If anyone is surprised at how the Rittenhouse trial is going, they weren’t paying attention. Even the initial complaint (thread summarizing below) made it obvious that the prosecution was going to struggle making their case for some of the charges they filed.
If you want to understand why no one trust the press, today’s headlines about the trial are a perfect example. This witness got caught in multiple lies and his testimony ended up making a clear case for self-defense. This is how the major outlets reported on it:
Another one. It's incredible. Every major outlet is spreading the same exact dishonest spin about today's testimony. Actively misinforming their audience in a way that is likely to lead to unjustified outrage down the line.
Let me make it easy for those interested in the truth or who have been denying that these mobs are motivated by anti-Semitism or support for terrorism. Here is a short thread with just some of the direct evidence. I will just focus on the protests at and around Columbia:
As @jonathanchait pointed out, the main 2 groups behind the protests, SJP and WOL, have both openly expressed support for terrorism. Both groups have defended the 10/7 attack where Hamas massacred numerous innocent people:
The main student organizer of the Columbia protests is on video saying he believes “Zionists do not deserve to live” and was on video directing other students to expel 3 Jewish students who simply walked into the area:
Is Israel Committing “Genocide” or indiscriminately killing Palestinians in Gaza?
I’m tired of people going through this discussion without any accompanying facts or logic so I’m going to put some thoughts into one thread and people can decide for themselves.
To properly have this discussion, we first need to go through and understand Gaza casualty figures. Where they come from and what they show.
The current Gaza casualty figures are all provided by the Hamas-affiliated Gaza Health Ministry. In previous conflicts with Israel, the Gaza Health Ministry has used a system of collecting data from hospitals, ambulance services, and morgues (we can refer to this as the central collection system) to come up with casualty figures. Their numbers do not usually distinguish civilian vs. militant casualties, but they do typically provide a demographic breakdown. Those who defend using their numbers will point to the fact that the Gaza Health Ministry casualty numbers in previous conflicts, collected via the CCS mentioned above, have often been consistent with estimates from other sources.
However, there have been large errors in the demographic breakdowns and in claims on the portion of combatants killed when provided. Usually, some NGOs are also doing their own counts to confirm, which is not happening in this conflict.
In the current war, the Gaza Health Ministry started collecting casualties the same way via the CCS when the war began. They showed ~9K deaths before Israel launched their ground invasion at the end of October. Then, as the data below shows, the casualty rate dropped significantly in the CCS data after the initial period of fighting in November. What is also clear from the CCS data, as shown below, is the proportion of male casualties (the category most, but not all, Hamas militants would fit into) increased significantly over time.
These are Jordanians who were born in Jordan and have lived there their whole lives. Only by the insane UNRWA definition, which applies to no other group of people anywhere in the world, are Jordanian citizens that have only ever lived in Jordan considered refugees.
This is like referring to Jews in Israel, whose grandparents fled Arab countries such as Jordan, as refugees. Only no one does that because it’s obviously absurd. But UNRWA is intentionally setup outside the normal rules for everyone else to perpetuate conflict.
Not one person can reasonably explain why the grandchild of a Palestinian Arab who moved from The current West Bank to Syria in 1952 is a refugee but the grandchild of a Jewish Syrian who was forced to flee to Israel in 1950 is not one. Or why they were not considered refugees when Jordan controlled The West Bank from 1947-1967, but are now.
It's incredible that almost the entire media adopted and regularly used a nickname for this law ("Don't Say Gay") that was used by critics to intentionally mislead regarding the content of the law while the settlement just restates that the law should be followed as written.
I pointed out repeatedly at the time that media outlets were misleading their readers by suggesting the law bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity instead of classroom instruction related to those subjects....
If you want to understand how Hamas propaganda is created on here and spreads, let me show a perfect example.
21 year old Mia Schem was taken hostage by Hamas on 10/7. She had her arm blown off. She was released as part of the ceasefire exchange.
While she was still in Hamas captivity, they had her film a hostage video in October.
Then, right before her release, they had her film another video under gunpoint where she said she was treated “very good” and people in Gaza were “very kind” to her.
The main anti-Israel propaganda accounts on here then promoted that video for millions of views suggesting Hamas was treating the hostages very well.