With Israel eager to restrict the spread of Covid-19, it's no surprise that the government moved to impose restrictions, including on protests, so much of the media either published the news matter-of-factly, or didn't cover it at all.
Perhaps because, with a complete lockdown under way, the lifting of the exemption for political protests is not as outrageous as @Guardian would have us believe.
Regardless, the @Guardian and others have the right to cover whichever stories they choose. What is less legitimate, however, is the contrived manner in which internal critics of Israeli government policies are repeatedly given a platform far exceeding their own significance.
This tendency, taken together with the blurring of the lines between news reporting and news analysis, leads to an ongoing stream of negative news content from some media outlets.
This has a real, distortionary effect on the public's opinion of Israel.
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🧵1/
You’ve seen it before.
A bombed-out building.
A pile of rubble.
And there, impossibly intact, a teddy bear.
Let’s talk about one of the most emotionally powerful, and misleading, images used in war coverage.
2/ The teddy bear in the rubble sends a clear message: a child died here. It’s powerful, emotional, and widely used. But when the same bear keeps appearing in different scenes, taken by different photographers, it raises questions.
📸 Rafah, Jan 21. Same toy, multiple photos.
3/ October 6: Teddy bears arranged on rubble in Khan Yunis.
📸 Abed Rahim Khatib / Anadolu via Getty
December 1: A similar scene appears with a new caption.
📸 Saeed Jaras / Middle East Images via AFP
“The girl who gathered them attempts to preserve joy…”
.@Independent "takes a closer look at the history of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and why it is controversial."
So let's take a closer look at how The Independent evidently finds the concept of Jews defending themselves against terrorists to be "controversial." 🧵
@Independent No mention of how the newly formed IDF fought to defend the nascent Jewish state against 5 Arab armies intent on wiping it out.
Just a hyperbolic claim that "hundreds of thousands of people were driven...into refugee camps."
@Independent The IDF "claims" to be facing terrorist organizations?
Just who does @Independent believe threatens Israelis? Or did October 7 simply not happen?
Israel struck Iran preemptively.
Was it legal under international law? Here's what the rules actually say 👇
International law doesn’t ban preemptive strikes, but it does make them hard to justify.
They must be a response to a real, immediate threat, not a guess or grudge.
The standard? A 19th-century case called the Caroline Affair.
It's still the gold standard for when preemptive force is legal.
Modern military lawyers use it like a checklist, and it’s hard to pass.
How the media manufactured a “genocide.”
Zach Goldberg breaks down how the world’s most serious crime became a political weapon—and how media outlets helped it happen. 🧵
Mentions of “genocide” in relation to Israel have exploded—far beyond how the media treated actual, recognized genocides in history.
In The New York Times, coverage linking Israel and genocide was:
➤ 9x higher than for Rwanda
➤ 6x higher than for Darfur
Let that sink in.
“Why hasn’t there been a Palestinian state?”
Let’s talk about the peace deals that could’ve made it happen—and why they were rejected.👇
1️⃣ 1947 – The UN Partition Plan
Palestinians were offered statehood with the most fertile land.
Arab leaders said no. Then 6 Arab states attacked Israel.
Israel survived.
2️⃣ 1967 – Khartoum Summit & UN Resolution 242
After the Six-Day War, the UN proposed land-for-peace.
The Arab League responded:
“No peace. No recognition. No negotiations.”
End of conversation.