Agitprop kills

Further to our post yesterday asking whether Reuters and its correspondents could be seen as being complicit in the murders of three Jewish children and a rabbi in Toulouse France due to the agency's long-standing agitprop campaign targeting Israel, Haaretz reports that a French woman warned police about the suspect as far back as 2010:

A local French newspaper published on Thursday an in-depth testimony of a woman claiming that she had warned authorities multiple times that the suspect in the Toulouse killings, Mohamed Merah, was a danger to the public.

Included in the woman's account of Merah's behavior and attempts to indoctrinate her son into the world of Islamic fundamentalism and jihad, is this revealing comment:

Merah claimed he would “wipe out all those who kill Muslims.”

Such a motive being entirely consistent, indeed incited and rationalized by the many instances of Reuters tendentious reporting and outright fabrications suggesting the Jews of Israel kill Muslims indiscriminately.

Words matter.  And it takes no great leap of faith to appreciate that false and misleading messages, appearing in thousands of news outlets every day and read by millions of Arab Muslims, intended to portray Jews as cold-blooded killers and to arouse reader passions, can incite the murders we witnessed in Toulouse.

Are Reuters and its correspondents complicit in the murders of the Jewish children in France?

As our more than 700 posts since August 2009 demonstrate, Reuters, the largest multimedia news agency in the world, is heavily engaged in a systematic, mendacious, and malicious propaganda campaign intended to demonize and delegitimize the Jews of Israel for choosing to defend themselves in the face of 64 years of Muslim calls for annihilation of the Jewish state and its inhabitants.

That campaign involves the publication of hundreds of stories, disseminated to thousands of media outlets, each employing scores of propaganda techniques and fallacies, ethical and professional breaches, and outright lies designed to manipulate reader opinion and emotions so as to compel the audience to adopt Reuters' own anti-Israel institutional ideology and political view.

It also involves the hiring, training, and tight coordination of a team of propagandists, masquerading as independent journalists, who either subscribe to the same ideology or enthusiastically serve as foot soldiers in the propaganda campaign so as to advance their careers.

Take for example, Reuters correspondent Dan Williams who, in September of 2011 conveyed the blood libel that Israelis have a "shoot-on-sight" policy against Palestinians.

Or Nidal al-Mughrabi, who, in dozens of stories about the 2008-09 Gaza war, reports that some 1,400 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces, without revealing that most of these casualties were members of Hamas, sworn to genocide of the Jews, and their human shields.

Or Allyn Fisher-Ilan, who suggested, falsely, that Israel was to blame for the lack of basic medicines in Gaza.

Or Crispian Balmer, who duplicated, verbatim and absent criticism, a Twitter feed post by a former Egyptian foreign minister portraying Israel as a killer of children.

This afternoon, the French authorities arrested an Algerian-born Muslim man suspected of killing the Jewish children in Toulouse.  (See update below).

Haaretz reports the suspect said he wanted revenge for "Palestinian children".

We don't know if the suspect was a reader of any of the thousands of newspapers or news websites that publish Reuters stories on the Middle East conflict.

But given Reuters global reach and the frequency with which the agency's anti-Israel propaganda appears, it's entirely possible, indeed likely, the suspect had come across one or more of these stories at some point.

We also know that Reuters successfully influences readers to alter their behavior in a manner consistent with the agency's propaganda campaign and institutional ideology.

As the investigation proceeds, it will be very interesting to learn more about the suspect's motivations and mentors.

UPDATE: Earlier reports of the arrest of the suspect were incorrect and a stand-off continues.

UPDATE 2: Following a shoot-out with police, the murder suspect, Mohamed Merah, reportedly jumped from a window to his death.

Libel by omission

The last we visited with Reuters correspondents Nidal al-Mughrabi and Allyn Fisher-Ilan, they were serving as apologists for Hamas' attempted murder of Israeli school children and groping for words to conceal the fact that over six hundred Palestinian rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel since the end of the Gaza war in 2009.

In another story published on Tuesday, al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan take Israel to task for closing the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza:

(Reuters) - Israel kept a commercial crossing with Hamas-ruled Gaza shut for a seventh day Tuesday although a truce had stopped cross-border fighting, and a UN official said he was "extremely worried" essential supplies may run out.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which provides aid to more than two thirds of Gaza's population of 1.5 million, said 172 truckloads of oil, sugar and flour were waiting to cross into the impoverished coastal territory.
Israel said it shut the crossings a week ago during a violent flare-up when Hamas militants fired an anti-tank rocket at a school bus, critically wounding an Israeli teen-ager, and Israel retaliated with air raids, killing 19 Palestinians.
The violence has subsided since Egyptian and UN mediators achieved an informal truce Sunday.
Israel has not yet reopened the terminal because of concern about security, an Israeli official said, adding that individual humanitarian cases were allowed into Israel at a separate crossing.
Christopher Gunness, an UNRWA spokesman, said he was "extremely worried" the commercial crossing at Kerem Shalom might not reopen before the Jewish Passover holiday begins on Monday evening, a time when Israel often shuts its crossings with Palestinian territories, citing security concerns.
The relief agency generally aims to send about 20 truckloads of sugar, flour, oil and school lunches into Gaza daily, and has only enough of these supplies stored in the territory to last until the end of the month, Gunness said.

Al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan are attempting to suggest here that Israel is putting the population in Gaza at risk by keeping the border closed and doing so unreasonably since "a truce had stopped cross-border fighting" and "the violence has subsided since Egyptian and UN mediators achieved an informal truce Sunday".  Going unreported however, is this tidbit:

At 6 o'clock Sunday morning 4/10/2011, the artillery unit of the Al-Quds Brigades shot 4 80 mm mortar shells toward the site "Karm Abu Salem," [Kerem Shalom] located east of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where shells hit their targets precisely, leading to the interruption of electricity to most parts of the site and spreading a state of confusion the soldiers present inside.

Which might explain why Israel has prudently maintained the closure.

Following another suggestion by al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan that "sugar, flour, oil and school lunches" will run out at the end of the month unless the Kerem Shalom crossing is opened, the two Reuters correspondents tell us:

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) said 150 types of basic medicines were lacking in the territory and that a cooking gas shortage also loomed.

The suggestion here of course, that Israel is also responsible for the lack of medicines in Gaza.

But the chronic shortages in Gaza are actually due to the ongoing conflict between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is negotiating with the two Palestinian health authorities to reach a long-term agreement that would end chronic drug shortages, which affect patients first.
The lack of cooperation between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and authorities in the Gaza Strip harms the Gaza health system. For example, a strike was called in 2008 in the Gaza public hospital system. The health facilities estimated that 50 – 80% of health workers -- trapped in the conflict of interests between the two "competing" health authorities – observed the strike.

Al-Mughrabi and Fisher-Ilan show us it's much easier to libel Israelis than to report the facts.

Reuters in a time warp; repeats the Big Lie

In a story about the latest "aid" ship to head for Gaza -- financed by Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi's son -- Reuters is still characterizing the Strip as "blockaded".  This despite the fact that all manner of goods other than weapons and war materiel are moving freely across the Israel-Gaza border.

More appalling, is Reuters continued reliance on the Big Lie:

The United Nations says the blockade has led to a humanitarian crisis for the territory's 1.5 million people, of whom about 1 million depend to some extent on regular supplies of U.N. and other foreign aid brought in overland after Israeli inspection.

The United Nations has absolutely not asserted that there is a "humanitarian crisis" in Gaza; indeed, it has stated just the opposite.

Perhaps the people of Israel should consider filing suit against Reuters for damages associated with the agency's unremitting blood libels.

Jeffrey Heller repeats the Big Lie

Reuters continues with its calumnies against Israel:

The United Nations says the Israeli blockade has caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, an allegation Israel denies.

No.  The United Nations has said "there is no humanitarian problem in Gaza".

With Reuters' doctoring of photos exposed yet again, one would think the agency would set in place a disciplined editorial regime to ensure truth and accuracy in its Middle East reporting.  Unfortunately, one would be underestimating the power and persistence of Reuters arrogance and contempt for Israel.

Reuters repeats lie that Gaza is facing humanitarian crisis

Repetition is a classic propaganda technique designed to lead the reader to an hypnotically-induced acceptance of the propagandist's message.  Repetition combined with mendacity has potentially catastrophic consequences as millions of people can be led to believe, and react to, malicious disinformation and calumnies.  Joseph Goebbels understood this -- as does Reuters.

In a story on US Vice-President Joe Biden commenting on the Gaza flotilla incident, Reuters correspondent Ross Colvin repeats the Big Lie:

The United Nations says the blockade has led to a humanitarian crisis among the territory's 1.5 million people.

No.  The United Nations has said just the opposite.  Viewed objectively as well, there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

UPDATE 2:15 PM: Reuters Bureau Chief Alastair Macdonald and Editor-in-charge Jeffrey Heller repeat the lie in another story here.

Turkish TV airs blood libel propaganda; Reuters buys the popcorn

State-run TRT 1 television in Turkey recently aired a new fictional series dramatizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Amongst other horrendous scenes is one of an Israeli soldier deliberately shooting a baby being held up by his father. Though Reuters' Sangwon Yoon acknowledges that Israeli newspapers, academics, and politicians are appalled by the incitement and antisemitism betrayed by the show, Reuters embeds an 11-minute YouTube clip for its AxisMundi Jerusalem audience.

We eagerly await Reuters next feature attraction, The Eternal Jew.