Can we afford the luxury of news that's unsupportive of the prevailing lefty wisdom?

This is how it works on "our side" these days:

Bob [Somerby's] outlook is so pure, in fact, that he actually defends GOPers he thinks are being done in by our celeb press. He also points out when he thinks we are using the press as a diversion to issues oriented politics.

Unfortunately, the world isn't as perfect as Bob would like it to be and the Dems cannot afford the luxury of condemning the press when it specious arguements accidently benefit us (something that happens once or twice a decade).

I only wanted to point out that the M$M is burying a story: its dishonesty.

(This is not news. This goes back at least as far as the "story" about Bill Clinton's haircut shutting down LAX.)

UNRWA was always a partner of Hamas in Gaza.

Such stories are not new and don't die when the truth comes out.

The following is a Wikipedia piece

The Battle of Jenin took place from April 3 to April 11, 2002 in the Palestinian Authority administered refugee camp of Jenin, in the West Bank. The battle was fought between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian forces as part of Operation Defensive Shield, during the Second Intifada.
As part of the operation, which involved incursions into West Bank cities and towns, Israel targeted the refugee camp of Jenin, after it deemed that the camp had "served as a launch site for numerous terrorist attacks against both Israeli civilians and Israeli towns and villages in the area".[3]
During the fighting, rumors of a massacre circulated.[4] While Jenin remained sealed during the invasion, stories of civilians being buried alive in their homes as they were demolished, and of smoldering buildings covering crushed bodies, spread throughout the Arab world. A large area in the camp was destroyed as a result of the fighting but subsequent investigations found no evidence to substantiate claims of a massacre. The final death toll was 52 to 56 Palestinians, of whom 5-26 may have been civilians. 23 IDF soldiers were also killed in the fighting.

After the truth came out there was a Palestinian movie about events that didn't happen.

Although no one is saying how badly. It's an even better thing that no one died (including subsequently of injuries?).

Now we can only hope they can debunk this Jan. 27 story from McClatchy because it would be wonderful if it was untrue:

"Abed Rabbo said he gathered his wife, their three daughters and his mother, Souad. Souad Abed Rabbo said that she tied a white robe around a mop handle and two of her granddaughters waved white headscarves as they walked outside.

When they opened the door, they saw an Israeli tank parked in their garden about 10 yards away.

"We were waiting for them to give us an order," Khaled said last week as he stood in the ruins of his home. "Then one came out of the tank and started to shoot."

Souad Abed Rabbo said she was shot as she pushed her son back inside and her granddaughters fell on the stairs. When the shooting was over, she said, 2-year-old Amal and 7-year-old Souad were dead.

The allegation is one of at least five such white flag incidents that human rights investigators are looking into across the Gaza Strip. It's part of a growing pattern of alleged abuses that have raised concerns that some Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes during their 22-day military campaign in Gaza.

"The evidence we've gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly strong," said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch working in the Gaza Strip. "All the research so far suggests they shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags.""

Wouldn't it be nice if that hadn't happened and it was only that damn media again?

...that continuously pretends that Israel liberated the Gaza Strip? That is still under siege?

Be serious, one swallow does not make a summer. Israel is still a colonial state, and its shelling of Gaza still a crime more monstrous than any number of homemade Gaza rockets.

i'm confused.

i tracked down what looks like the original article, and while the headline is a bit of screamer, the facts reported in the article check out pretty closely with the facts reported in the later 'debunking'.

also, the original article was written during the time when israel was not letting any journalists into gaza, and telephone service was unreliable. given all the handicaps, the 'debunked' article appears to have come amazingly close to the truth.

what it sounds like is that a few hundred palestinians took refuge inside the school building, a building that was surrounded by a wall, and very shortly after they left the building and were in the street just outside the building, the israelis fired 3 missiles into the crowd, killing 40+ people outside the wall and injuring another dozen who were still inside the wall.

so yeah, technically they didn't attack the school building.

from the original article [or at least one written the day after the attack, and bearing the headline in question] --

Massacre of innocents as UN school is shelled
Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Hundreds of Palestinians had fled their homes for the refuge of the al-Fakhoura school, hoping the blue and white flag of the UN flying over the impromptu shelter would protect them from the Israeli onslaught.

The UN had even given the Israeli army the co-ordinates for the building to spare it from the shells and air strikes raining down on the Gaza strip. But yesterday afternoon tank shells exploded outside the school, sending shrapnel into the crowds, killing at least 40 and wounding another 55.

[...]

At the meeting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas voiced support for the Sarkozy-Mubarak ceasefire initiative. The killings at the school in Gaza confirmed the "heinous crime being committed against our people," he said.

[...]

With Israeli troops moving further south into the cities of one of the world's most crowded territories, the Palestinian death toll is beginning to rival that in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Yesterday, the UN demanded an immediate independent investigation into the latest school killings.

[...]

Majed Hamdan, a photographer, said he rushed to the scene shortly after the attacks, which happened just as many of the refugees had ventured outside for fresh air.

[...]

Responding to criticism of its hit on the school in the Jabalya refugee camp, the Israeli military accused Hamas of "using civilians as human shields". It said that the results of its "initial inquiry" was that mortar shells had been fired from the school at forces operating in the area and that, "in response to the incoming enemy fire, the forces returned mortar fire", and said that this was not the first time Hamas had fired mortars and rockets from UNRWA school premises in Gaza. Two Hamas militants, Imad Abu Askar and Hasan Abu Askar, were among the dead, the army said.

John Ging, the operations director for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs the school, expressed his outrage. "Those in the school were all families seeking refuge," he said. "There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorised and traumatised ... I am appealing to political leaders to get their act together and stop this."

[...]

With foreign journalists currently prevented from entering Gaza and with mobile telephone use in Gaza intermittent, it is virtually impossible to verify details of all casualties.

In Israel, the Hamas rockets have continued to land. At least five hit Israeli soil yesterday, including one in Gadera, 28km (17 miles) from Tel Aviv. A three-month-old baby was hurt.

The Israel Defence Forces says seven Israeli soldiers have died during the offensive: one during the air strikes, three more since the ground invasion began and, late on Monday, three were killed and another 24 wounded by a tank shell in a friendly fire incident.

This is a highly, highly misleading post, and I'm feeling pretty damn abused for having believed its premise in the first place. Only very careful reading of the sources shows the flaws.

First you write:

"Quoting The Globe and Mail, the downunder news site clarifies thusly:"

But that is not what you link to, you actually link to a site called www.honestreporting.com, which after a minute or two of reading reveals itself as an obvious, and unapologetic Israeli pushback/propoganda site. They even quote former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the following:

"The fact that people were milling around the area where Hamas was firing rockets is not Israel's fault, but rather points out that Hamas fired from an area frequented by civilians, engaging in what former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls a double war crime: "Attacking [Israeli] civilians and hiding behind [Palestinian] civilians.""

And that statement, according to the Globe and Mail account, is a blatant falsehood (as I quote below).

Even still, I wouldn't have a problem with the source, if it were more than "truthy", unfortunately, on actually reading the piece, it is obvious that only selective, self-exculpatory facts are quoted (as I will go in to below).

Second, even if it had been the right link, does that downunder news site really clarify? Actually, it does the opposite!

Here is the actual quote from the Globe and Mail:

"The teacher, who refused to give his name because he said UNRWA had told the staff not to talk to the news media, was adamant: "Inside [the compound] there were 12 injured, but there were no dead."

"Three of my students were killed," he said. "But they were all outside.""

I suppose you could debate whether or not it was and attack "on" the school rather than just "in" the school, since the shells landed right outside the school, in a crowd of people that had just spilled OUT of the school, and the dead students were outside the walls. But The Australian quite cleverly omits that last sentence, and doesn't indicate that it is clipped out. In fact they have a whole block of text pulled from the Globe and Mail, making it look like a continuous quote, but it isn't.

Third, it may be true that, as the Globe and Mail puts forth, that "There was just one problem: The story, as etched in people's minds, was not quite accurate. ". There is a difference between what is "etched in minds" and what the actual parties said though. And I haven't seen anywhere that (UNRWA's) Ging needed to "set any record straight", he said from the first that no one inside the school was killed, he never said mortars landed in the school (even though shrapnel from them did), he said (as noted in the Globe and Mail), that there were no Hamas gunmen in the school. And that was true, he said it in response to a false claim by the Israeli Army that they were shooting at gunmen in the school. A claim they later moonwalked away from. There isn't anything that he said that was not true, and the Globe and Mail basically agrees.

I know, how about if I provide a relevant, unbroken quote from the Globe and Mail story?

"No witnesses said they saw any gunmen. (If people had seen anyone firing a mortar from the middle of the street outside the school, they likely would not have continued to mill around.)

John Ging, UNRWA's operations director in Gaza, acknowledged in an interview this week that all three Israeli mortar shells landed outside the school and that "no one was killed in the school."

"I told the Israelis that none of the shells landed in the school," he said.

Why would he do that?

"Because they had told everyone they had returned fire from gunmen in the school. That wasn't true."

Mr. Ging blames the Israelis for the confusion over where the victims were killed. "They even came out with a video that purported to show gunmen in the schoolyard. But we had seen it before," he said, "in 2007."

The Israelis are the ones, he said, who got everyone thinking the deaths occurred inside the school.

"Look at my statements," he said. "I never said anyone was killed in the school. Our officials never made any such allegation."

Speaking from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as the bodies were being brought in that night, an emotional Mr. Ging did say: "Those in the school were all families seeking refuge. ... There's nowhere safe in Gaza."

And in its daily bulletin, the World Health Organization reported: "On 6 January, 42 people were killed following an attack on a UNRWA school ..."

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs got the location right, for a short while. Its daily bulletin cited "early reports" that "three artillery shells landed outside the UNRWA Jabalia Prep. C Girls School ..." However, its more comprehensive weekly report, published three days later, stated that "Israeli shelling directly hit two UNRWA schools ..." including the one at issue.

Such official wording helps explain the widespread news reports of the deaths in the school, but not why the UN agencies allowed the misconception to linger.

"I know no one was killed in the school," Mr. Ging said. "But 41 innocent people were killed in the street outside the school. Many of those people had taken refuge in the school and wandered out onto the street.

"The state of Israel still has to answer for that. What did they know and what care did they take?"
"

There, I think that "clarifies" a little better, and maybe he has a point quibling the difference between shrapnel hitting the school is misleading compared to the actual "mortar" hitting inside the school. It is important to split hairs, I'm sure it makes all the difference in the world to the dead rotting in their graves and to the families that mourn them.

Update: You also say this:

"But the UN forbade a teacher on the site from telling media representatives no one was killed, "

And that really contributes to the truthiness, first, the UN didn't want anybody speaking to the press PERIOD (possibly because that is how unfounded rumors can spread?), second, you make it sound like "no one was killed", well, they WERE killed, only right outside the school. Your breathless post makes no note of the fact that 42 civilians were killed that day.

...to Hipparchia and herb for clearing this up.

again.

I tire of trying to overcome the anti-Israel bias in worldwide media.
I tire of reading the propaganda anointing the Palestinians as innocent lambs and tarring the Israelis as aggressive war criminals.

No, I don't thank any of you for your arguments. I don't thank you for your distortions.
And furthermore I don't believe you have anything worthwhile to say on this subject because you are all -- herb the verb, hipparchia, mandos, all three of you -- anti-Israel.

So I will stop paying attention to your spewings. But when I find indications that the press has in fact misreported, misdirected, or lied in an effort to whip up the biased and unthinking toward a march to drive Israel into the sea at the behest of Iran and bin Laden, I will post my findings.

Because whether or not you choose to see it, the truth about corruption in Gaza is out there.

A one-state solution is no solution at all.

the Israeli people and the Israeli nation.

I hoped that others were doing the same when the president of my country, the US, was committing war crimes and making illegal wars. When even many Dems supported these illegal actions. I really hoped the rest of the world understood that BushCo did not act in my name.

I and others like me were essentailly ignored by the MCM or made fun of, our numbers in marches and protests ignored, misreported, or trivialized.

So, it is possible to criticize the actions of a government without being "anti-Nation X."

Right?

A one-state solution is the solution that Israel has chosen for itself. It is only in Western media that anyone seriously believes that Israel (as in, its government and policy-makers) has ever wanted a two-state solution.

I mean, the Saudi plan has been on the table for a while now. You know, normalized relations and all. Everything that Israel has ostensibly asked for. Ostensibly. Your propaganda, Sarah, doesn't do it here.

That article was anti-Israel bias??? Come on. It was at best a neutral POV from Xinhua.

Naturally, the non-white-European world is not going to buy Israeli hasbara as easily as guilt-ridden Westerners. It's kind of hard to dredge up sympathy for European settler colonialism in this day and age in ex-colonies.

...Iran, booga booga!!!