether an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian gunman fired the fatal shot.

Moreover, if a ballistics test did one day establish that an Israeli soldier fired the gun, how would that implicate the Israeli government? A bullet could have ricocheted, the soldier might have shot Abu Akleh by mistake or something else could have gone wrong. Even in the highly unlikely case that the soldier deliberately disobeyed orders and targeted a journalist, this would still not establish Israeli government involvement.

Indeed, how would the Times even begin to prove that the soldier received government orders to murder Abu Akleh? Was there a cabinet meeting at which the government approved the killing? If not, what exactly constituted Israeli government involvement? There are no remotely plausible answers to these questions.

The Associated Press, Agence France Presse and the Guardian have all commendably corrected themselves after reporting as fact the unsubstantiated allegation that Israeli soldiers killed Abu Akleh. Why hasn't The Los Angeles Times corrected the even more outrageous claim that the Israeli government played a role in the killing? And if the Times is going to stand by that fabrication, what's next?

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The Times' allegation is as tethered to reality as the following make-believe scenario: The Israeli government was involved in the murders of Israeli civilians in Bnai Brak, Tel Aviv and Beersheva, in order to establish the pretext for a counter-terror operation that would provide the opportunity to knock off public enemy, number one Shireen Abu Akleh.

CAMERA contacted senior Times editors last week and pointed out that—as their own reporters acknowledged—Abu Akleh's case has not been solved. Despite this, the Times has failed to retract their baseless accusation, suggesting that the paper has drifted into full-blown conspiracy theory. Is this the kind of thing that passes as "press freedom" at The Los Angeles Times? Freedom from the facts?

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Israel office of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Featured on JNS.org, this article was originally published by CAMERA.

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Numerous international news headlines that covered the violence at Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh's funeral Friday withhold key information, which revealed more about their own agenda than the day's tumultuous events.

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"Israeli police beat mourners at funeral of slain Palestinian journalist," was the Reuters headline.

"Israeli police beat pallbearers at journalist's funeral," said the Associated Press.

"Outcry after Israel police beat mourners at journalist funeral," echoed Agence France Presse.

"Israeli police attack funeral of slain Palestinian journalist," said The New York Times.

"Israeli forces attack mourners carrying casket of dead Al Jazeera journalist," was the unexceptional Independent headline.

Casual readers who do not glance beyond the headlines were sent a clear message that unprovoked Israeli police attacked peaceful Palestinian mourners at a funeral procession.

But that's not the truth. Video documentation of the funeral demonstrates that some of the Palestinians gathered outside the hospital where Shireen Abu Akleh's body was held prior to the funeral procession initiated the violence and attacked Israeli police.

The articles by the two aforementioned British media outlets – Sky and The Independent – contained not one word about the Palestinian attacks on the police. The other media outlets, however, did include references to the attacks. They attributed the information to the police themselves and buried it deep in the article. The lower information appears, the less audience and exposure it gets.

Reuters, for instance, reported in its article's eighth and ninth paragraphs:

Israeli police said a group of Palestinians outside the hospital, whom they described as rioters, had begun throwing stones at officers.

"The policemen were forced to act," they added.

The AP, for its part, reserved its reference to the Palestinian violence for the 13th paragraph:

Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting "nationalist incitement," ignored calls to stop and threw stones at them. "The policemen were forced to act," police said. They issued a video in which a commander outside the hospital warns the crowd that police will come in if they don't stop their incitement and "nationalist songs."

AFP fared somewhat better. It reported in its fifth paragraph: "Israeli authorities said six arrests were made after mourners had thrown 'rocks and glass bottles.'" Notably, "rocks and glass bottles" appeared in scare quotes, although the information had already been attributed ("Israeli authorities said"), which constitutes a double attribution. Given that videos confirm the information, attribution to the Israeli police is not merely superfluous, but signals to readers that the information is not to be believed.

The New York Times, which sets the tone and content for coverage about Israel and the Palestinians in the international media, went farther, and called into question the throwing of rocks and glass bottles. It did so by repeated (three times) emphasis on the the lobbing of plastic bottles. In a misleading description of the videos of the incident, The Times wrote, beginning with the fifth paragraph:

The violence at the funeral procession lasted for roughly a minute, and followed a tense standoff between riot police and mourners in which at least one empty plastic bottle was thrown in the direction of the police.

The police then suddenly advanced on the coffin, swinging batons and aiming kicks at the mourners. As the officers advanced, mourners threw projectiles, including what appeared to be a stick, and officers threw what appeared to be stun and smoke grenades.

In a statement, the Israeli police said they "took enforcement action" after some mourners began chanting "nationalist incitement" and after officers had given the crowd a warning. As the coffin was carried out of the hospital, police said, they were "forced to act" because "rioters began throwing stones toward the policemen."

The police later distributed video showing an empty plastic bottle and two other bottle-shaped objects being thrown in the direction of the officers in the moments before they advanced on the pallbearers, and a separate undated video showing several stones on the ground. There was no clear indication of when or how the stones had reached that spot. (Emphasis added.)

Later in the article, The Times sums up what it presents as the sequence of violence, and emphasizes again that "at least one empty plastic bottle" was thrown prior to the police charge.

The Times' fixation on an "empty plastic bottle" despite the fact that shattered glass is audible in video documentation recalls the case of a certain notorious "boy scout" knife. In 2015, after a Palestinian terrorist charged Israelis waving a knife, The Times reported:

"He was not carrying a knife, I saw everything," a [Palestinian] witness insisted. "If they show a knife, they planted it."

The Israeli police soon published a photo of a pocketknife, the kind Boy Scouts use, next to the slain teenager.

In fact, the butterfly knife in question is associated with martial arts, not the Boy Scouts, and the paper was compelled to publish a correction that acknowledged, "An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the knife in the Israeli police photo. It is a butterfly knife, which is traditionally used as a weapon. … The knife pictured is not typically 'the kind Boy Scouts use.'"

From dangerous butterfly knives to wholesome Boy Scout knives, from hazardous glass bottles to harmless empty plastic bottles, the agenda behind reports that obscure or downplay Palestinian violence is clear.

Indeed, in an alternate reality in which news coverage is driven by events as opposed to narrative, headlines might have stated: "Palestinian rioters at journalist's funeral attack Israeli troops." A longer and more complete headline would say: "Police forcefully respond to violent rioting at journalist's funeral." Then there's the third route, which Haaretz chose: "Clashes With Police Erupt at Palestinian Journalist's Funeral Procession."

While Haaretz's formulation failed to convey the chronology – first the Palestinian violence, then the police's forceful response – it nevertheless communicated that clashes took place with violence on both sides, and thus provided a more accurate depiction than the foreign media's clams of Israeli police attacking peaceful mourners.

Like polluting empty plastic bottles strewn about, international media headlines devoid of key facts litter the information landscape and diminish public enlightenment.

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Israel office of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

 Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

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A lot can be concealed – or revealed – by a footnote. It all depends on whether the reader bothers to check it.

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For example, a Nov. 10 press release posted by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner ("UN experts alarmed by rise in settler violence in occupied Palestinian territory") begins:

"UN human rights experts* have expressed alarm at the rising rate of violence directed by Israeli settlers towards Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"'Settler violence has always been an extremely disturbing feature of the Israeli occupation,' said the experts. 'But in 2021, we are witnessing the highest recorded levels of violence in recent years and more severe incidents.'"

The asterisk next to the words "UN human rights experts" refers those who bother with it to the following qualification at the bottom of the press release:

"Michael Lynk, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. Jelena Aparac (Chair-Rapporteur), Ravindran Daniel, Chris Kwaja, Sorcha MacLeod, Working Group on the use of mercenaries.

"The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity."

In other words, despite a headline shouting about "UN experts," a careful read reveals that the United Nations distances itself, albeit practically under the radar, from the so-called experts, noting they are "independent."

However, though the footnote maintains that special rapporteurs are independent, Lynk has a long history of anti-Israel activity. In 2016, UN Watch revealed that Lynk "plays a leadership role in numerous Arab lobby groups, including CEPAL, which promotes 'Annual Israeli Apartheid Week' events; signs anti-Israel petitions; calls to prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes; addresses 'One State' conferences that seek to eliminate Israel; and argues that 'the solution' to 'the problem' must go back to Israel's very creation in 1948, which he calls 'the start of ethnic cleansing.'"

So much for the "UN experts."

But that's not the only deception achieved here by the UN's burying of key information. Without providing any additional details, the same UN press release makes the alarming statement: "Four Palestinians were killed by settlers this year."

The press release appears to attribute that figure to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Those determined to hunt down the facts about the four reported fatalities arrive at OCHA's "Data on casualties."

For whatever reason, however, OCHA conceals its data from the public, releasing it only to pre-approved representatives of "humanitarian agencies." A request from this researcher to OCHA for access to the full data went unanswered.

What exactly is OCHA hiding? Releasing details about the four fatalities – their names, dates, and locations – would enable independent researchers and journalists to cross-check and verify the information.

But even OCHA's partial data raises serious questions. Here's where the UN's propensity for burying critical information again comes into play.

Significantly, the tenth paragraph of "Definitions and clarifications," appearing under the selectively revealed data from the database, states:

"Incidents involving Israeli settlers: includes attacks and alleged attacks by Israeli settlers, as well as incidents involving access prevention, and clashes following the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian communities. It also includes Palestinians killed or injured during attacks or alleged attacks they perpetrated against Israeli settlers."

In other words, omitted in the alarmist press release about alleged rising settler violence is the fact that the supposed victims who paid the ultimate price of settler attacks – "four Palestinians were killed by settlers this year" – were possibly the assailants.

Indeed, the data that is accessible allows users to select "Settler-related incidents" under "context," revealing four Palestinians killed. Thus, while OCHA states that four Palestinians were killed in "incidents involving settlers," including incidents in which Palestinians attacked settlers and were subsequently killed, the UN press release counts these assailants as casualties of "rising settler violence."

It gets worse. Journalists, apparently relying on the press release – (after all, press releases are for the benefit of journalists) – parroted the deceptive figure without undertaking any independent fact-checking.

The Guardian's Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum, in particular, got carried away, charging: "The UN recorded 410 attacks by settlers against Palestinian civilians and property in the West Bank in the first 10 months of 2021, including four murders, up from 358 in 2020, and 335 in 2019."

CNN also fell for the press release's falsehood, originally stating: "Four Palestinians have been killed in settler violence, OCHA says."

Following CAMERA's communication with CNN pointing out that OCHA itself acknowledges that its figures include Palestinians killed as they carried out attacks, editors slightly amended the text to state: "According to the UN organization's database of incidents, at least three Palestinians were shot dead by settlers in 2021." In addition, a note appended to the bottom of the article now states: "The original article has been updated with new information about violent attacks in the West Bank."

While CNN's new language is technically correct, it remains grossly misleading as it still fails to note that even according to OCHA, the data includes cases in which settlers killed Palestinian assailants in self-defense.

CNN's reference to "at least three" indicates that the media outlet received access to the blocked data and that it is not confident that the fourth was killed by settlers, even in self-defense.

Without access to OCHA's details about the alleged victims – who are perhaps assailants – a look at the detailed data provided by B'Tselem, an left-wing organization that provides detailed data on both Israeli and Palestinian casualties, is instructive.

B'Tselem's database, updated through Nov. 30, 2021 – in other words, it covers a longer period than the Nov. 10 UN press release – enables researchers to view detailed information on Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Significantly, over this period, B'Tselem lists two – not four – Palestinian casualties.

They are:

"Khaled Maher Saleh Nofal

"33 years old resident of Ras Karkar, Ramallah and al-Bira District, killed on February 5, 2021, in Sde Ephraim farm, Ramallah and al-Bira District, live ammunition. Additional information: … Fatally shot in the head and back by a settler and a settlement outpost security guard in circumstances unknown to B'Tselem. According to the military, he was unarmed. Israel held his body until 26 March 2021, when it was returned to his family.

"Ahed 'Abd a-Rahman Mahmoud Ekhlil

25 years old resident of Beit Ummar, Hebron District, killed on January 5, 2021, in Gush Etzion, Bethlehem District, live ammunition. Additional information: Wounded by a settlement security coordinator's gunfire at Gush Etzion junction after, according to the military, he had thrown a knife during suspect apprehension procedure. Succumbed to his wounds shortly afterward. Israel is holding his body."

Thus, B'Tselem's data points to two Palestinian assailants killed in 2021 – one was trying to break into a settler's home, the other had attempted to stab the settlement security coordinator – not four victims of settler violence.

In short, the completely dishonest UN press release manipulated secretive and unverifiable UN data, prompting entirely baseless media reports about Palestinians killed by settlers.

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While denying and downplaying Jews' presence in their ancient homeland has long been a mainstay of Arab anti-Israel propaganda, at times this particularly noxious type of delegitimization of the Jewish state also finds a platform in international media coverage.

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Curiously, it's precisely media items supposedly about Jewish history that tend to minimize the historical connection between the Jews and their ancient land.

For example, The New York Times in 2015 infamously called into question whether the ancient Jewish Temples were located on the Temple Mount ("Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem's Holiest Place"). In fact, serious archeologists agree with the indisputable evidence of the Temple's location at the site, and The Times subsequently published a lengthy editor's note.

In a 2019 feature titled "Six periods in Jewish history," Agence France Presse reported, unbelievably, that Jerusalem became a city sacred to Jews during the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. In reality, Jerusalem held sacred status in Jerusalem for some 1,500 years prior to the Muslim conquest, as the media outlet was compelled to state in its correction.

Last week, the Times again flunked on the facts regarding Jews in their homeland during antiquity. The Sept. 11 article examines lessons for present-day Israel from "Legend of Destruction," an animated film about the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Jerusalem in the Roman conquest against the backdrop of internal disunity ("For a Fractured Israel, a Film Offers Ominous Lessons From Ancient Past").

Leaving aside whether Israelis have absorbed the lessons about the past concerning unity and civil discourse, it's clear that The New York Times has not learned its own lessons.

In fact, the Kingdom of Judah was extant for more than 300 years, from the time of the collapse of the United Kingdom of Israel in 922 BCE until the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE. (The United Kingdom lasted for approximately a century, starting around 1020 BCE).

The northern Kingdom of Israel, the other half of what had been the United Kingdom until it fell apart in 922 BCE, lasted for approximately 200 years until the Neo-Assyrian empire's conquest.

Besides these three separate Jewish kingdoms (two of which were contemporaneous), there was also the Hasmonean dynasty, which achieved autonomy from the Seleucids in 147 BCE and independence in 129 BCE. Their kingdom lasted some 80 years.

Thus, four Jewish kingdoms predated the modern Jewish state, and the longest one lasted more than three centuries, not 80 years.

By reporting that the longest Jewish rule in Israel fell in fewer than 100 years, the Times minimizes the historic Jewish connection to ancient Israel, eroding the legitimacy of the present Jewish state.

Tellingly, from the otherwise fascinating and informative article about what looks to be an intriguing film, The New York Times selected to highlight on Twitter that singular sentence with the falsehood underreporting the long Jewish sovereignty in the ancient land of Israel.

CAMERA contacted the Times to request a correction, making clear that the longest Jewish sovereignty in ancient Israel extended beyond three centuries, and that it was one of four Jewish sovereignties in antiquity.

The Times declined to correct, responding that the article's "intention" was to reference the "two periods when there was both unity and sovereignty," supposedly the United Kingdom of Israel (in which Saul, David and Solomon ruled), and also the Hasmonean period. (As for unity during the Hasmonean period, that too is a total fallacy.)

An 80-year lifespan for ancient Jewish sovereignty provides a tidy touch to the article's narrative about fractious present-day Israel learning from the dangers of the fallen kingdoms of antiquity. The passage in question suggests that the 73-year-old Jewish state likewise totters perilously close to the abyss of expiration:

"Israeli leaders have increasingly drawn on the lessons from Jewish history, noting that the Jews enjoyed two previous periods of sovereignty in the land in ancient times, but both lasted only about 70 or 80 years – a poignant reminder for the modern state that, founded in 1948, has passed the 70-year mark."

As for the paper's justification for refusing to conform with the facts, whether or not the article intended for the 80 years to refer specifically to periods of sovereignty and unity, that's not what it says.

How many Times readers are familiar with Israel's complex ancient history and would understand from the sentence that really, the author meant "sovereignty and unity"?

Since when does intent (which is in the journalist's head, and which readers cannot possibly divine) take precedence over language which informs – or misinforms – readers?

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The Associated Press, a leading news agency whose stated mission is "advancing the power of facts" with "world-class journalism," on Monday appeared to have taken a page out of the open letter signed this month by hundreds of journalists against ethical journalism.

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The letter signatories seek to replace factual reporting with a partisan, anti-Israel agenda falsely painting Israel as a criminal, apartheid state and Palestinians as blameless victims of Israeli oppression ("From journalists to journalists: Why reporting on Palestine has to change").

"We have failed our audiences with a narrative that obscures the most fundamental aspects of the story: Israel's military occupation and its system of apartheid," charge the media crusaders. "We are calling on journalists to tell the full, contextualized truth without fear or favor, to recognize that obfuscating Israel's oppression of Palestinians fails this industry's own objectivity standards." The "contextualized truth," of course, is Israel's alleged apartheid nature and military occupation.

AP heeded the call, on Monday funneling information through the prism of military occupation, discarding inconvenient facts that failed to serve the cause of "the Palestinian people," as the letter puts it.

The closing lines of an otherwise fair and objective report by Laurie Kellman, Matthew Lee and Ellen Knickmeyer ("Blinken, Lapid meet in Rome amid reset US-Israel relations") editorializes:

"Biden has moved to reverse Netanyahu-backed Trump policies that alienated the Palestinians, and the administration has said Israelis and Palestinians should enjoy equal measures of security and prosperity.

"But the US has yet to explain how it intends to bring that about without ending Israel's half-century military occupation of the West Bank, its blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza and discriminatory policies in Jerusalem that fueled a spring of unrest."

This is an extremely partisan formulation. It completely ignores the following obstacles to security: Palestinian demands for a so-called "right of return" of refugees and their millions of descendants, which fair observers understand as an existential threat to the only Jewish state; Palestinian rejectionism of Israel as a Jewish state and the consistent Palestinians rejection of offer after offer of a Palestinian state alongside Israel; Palestinian denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land, including its most holy site in Jerusalem; government-backed incitement calling for attacks on Israeli civilians; Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists and their families; Palestinian investment in terror infrastructure such as rockets and tunnels at the expense of investment in its civilians; Palestinian rocket-firing on Israeli civilians and arson attacks on southern Israel; Hamas camps that brainwash a generation of kids to admire suicide bombers and other terrorists; and so on.

All of these points feature Palestinian actions as obstacles to conflict resolution. Every single one of them counters the "full, contextualized truth" as the media crusaders, including one  anonymous AP journalist, see it, and thus, they believe, have no place in reporting on behalf of the Palestinian narrative.

"Expand the reach of factual reporting," promises the AP, even as it suppresses information contradicting the favored anti-Israel narrative.

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"The free exchange of information has been replaced with the free expungement of inconvenient information," wrote this media critic last week in The New York Daily News, weighing on the open letter's heavily partisan agenda as anathema to ethical journalism.

"Label advocacy and commentary," exhorts the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics. Turn news into advocacy, counter the unethical practitioners. And the Associated Press, quietly laying aside its longstanding commitment to factual reporting, obliged.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

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When it comes to coverage of Israel by The New York Times, literally anything goes. The latest case in point is this week's completely bogus caption about an Israeli election billboard alongside an article meant to explain the various campaign commercials in the close and heated race.

The caption in question, on page 3 of the April 7 International Edition, states:

"In Tel Aviv, a Blue and White Party billboard, left, competing with a campaign ad for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing allies. Polls show that the race is close."

It sits below a four-column, top of the page color photograph of a billboard depicting, on the left side, the leadership of the challenging Blue and White party, from left: Moshe Ya'alon, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid and Gabi Ashkenazi. All but Lapid are former army chiefs; Lapid is a former finance minister. Their images are framed in blue and white, and the slogan underneath states in white: "The nation of Israel lives – Blue and White."

Immediately to the right are four more figures framed in yellow and gray. They are (from left) Itamar Ben-Gvir of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Betzalel Smotrich of the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi party, and Otzma Yehudit's Michael Ben-Ari, whom the Supreme Court banned from running in the election on the grounds of anti-Arab incitement. The slogan below these four men, in yellow, states, "Kahane lives," the rallying cry of the outlawed, extremist Kach Party, banned from the Knesset in 1988 for inciting racism.

In the accompanying article, "In Israeli campaign ads, anything goes," bureau chief David Halbfinger writes:

"Israeli politics is not subtle. … Just take a look at the commercials targeting voters on social media as the election on Tuesday draws near. They are in Hebrew and Arabic but much of what is shown in the ads requires little or no translation."

Actually, it seems the confounded New York Times editors were in sore need of translators to decode the not so subtle billboard. For starters, the photograph shows just one billboard, and not, as the caption falsely claims, two competing ads. As is readily apparent to any Israeli observer – and as should be apparent to Times journalists tasked with explaining the elections to outsiders – the ad for Gantz's Blue and White paints the prime minister as a close ally of the extremist Otzma Yehudit politicians known for anti-Arab racism. The ad points to a merger between the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi party and the more extreme Otzma Yehudit Party that the prime minister facilitated.

The New York Times promises its readers "the world's most trusted perspective." Yet the complete misreading of a rather blatant political ad exposes, once again, the paper's failure to deliver up factual reporting. Indeed, it's been a rough few weeks for the paper's credibility when it comes to trusted news about Israel.

On the news side, editors refused to correct both the false report that a Pew survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews favor expelling all Palestinians, as well as the completely unfounded claim that "most of Jaffa's Arab residents were forcibly expelled from their homes" in 1948.

The Opinions section is also doing its share to erode "the world's most trusted perspective," with, for example, a page 1 opinion piece in the International Edition ("In Israel, a so-called democracy") calling Israeli democracy into question, following closely on the heels of the anti-Israel counterfactual screed last week by Nathan Thrall.

At The New York Times, this is so-called journalism.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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