Back in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge, Aishi Zidan, a reporter for Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat, admitted that Hamas was firing rockets from a hospital.
After the video went viral, she expressed her dissatisfaction that her words were being used as a “propaganda weapon.”
Don’t use me as your propaganda weapon
I spent a night at the Shifa hospital in Gaza two weeks ago. I was covering the situation in Gaza for my newspaper.
My story was about the Palestinian civilians who were victims of war. My article started with a story of four little boys who were killed on the beach the same day. They were playing on the beach when Israeli army hit them without any clear reason or warning. I interviewed a boy who survived from the attack. The Shifa hospital was full of women and children who were victims of this ugly war. I described their stories in detail.
During the night someone launched a rocket somewhere behind the hospital. Now this sentence from my article is spreading in the pro-Israeli medias. I mentioned this in my article because I’m a professional journalist. I try to cover the events truthfully as I see them and I strongly condemn these kind of actions.
But I find it very disgusting how this one sentence was taken out context to be used as an excuse to target civilians in Gaza. My story became quickly a tool of propaganda. The people sharing this story are not even trying to understand the situation as a whole. They are just looking for excuses to Israeli actions in Gaza.
I refuse to be part of this kind of propaganda.
Finnish blogger Tundra Tabloids has discovered that Zidan has a new gig – press officer/publicist for the Finnish branch of Amnesty International.
The organization is still headed by Frank Johansson, who infamously (TT broke that story as well) smeared Israel as a ”scum state” while writing on his blog in Finnish, which included his Amnesty International title.
The story in 2010 went viral and there were calls for Johansson’s dismissal, NGO Monitor wrote directly to Amnesty’s Secretary-General and insisted upon it. What happened instead was Frank Johansson issuing an apology to the then Israeli Ambassador to Finland, Avi Granot. We can now safely assume that it was not genuine, at all.
According to Johansson’s Twitter profile, he is “on sabbatical, writing a book.” Whether or not this is an impose sabbatical can be the subject of speculation. Either way, he clearly has time to retweet Edward Snowden from time to time.
We already knew Amnesty International is very biased against Israel. The leadership of Frank “scum state” Johansson and appointment as press officer of Aishi Zidan – for whom Hamas firing rockets from a hospital is a really inconvenient fact – just reinforces this.
