As regular readers will already know, Qatari’s flagship media network Al Jazeera is one of the worst proponents of anti-Israel propaganda, which regularly crosses over into antisemitism. And their coverage of the Hamas atrocities against Israel and our response pretty much sticks to the script.
Except for one example, which seems to have somehow eluded the gatekeepers before being caught and modified. Thankfully, the original version is still available on Web Archive, and was screenshotted before Al Jazeera attempted to flush it down the memory hole.
The piece in question, titled Analysis: Is Hamas a more sophisticated force than Israel imagined?, written by one Philip Ingram, firstly contained an open admission (and seeming admiration) for Hamas’ targeting of Israeli civilians,
This as now been changed to:
The original version also contained this admission of Iranian involvement, including their helping Hamas improve the accuracy and range of their rockets.
I assume the Qatari overlords would not have liked this because 1. it implicates Iran and 2. flies in the face of the usual anti-Israel propaganda that Hamas use “crude, ineffective home-made projectiles”; so this has also been deleted from the piece.
But perhaps the most damaging part of the original version is the admission that Hamas use their own civilians as human shields:
Naturally, this has been removed and replaced with:
Towards the end of the original version was another admission that Hamas have killed innocent Israeli civilians:
This was predictably also removed, replaced with a more vague statement about Israeli civilians mourning their dead and searching for their missing (which is still surprising for Al Jazeera):
One of our challenges in fighting the lies is overcoming those who choose to ignore the obvious – like Hamas’ targeting of civilians and using their own as human shields – claiming it is just “Israeli propaganda.” So when Al Jazeera hands us a gift like this, we sure as hell better use it.
