Reader Post: Sheera Frenkel’s Illogical Crusade To Exonerate Hamas For Kidnapping Three Boys

We’re going to shake things up… here are the conclusions we’ll reach: you won’t believe how we reach them! Unless you read the rest of this!

  • Sheera Frenkel insists the war is because Israel wants to undermine the Hamas/PA unity government
  • the kidnappings were not done by Hamas, based on
  • Hamas says they didn’t do it, and
  • denies the kidnappers are Hamas members, since
  • the aunt of a kidnapper, and Hamas themselves, say they were not members, and besides
  • the Shin Bet didn’t catch the kidnappers before the attempt, so it must be it wasn’t Hamas’ doing – after all, they caught all the other tries, and oh, yeah
  • I must lack reading comprehension skills for pointing out her “logic”.

Sheera Frenkel is the Middle East Correspondent for Buzzfeed. She has been pushing a narrative that the kidnapping of Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali is what sparked the current war in Gaza (Operation Protective Edge). Her logic is laid out in this tweet:

Besides the complete ignoring of all the rockets fired from Gaza since the “ceasefire” in 2012, the part where the three teens were executed, the tunnels discovered leading to Kibbutz eating rooms and nurseries, and the insane allegation that the horrific murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir was the catalyst for the violence along the Gaza/Israel border, Frenkel is subtly attempting to set a cause for the war as a mistaken, if not unjust one. In fact, in response to Laura Rozen (herself a recently made fool for buying an Al-Jazeera fake of the leaked Kerry ceasefire proposal) , she actually insists that the real cause of the war was an attempt to undermine the unity government of Hamas and the PA:

On June 15th, Sheera published an article claiming that Hamas had nothing to do with the kidnapping. It is available here. Her argument boils down to

Hamas says they didn’t do it

and more so,

Hamas in Gaza says they didn’t do it.

This completely ignores the many reports by the media, including Yisrael Hayom’s interview with General Tamir Yadai (IDF commander of the West Bank) as far back as January, that Hamas in the West Bank is directed by Hamas operatives in Turkey – namely Salah al-Arouri, who was one of the Hamas members released in the Gilad Shalit deal. The Washington Post reported on Salah al-Arouri on July 10th and Matthew Levitt (himself an expert on Hezbollah in particular, and Iranian-financed terror groups in general) wrote about him as well.

However, Sheera did not back down from her “reporting”. Instead, she has doubled down on her narrative, recently publishing this and appearing on Chris Hayes’ TV show and saying the same thing.

After reading the article, I was a little incredulous:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494397562674106369

To my surprise, and delight, Sheera responded:

Ignoring her condescending attitude, I responded thusly:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494399718294691842

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494399908347002880

Seizing on what she thought must have been my elementary mistake in reading her article, she said:

And in response to my challenge that the Shin Bet had been reporting a major amount of attempted kidnappings in the West Bank (the report is in Hebrew on the Prime Minister’s website, if you wish to read it), she said this:

I responded to her first point with this:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494401059897372673

And to her second point with this:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494401343507795969

She did not respond to my second point at all (I think it is a little difficult to defend an argument based on that logic), but in response to point number one she says, quite insultingly:

Now, I had said in two tweets already that her sources were “Hamas itself/their families”. And I said that to her in response:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494402733017817088

And addressing the insane assertion that a Hamas member is a valid source to ask about Hamas membership (you know, they are so honest and forthcoming about this – see the “civilian death” numbers oddly skewered to young males of fighting age or their claims to have shot down an F16 the other day), I asked her this:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494402940015083521

Having not received a response for ten minutes, I summed up her argument’s foundation as a question to her:

https://twitter.com/TzviZucker/status/494405377056718849

And I have not heard back since. I doubt Sheera has an answer for that question, the same way she didn’t have an answer for that other unanswered question of mine.

So to recap

  • Sheera Frenkel insists the war is because Israel wants to undermine the Hamas/PA unity government
  • the kidnappings were not done by Hamas, based on
  • Hamas says they didn’t do it, and
  • denies the kidnappers are Hamas members, since
  • the aunt of a kidnapper, and Hamas themselves, say they were not members, and besides
  • the Shin Bet didn’t catch the kidnappers before the attempt, so it must be it wasn’t Hamas’ doing – after all, they caught all the other tries, and oh, yeah
  • I must lack reading comprehension skills for pointing out her “logic”.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Buzzfeed Middle Eastern Correspondent.

P.S. The one unnamed security officer that Sheera mentions in her article as a source? Supposedly, all he said was this.

P.P.S. I have no way of knowing if the following source is accurate, but while I was rooting around for Sheera’s bio…. it seems that she was the original source for the “Israel uses white phosphorous munitions on civilians” claim, at least according to an anonymous commenter on NPRCheck ), referencing this article.

Update: very shortly after this post went live, Sheera Frenkel blocked Tzvi on Twitter. Clearly she’s not a fan of having her “work” questioned and examined.

4 thoughts on “Reader Post: Sheera Frenkel’s Illogical Crusade To Exonerate Hamas For Kidnapping Three Boys”

  1. Norman_In_New_York

    Yes, I have seen the statements in different sources that the kidnapers were Hamas rogues who did their deed without approval from their puppet masters and that Israel was using this as a pretext to sever the Hamas-Fatah (HamFat) coalition. However, even if this is true, the subsequent discovery of the terror tunnels makes this war worthwhile.

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