01-Mar-15: Facts, dam facts, and non-factual inventions aimed at the gullible

Friday's revised AFP report on that Gaza flooding
[Screen capture from this source]

A number of news channels reported this past Monday ["23-Feb-15: Dam!"] about a malicious Israeli "attack dam" strategy. With Hamas regime spokespeople in Gaza as their sole source, they dutifully parroted serious charges about Israel deliberately opening the gates of dams in southern Israel so that floodwaters would pour into the teeming communities of the wretched Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. 

Not a single reporter saw anything to confirm the claims. The dams were never named or located or photographed. 

None of this, however, prevented some of the most respected names in journalism from reporting that Israel's actions were malicious and calculated to increase Gazan suffering.

We followed up a day later ["24-Feb-15: The mess that the receding flood waters reveal"] with some observations about how some of the silly media people were dealing with having been conned: 

• Ma'an, the self-styled "independent" Palestinian Arab news source that had run the story (here) as its main lead during last Sunday's evening hours, left it online, unchanged (you can see that it's still unchanged today). Headlined "Hundreds of Palestinians flee as Israel opens dams into Gaza Valley", the piece reports as fact that "Israeli authorities opened a number of dams near the border, flooding the Gaza Valley in the wake of a recent severe winter storm."
• The influential Chinese newsagency, Xinhua, reported it too, and made no change once the facts got clearer. It too has left the story as it was, unmoved by the actual facts even today.
• Egypt's Al Akhbar reported it on the first day ("Israel's Open Dams Flood Gaza, Hundreds Evacuated"), and it too found no need to update it, to modify the charges, or to investigate the facts as received from the Hamas-controlled ministry that announced them. The same is true as of today: Sunday's bogus Al Akhbar story still stands.
• Aljazeera's version changed its version of the story, to their credit, quoting Israeli sources and presenting a more balanced version while repeating the made-up Hamas claims.
• The Russian RT news agency editors also ran with the Hamas claims, but a day later tried to clean their act up by modifying the original headline and some of the contents too, to project a "he said/she said" narrative. As we noted, RT's editors didn't claim to conduct any actual investigation into the facts. Getting it from Hamas was evidently sufficient validation for them.

There are others as well. But the most interesting of the list is Agence France-Presse ("...the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest", according to its Wikipedia entry). They published and syndicated the Hamas whopper on Day One to their huge subscriber base. But by the following day the story had already been removed. Clicking on the story's original link [http://news.yahoo.com/video/gaza-village-floods-israel-opens-163038474.html] produced an AFP error message. 

On Friday, the French agency issued a completely-changed version of its tune.

"For the residents [of Gaza], there was no doubt: Israel was responsible after deliberately opening "a dam" to flood the enclave. But an examination of the facts on the Israeli side tells another story, shattering a long-held Palestinian myth... [AFP]

(There's a video version of AFP's February 27, 2015 shattering-the-myth report here.)

Here's what AFP's new take on the attack-dams story does not do:

• Does not make any mention of its disgraceful original report
• Does not acknowledge that its gullible reporters and editors accepted at face value a string of Hamas claims about Israeli malfeasance, and did so without making the smallest effort at checking the facts until it ran into a torrent of criticism from readers and media watchdogs
• Does not apologize for its role in creating the Hamas myth and then spreading it as "news" throughout its subscriber base
• Does not name and shame the Hamas individuals who fed it the original story
• Does not name and shame the AFP stringers, AFP reporters, AFP news editors, AFP fact-checkers and AFP syndication editors who had only one job to do (report and disseminate the facts on an objective and verifiable basis) and failed miserably.

Affairs like the attack-dam myth get propagated widely because, for the professionals of the news reporting industry, their anti-Israel character is enough to overcome the absence of a factual basis and the nonsense logic underpinning them. For those of us who depend on them (to whatever extent) for information and ideas, we have much to fear from today's industrialized mainstream news channels.

24-Feb-15: The mess that the receding flood waters reveal

The Anadolu (Turkish news agency) caption reads:
"Hundreds of Palestinians were evacuated from
their homes Sunday morning after Israeli
authorities opened a number of dams
near the border, flooding the Gaza Valley
in the wake of a recent severe winter storm.
Anadolu/Ashraf Amra"

Here's some follow-up to a post ["23-Feb-15: Dam!"] we published yesterday about the uncritical, lazy and irresponsible way some news agencies carry stories, often originating from notoriously partisan sources, that pin damaging allegations against Israel without bothering themselves to check whether they're true or made-up.

First, a clear and unambiguous assertion: yesterday's widely published news reports about Israel opening up dams in the vicinity of the Gaza Strip are in the made-up category.

The story, based on allegations that no reporter claims to have investigated or to have proven, exists in order to validate perpetual claims from the Palestinian Arab power structure - in this case, from Hamas - of Palestinian Arab victimhood and Israeli malevolence.

Once invented and handed to gullible reporters and editors, stories like the one about Israel's "attack dams" go public and become part of the news cycle. Their anti-Israel character, it seems, is enough to overcome the absence of a factual basis and the nonsense logic underpinning them.

The most direct version of the libelous story can be found in Ma'an, the self-styled "independent" Palestinian Arab news source about which we posted critical comments on Sunday. It ran this story as its main lead during Sunday's evening hours; the article remains online and unchanged as of today:

Hundreds of Palestinians flee as Israel opens dams into Gaza Valley | Hundreds of Palestinians were evacuated from their homes Sunday morning after Israeli authorities opened a number of dams near the border, flooding the Gaza Valley in the wake of a recent severe winter storm.

The Chinese newsagency, Xinhua, reported it too, and has made no change since then:

Israel opens dams, floods Gaza | Mufid al-Hasaynah, minister of Housing and Public Works in the Palestinian unity government, told Xinhua that Israel deliberately increases the suffering of the Gazans.

Egypt's Al Akhbar reported it yesterday ("Israel's Open Dams Flood Gaza, Hundreds Evacuated"), and has found no need to update it or modify the charges. Or to investigate the facts as received from the Hamas-controlled ministry that announced them.

The major French news agency Agence France-Presse ("...the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest", according to its Wikipedia entry) published it too. But click on its link now [here] and you get an error message:

The nonsense article has been removed by the AFP editors, leaving behind this text: "Hmmm... the page you're looking for isn't here. Try searching above". Perhaps it should read:

"Hmmm, you discovered we trusted Hamas with predictable consequences. In future, try searching at a more reliable source".

In any event, no apology from AFP and no explanation for the article or its removal.

Aljazeera's version of the bogus story has been changed, and now carries this doctored headline: "Israel denies causing Gaza floods by opening dams". We should have archived the original version but did not. However the URL gives a clear indication of the headline it used to have:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/gazans-flee-floods-caused-israel-dams-opening-150222115950849.html

To their credit, Aljazeera's editors now open their account with what they ought to have reported a day earlier:

Israel has rejected allegations by government officials in the Gaza strip that authorities were responsible for released storm waters flooding parts of the besieged area.
"The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams," said a statement from the Coordinator of Government Activites in the Territorities (COGAT).
"Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel."

Over at the Russian RT news agency, the editors have tried to clean their act up by modifying the original headline and some of the contents too. Yesterday their story was entitled "Israel opens dams forcing hundreds of Gazans out of flooded houses", and asserted as fact that "In the wake of a recent severe winter storm in the region, Israeli authorities opened the floodgates to discharge the accumulated water." Today at the same URL it's called "Palestine accuses Israel of opening dams, flooding Gaza, forcing evacuations". Not much better, but in the face of the criticism directed at their editorial foolishness, it's a concession. And in the body of the piece, they now add:

In a letter to RT regarding the issue, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) maintained that “the claim is entirely false."

As for RT actual investigation into the facts, their editors evidently don't feel the need. Getting it from Hamas is apparently sufficient validation for them.

No one was killed. But the affair gives a useful - if depressing - insight into how packaged news on the Arab/Israel conflict (and many other matters) gets its character and makes its way into our living rooms and heads. There is much to fear from today's industrialized mainstream news channels.

23-Feb-15: Dam!

Flooding in a Gazan urban street: Not this week, and not because of any
Israeli dams (there are none in the area) but because of heavy rain in November 2014
and chronic Hamas municipal malfeasance [Image Source]

The "independent" Palestinian Arab news agency Ma'an (about whom we had some comments just a few hours ago) ran this story as its main lead during the evening hours yesterday (Sunday):

Hundreds of Palestinians were evacuated from their homes Sunday morning after Israeli authorities opened a number of dams near the border, flooding the Gaza Valley in the wake of a recent severe winter storm.

Aljazeera ran with a similar report, as did Agence France-Presse, the Chinese Xinhua news agency, Russia's RT and Egypt's al-Akhbar. All quoted Gaza ministries as their source. None of them named or located the dams. Not one of them said a reporter of theirs saw anything to confirm the central claim. But all were able to report that this was malicious and intended to increase Gazan suffering.

It's not the first year we are hearing of un-named Zionist dams that are opened at precisely the same time as torrential rains wash through Gaza's under-invested, sewer-deficient communities bringing havoc in their wake. See "How Hamas used the weather to defame Israel" from last winter, as an instance.

There were also torrential rains in the area at the start of the winter, just a few weeks ago. The reliably hostile UNRWA published reports [here] about the damage at that time, along with appeals for more help, without once mentioning an Israeli hand in the disaster. That's because there was none. Of course, it might have been helpful if they had said what they know about Hamas' chronic and deliberate failure to improve infrastructure, facilities and life for the unfortunate Gazan population living under their rule. But that kind of thing is not in UNRWA's charter.

As for the notorious "Gaza Valley", does anyone out there know where in the narrow coastal plain it's located? And if we can ask that question, why can't the lazy editors at those news outlets? They are at least as culpable as the thugs inside Hamas are.

For the record, Honest Reporting sought and got a relevant quote this morning from a respectable Israeli source, the Spokesperson’s Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT):

The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams. Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel. Prior to the storm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories allowed the transfer of four water pumps belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority from Israel into Gaza to supplement the 13 pumps already in the Gaza Strip in dealing with any potential flooding throughout the area.

Stand by to see those newsagencies listed above promptly issue a prominent correction, and express thanks to COGAT for relieving widespread regional concerns about malicious Zionist use of attack-dams.

Kidding aside, shouldn't they?