CNN has, in its coverage of the IDF’s Al-Shifa operation, performed dismally: “CNN’s coverage of Shifa Hospital is abysmal. Every IDF claim is doubted, and none of the Palestinian claims – unless they support the IDF statements,” Elder of Ziyon, March 31, 2024:
CNN takes pains to cast doubt on literally everything the IDF says. Yet it expresses no such reservations on Hamas claims or any Palestinian claims of torture, patients dying, and other allegations of war crimes by the IDF:
Residents of the area around Al-Shifa told CNN there was heavy firing in the vicinity. One family said their home was shelled, and that children – some still alive – were buried under the rubble.
Unlike IDF statements, those claims are quoted without any caveats or mentions that CNN cannot verify them.
Why didn’t CNN report that “one Palestinian family claimed that after its house was shelled by the IDF, children — belonging to whose family is not clear — including some who were alive, were buried under the rubble. That claim remains unverified”?
There is only one Palestinian witness who [sic] CNN does express doubt about. Buried in the middle of the many paragraphs accusing Israel of war crimes, the article says:
Targeting hospitals in wartime is prohibited under international law, but those standards change if enemy combatants are using the facility to attack an enemy.
One eyewitness said that, on the eve of the raid, they spotted hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad members inside the hospital.
The eyewitness, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, estimated about 400 to 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad members and their families arrived at the hospital in mid-March. Some of them appeared to be members of Hamas’ political branch, while others were armed militants.
The eyewitness said some of the militants were carrying guns inside the hospital.
CNN is unable to independently verify the numbers due to lack of reporting access to the strip, and has asked the Gaza health ministry for comment.
This Arab eyewitness’s testimony about armed terrorists from Hamas and PIJ inside the hospital is reported, but with the doubt-creating caveat that “CNN is unable to verify the numbers” of terrorists he saw inside the hospital.
Immediately afterwards, the article reverts to quoting Palestinians at length about alleged torture of innocent civilians, doctors who fear for the health of patients still in the hospital without any evidence that they have been affected by the raid, and international condemnation by the World Health Organization….
That damning account provided by an Arab eyewitness of a massive Hamas and PIJ presence in Al-Shifa just before the raid was quickly followed by a report about the IDF engaging in the “torture of innocent civilians,” which, given its seriousness, should have been, but was not, followed by a disclaimer that “CNN has been unable to independently verify this claim.”
The extended time that Israel is taking at Shifa is not evidence that the IDF is trying to keep patients safe while rooting out hundreds of armed terrorists hiding inside the hospital itself but instead as evidence that the IDF doesn’t know what it’s doing.
The IDF is presented by the CNN report as prolonging its March raid because it was having such trouble finding those Hamas fighters who keep eluding it. But the Al-Shifa operation was over in two weeks; that hardly counts as a long time to search every part of the vast hospital complex, comprising many buildings, and also searching the tunnels directly underneath the hospitals. Two hundred terrorists were killed and 500 taken captive. Furthermore, Elder of Ziyon is right: the IDF took such time because it wanted to be careful, during its search throughout the Al-Shifa buildings, to minimize the danger to civilians.
As of late March , IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari reported that not a single patient or member of the medical staff, or any other civilian at Al-Shifa, had been killed. That has not prevented Hamas, however, from claiming that “hundreds of civilians” at Al-Shifa died. Those 200 Hamas terrorists who were killed were actually, Hamas wants you to believe, civilians. Keep in mind that the IDF has a record of telling the truth, while Hamas has just as long a record of lying. Consider how that “massacre in Jenin,” where Hamas accused the IDF of killing 500 civilians, turned out to be, instead, 52 Palestinians killed, of whom at least 45 were terrorists. Or remember the accusation by Hamas of an “Israeli airstrike on Al-Ahli hospital that killed 500 civilians”? It turned out that there had been no Israeli airstrike, but an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that instead of landing in Israel fell to earth in Gaza, not on the Al-Ahli hospital itself but in the parking lot adjacent to the hospital, and that instead of “500 civilians killed” there were between 10 and 50 Gazans killed, an unknown number of whom were Hamas terrorists.
Fortunately, not everyone depends on CNN for its coverage of the war in Gaza. The BBC is even worse than CNN in its anti-Israel animus, but there are many other news sites — CBS, ABC, Sky News, Deutsche Welle, KAN TV (an Israeli news channel)— that try to tell the truth.
Rick Gordon says
Unfortunately, while many may doubt (correctly) the truth of anything on CNN – once their lies are out there others will copy them and circulate them. The only way to combat such shenanigans is to broadcast what has truly taken place …. BUT no one seems to be willing and able to do so.
Wellington says
Anyone counting on CNN to provide unbiased information is a fool. Ditto for any person assuming that anyone in the bogus Biden Administration accurately puts forward the truth on a regular basis.
America is now mostly led by rogues, liars, incompetents, avaricious people and even utterly wicked human beings (e.g., Mayorkas, DHS Secretary, who truly looks like a Bond villain so complete is his malevolence and which once again proves that fact is even stranger than fiction).
Yes, there are still honest people in American government but they are a dying breed. None can be found in the puppet Biden Administration—and I challenge anyone to refute me here; want to start with John Kirby or Karine Jean-Pierre or Jake Sullivan, etc.?; oh yeah, give it a shot.
America is now led for the most part by the wrong people (including an ever increasingly foolish and condescending federal bureaucracy that is completely unelected—and, note here, term limit advocates mistakenly never take this into account). There is still time, though not much time, to correct this rot destroying America (yes, actually destroying America), but anyone still voting Democrat just doesn’t get it and even those voting Republican are understandably, justifiably, wary of questioning the wisdom of continuing to do this, so much have both political parties betrayed America, the one completely and the other largely through fecklessness and timidity (e.g., oh gee, will Republicans in Congress have yet another hearing to root out Democratic malfeasance with no repercussions whatsoever?).
America is in huge trouble. And if America is in huge trouble, the entire world is. One knows this or should know this. Well, things right now suck for the entire world. No doubt. In large part part, though of course not entirely, because America is dying right before our very eyes, as is the single greatest civilization of all time, i.e., Western Civilization. It is a debacle in progress like no other in the history of mankind.
James Lincoln says
All tragically true, Wellington.
And still, some Americans STILL do not realize the depth and scope of the “fix” that we are in.
OLD GUY says
It seems like we can’t stand success, when we have a fairly easy life compared to say 100 years ago. We can’t stand success and have to create tragedy and disruption of the society. You don’t have to do everything in drastic steps to improve lives or living conditions, this isn’t a TV show where the world gets fixes in 10 minutes with twenty minutes of commercials for the good life. Lets stop worrying about our feelings being hurt and start working and doing something to keep our country safe, Educate our children on how to succeed in life, and how not to starve to death or allow criminals to murder, steal and destroy property of others.
Instead of all these groups pulling us apart lets work on putting us together through work, play and friendships. Being a productive group or individual and working to make everything in your community better is smarter than pulling it apart and destroying everything just for the look at me feeling.
“BUILD DON’T DESTROY”
James Lincoln says
OLD GUY says,
“It seems like we can’t stand success, when we have a fairly easy life compared to say 100 years ago. We can’t stand success and have to create tragedy and disruption of the society.”
Very perceptive.
I think it’s a symptom of a society that is “overdeveloped”.