Today marks 20 years since Tuvia Grossman, the bloodied "Palestinian," appeared all over the media, leading to the creation of HonestReporting.
On Sep 30, 2000, The @nytimes, @AP and others published a photo of a bloodied young man seen near a club-wielding Israeli policeman.
The caption read: “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount.”
The pose suggested that the Israeli policeman was responsible for the injuries of the “Palestinian” man in the foreground.
In reality, the man was not a Palestinian Arab at all, but a Jewish American yeshiva student named Tuvia Grossman. Grossman had been pulled from a taxi in Jerusalem by an Arab mob and severely beaten.
Similarly, from the picture the policeman seems to be threatening. In reality, the Israeli policeman pictured, a Druze Israeli called Gideon Tzefadi, was actually standing over Grossman and *defending* him from the mob.
Seeing his son's picture in the @NYTimes, Alan Grossman sent the following letter to the newspaper: “…that Palestinian is actually my son, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem…“
“...by a mob of Palestinian Arabs, and were severely beaten and stabbed. That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering.“
In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as “an American student in Israel” — not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs.
Responding to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, @NYTimes reprinted Tuvia Grossman’s picture — this time with the proper caption — along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters.
The first “correction” also noted that “Mr. Grossman was wounded” in “Jerusalem’s Old City” — although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.
For years after, the media distortion had an ongoing, real-life effect as Arab groups adopted Grossman’s photo in their propaganda campaigns, cynically using a bloodied Jew as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle.
Among others, an official Egyptian government website used the photo on its photo gallery, and the Palestinian Information Center incorporated Grossman’s photo into its homepage banner.
WATCH: A decade later, HonestReporting reunited Grossman with his rescuer, Gidon Tzefadi:
🧵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.